Plutarch: The Moralia
The Plainspoken Classics - Scriptorium Press (First Edition, 2026)
An original AI translation made directly from the source language.
https://scriptorium-press.pages.dev


======== Moralia: Ad Principem Ineruditum ========

Plato was asked by the Cyrenaeans to write laws for them and to leave them a settled constitution, but he declined, saying that it was difficult to legislate for Cyrenaeans while they were so prosperous, "for nothing is so proud and harsh and hard to govern as a man" once he has laid hold of what seems to be good fortune. This is why it is difficult for rulers to accept a counselor about their rule: they are afraid to admit reason to themselves as if it were a ruler in its own right, lest it curtail their power by enslaving it to duty.
For they do not know the story of Theopompus, king of the Spartans, who was the first at Sparta to associate the Ephors with the kings in the government, and who, when his wife reproached him for handing down to his children a lesser rule than he had received, replied, "No, a greater one, inasmuch as it is more secure." By relaxing its violent and unchecked character, he escaped, along with the envy it provoked, the danger that goes with it.
And yet, though Theopompus channeled off part of his royal power to others as if diverting a great stream, he cut away from his own share exactly as much as he gave to others. But the reason that dwells with a ruler as a companion and guardian from philosophy, removing the precariousness of his power the way one removes the risk of disease from a sound body, leaves what is healthy intact. But most kings and rulers, having no sense, imitate unskillful sculptors, who think their colossal statues will look grand and massive if they make them striding wide apart, straining, and open-mouthed. For such rulers too, by the heaviness of their voice, the harshness of their look, the difficulty of their manners, and the unsociability of their way of life, think they are imitating the weight and dignity of power, though they differ not at all from those colossal statues, which have on the outside a heroic and godlike form, but within are full of earth and stone and lead.
Except that in the statues these weights preserve an upright stability, fixed and unshaken, whereas uneducated generals and rulers, because of the folly within them, are often shaken and overturned; for building a lofty structure of power upon a foundation that is not set straight, they collapse along with it. But it is necessary that, just as the mason's rule itself, once it has become straight and true, corrects everything else by being fitted and set alongside it and making it conform to itself, so too the ruler, having first gained mastery over himself, straightened his own soul, and settled his own character, should fit his subjects to himself in the same way. For it belongs to no one who is himself falling to set others upright, nor to one who is ignorant to teach, nor to one who is disordered to bring order, nor to one who is unarranged to arrange, nor to one who is not ruled to rule.
But most people, thinking wrongly, suppose that the first good thing about ruling is not being ruled — indeed the king of the Persians considered everyone a slave except his own wife, of whom above all he ought to have been master. Who, then, will rule the ruler? Law, "the king of all, both mortal and immortal," as Pindar said — not written outside in books or on tablets of wood, but a living reason within him, always dwelling with him and keeping watch, never allowing his soul to be left destitute of guidance. The Persian king, for his part, kept one of his chamberlains appointed for this very purpose, so that, coming in at dawn, he would say to him, "Arise, O king, and attend to the affairs which the great Oromasdes willed you to attend to."
But in the educated and self-controlled ruler, it is one within himself who says this always and urges him on. Polemon used to say that love is "a service of the gods for the care and preservation of the young." One might say more truly that rulers are servants of god for the care and preservation of mankind, so that of the good things god gives to men, they may distribute some and guard others. Do you see this boundless expanse of air on high, and the earth held round about in its watery arms? God sends down the beginnings of the seeds appropriate to it, and the earth brings them up; and some things grow warmed by rains, others by winds, others by the stars and the moon, while the sun brings order to all things and mingles into everything this very charm that comes from itself.
But of such great gifts as the gods bestow, there is no enjoyment nor right use apart from law and justice and a ruler. Justice, then, is the end of law; law is the work of the ruler; and the ruler is the image of the god who orders all things — a god who has no need of a Phidias to mold him, nor of Polyclitus or Myron, but who fashions himself, through virtue, into a likeness of god, and thereby creates of all statues the one most pleasing to behold and most godlike.
Just as god has set in the heavens the sun and the moon as beautiful images of himself, so a ruler establishes in his cities a like reflection and radiance — one who, being god-fearing, upholds justice, that is, who possesses the reasoning and understanding of god — not a scepter, nor a thunderbolt, nor a trident, as some fashion and paint themselves, making their folly odious through their unattainable pretensions. For god is indignant with those who imitate his thunders and lightnings and rays of light, but on those who emulate his virtue and assimilate themselves to what is good and kind he looks with delight, and he increases them and gives them a share in his own good order and justice and truth and gentleness — things than which nothing is more divine, not fire, not light, not the sun's course, not the risings and settings of the stars, not eternity and immortality itself.
For god's blessedness lies not in length of life but in virtue, and this is what is divine in a ruler; and beautiful, too, is that share of it which belongs to the ruled. Anaxarchus, then, comforting Alexander when he was in agony over the murder of Cleitus, said that Justice and Right sat beside Zeus, so that whatever a king did might seem right and just — not rightly nor helpfully healing Alexander's remorse for his wrongdoing by emboldening him toward similar acts in the future.
But if we must speculate on these matters, Zeus does not have Justice seated beside him; rather he himself is Justice and Right, and the eldest and most perfect of laws. The ancients, however, say and write and teach that not even Zeus can rule well without Justice, but rather "she is a virgin," as Hesiod says, undefiled, the companion of reverence and self-control and helpfulness — which is why men address kings as "revered"; for it is fitting that those be revered who have the least cause to be feared. And the ruler ought to fear suffering evil more than doing it, for the one is the cause of the other, and this fear on the ruler's part is a humane and noble one — to fear on behalf of the ruled, lest they come to harm unnoticed, "as dogs keep watch over sheep in the fold on hearing a fierce-hearted beast" — not for their own sake but for the sake of those they guard.
Epaminondas, when the Thebans had given themselves up freely to some festival and its drinking, alone went the rounds of the arms and the walls, saying that he kept sober and watchful so that the others might be free to get drunk and sleep. And Cato at Utica, after the defeat, ordered everyone else to sail away by sea, and after putting them aboard and praying for their safe voyage, returned home and killed himself — thereby teaching for whose sake a ruler ought to make use of fear, and for whose sake he ought to show contempt for it.
Clearchus, the tyrant of Pontus, used to sleep shut up in a chest, like a snake. And Aristodemus of Argos, in an upper room fitted with a bolted door, above which he placed his couch, used to sleep there with his mistress; and her mother would draw away the little ladder from below, and bring it back and set it in place again the next day. How, do you suppose, did such a man shudder at the theater, the magistrate's office, the council chamber, the banquet hall — he who had made his own bedchamber a prison for himself? For in truth kings fear on behalf of their subjects, but tyrants fear their subjects; and so their fear grows together with their power, since those who rule more, fear more.
For it is neither likely nor fitting, as some philosophers say, that god should exist mixed up in matter, which is subject to everything, and in affairs that admit countless necessities and chances and changes; rather, he abides somewhere on high, established, as Plato says, "on holy foundations" amid that which is by nature always constant, "accomplishing his course in a straight line as he moves about according to nature." And just as the sun in heaven displays, as its own most beautiful likeness, a reflection as through a mirror to those able to look upon it through itself, so the light of justice and of the reason concerning himself that a ruler establishes in his cities stands as an image, one which the blessed and self-controlled copy from philosophy, fashioning themselves toward the noblest of things.
And nothing else produces this disposition so much as reason coming from philosophy — lest we suffer the fate of Alexander, who, on seeing Diogenes at Corinth, and loving him for his natural gifts and marveling at the man's spirit and greatness, said, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes" — coming very close to saying that the good fortune, splendor, and power that surrounded him were a hindrance to virtue and a burden, and that he envied the rough cloak and the beggar's pouch, because by these things Diogenes was unconquered and unassailable, not as Alexander was, by arms and horses and long spears. It was possible, then, for Alexander, by philosophizing, to become Diogenes in disposition while remaining Alexander in fortune, and for this very reason to become Diogenes all the more, because he was Alexander — just as a great fortune, having much wind and swell, needs much ballast and a great pilot.
For among the weak, the lowly, and private persons, folly mingling with powerlessness ends in an inability to do serious wrong, just as in unpleasant dreams something disturbs the soul without its being able to rise up together with its desires; but power, once it takes hold of vice, adds sinew to the passions, and what Dionysius said is true: he said he enjoyed his rule most when he could quickly do whatever he wished. Great, then, is the danger for one who is able to do what he wishes, of wishing what he ought not. "Straightway the word was spoken, and the deed was done." Vice, given a swift course by power, drives every passion to its extreme, turning anger into murder, love into adultery, and greed into confiscation.
"Straightway together the word was spoken" — and the man who gave offense is destroyed on mere suspicion, and the man who was slandered is already dead. But just as the natural philosophers say that lightning, although it actually occurs after the thunder, appears before it — the hearing meeting the sound later, the sight meeting the light sooner — so too in the courts of the powerful, punishments outrun the accusations, and condemnations fall before the proofs are heard.
For anger already gives way and no longer holds firm, like a sandy anchorage in a swell, unless a weighty reasoning presses down upon power and restrains it, the ruler imitating the sun, which, when it has reached its greatest elevation, raised up in the northern regions, moves the least, settling its course into safety by a more leisurely pace.
For it is not possible for vices to escape notice in positions of power. Rather, just as epileptics, if they come to some height and are carried around it, are seized by dizziness and vertigo, which exposes their condition, so the uneducated and ignorant, when fortune lifts them up a little with certain riches or reputation or offices and they become elevated, at once show themselves falling — all the more so, just as with empty vessels you cannot tell the sound one from the cracked one, but when you pour something in, the leak becomes apparent; so unsound souls, unable to contain power, overflow with desires, with fits of anger, with boastfulness, with vulgar excess.
And yet why need one even mention these things, when even the smallest failings are magnified by slander when they concern men who are conspicuous and famous? Cimon was slandered for his wine, Scipio for his sleep, Lucullus was ill spoken of for dining too extravagantly.

======== Moralia: Adversus Colotem ========

Colotes, whom Epicurus used to call by the pet names Colotaras and little Colotarion, has published a book, Saturninus, entitled "That According to the Doctrines of the Other Philosophers It Is Not Even Possible to Live." That book has been dedicated to King Ptolemy. But what occurred to me to say against Colotes I imagine you would be glad to go over in writing, since you are a lover of what is fine and a lover of antiquity, and you consider it the most kingly pursuit to keep in mind, and as far as possible in hand, the words of the ancients.
Recently, then, when the treatise was being read aloud, one of our companions, Aristodemus of Aegium — you know the man, no mere wand-bearer among the Academics but a most frenzied celebrant of Plato's mysteries — somehow, contrary to his usual habit, held himself in patient silence and gave himself as an orderly listener to the very end. But when the reading was finished, he said, "Well then, whom shall we set up to fight this man on behalf of the philosophers? For I do not admire Nestor's way of doing things, when, though he ought to have chosen the best of the nine, he left it to fortune and cast lots." "But you see," I said, "that he too submitted himself to the lot, so that the roster came about under the arbitration of the wisest man; and from the helmet the lot leapt out that they themselves wanted — Ajax's.
Still, if you order me to make the choice, how then could I forget godlike Odysseus afterward? See to it, then, and consider how you will ward the man off." And Aristodemus said, "But you know Plato's saying, that when he was angry with his slave-boy he did not himself lay on the blows, but bade Speusippus do it, saying that he himself was too angry; so you likewise take the man in hand and punish him however you wish, for I am angry."
Since the others too were urging the same thing, I said, "Speak I must, then, but I am afraid I may seem to have taken the book more seriously than I ought, out of anger — because of the man's boorishness and buffoonery and insolence, flinging out some sort of fodder for a discourse: as with Socrates, and how it is that one does not put food into the mouth but into the ear, so he asks. Yet perhaps at this one might even laugh, reflecting on the gentleness and charm of Socrates.
"But 'on behalf of the whole army of the Greeks' " — that is, of the other philosophers, among whom are Democritus and Plato and Stilpo and Empedocles and Parmenides and Melissus, men who have been ill spoken of — it is not only 'shameful to be silent,' but not even pious to give way at all or to detract anything from the utmost frankness owed on their behalf, seeing that they have advanced philosophy to this height of reputation.
And yet life itself our parents, together with the gods, gave us; but from the philosophers we think we have received, as an ally of justice and law, reason as chastiser of the passions, for living well. And living well is living sociably and with friendship, with self-control and with justice. Of none of these do the men fall short who cry that the good lies in the belly — no, they would buy all the virtues together with a perforated copper coin, if pleasure were driven out entirely from every side; and it is enough for them, they say, that there is no account to give of gods and of the soul — as though the soul perishes when it is dissolved, and they care nothing for anything belonging to us.
Now the others charge these men, because they abolish living with self-control; but these charge the others in turn, because they teach living basely and like beasts." "And yet these things are mixed into Epicurus's own words and pervade his whole philosophy. But as for Colotes — that he pulls certain phrases stripped of their subject matter, and fragments of arguments, and mute scraps deprived of what confirms and supports understanding and conviction, and drags them together as if into a market or a picture-gallery of monstrosities, so composing his book — you, I think, know this better than anyone, since you have the writings of the ancients constantly in hand.
To me it seems that, like the Lydian who opened not one door upon himself but flung Epicurus round with the most numerous and the greatest difficulties. For he begins from Democritus, receiving from him fine and fitting instruction — and yet for a long time Epicurus himself proclaimed himself a Democritean, as others say and especially Leonteus, one of Epicurus's foremost pupils, who, writing to Lycophron, says that Democritus was honored by Epicurus because he was first to grasp correct knowledge, and that the whole undertaking is called Democritean because he was the first to hit upon the first principles concerning nature; and Metrodorus has said outright, concerning philosophy, that if Democritus had not led the way, Epicurus would not have come forward to wisdom.
But if it is not possible to live according to the doctrines of Democritus, as Colotes supposes, then Epicurus was ridiculous to follow Democritus, who leads one to not living. He charges him, first, with this: that by saying each of the things that exist is 'no more this than that' he has thrown life into confusion. But Democritus is so far from holding that each of the things that exist is no more this than that, that he fought against Protagoras the sophist for saying so, and wrote much that is persuasive against him — writings which Colotes, never having met with them even in a dream, has erred about the man's actual wording, in which he distinguishes 'den' as being no more than 'meden,' calling 'den' the body and 'meden' the void, on the ground that this too has a nature and a substance of its own.
He, then, who thought that 'nothing' exists no more as such-and-such than as such-and-such has made use of an Epicurean doctrine — namely, that all impressions coming through sense-perception are true. For if two men, one saying the wine is dry and the other that it is sweet, neither is lying as far as his perception goes, why should the wine be dry any more than sweet? And indeed one can see people using the same bath, some as if it were hot, others as if cold; for some bid one pour it on cold, others hot.
And they say that a certain Berenice, one of the Spartan women who had gone to visit Deiotarus, when she came near another woman, immediately turned away, the one, it seems, disliking the perfume, the other the rancid butter. If, then, one perception is no more true than the other, it is likely also that water is no more cold than hot, and that the perfume and the rancid butter are no more sweet-smelling than foul-smelling. For if one says that the same appearance is different to different people, without realizing it he is saying that it is both."
"And the much-talked-of symmetries and harmonies of the passages about the sense-organs, and the manifold minglings of the seeds which they say are scattered about in all flavors and smells and colors, moving a different sense-perception in one person than in another — do they not drive matters straight to the 'no more this than that,' as far as these men themselves are concerned? For those who suppose that perception is false, because opposite experiences arise in people using the same things, they console by teaching that, since all things are as it were jumbled and mingled together, and one thing is naturally fitted to one person and another to another, the contact and apprehension of the same quality is not the same, nor does the underlying thing move all its parts alike in everyone.
Rather, each person, encountering only those things toward which he has a proportionate perception, wrongly contends about whether the thing is good or bad, white or not white, thinking to confirm his own perceptions by destroying those of others; whereas one ought to quarrel with no perception at all, for all of them lay hold of something, each drawing, as it were from a spring of manifold mixture, what is suited and proper to it; and one ought not to make predications about the whole while touching only parts, nor think that all must be affected in the same way, different people being affected according to a different quality and power belonging to the thing."
It is now time to consider who are more the men who impute 'no more this than that' to things than those who declare every sensible object to be a mixed compound of qualities of every kind, like an unfermented must fit for the flute-player — men who confess that their own standards go to ruin for them and that their criterion is utterly lost, unless they leave each thing pure and unmixed and not manifold. "See what Epicurus himself has made Polyaenus say concerning the heat of wine, in the Symposium, conversing with himself. For when someone said, 'Do you not affirm, Epicurus, that there are heatings produced by wine?' — did anyone suppose he was declaring wine to be, universally, heat-producing? — and shortly after: 'For it appears that wine is not universally heat-producing, but that so much of it might be said to be heat-producing for this particular person'; and again, having stated as cause the compressions and dispersals of atoms, and having alleged as cause, in the mingling with the body, the combinations and conjunctions of other atoms,
he adds concerning the wine: 'Wherefore one must not say, universally, that wine is heat-producing, but that so much of it, of such a nature and so disposed, is heat-producing for this person, or that so much of it is cooling for that one; for there are present in such an aggregate natures of such a kind also, from which a cold effect might be composed, and which, when conjoined suitably with others, might bring about the nature of coldness. Whence those are deceived who say that wine is universally cooling, and those who say it is universally heat-producing.'
He, then, who says that most people are deceived in supposing that what heats is heat-producing, or what cools is cooling-producing, if he does not think that the 'no more this than that' of each thing follows from what he himself has said, is himself the one deceived. And he adds further that 'often the wine does not even enter the body bearing a heat-producing or a cooling power, but when the mass has been set in motion and a transposition of the bodies has occurred, the atoms that produce heat now have come together into the same place and, by their multitude, have furnished heat and a burning to the body; and now again, having fallen out, they have cooled it.'"
"But that it is possible to apply to any and everything what is called and reckoned bitter, sweet, purgative, sleep-inducing, luminous — as though nothing had a self-sufficient quality and power, nor acts rather than is acted upon, whenever it comes to be present in bodies, but takes on a different differentiation and blending in different subjects — this is not unclear. For Epicurus himself, in the second book of his work against Theophrastus, saying that colors are not innate in bodies, but are generated according to certain positions and arrangements relative to the sight, says that in accordance with this argument a body is no more colorless than colored.
Higher up, in his own words, he has written this: 'But apart from this point too, I do not know how one ought to say that these things, being as they are in the dark, have colors' — and yet, though the air is often equally dark all around, some perceive a difference of colors while others do not, on account of the dullness of their sight.
Further, when we enter a dark room we see no appearance of color at all, but after waiting a little we do see it: so it will be said that each of the bodies no more has color than lacks it. And if color is relative to something, then white too will be relative to something, and blue as well; and if these, then sweet and bitter too; so that of every quality it will be truly predicated that it no more is than is not — for to those affected in this way it will be of such a kind, but to those not so affected it will not be.
"The mire, then, and the mud in which he says those who declare things to be 'no more this than that' come to be mired, Colotes pours over himself and over his own master." "Is it, then, only here that our noble friend is revealed as 'a healer of others, himself teeming with sores'? Not so, indeed; but even more, in the second book of his Objections, he does not notice that he is expelling Epicurus, along with Democritus, from the realm of the living. For as to the statement that color exists by convention, and sweet by convention, and compound by convention, but in reality only the void and the atoms exist — this, said by Democritus, he asserts fights with the senses, and that one who abides by this argument and makes use of it could not even conceive of himself as to whether he is dead or alive."
Against this argument I have nothing to say in reply, except to say that these doctrines are just as inseparable from those of Epicurus as shape and weight are said by his own followers to be inseparable from the atom. For what does Democritus say? That there are substances infinite in multitude, indestructible atoms, and moreover without qualities and unaffected by anything,
borne about scattered in the void; and that whenever they draw near one another, or collide, or become entangled, of the things thus aggregated some appear as water, some as fire, some as a plant, some as a man; but that all things are the atoms, called by him by their own peculiar name, and nothing else; for out of what is not, there can be no coming-to-be, and out of the things that are, nothing
could come to be, since the atoms, by reason of their hardness, neither are affected nor change; whence neither color could arise out of colorless things, nor nature or soul out of things without quality and unaffected. Democritus, then, is to be blamed, not for failing to acknowledge the consequences of his first principles, but for adopting first principles to which these consequences belong. For he ought not to have posited the primary bodies as unchangeable, but having posited them, he ought then to have seen that all coming-to-be of quality is thereby done away with;
and to deny this while perceiving the absurdity is most shameless. This is what Colotes says Epicurus does: that he posits the same first principles, but does not say that color and sweetness and whiteness exist 'by convention,' along with the other qualities. Now if by 'does not say' he means something like 'does not admit,' this is one of the things Epicurus is accustomed to do: for even while abolishing providence he says he leaves piety intact; and while choosing friendship for the sake of pleasure he says he is ready to undergo the greatest pains on behalf of his friends;
and while positing the universe as infinite, he does not do away with 'up' and 'down.' There are those who, having taken the cup, drink as much as they wish and then give back what is left over; but in this argument above all one must remember that saying of this same wise man: 'those things whose first principles are not necessary, their ends are necessary.'
It is not, then, necessary to posit — or rather, borrowing it from Democritus — that atoms are the first principles of all things; but having posited the doctrine and adorned it with its first plausibilities, one must go on to swallow down the difficult consequence, or else show how qualityless bodies furnish all manner of qualities by their mere coming together. Take at once: whence has what is called heat come to you, and how has it arisen in the atoms, if
they neither came possessing heat nor became hot by coming together? For the one belongs to a thing that has a quality, the other to a thing naturally disposed to be affected — and you say that neither is proper to the atoms, on account of their indestructibility." "What then? Did it not likewise happen to Plato and Aristotle and Xenocrates, that gold comes to be out of what is not gold, and stone out of what is not stone, and the other things are generated out of four simple and primary
—of all things? Certainly. But in their case the first principles immediately combine for the generation of each thing, bringing with them, as it were, great contributions of the qualities they contain; and whenever they come together into one place and coincide—wet with dry, cold with hot, solid with soft—bodies moving upon one another and changing throughout under mutual affection, one blending gives birth to another generation out of another mixture. The atom, however, taken by itself, is solitary and stripped bare of all generative power, and when it collides with another, from hardness and resistance it undergoes nothing more than a mere jolt—it neither suffers nor produces any further effect—but atoms strike and are struck for all time, unable, out of themselves, to produce so much as a common multitude or a single heap, since they are forever being shaken together and pulled apart, let alone a living creature or a soul or a nature.
Colotes, as though addressing an illiterate king, again attacks Empedocles for breathing the very same doctrine: ‘I will tell you something else: there is no “nature” of any single mortal thing, nor any accursed begetting through death; there is only the mixing and interchanging of things mixed, and it is this that men call “nature.”’ Now I, for my part, do not see how these words are opposed to the position of those who suppose that there is neither a coming-into-being of what does not exist nor a destruction of what does exist, but rather that, certain things existing, their coming together with one another is called birth, and their separation from one another is called death; for Empedocles has made it plain that he used the word “nature” in place of “birth,” setting death over against it.
But if those who take mixtures to be births and dissolutions to be destructions do not live and cannot live, what different thing are these men doing? And yet Empedocles, by cementing and fitting the elements together through degrees of heat, softness, and moisture, does at least grant them, in some fashion, a mixture and a unifying growing-together; whereas those who drive the unalterable, unsympathetic atoms together into one place produce out of them nothing at all, but only many continuous collisions among them—for their interlocking, far from preventing dissolution, only intensifies the clash, so that on their view what is called “birth” is neither a mixing nor a cementing but a turmoil and a battle. For an instant the atoms recoil from one another because of the collision, and then, once the force of the blow has spent itself, they approach again, so that for more than twice as long they are apart from one another as they are touching and close together—with the result that nothing whatever is produced out of them, not even something lifeless.
As for sensation, soul, mind, and thought—these atomists cannot, even if they wished, form any conception of how such things could arise in void and atoms, entities which, taken by themselves, possess no quality, and which, when they come together, undergo neither affection nor change, nor indeed any coming-together that produces blending, mixture, and organic union, but only collisions and rebounds. So that by their own doctrines both living and being a living creature are abolished, since they lay down as first principles things that are empty, unaffected, godless, and soulless, and, further, incapable of mixing or being blended. How then do they leave any place for nature, soul, and living creature? Only as one leaves a place for an oath, a prayer, a sacrifice, an act of worship—in word and speech, by saying, pretending, and naming things which, by their own first principles and doctrines, they have abolished.
But if in fact they simply call the thing that has come to be by nature “nature,” and the thing that has come to be “birth”—just as people, using a loose figure of speech, call timber “woodwork” and things that are in harmony “harmony”—then where did it occur to Colotes to raise such objections against Empedocles? ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘do we wear ourselves out, taking such pains for our own sake, reaching after certain things and guarding against others? For we do not exist, nor do we live by making use of other things.’ But take heart, one might say, my dear little Colotes—no one is stopping you from taking pains on your own behalf, once you have been taught that the “nature” of Colotes is simply Colotes himself and nothing else, and that making use of things is nothing else either, while pointing out that for you “things” are pleasures—
on the ground that there is no “nature” of pastries, or of perfumes, or of intercourse, but only pastries, perfumes, and women that exist; just as the grammarian who says that ‘the might of Heracles’ means Heracles himself does not thereby do away with Heracles, nor do those who claim that “harmonies” and “beam-frames” are mere figures of speech thereby deny that there exist notes and beams—seeing that even those who deny the existence of soul and thought do not, for all that, seem to deny that we live or think.
Now when Epicurus says, ‘the nature of existing things is bodies and void,’ are we to take this as meaning that he intends “nature” to be something other than the things that exist, or rather that he is simply pointing to the things that exist and to nothing else—just as, no doubt, he is also in the habit of calling the void itself “the nature of void,” and, by Zeus, of calling the universe “the nature of the universe”? And if someone were to ask, ‘What do you mean, Epicurus—that one thing is void and another the nature of void?’ he will say, ‘No, by Zeus; but this manner of speaking has somehow become customary, and I too, in using it, appeal to convention.’
What else, then, by Zeus, has Empedocles done, in teaching that “nature” is nothing beyond the thing that comes to be, and “death” nothing beyond the thing that dies? Rather, just as the poets, personifying things, often say, ‘and among them mingled Strife, and Tumult, and deadly Doom,’ so most people give the names “birth” and “destruction” to things that are being formed and things that are being dissolved. He was so far from disturbing reality and fighting against the appearances that he did not even banish the customary word from use, but, having removed only whatever deceptive harm it did to the facts, restored to the names their accustomed sense in these lines:
‘But when the light of ether, mingling, comes to dwell within a man, or within the race of wild beasts, or within bushes, or within birds, then men speak of this as “being born”; and when the elements separate apart again, this in turn they wrongly call “ill-starred fate”; and I too, following convention, use the accustomed term.’ In quoting these lines, Colotes failed to see that Empedocles has not done away with men, beasts, bushes, and birds—which he himself says come to be when the elements mix together—but rather, in teaching that those who apply to this combining and separating the terms “nature,” “ill-starred fate,” and “destructive death” are mistaken, he did not thereby take away the use of the customary words about these things.
To me, however, it seems that Empedocles is not disturbing this figurative usage at all, but rather, as has already been said, is contesting in earnest the notion of a coming-into-being out of what does not exist—which some call “nature.” And he makes this especially clear in these verses: ‘Fools—for their thoughts do not reach far—who suppose that what previously was not can come into being, or that anything can die and be utterly destroyed.’ These verses cry aloud, to those who have ears, that he is not abolishing coming-into-being as such, but only coming-into-being out of what does not exist; nor destruction as such, but only destruction ‘utterly,’ that is, destruction that reduces a thing to what does not exist.
Since, indeed, for anyone willing to misrepresent him not so savagely and foolishly but a little more gently, what follows would furnish grounds for the very opposite accusation, given that Empedocles says: ‘A man wise in judgment would not divine anything like this—that so long as men live what indeed they call life, so long they exist and have their share of things both terrible and good, but that before mortals were compounded and once they are dissolved, they are then nothing at all.’ For these words are not the words of one who denies that those who have come to be and are living exist; rather, they are the words of one who supposes that even those not yet born and those already dead exist as well.
But in fact Colotes has not even brought this charge; instead he says that, according to Empedocles, we shall not fall sick or be wounded at all. Yet how can one who does not exclude suffering from those who exist before life and after it fail to leave room for suffering among the living as well? To whom, then, does it truly belong not to be wounded and not to fall sick, Colotes? To you—to you who are compacted out of atom and void, neither of which has any share in sensation. And this is not even the worst of it: there is nothing that can produce pleasure for you either, since the atom does not admit the things that could act upon it, and the void cannot be affected by them.
Now since Colotes, right after Democritus, wished to bury Parmenides along with him, while I have passed over that order and taken up Empedocles first, because his case follows more directly upon Colotes’ opening charges, let us now return to Parmenides. As for the things which Colotes says Parmenides speaks as shameful sophistries, that man did not, by means of them, make friendship any less respectable, nor love of pleasure any bolder, nor did he take away the power of the good to draw us toward itself and to be honored for its own sake, nor did he throw our beliefs about the gods into confusion; and by declaring that the All is one, I fail to see how he has kept us from living.
For indeed Epicurus too, when he says that the All is infinite, ungenerated, and indestructible, neither increasing nor diminishing, is speaking of the All as some single thing; and at the beginning of his treatise, having already stated that the nature of existing things is bodies and void, he has divided into two what is really one thing, one part of which really is nothing at all, though it is called by you “intangible,” “void,” and “incorporeal”—so that for you too the All is one, unless you wish merely to bandy empty words about the void, shadow-boxing against the ancients. ‘But,’ you will say, ‘by Zeus, according to Epicurus the bodies are infinite in number, and each of the visible things comes to be out of them.’
Consider, though, what sort of first principles you posit for generation: infinity and void—of which the one is inert, unaffected, and incorporeal, while the other is disorderly, irrational, and unbounded, forever dissolving and disturbing itself because, owing to its multitude, it is neither mastered nor bounded. Parmenides, at any rate, has done away with neither fire nor water nor cliff nor cities, as Colotes claims, inhabited throughout Europe and Asia; indeed he has even composed an ordered account of the world, and, by mixing the elements—the bright and the dark—produces from them, and through them, all the phenomena.
For he has said a great deal about the earth, and about the heaven, the sun, the moon, and the stars, and has narrated the generation of mankind; and, as befits an ancient man versed in natural philosophy who composed a treatise of his own—not a corruption of someone else’s—he has left out nothing essential. And since, even earlier than Plato and Socrates, he understood that nature possesses something that is an object of opinion and also something that is an object of intellect—the object of opinion being unstable and wandering, subject to many changes and affections, through waning and waxing, appearing differently to different observers, and never remaining the same even to the same observer's perception at all times—
while the object of intellect is of a different kind: whole of limb, unmoving, and ungenerated, as he himself has said, like unto itself, and abiding in being. Misrepresenting these matters on the strength of mere wording, and pursuing the phrase rather than the meaning, Colotes says flatly that Parmenides does away with everything by positing that being is one. But Parmenides does away with neither reality; rather, assigning to each what properly belongs to it, he places the intelligible under the form of the one and of being—calling it “being” as eternal and indestructible, and “one” because of its likeness to itself and its admitting of no distinction—while under the disorderly and the moving he places the object of sense. One can see the very criterion for these in the lines: ‘both the unshaken heart of well-persuasive truth,’ which lays hold of the intelligible, that which remains ever the same in the same way,
‘and also the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true reliance,’ because these deal with things subject to every sort of change, affection, and dissimilarity. And yet it is impossible to say how he could have left room for sensation and opinion had he not also left room for an object of sense and an object of opinion. Rather, he held that whereas it belongs to what truly is to remain constant in being, these other things—which now are and now are not, forever passing out of themselves and changing their nature—required, he thought, a name different from that of true Being, since they always stand in need of some designation.
His argument, then, that being is one, was not a denial of the many and of the objects of sense, but a demonstration of their difference from the intelligible—a distinction which Plato, setting it forth still more fully in his treatment of the Forms, likewise gave Colotes an occasion to seize upon. For this reason I think it best to take up next what has been said against Plato. And first let us examine the diligence and wide learning of our philosopher, who claims that Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, and all the Peripatetics followed these very doctrines of Plato.
In what uninhabitable wilderness, then, were you living when you wrote your book, that in compiling these charges you never came across their treatises, and never took into your hands Aristotle's On the Heavens and On the Soul, or Theophrastus's Against the Natural Philosophers, or Heraclides's Zoroaster, his On the Things in Hades, or his On Difficulties in Natural Philosophy, or Dicaearchus's On the Soul—works in which, on the most important and greatest questions of natural philosophy, they persist in opposing and contending against Plato? Moreover, among the other Peripatetics, Strato, their most eminent figure, agrees with Aristotle on many points, yet holds opinions opposite to Plato's concerning motion, mind, soul, and generation;
and, to crown it all, he says that the cosmos itself is not a living creature, and that what happens according to nature follows upon what happens by chance; for the spontaneous supplies the starting point, and thereafter each of the natural processes is brought to completion in this way. As for the Forms, on account of which Colotes brings his charge against Plato, Aristotle himself, attacking them at every turn and raising every possible difficulty against them—in the ethical treatises, in the Metaphysics, in the Physics, and in the exoteric dialogues—seemed to some, on the strength of these very doctrines, to be acting more out of contentiousness than out of philosophy, as though he had set out to demolish Plato's philosophy; so far was he from following it.
What sort of recklessness is it, then, to misrepresent, without having learned them, the views these men actually held, and, believing oneself to be refuting others, to publish under one's own name a proof of one's own ignorance and rashness—by claiming that those who disagree with Plato agree with him, and that those who contradict him follow him? ‘But,’ he says, ‘Plato claims that horses are vainly called horses by us, and men, men.’ In what hidden corner of Plato's writings did Colotes discover this? For throughout all his works we read that man is called man, horse is called horse, and fire is called fire, each of these being, in his view, an object of opinion—and he does indeed call each of them exactly that: an object of opinion.
But he, having not the slightest share in wisdom, took it as one and the same thing to say that the...
a human being — and to “not-being” as “being not a human being.” But Plato held that it made a marvelous difference whether one said “not to be” or “to be not-being”: the one signifies the removal of all being whatsoever, the other the otherness of the participated from the participant. This distinction the later philosophers reduced merely to the difference of genus and species, or of what is said in common and what is said properly of qualities, and they advanced no higher, falling instead into more logical puzzles.
There is, in fact, a relation of the participated to the participant, the same relation that a cause bears to its matter, a model to its image, a capacity to its affection. And it is precisely by this relation that what exists in itself and remains ever the same continually differs from what exists through another and is never in the same state — because the one neither will be, nor has become, not-being, and for this reason is altogether and truly being, while the other has no security even in the borrowed being it possesses from another, but slips away through weakness, since matter, sliding about the form and admitting many affections and changes, constitutes the image of real being, so that it is subject to motion and disturbance. Just as one who says that the image is not Plato does not thereby deny that it can be perceived and does exist as an image, but rather points out a difference between something that exists in its own right and another thing that has come to be in relation to it — so too, those who call each of us an image, coming to be by participation and by form in a common kind of being, do not thereby deny the nature, the use, or the perception belonging to human beings; for indeed
a person who denies that heated iron is fire, or that the moon is the sun, but calls it instead, in Parmenides’ words, “a light shining by night, wandering about the earth, an alien light,” does not thereby deny the use or the nature of iron or of the moon. But if he should deny that it is a body at all, or that it is illuminated, then he is already at odds with the senses — as would be the case with someone who denied it body, living creature, coming-to-be, and perception altogether. But the one who supposes that these things exist by virtue of participating,
and insofar as they fall short of that which always is and which furnishes them their being, does not overlook the perceptible but rather looks past the intelligible; nor does he deny the things that come to be and appear around us as affections, but rather, by showing that other things are more secure and more abiding with respect to being — because they neither come to be nor perish nor undergo any affection — he demonstrates this to those who follow him, and teaches them, with greater precision than the ordinary distinction, to call the one class of things ‘beings’ and the other ‘things that come to be,’ fastening their names to this difference.
This same thing has happened among the moderns as well: for they deprive many great things of the designation of being — the void, time, place, and, in a word, the whole class of ‘sayables,’ in which all truths are included; for these, they say, are things that are not, though they are “somethings,” and yet they make use of them as subsisting and existing both in daily life and in their continued practice of philosophy.
“But I should be glad to ask the accuser himself whether he does not see this same distinction in the doctrines of his own school — the distinction between things that are stable and unchangeable in their being, as they say the atoms are, remaining forever the same by virtue of their impassibility and hardness, while all compounds are fluid and changeable, coming to be and perishing— since countless images are forever streaming away and flowing off, and, as is likely, countless others flow in from the surrounding medium and refill the aggregate, which is made variegated and remixed by this exchange, inasmuch as the atoms deep within the compound are never able to cease their motion or their mutual vibrations, as they themselves say.
Yet even granting that such a difference of being exists among these things, Epicurus proves himself wiser than Plato by calling all things alike ‘beings’ — the intangible void, the resisting body, the first principles, and the compounds — holding, by Zeus, that the eternal shares a common being with what comes to be, and the indestructible with what perishes, and those impassible, enduring, unchangeable natures that can never fall out of being, with those very things whose being consists precisely in undergoing affection and change, and which are never for any time in the same state. And if Plato erred as badly as possible in this matter, he ought to have been held accountable only for a confusion of terms by these more precise Hellenists and clearer reasoners — not charged with abolishing the facts themselves and driving us out of life — on the ground that he called things that come to be ‘not beings,’ as these men themselves do.
“But since, after Parmenides, we have passed over Socrates, he must be taken up at once, since Colotes has stirred him from the sacred hearth. Having related that Chaerephon brought back an oracle from Delphi concerning Socrates — which we all know — Colotes has added these words: ‘We shall pass over the story of Chaerephon, as being altogether the mark of a sophist and vulgar.’ Vulgar, then, was Plato, who set down this oracle in writing — to say nothing of the others. More vulgar still were the Spartans, who kept the oracle concerning Lycurgus recorded in their most ancient archives. A sophistic tale, too, was that of Themistocles, by which he persuaded the Athenians to abandon their city and defeated the barbarian in a sea battle. Vulgar as well were the lawgivers of Greece, who established the greatest and most numerous of their sacred institutions on the authority of Pythian oracles. If, then, the oracle
concerning Socrates — a man possessed by a god for his virtue — brought back as attesting his wisdom, was vulgar and sophistic, by what name shall we fittingly address your own ‘roarings’ and ‘wailings’ and ‘clamorous applause’ and ‘acts of reverence’ and ‘invocations of divinity,’ with which you turn in supplication and sing hymns to the man who summons you to continual and repeated pleasures? He who in his letter to Anaxarchus wrote these very words: ‘I for my part summon men to continual pleasures,
and not to virtues, which hold out empty, vain, and troublesome hopes of their fruits.’ And yet, for all that, Metrodorus, exhorting Timarchus, says: ‘Let us do some noble deed befitting noble men, all but plunging ourselves into fellow-feeling with him and freeing ourselves from the life lived close to the ground, into the truly god-revealed mysteries of Epicurus.’ And Colotes himself, while listening to Epicurus discoursing on nature, suddenly fell at his knees,
and Epicurus himself writes this of the incident, priding himself upon it: ‘For as you were showing reverence toward what was then being said by us, there fell upon you an impulse, beyond all natural explanation, to embrace us, clasping our knees, and to perform the whole customary act of supplication, in the manner of those paying honor and offering prayers of reverence. You made us, accordingly,’ he says, ‘consecrate you in return and revere you as well.’ One may well forgive, by Zeus, those who say they would pay any price
to behold a painted image of that scene — the one falling at the knees and embracing them, the other returning the supplication and the reverent bow. Yet this act of devotion, however well composed on Colotes’ part, did not bear a fruit worthy of it: he was not proclaimed a sage, but was told only, ‘Walk about before me as one imperishable, and think of us as imperishable too.’ Well aware, then, of such words, gestures, and feelings of their own,
they call other people vulgar. And indeed, after setting forth these wise and noble sayings of his about the senses — that ‘we take in food and not fodder, and when rivers are large we cross them by boat, but when they become fordable, on foot’ — Colotes exclaims: ‘But you, Socrates, cultivated boastful arguments, and said one thing to those you conversed with while doing another.’
For how are the arguments of Socrates not boastful, when he professed to know nothing himself, but to be forever learning and seeking the truth? And if, Colotas, you fell in with such utterances of Socrates, what of those which Epicurus writes to Idomeneus: ‘Send us, then, first-fruits for the care of our sacred body, on behalf of yourself and your children — for so it occurs to me to put it’? What cruder words could you have used?
And as for the claim that Socrates said one thing and did another, the events at Delium bear you marvelous witness, and those at Potidaea, and those under the Thirty, and his dealings with Archelaus, and with the people, his poverty, his death — for these are not worthy of Socratic arguments. That man, my good friend, would have been a refutation of Socrates — saying one thing and doing another — if,
having set down pleasant living as his goal, he had lived accordingly. So much, then, in answer to the slanders. But that in the very matters for which he brings his accusation about self-evident things Colotes himself is guilty, he has failed to notice. For it is one of Epicurus’ own doctrines that no one, save the sage alone, is unshakably convinced of anything. Since, then, Colotes was not a sage — not even after those acts of reverence — let him first ask himself those very questions:
how it is that, being suited to take in food and not fodder, he nonetheless is not unshakably convinced that clothing is clothing and food is food, wrapping his garment about his own body and not about a pillar. And if he does these things, and likewise does not wade on foot through rivers when they are large, and flees serpents and wolves, without being unshakably convinced that any of these is really what
it appears to be, but acts in each case according to appearance — then neither, surely, was Socrates hindered by his view about the senses from making use of appearances in just the same way. For it was not the case that bread appeared as bread to Colotes, and fodder as fodder, because he had read the god-given Canons, while Socrates, out of boastfulness, got an impression of bread as fodder and of fodder as bread.
For these wise men make use of the same doctrines and reasonings as we do; but perceiving and being impressed by appearances is a common affection, brought about by causes that have nothing to do with reason. It is the reasoning that is brought to bear upon the senses — holding that they are not exact nor secure grounds for certainty — that does not abolish the fact that each thing appears to us as it does, but rather, while men make use of appearance for the purpose of action,
denies to the senses the claim to be trusted as wholly true and infallible in every case; for what is necessary and useful is sufficiently supplied by them, since nothing better is available — but the knowledge and understanding of each thing that the philosophic soul longs to grasp, these the senses do not provide.” “On these matters, then, Colotes will again give us occasion to speak, since he has leveled the same charge against many others. But in the passage where he utterly
derides and mocks Socrates for inquiring what a human being is, and for boasting, as he says, that he himself did not even know — it is clear that Colotes himself never once came near that question. Heraclitus, however, as though he had accomplished something great and solemn, says, ‘I searched out myself,’ and among the inscriptions at Delphi the most divine seemed to him to be ‘Know thyself’ — the very saying that, as Aristotle says in his works on Plato, gave Socrates the starting point
for this perplexity and this inquiry; but to Colotes it seems laughable. Why, then, does he not likewise laugh at his own master, who does this very thing whenever he writes or discourses about the being of the soul and about the coalescence at its origin? For if, as they themselves maintain, a human being is the compound of both — a body of such-and-such a kind together with a soul — then one who inquires into the nature of the soul is inquiring into the nature of the human being,
proceeding from the more authoritative principle. And that this principle is hard to discern by reasoning and impossible to grasp by sense-perception, let us learn not from Socrates, ‘that sophist and boaster,’ but from these wise men themselves, who, even in dealing with the powers of the soul that concern the flesh — those by which it furnishes warmth and softness and tension to the body — in constructing its being out of something hot and breath-like and airy, do not
attain to the most authoritative part, but rather give up the attempt. ‘For that by which the soul judges and remembers and loves and hates, and in general the intelligent and reasoning faculty,’ he says, ‘arises from a certain quality that cannot be named.’ And that this ‘unnamable’ is a confession of an ignorance that is ashamed of itself — men admitting that they cannot name what they are unable to comprehend — we know well: ‘let this too be granted forgiveness,’ as they say.
For it appears to be no trivial or easy matter, nor one within just anyone’s reach, to come to understand — but something deeply embedded in some inaccessible place and terribly concealed, a thing for which, among so many names, not one is proper to make it plain. Socrates, then, was not foolish for inquiring into himself, but rather all those are foolish who are moved to inquire into anything else before this, seeing that the knowledge of it, necessary as it is, is so difficult
to discover; for no one could hope to grasp knowledge of anything else, when he has failed to comprehend the most authoritative part of his very self. “But granting him that nothing is so useless or so vulgar as inquiring into oneself, let us ask what this confusion in his account of life amounts to, or how it is that a man cannot, in the course of living, at some point pause and reason with himself: ‘Come now, who am I,
this self that I happen to be? Am I a kind of blend mixed together out of soul and body? Or rather is it the soul that makes use of the body, just as a horseman makes use of a horse, and not the compound of horse and man? Or is it the most authoritative part of the soul, by which we think and reason and act, that each of us is, while the rest — all the remaining parts both of soul and of body — are merely
instruments of this faculty’s power? Or is there, in fact, no substance of soul at all, but the body itself, once blended together, has acquired the power of thinking and living?’ Now by raising these questions Socrates does not abolish life — questions which, indeed, all the natural philosophers pursue. Those other questions were the terrifying and disturbing ones, the ones in the Phaedrus, where he thought he must examine himself, to see ‘whether he is
a beast more complex and more inflamed with passion than Typhon, or whether by nature he shares in some portion that is divine and free of arrogance.’ But even with these further reflections he was not abolishing life; rather, he was driving frenzy and arrogance out of life, along with the burdensome, swollen conceits and vainglories — for these are the very ‘Typhon’ that your master has bred so abundantly in you, warring against the gods
and against godlike men.” “After Socrates and Plato, he attacks Stilpo next; and the true doctrines and arguments of that man, by which he adorned himself, his country, his friends, and those kings who were devoted to him, Colotes has not recorded — nor how great was the loftiness of spirit in his soul, joined with gentleness and moderation of feeling. Instead, from among the playful arguments Stilpo used in jest against the sophists,
he singled out one little argument that Stilpo had proposed to them, mentioning it while saying nothing in reply to it and without refuting its plausibility, and then piles on tragic language against Stilpo, declaring that ‘his life is done away with’ by his own argument — the argument that one thing cannot be predicated of another. ‘For how shall we live,’ he asks, ‘if we do not say “a good man” nor “a man general,” but “man” separately and “good” separately and “general” separately, nor “ten thousand horsemen” nor “a city
...but cavalry are cavalry, and ten thousand are ten thousand, and so on for the rest? Who ever lived worse because of such talk? Who, hearing the argument, failed to understand that it is the utterance of a man playing wittily, or offering this as a dialectical exercise for others? It is no terrible thing, Colotes, to refuse to call a man ‘good’ or to refuse to say ‘ten thousand cavalry’; but to refuse to call god ‘god,’ or to refuse to believe it—that is another matter—
since you yourselves are unwilling to acknowledge Zeus as Genethlios, Demeter as Thesmophoros, or Poseidon as Phytalmios: this stripping away of names is a wicked business, and it fills life with godless neglect and insolence, since by tearing off the epithets that are joined to the gods you destroy along with them the sacrifices, the mysteries, the processions, the festivals. To whom shall we sacrifice the Proerosia? To whom the Soteria? How shall we keep the Phosphoria, the Bacchic rites, the wedding proteleia, unless
we also give up the Bacchic gods, the Bearers of Light, the Lords of the Plowing-Season, and the Saviors? For these matters touch what is most authoritative and greatest, and the deception they involve lies in actual practice, not in certain sounds, nor in the arrangement of words, nor in the customary use of names. Yet if even such things as these overturn life, who trespasses more against language than you, who utterly abolish the whole class of ‘sayables,’ which furnishes reason with its very substance,
leaving only the sounds and the objects referred to, while declaring that the meanings that lie between them—through which learning, teaching, preconceptions, acts of understanding, impulses, and assents all come about—do not exist at all? —“No, but the case of Stilpo is rather this: ‘If we predicate running of a horse,’ he says, ‘the predicate is not the same thing as that of which it is predicated, but something different;
nor, if we predicate good of man, [is it the same]: rather, the account of what-it-is-to-be is one thing for man and another for the good; and again, being a horse differs from being running, for when asked to give an account of each we do not render the same account for both.’ Hence those who predicate one thing of another go astray: for if good is the very same thing as man, and running the same as horse,
how is it that we predicate ‘good’ also of food and of medicine, and, by Zeus, again ‘running’ of a lion and of a dog? But if it is something different, then we are wrong to say ‘man is good’ and ‘horse runs.’ If indeed it is over matters such as these that Stilpo draws blood so bitterly, leaving no connection at all between what is said of a subject and what is said within a subject,
unless a thing is called strictly identical with that to which it belongs, and not thinking it necessary to speak of it merely as an attribute—being difficult over certain expressions and setting himself against ordinary usage—he is plainly not doing away with life, nor with the realities themselves.” Having finished, then, with the ancients, Colotes turns to the philosophers of his own day, naming not one of them—though it would have been better either to refute these too by name,
or else not to have named the ancients either. But the man who set down Socrates and Plato and Parmenides so many times under his pen is plainly one who lost his nerve before the living, restrained not by reverence, since that is a thing he never granted even to his betters. His aim, I suspect, is to refute first the Cyrenaics, and second the Academics who followed Arcesilaus. For these were the ones
who suspended judgment about everything, while the Cyrenaics, placing the affections and the appearances within themselves, did not think that the conviction arising from these was sufficient ground for making assertions about external things; rather, as if under siege, withdrawing from what lay outside, they shut themselves up within their affections, positing ‘it appears,’ but no longer adding ‘it is’ concerning external things. This, Colotes says, is why
they cannot live or make use of the things around them; and then, mocking them, he says: ‘These men do not say that man exists, or horse, or wall, but that they themselves are being-walled, being-horsed, and being-manned.’ In this, first of all, like a common informer, he twists their words maliciously. It is true that this does follow, in a sense, from what these men say; but he ought to have made clear—as they themselves teach—what is actually meant, since they speak of ‘being sweetened’
and ‘being embittered’ and ‘being chilled’ and ‘being warmed’ and ‘being illumined’ and ‘being darkened,’ each of these affections having its own activity within the perceiver, self-contained and undisturbed; whereas whether the honey itself is sweet, the young shoot bitter, the hail cold, the unmixed wine warm, and the night air dark, is contradicted by many witnesses—animals, things, and men alike—of whom
some find honey disagreeable, others relish the young shoot, some are scorched by the hail while others are chilled by the wine, and some are dazzled looking toward the sun while others see well by night. Hence, so long as belief stays close to the affections themselves it preserves its freedom from error; but once it steps outside and busies itself with judging and pronouncing upon external things, it often both throws itself into confusion and clashes with others who, from the very same objects, receive opposite affections and different appearances.”
Colotes seems to suffer the same thing as children just learning their letters, who, having grown used to naming the characters on their own writing tablets, are baffled and thrown into confusion when they see the same letters written elsewhere. So too this man: the very arguments that he embraces and loves in the writings of Epicurus he neither understands nor recognizes when spoken by others.
For when an image reaches us that is round, and another that is bent, these philosophers say that the sensation is truly imprinted as it is, yet they do not allow one to go further and assert that the tower itself is round or the oar itself bent; they stand by their own affections and appearances, but are unwilling to agree that external things are actually so—just as, in the other case, one must say ‘being-horsed’ and ‘being-walled,’ not that there is a horse
or a wall, so likewise one must say that the sight is ‘being roundened’ or ‘being made scalene,’ without any need to call the oar or the tower itself scalene or round: for the image by which the sight is affected is bent, but the oar from which the image comes is not bent. Since the affection, then, differs from the external object underlying it, one must either rest one’s confidence on the affection alone, or be refuted the moment one goes further and asserts that being follows appearing.
As for their loud protest and indignation on behalf of sensation—that they are not saying the external object is hot, but that the affection within the sense itself has become of such a kind—is this not exactly the same as what is said concerning taste, that they do not claim the external thing is sweet, but rather that a certain affection and
movement of that kind has occurred within the perceiver? The man who says he receives a man-shaped appearance, while denying that, if it is truly a man, he perceives it as such—where did he get the grounds for this distinction, if not from those who say they receive a curved appearance, while denying that, if the object is curved, the sight should go further and assert that it is round, rather than saying only that an appearance and impression of a roundish shape has arisen in it? ‘Yes, by Zeus,’ someone will say, ‘but I, going up to the tower and touching the oar with my own hand,
will declare the one straight and the other many-angled’—while that other man, even coming close, will grant only ‘it seems’ and ‘it appears,’ and nothing more. ‘Yes indeed, by Zeus, and more truly than you, my good fellow,’ since he sees and holds fast to what actually follows: that every appearance is equally trustworthy as evidence about itself, but that concerning anything beyond itself none is more trustworthy than another—they all stand on the same footing.
But for you, the claim that all appearances are true and none untrustworthy or false has already collapsed, if you think it necessary, in the case of some, to go on and make assertions about external things on their basis, while in the case of others you trusted them no further than the bare being-affected. For if the appearances stand on equal footing for credibility whether one comes near or stays far off, then either it is right to follow all of them into the judgment that further asserts being, or to follow none of them;
but if a difference in the affection does arise between withdrawing and approaching, then it is false to say that ‘neither appearance nor sensation is ever clearer than another’—just as the confirmations and counter-confirmations they speak of belong not to sensation but to opinion. So that if they bid us follow these in making assertions about external things, they are making the verdict of ‘being’ belong to opinion, and the ‘appearing’ belong to the affection of sense,
and are thereby transferring judgment away from what is altogether true and onto what often fails. But how much turmoil and self-contradiction all this is full of—why should one say more of it at present? Epicurus seems to have been troubled beyond measure by the reputation of Arcesilaus, who was esteemed above all the philosophers of that age, for he says that Arcesilaus, ‘having nothing of his own to say,’
‘produced belief and opinion in unlettered men’—this from a man himself thoroughly lettered and cultivated! Yet Arcesilaus was so far from courting any reputation for novelty, or appropriating any doctrine of the ancients as his own, that he used to reproach the sophists of his day for foisting upon Socrates and Plato and Parmenides and Heraclitus the doctrines of suspension of judgment and non-apprehension, though these men had no need of any such thing, but were rather made
into a kind of derivation and confirmation of those doctrines by being enlisted as famous men. For this, then, thanks are due to Colotes, and to everyone else who declares that the Academic doctrine descends from of old down to Arcesilaus. But universal suspension of judgment not even those who labored hard at it, and devoted whole treatises and arguments to it, ever managed to set in motion; rather, in the end, from the Stoa itself they gave it up, bringing forward inactivity like a Gorgon’s head, protesting that, however much
they twisted and turned the matter, impulse simply would not obey them so as to become assent, nor did their sensation ever admit any beginning of that inclination—rather, of itself it proved able to lead them into action, with no need of assent being added to it. For the contests waged against these men are fair and lawful ones, and ‘whatever word you speak, such a one you may hear in answer.’ But to Colotes, I think, discussions of impulse and assent are like music played for a donkey’s ears—
nothing to him. It is said, however, by those who follow the argument and listen closely, that of the three movements that occur about the soul—the imaginative, the impulsive, and the assenting—the imaginative one cannot be abolished even by those who wish it, but of necessity, on first encountering things, a person is imprinted and affected by them; and the impulsive movement, roused by the imaginative one, moves a person practically toward what suits him, there being, as it were, an inclination and a settling in the ruling part of the soul,
and this too those who suspend judgment about everything do not abolish, but rather make use of the impulse that naturally leads toward what appears fitting. What, then, do they alone avoid? Only that in which falsehood and deception alone take root: namely, opining and rushing headlong into assent—a yielding, through weakness, to what merely appears, and one that serves no useful purpose. For action requires two things: an appearance of what suits one,
and an impulse toward the fitting thing once it has appeared—and neither of these is in conflict with suspension of judgment, for reason does away with opinion, not with impulse or with appearance. So whenever the pleasant appears as fitting, there is no need of opinion, nor of any movement of opinion, to produce the motion and drive toward it; rather, impulse arrives at once, being itself a motion and drive of the soul.” And indeed, by these very men’s own words—since, as they say, ‘one must have sensation and be a creature of flesh, and pleasure will appear a good’—
then to the man who suspends judgment too it will appear good, since he too shares in sensation and is a creature of flesh; and having received the appearance of a good thing, he reaches for it and feels impulse toward it, doing everything so that it will not escape him, but so that, as far as possible, he will always remain with what suits him, drawn by natural necessities, not geometrical ones—‘for without any teacher these fine things invite themselves,’
and ‘the smooth, gentle movements of the flesh,’ as these men themselves put it—drawing in even the man who altogether refuses and denies that he can be bent and softened by them. ‘But then how is it that the one who suspends judgment does not go running off to the mountain instead of to the bathhouse, or walk toward the wall rather than toward the doors when he rises, wishing to go out to the marketplace?’ You ask me this, while claiming that the senses are exact
and the appearances true? It is because, surely, to him the bathhouse appears as a bathhouse and not as the mountain, and the door as a door and not as the wall—and so likewise with everything else. For the doctrine of suspended judgment does not divert sensation, nor does it produce any alteration in its irrational affections and movements that would disturb the imaginative faculty; it does away only with opinions, and makes use of everything else just as nature provides it.
‘But it is impossible not to assent to what is self-evident; and to deny what is generally believed, or neither to deny nor affirm it, is even more irrational.’ Who, then, is it that unsettles what is believed and fights against what is self-evident? It is those who do away with divination, and who deny that there is any providence of the gods, claiming that the sun is not even a living being, nor the moon—beings to which all men sacrifice, pray, and pay reverence,
holding that by nature those who bear children are bound in affection to their offspring—do you not do away with what is evident to everyone? And do you not assert, against the sense of all mankind, that there is nothing intermediate between pain and pleasure, calling the mere absence of pain ‘pleasure,’ and the mere absence of pleasure ‘pain’?” “But—to let the rest go—what is so self-evident, so universally believed, as this: that seeing and hearing wrongly occur in states of ecstatic and melancholic derangement,
whenever the mind suffers and is thrown into such disturbance—as in the line, ‘torch-bearing women in black garments set my eye ablaze’? Indeed, these things, and many others more tragic still, resembling the ‘monstrosities’ of Empedocles—the very things at which they themselves laugh—‘shambling, handless, wandering creatures’ and ‘ox-born, man-faced beings’—and whatever strange shape or nature men have conjured up out of dreams and derangements, of all this they say
that none is an illusion, nor false, nor without real existence, but that all are true appearances, bodies and shapes arriving from the surrounding medium. Is there, then, anything at all among existing things that it is impossible to disbelieve, if such things as these can be believed? For things that no maker of properties, no fashioner of marvels, no skillful painter ever dared to combine, even for the sake of deception, as mere likenesses and toys—these men set down as existing in sober earnest; or rather, altogether,
they claim that if such things did not exist, then confidence, certainty, and the very judgment of truth would be gone—and in saying this they themselves cast all things down into obscurity, bringing fears into our judgments and suspicions into our actions, if the very things we do, and believe, and are accustomed to, and have constantly in hand, are carried on the same footing of appearance and conviction as those mad, monstrous, and lawless apparitions.
For the equality which they posit for all appearances alike removes confidence from what is customarily believed far more than it lends confidence to the irrational; hence we know that not a few philosophers would rather have laid it down that no appearance at all is true than that all are, and would sooner have distrusted men and things and words absolutely—everything, in fact, with which they have no direct acquaintance—than hold that even a single one of those strange appearances is true and real.
...than be persuaded that one of those images alone is true and real — the very images that people in a state of madness, Corybantic frenzy, or sleep receive. Now it is possible to reject these images; and it is likewise possible — indeed unavoidable — to suspend judgment about them, taking this very disagreement, if nothing else, as sufficient ground for suspicion regarding the facts; and even so nothing is sound, but everything is full of obscurity and confusion.
As for the doctrines of infinite worlds, the nature of atoms, indivisible particles, and swerves, even though they trouble a great many people, there is nonetheless some consolation in the fact that none of these questions lies close at hand, but rather that each of the things under investigation is situated altogether beyond the reach of sense-perception. But this distrust, ignorance, and confusion regarding the eyes, the ears, and the hands themselves — regarding sensible objects and the images we receive, whether true or false — what opinion does it not shake? What assent or judgment does it not turn upside down?
For if it is not men who are drunk, drugged, or deranged, but men sober, healthy, and writing treatises about truth, standards, and criteria, who — in the very clearest experiences and movements of sense-perception — suppose that what does not exist is true, or that what is false and nonexistent is the truth, then it is not their suspending judgment about everything that is remarkable, but rather that they assent to anything human at all. Nor is it incredible that they have no settled judgment about appearances, but rather that they hold contrary ones. One would be less surprised at a man who, instead of asserting either of two contrary and opposing claims, suspends judgment about them, than at men who contradict and oppose one another; for the man who neither affirms nor denies, but remains quiet, is at odds with the one who affirms an opinion less than the one who denies it is, and at odds with the one who denies it less than the one who affirms it. And if it is possible to suspend judgment about these matters, then it is not impossible in the case of other matters either — at least on your own premises, since you hold that one sense-perception does not differ in the least from another, nor one impression from another.
The doctrine of suspension of judgment, then, is not a fable, nor a device for hunting down impudent and reckless young men, as Colotes supposes; it is a settled state and disposition of grown men, one that guards against error and does not surrender judgment to senses so discredited and so at odds with themselves, nor lets itself be deceived along with those who claim that 'appearances offer proof of what is unclear,' even while observing so much unreliability and obscurity in the appearances themselves. But a fable, rather, is the infinite worlds and the images; and it is the man who, writing about Pythocles when he was not yet eighteen years old, declares that 'there is no finer nature in all of Greece,' and reports on him in extravagant terms, and who himself feels what women feel, praying that all things connected with the young man's excess be free of envy and reproach — he is the one who breeds recklessness and impudence in the young. Are not those men sophists and charlatans who write so insolently and arrogantly against men of repute? And yet Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Democritus disputed with those who came before them; but no one else has ventured to publish a book bearing such a title, directed against everyone at once.
Hence, like men who have transgressed against the divine and are confessing their own misdeeds, near the very end of the book he says that 'those who established laws and customs, and who set cities under kingship and government, brought human life into great security and tranquility and freed it from turmoil; but if anyone abolishes these things, we shall live the life of beasts, and whoever meets another will all but devour him.' These are Colotes' very words, and they are neither just nor true. For if one were to abolish the laws but leave in place the doctrines of Parmenides, Socrates, Heraclitus, and Plato, we should be very far from devouring one another and living the life of beasts; for we would fear disgraceful acts and honor justice for its own nobility, believing that we have good gods as our rulers and divine spirits as guardians of our life, and holding that 'not even all the gold above and beneath the earth is worth as much as virtue' — doing willingly, for reason's sake, as Xenocrates says, what men now do only unwillingly, for fear of the law.
When, then, will our life become bestial, savage, and unsociable? When the laws are abolished, but the doctrines urging us toward pleasure remain, the providence of the gods is no longer believed in, and men consider wise those who 'spit upon nobility, if pleasure is not attached to it,' mocking and laughing at the sayings, 'There is an eye of Justice that sees all things,' and 'the god stands near and watches close at hand,' and 'God, as the old saying has it, holding the beginning and middle and end of all things, accomplishes his straight course as he travels round according to nature; and Justice follows him, as avenger of those who fall short of the divine law.' For those who despise these sayings as mere fables, and who locate the good in the belly and the other channels through which pleasure arrives, need law, and fear, and the lash, and some king or ruler holding justice in his hand, so that they may not devour their neighbors once their gluttony is emboldened by atheism.
For indeed the life of beasts is of just this sort: they know nothing better than pleasure, they know no justice of the gods, nor do they revere nobility, but whatever boldness, cunning, or energy nature has given them, they employ toward the pleasure of the flesh and the satisfaction of appetite — just as the wise Metrodorus thinks proper, when he says that all the fine, wise, and extraordinary discoveries of the soul exist for the sake of the pleasure of the flesh and the hope of that pleasure, and that every accomplishment which does not tend toward this end is empty. If the laws were abolished by these reasonings and philosophical doctrines, nothing would be lacking to us but wolves' claws, lions' teeth, the bellies of oxen, and the throats of camels; and these same passions and doctrines, for lack of words and writing, beasts express in roars and whinnies and other such sounds, and every sound they utter is a sound of the belly, welcoming and fawning upon the pleasure of the flesh, present or expected — unless some creature is by nature simply fond of noise and chatter.
No praise, then, could be worthy enough for those who established laws, constitutions, offices, and legal codes against these bestial passions. But who are the ones confounding, overthrowing, and utterly abolishing these things? Is it not those who withdraw themselves and their associates from political life? Is it not those who say that 'the crown of tranquility is beyond comparison with great empires'? Is it not those who declare 'kingship a sin and a downfall,' and who write, in these very words, that 'one ought to explain how a man may best preserve the end set by nature, and how he may, of his own will, never in the first place approach positions of authority over the masses'? And further, in addition to these words: 'there is no more need to save the Greeks, or to win from them a crown for wisdom, but rather to eat and drink, Timocrates, in a way that is harmless and pleasing to the flesh'?
And yet, in the very ordering of laws that Colotes himself praises, belief concerning the gods is the first and greatest element; and Lycurgus consecrated the Spartans, Numa the Romans, Ion of old the Athenians, and Deucalion virtually all the Greeks together, making them susceptible to the divine, through prayers, oaths, oracles, and reports, by means of hopes and fears at once. Traveling about, you might find cities without walls, without writing, without kings, without houses, without wealth, having no need of currency, unacquainted with theaters and gymnasiums; but a city without temples and without gods, one that makes no use of prayers, oaths, divinations, or sacrifices either for the sake of blessings or for the warding-off of evils, no one has ever seen, nor will ever see. Rather, it seems to me, a city could sooner come into being without ground beneath it than a political community could either be formed, or having been formed, be preserved, once belief concerning the gods had been entirely removed.
This, then — the very support and foundation holding together every human community and system of law — they overturn, not by circling around it, nor secretly and through riddles, but by attacking it directly, as the first of the most authoritative beliefs. Then, as though driven by some avenging punishment, they confess to doing terrible things, throwing customs into confusion and abolishing the ordinances of the laws, so that they may not even obtain pardon. For to err in one's opinion, even if it is not the mark of wise men, is nonetheless human; but how could one describe the act of accusing others of the very things one does oneself, if one is sparing of the names such conduct deserves? For if, writing against Antidorus or Bion the sophist, he had made mention of laws, political community, and constitutional order, would not someone have said to him: 'You, poor wretch, quietly wrapping your little bit of flesh in your own bedclothes — let those who have lived their lives in household and civic responsibility bring charges against me on these matters!'? And these are all men whom Colotes has reviled.
Among them, Democritus advises that men be taught the political art, since it is the greatest of all, and that they pursue the labors from which great and splendid things come to human beings. Parmenides ordered his own homeland with excellent laws, so that the magistrates, every year, put the citizens under oath to abide by the laws of Parmenides. Empedocles, after exposing the leading citizens who were behaving arrogantly and plundering the public funds, drove them out, and he freed his country from barrenness and plague by walling off the clefts of a mountain, through which the south wind used to pour down upon the plain. Socrates, after his condemnation, when his friends had contrived an escape for him, did not make use of it, so as to uphold the laws, but chose to die unjustly rather than be saved unlawfully. Melissus, serving as general of his homeland, defeated the Athenians in a naval battle. Plato left behind beautiful writings on laws and political constitution, but he instilled far better ones in his companions, through whom Sicily was liberated by Dion, and Thrace by Pytho and Heraclides, who killed Cotys; and from the Academy came forth Athenian generals such as Chabrias and Phocion.
Epicurus, by contrast, sent men to Asia to revile Timocrates and to drive the man out of the royal court, because, though his brother, he had fallen out with Metrodorus — and this is written in their own books. Plato, on the other hand, sent out his companions: Aristonymus to the Arcadians, to set their constitution in order, Phormio to the Eleans, and Menedemus to the Pyrrhaeans. Eudoxus, who had been Plato's associate, wrote laws for the Cnidians, and Aristotle for the people of Stagira; and Alexander asked Xenocrates for advice concerning kingship; and the man sent to Alexander by the Greeks settled in Asia, who did the most to kindle and spur him to undertake the war against the barbarians, was Delius of Ephesus, a companion of Plato.
As for Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides, who attacked the tyrant Demylus and met with misfortune in the attempt, he proved the doctrine of Parmenides in the fire to be like gold, unadulterated and genuine, and demonstrated by his deeds that disgrace, not pain, is what a great man fears — pain being feared by children, and by women, and by men who have the souls of women; for he bit through his own tongue and spat it at the tyrant.
But from the words and doctrines of Epicurus, I will not even ask who among them became a tyrannicide, or a champion in war, or a lawgiver, or a ruler, or a king's counselor, or a leader of the people, or a man tortured or put to death on behalf of justice; but which of your sages ever sailed on his country's behalf, went on an embassy, or spent his own money for it? Where is any political act of yours recorded? And yet the fact that Metrodorus went down to the Piraeus — forty stades — to help a certain Mithres, a Syrian in the king's service who had been arrested, was written up and sent to everyone, in every letter, with Epicurus boasting grandly and solemnizing that little journey. What, then, would they have said, had they accomplished something like what Aristotle did — refounding his native city after it had been destroyed by Philip — or what Theophrastus did, freeing his city from tyranny twice over? Would not the Nile have sooner run out of papyrus to carry than these men have wearied of writing about themselves?
And the outrage is not merely that, among so many philosophers, they are almost the only ones who share in the goods of their cities while contributing nothing, but that even writers of tragedy and comedy always try to offer something useful and to speak on behalf of laws and civic order; whereas these men, even when they do write, write about politics so that we will not engage in politics, and about rhetoric so that we will not practice oratory, and about kingship so that we will avoid living alongside kings; and they name statesmen only to mock them and tear down their reputations, saying of Epaminondas that he 'had some good in him' — and even that, 'a small one,' phrasing it in just those words — calling him a man of 'iron guts,' and asking what possessed him to march through the middle of the Peloponnese instead of sitting at home in his little cap, devoted, no doubt, entirely to the care of his belly, as they are.
And what Metrodorus, dancing his contempt for political life, wrote in his book On Philosophy, I did not think I should leave out. He says: 'some of the wise, out of a great abundance of vanity, understood the business of political philosophy so well that they go rushing off toward the very same ambitions as Lycurgus and Solon, in their discourses about ways of life and virtue.' So it was vanity, and a great abundance of vanity, that Athens should be free, that Sparta should be well-governed by law, that the young should not grow insolent, that children should not be fathered on courtesans, and that wealth, luxury, and licentiousness should not rule, but rather law and justice in the cities — for these were the ambitions of Solon. And Metrodorus, heaping abuse, adds to what he has said: 'Therefore it is right for the truly free man to laugh a hearty laugh, both at the rest of mankind and at these Lycurguses and Solons.'
But this man, Metrodorus, is not free at all — he is servile and ill-bred, and deserves not even the whip fit for a free man, but that studded scourge with which they punish the Galli when they offend, in the temples of the Mother Goddess.
That it was not against lawgivers but against the laws themselves that they were waging war, one may hear from Epicurus himself; for he asks himself, in his Perplexities, 'whether the wise man will do any of the things the laws forbid, if he knows he will escape detection' — and he answers, 'the simple predicate does not admit an easy answer,' that is to say, 'I will do it, but I am unwilling to admit it.' And again, I believe, writing to Idomeneus, he urges him 'not to live in servitude to laws and opinions, so long as they do not, through the trouble caused by one's neighbor, bring on the annoyance that comes from being struck.'
If, then, those who abolish laws and civic constitutions thereby abolish human life itself, and Epicurus and Metrodorus do just this — turning their companions away from taking part in public affairs, showing hostility to those who do take part, speaking ill of the first and wisest of lawgivers, and urging men to despise the laws unless the fear of a beating and punishment is attached to them — then I do not know what falsehood of such magnitude Colotes has told against others, comparable to the truth he has himself, unwittingly, laid as a charge against the words and doctrines of Epicurus.

======== Moralia: Amatoriae Narrationes ========

In Haliartus in Boeotia there was a girl of surpassing beauty named Aristocleia, daughter of Theophanes. She was courted by Straton of Orchomenus and Callisthenes of Haliartus. Straton was the wealthier and somewhat the more smitten of the two, for he had happened to see her bathing at the spring Hercyna in Lebadeia, when she was about to carry the sacred basket for Zeus the King. But Callisthenes had the greater claim, since he was also a kinsman of the girl. Theophanes, at a loss what to do — for he feared Straton, who surpassed almost all the Boeotians in wealth and lineage — wished to refer the choice to Trophonius. Straton, too, having been persuaded by the girl's household servants that she was more inclined toward him, demanded that the choice be left to the bride herself. When Theophanes questioned the girl before everyone and she preferred Callisthenes, Straton at once showed plainly that he took the slight hard. But after letting two days pass, he came to Theophanes and Callisthenes and asked that his friendship with them be preserved, even though he had been cheated of the marriage by some divine power. They approved of what he said, so much so that they even invited him to the wedding feast. He, however, having gathered a crowd of companions and no small number of servants, scattered them among the guests unnoticed, and waited until the girl, according to ancestral custom, went down to the spring called Cissoessa to offer the preliminary sacrifices to the Nymphs. Then all his men lying in ambush rushed together and seized her. Straton himself took hold of the girl, and Callisthenes, naturally, along with his companions, laid hold of her in turn, until, unnoticed, the girl perished in the hands of those pulling her from both sides. Callisthenes at once vanished — whether he had done away with himself, or gone into exile from Boeotia, no one could say what had become of him. But Straton openly slew himself upon the girl.
A certain Phidon of the Peloponnesians, aiming at supreme power and wishing his own city, Argos, to rule over the rest, first plotted against the Corinthians. He sent and asked of them a thousand young men outstanding in vigor and courage, and they sent the thousand, appointing Dexander as their general. Phidon, intending to attack these men so that he might have Corinth the weaker and make use of the city — since it would be the most strategically placed outpost of the whole Peloponnese — disclosed the plan to some of his companions. Among them was one Habron, who, being a guest-friend of Dexander, told him of the plot. And so the Phliasians escaped safely into Corinth before the attack, while Phidon tried to track down the man who had betrayed him and sought him diligently. Habron, in fear, fled to Corinth, taking his wife and servants, to Melissus, a village in Corinthian territory, where he also fathered a son whom he named Melissus, taking the name from the place. From this Melissus was born a son, Actaeon, the most handsome and most modest of his contemporaries, who had a great many lovers, but especially Archias, a man of the lineage of the Heraclids and the most eminent of the Corinthians in wealth and other power. Since he could not persuade the boy, he resolved to use force and seize the youth; so he made a raid upon the house of Melissus, bringing with him a crowd of both friends and servants, and tried to carry the boy off. When the father and his friends resisted, and the neighbors too ran up and pulled against them, Actaeon, torn between the two sides, died in the struggle; and so the others withdrew. Melissus carried his son's corpse into the marketplace of the Corinthians and displayed it, demanding justice from those who had done this; but they showed no more than pity for the man. Having accomplished nothing, he withdrew and watched for the festival of the Isthmian games, and going up to the temple of Poseidon, he cried out against the Bacchiadae and reminded them of the benefaction of his father Habron; then, calling upon the gods, he threw himself down from the rocks. Not long after, drought and plague seized the city, and when the Corinthians consulted the oracle about relief, the god declared that it was the wrath of Poseidon, who would not relent until they avenged the death of Actaeon. When Archias learned of this — for he himself had been present as a sacred envoy — he did not willingly return to Corinth, but sailed to Sicily and founded Syracuse. Having become there the father of two daughters, Ortygia and Syracusa, he was treacherously murdered by Telephus, who had been his beloved and who, commanding a ship, had sailed with him to Sicily.
A poor man named Scedasus lived at Leuctra, a small village in the territory of the Thespians. He had two daughters, called Hippo and Miletia, or, as some say, Theano and Euxippe. Scedasus was a good man and hospitable to strangers, though he possessed little. Two Spartan young men who arrived he welcomed eagerly; but they, overcome with desire for the girls, were restrained from acting on their boldness by the goodness of Scedasus. The next day they set off for Delphi, for that was the road that lay before them; and having consulted the god about what they needed, they went back home again, and passing through Boeotia they came once more to the house of Scedasus. He happened not to be at home in Leuctra, but his daughters, following their usual custom, received the strangers. Finding the girls alone, the men violated them; and seeing them exceedingly angry at the outrage, they killed them, threw them into a well, and departed. When Scedasus returned he did not see his daughters, but found everything else left behind intact, and was at a loss over the matter, until, the dog whining and running repeatedly to him and back again to the well, he guessed what had happened, and so drew up the bodies of his daughters. Learning from the neighbors that they had seen, the day before, the same Lacedaemonians who had earlier lodged with them going in, he put together what had happened, since those men had also earlier repeatedly praised the girls, calling blessed whoever would marry them. He set off for Lacedaemon to meet with the ephors; and coming into the Argolid as night fell, he lodged at an inn, where at the same time another old man, by birth from Oreus, a city of Hestiaeotis, was also staying. Hearing him groaning and cursing the Lacedaemonians, Scedasus asked what harm he had suffered from them. The man told his story: that he was a subject of Sparta, and that Aristodemus, sent to Oreus as governor by the Lacedaemonians, had shown much cruelty and lawlessness. "For," he said, "having fallen in love with my son, since he was unable to persuade him, he tried to use force and take him from the wrestling school; when the trainer prevented him and many young men rushed to help, Aristodemus withdrew at once. But the next day, manning a trireme, he seized the boy, and sailing across from Oreus to the mainland opposite, tried to force himself on him, and when the boy would not allow it, he slew him. Returning to Oreus, he feasted. And I," he said, "learning of what had been done, and having buried the body, went to Sparta and appealed to the ephors, but they paid no attention." Hearing this, Scedasus grew despondent, supposing that the Spartans would pay no heed to him either, and in turn told the stranger his own misfortune. The man urged him not even to approach the ephors, but to return to Boeotia and build a tomb for his daughters. Scedasus, however, was not persuaded, but went on to Sparta and met with the ephors, who paid him no attention at all; he then went to the kings, and from them to each of the citizens in turn, lamenting. Accomplishing nothing further, he ran through the middle of the city, stretching his two hands up toward the sun, then striking the ground, calling upon the Furies, and at last took his own life. Some time later, however, the Lacedaemonians paid the penalty: for when they were ruling all the Greeks and had occupied the cities with garrisons, Epaminondas the Theban first slew the garrison of Lacedaemonians stationed with him, and when the Lacedaemonians declared war over this, the Thebans went out to meet them at Leuctra, taking the site as a good omen, because it was there too that freedom had earlier been won, when Amphitryon, driven into exile by Sthenelus, came to the city of the Thebans, and, after imposing tribute on the Chalcidians, ended the tribute, having killed Chalcodon, king of the Euboeans. And it happened that the Lacedaemonians suffered utter defeat right beside the very monument of the daughters of Scedasus. They say that before the battle, Pelopidas, one of the generals of the Theban army, troubled because certain unfavorable signs had been read, saw Scedasus stand over him in his sleep and bid him take courage, for the Lacedaemonians were coming to Leuctra to pay the penalty to him and to his daughters; and the day before joining battle with the Lacedaemonians, he ordered a white foal to be readied and sacrificed at the tomb of the maidens. They say that Pelopidas, while the Lacedaemonians were still on campaign at Tegea, sent men to Leuctra to inquire about this tomb, and, learning of it from the local people, led out the army with confidence and won the victory.
Phocus was Boeotian by birth, from Glisas; he was the father of Calliroe, who excelled in both beauty and modesty. She was courted by thirty of the most highly regarded young men in Boeotia, but Phocus kept postponing the marriage again and again, fearing that he might be met with violence. At last, when they pressed him, he asked that the choice be made by consulting the Pythian god. They grew angry at this proposal, and rushing at him, killed Phocus; and in the confusion the girl fled and ran through the countryside, pursued by the young men. She came upon farmers piling up a threshing floor and found safety with them, for the farmers hid her among the grain, and so those pursuing her passed her by. Having thus been saved, she kept the festival of the Pamboeotia, and then, coming to Coronea, sat as a suppliant at the altar of Athena Itonia, and told of the lawlessness of the suitors, naming each one and his home city. The Boeotians pitied the girl and were indignant at the young men; they, learning of this, fled for refuge to Orchomenus. When the Orchomenians would not receive them, they rushed in upon Hippotae, a village lying by Helicon between Thisbe and Coronea, and its people took them in. Then the Thebans sent demanding the murderers of Phocus, and when they were not given up, they campaigned along with the rest of the Boeotians, under the command of Phoedus, who then governed the Thebans, and besieging the village, which was well fortified, when those inside were overcome by thirst, they stoned to death the murderers when captured, and enslaved the rest who were in the village; and tearing down the walls and houses, they divided the land between the people of Thisbe and Coronea. They say that on the night before the capture of Hippotae, a voice was heard many times from Helicon saying, "I am here," and the thirty suitors recognized this utterance as being that of Phocus. On the day they were stoned, they say the tomb of the old man at Glisas ran with saffron. And to Phoedus, the ruler and general of the Thebans, returning from the battle, it was announced that a daughter had been born to him, whom, taking it as a good omen, he named Nicostrate.
Alcippus was Lacedaemonian by birth; having married Damocrita, he became father of two daughters. Since he advised the city most excellently and did whatever the Lacedaemonians needed, he was envied by his political opponents, who, misleading the ephors with false charges — that Alcippus wished to overthrow the laws — drove the man into exile. He withdrew from Sparta, but when his wife Damocrita wished to follow her husband together with her daughters, they prevented her; indeed they even confiscated his property, so that the girls should have no means for a dowry. And when, even so, some still wished to court the girls on account of their father's virtue, his enemies had it forbidden by decree that anyone should court them, saying that their mother Damocrita had often prayed that her daughters might quickly bear sons who would avenge their father. Hemmed in from every side, Damocrita watched for a certain public festival, at which the women, together with maidens and household members and infants, celebrated together, while the wives of those in office kept vigil apart through the night in a great men's hall. Girding on a sword and taking her daughters, she came by night to the temple, having watched for the moment when all were performing the mystery rites in the hall; and, with the entrances shut, she piled up against the doors much wood — the very wood that had been prepared by the women themselves for the sacrifice of the festival — and set it on fire. As the men ran together to help, Damocrita slew her daughters, and then herself upon them. Not knowing where to vent their anger, the Lacedaemonians threw the bodies of Damocrita and her daughters outside their borders. And they say that, the god being angered at this, a great earthquake befell the Lacedaemonians.

======== Moralia: Amatorius ========

FLAVIANUS: You say, Autobulus, that the discourses on Love took place at Helicon — discourses which, whether you wrote them down or remembered them from having often questioned your father about them, you are now about to report to us at our request.
AUTOBULUS: At Helicon, by the Muses, Flavianus, while the Thespians were celebrating the festival of Love — for they hold this contest every four years, just as they do for the Muses, and to Love too, with great zeal and splendor.
FLAVIANUS: Do you know, then, what we all who have come to hear are about to ask of you?
AUTOBULUS: No — but I shall know once you speak.
FLAVIANUS: Leave out of your account, for now, the poetic meadows and shades, the intertwining of ivy and bindweed, and all the other things of that sort which those who seize upon such settings crave to inscribe — Plato's Ilissus, that agnus-castus tree, and the grass growing on the gently sloping bank — eager to claim it more than they succeed in making it beautiful.
AUTOBULUS: But what need, best Flavianus, has the narrative of such preludes? The very occasion from which the discussions arose demands a chorus for its passion and needs a stage; nothing else proper to a drama is lacking. Let us only pray that the mother of the Muses be present, propitious, and help us save the story together.
For my father, since long ago — before we were born — had recently brought our mother home again after the quarrel and estrangement that had arisen between their parents, and had come to Thespiae to sacrifice to Love, bringing our mother to the festival; for the vow and the sacrifice were hers. Of his friends, those from home who were his usual companions were with him, and at Thespiae he found Daphnaeus, son of Archidamus, and Lysander, in love with Lysandra, daughter of Simon and, of all her suitors, faring best; also Soclarus, who had come from Tithora, the son of Aristion; and Protogenes of Tarsus and Zeuxippus the Spartan, who were guests. My father said that most of his Boeotian acquaintances were present as well.
For two or three days, it seems, they spent their time quietly in the city, philosophizing in the wrestling-grounds and through the theaters together; but then, fleeing a tiresome contest of citharodes — one already overrun by petitions and eager crowds — most of them decamped, as if from enemy territory, to Helicon, and took up quarters there beside the Muses.
At dawn, then, Anthemion and Pisias came to join them, men of repute, both connected to the youth called Bacchon the Handsome, and both, out of a kind of goodwill toward him, at odds with each other. For there was in Thespiae a woman, Ismenodora, splendid in wealth and family and, by Zeus, orderly in the rest of her life as well; for she had lived as a widow for no small time without reproach, although she was young and quite good-looking. Now, while arranging a marriage for Bacchon — who was the son of a woman who was her friend and companion — with a girl who was a relative of his by birth, through being often in his company and conversing with him she herself fell in love with the young man. Hearing and speaking kind words about him, and seeing the multitude of high-born lovers he had, she too was led on into loving him, and resolved to do nothing ignoble, but to marry him openly and live with Bacchon as his wife.
Since the matter appeared surprising in itself, his mother eyed with suspicion the weight and grandeur of the household as ill-matched to the suitor; and some of his hunting companions too, frightening Bacchon with the point that Ismenodora was not suited to him in age, and mocking him, proved harder opponents of the marriage than those who objected in earnest — for, being still a young man, he was ashamed to live with a widow. Still, setting the others aside, he left it to Pisias and Anthemion to deliberate on what was best for him — of whom the one, his older cousin, and Pisias, the sternest of his lovers, was for that reason opposed to the marriage as well, and attacked Anthemion for surrendering the young man to Ismenodora.
Anthemion, in turn, said that Pisias was not acting rightly — that, though decent in other respects, he was imitating base lovers by depriving his friend of a household, a marriage, and great advantages, so that the youth might remain untouched by him and go on stripping as a boy in the wrestling-grounds for as long as possible. So, in order that they might not, by provoking one another, gradually be driven into anger, they came before my father and his companions, as if choosing them for arbiters and judges. And of the other friends, as if by prearrangement, Daphnaeus was present in support of one side and Protogenes of the other — though Protogenes freely spoke ill of Ismenodora.
Daphnaeus said, "Heracles! What might one not expect, if even Protogenes is here to make war on Love — he for whom all play and all earnest business is about Love and through Love, forgetting his studies, forgetting his homeland — not as it was with Laius, who kept only five days' distance from his native land? For his Love was slow-footed and earthbound, but yours, Protogenes, flies swift-winged in circling flight across the sea from Cilicia to Athens, keeping watch over handsome youths and wandering about with them." For indeed, some such reason had truly been the cause of Protogenes' journey abroad.
When laughter arose, Protogenes said, "Do I seem to you to be making war on Love now, rather than fighting on Love's behalf against the licentiousness and outrage that force their way, with the most shameful acts and passions, into the fairest and most solemn of names?" And Daphnaeus said, "Do you call marriage and the union of man and woman the most shameful thing — than which no union has ever come to be, or exists, more sacred?"
"But these things," said Protogenes, "being necessary for procreation, the lawgivers do well to dignify and commend to the many; but of true Love the women's quarters have no share whatsoever, nor do I say that you men who are attached to women or girls are in love at all — any more than flies are in love with milk, or bees with honeycombs, or fatteners and cooks feel affection when they fatten calves and fowl in the dark.
Rather, just as nature leads the appetite toward food and relish in a moderate and sufficient measure, while excess, producing a further condition, is called gluttony or a craving for delicacies — so too it is inherent in nature that women and men need pleasure from one another; but the impulse that drives them to this, when it becomes great and hard to restrain through its violence and force, is called Love, though not properly so. For love, when it takes hold of a well-natured and young soul, ends in virtue through friendship; but from these desires directed at women, if they turn out for the best, all that is left to reap is pleasure and the enjoyment of youthful bloom and body — as Aristippus testified when, to the man who accused Lais of not loving him, he replied that he did not think the wine or the fish loved him either, and yet he made pleasant use of both; for the end of desire is pleasure and enjoyment.
Love, on the other hand, once it has given up the expectation of friendship, is unwilling to remain and tend, for the sake of bloom alone, what is painful and at its peak, if it yields no fruit of character proper to friendship and virtue. You have heard some tragic husband saying to his wife, 'You hate me?' 'And I shall readily be hated, dragging my own dishonor toward profit.' For no one is more truly in love than the man who endures a wretched and loveless woman not for profit but for the sake of sex and intercourse — as Philippides the comic poet, mocking Stratocles the orator, wrote: 'Turning her head away, you barely manage to kiss her.' If, then, this passion too must be called Love, it is a female and bastard sort, as if it had been smuggled into the women's quarters at Cynosarges.
Rather, just as they say there is one genuine, mountain-ranging eagle, which Homer called 'black' and 'the hunter,' while the other kinds are bastard breeds that catch fish around marshes and sluggish birds, and often, when at a loss, cry out something famished and plaintive — so too there is one genuine Love, the love of boys, not 'gleaming with longing,' as Anacreon said of the maidenly boy, nor 'filled with perfumes and gleaming,' but plain to see and unaffected, found in philosophical schools, or somewhere around gymnasia and wrestling-grounds, keenly and nobly urging on toward virtue those worthy of such attention.
But this soft, house-keeping sort, that spends its time in the laps and little couches of women, always pursuing what is delicate, melting away in unmanly, unfriendly, uninspired pleasures — this deserves to be cast down, as Solon too cast it down. For he forbade slaves to love freeborn boys and to anoint themselves with oil, but he did not forbid them the use of intercourse with women; for friendship is noble and refined, while mere pleasure is common and servile. Hence it is not a mark of a free and refined man to love slave boys, for this kind of love is not for intercourse, unlike that toward women."
As Protogenes was still eager to say more, Daphnaeus cut him off: "Well then, by Zeus, you have brought up Solon? He too must be used as the standard of the man in love: 'while he loves a boy in the lovely flower of youth, longing for his thighs and sweet mouth.' Add to Solon also Aeschylus, who says: 'You did not revere the holy awe of thighs, ungrateful one, for all the many kisses.'
Now, some indeed laugh at these poets, if, like sacrificers and diviners, they bid lovers gaze at thighs and loins — but I take this as an enormous piece of evidence on behalf of women. For if intercourse against nature with males does not destroy or harm loving goodwill, it is far more likely that a love of women, which follows nature, arrives at friendship by way of favor.
For indeed, Protogenes, the yielding of the female to the male has been called 'favor' (charis) by the ancients: as Pindar said that Hephaestus was born from Hera 'without the Graces,' and Sappho, addressing a girl not yet of marriageable age, says, 'You seemed to me a small and graceless child.' And Heracles, when asked by someone, 'Did you win the girl's favors by force, or by persuasion?' — that favor which comes from males, if unwilling, comes by force and plunder, but if willing, comes with softness and effeminacy, 'mounted,' as Plato puts it, 'in the manner of a four-footed beast and sown with seed' contrary to nature by those who give in to it — such favor is altogether graceless, unseemly, and without charm.
Hence, I think, Solon too wrote those earlier verses while still young and, as Plato says, 'full of much seed'; but these other ones once he had become an old man: 'Dear to me now are the works of the Cyprus-born goddess, and of Dionysus, and of the Muses, which bring men joy' — as though, out of a storm and tempest and the loves of boys, he had settled his life at last in a kind of calm centered on marriage and philosophy.
If, then, we look at the truth, Protogenes, the passion of the Loves toward boys and toward women is one and the same thing. But if you should wish, out of contentiousness, to keep them apart, it is this love of boys that would seem to behave immoderately — as if, having come late and out of season into life, it were a bastard, shadowy thing driving out the genuine, elder Love.
For only yesterday, my friend, and the day before, after the young men had stripped and disrobed, it slipped into the gymnasia, rubbed shoulders quietly at first and made its approach; then, little by little, having grown its feathers in the wrestling-grounds, it can no longer be held in check, but reviles and abuses that other, marital Love — the ally of immortality for our mortal race, which continually rekindles our dying nature through the begetting of children. Yet this new Love denies its own pleasure, for it is ashamed and afraid.
It needs some decent cover when it lays hold of the beautiful and those in their bloom; so friendship and virtue serve as its pretext. It dusts itself with sand and takes cold baths and lifts its eyebrows, and claims, out in public, to be philosophizing and practicing temperance, on account of the law; but then, by night and in quiet, 'sweet is the fruit when the watchman has gone.' But if, as Protogenes says, there is no sexual union among lovers of boys, how can there be Love where Aphrodite is absent — she to whom it has fallen by lot among the gods to tend and attend upon Love, and to share in whatever honor and power he grants her?
And if there is some Love apart from Aphrodite — like drunkenness apart from wine, from a drink made of figs or barley — its disturbing effect is fruitless and incomplete, and quickly cloying and quickly sated."
While this was being said, Pisias was plainly indignant and provoked at Daphnaeus; and after Daphnaeus had left off briefly, he said, "Heracles, what glibness and recklessness! Men who admit that they are joined to the female by their private parts, like dogs, and yet transfer and relocate the god from gymnasia, covered walks, and the pure, open pursuits carried on in the sunlight, shutting him up instead in brothel-keepers' houses among cosmetics, drugs, and love-charms and licentious women! Whereas surely it is not fitting for chaste women either to love or to be loved."
At this point, indeed, my father said that he took up Protogenes' side and said, "This speech arms the Argive host; and, by Zeus, Pisias, by not moderating himself, is only making us allies of Daphnaeus — for he brings into marriage a partnership without love and without any share in inspired friendship, one which, once erotic persuasion and charm have abandoned it, we see held together, only just, by yokes and bridles, under shame and fear."
And Pisias said, "For my part, I care little for the argument; but I see Daphnaeus suffering the same thing as bronze does. For bronze, when poured, is not so much melted by fire itself as by fire-heated, already molten bronze — it melts and flows together, becoming liquefied along with it. And it is not the beauty of Lysandra that troubles this man, but rather, having drawn near to and touched one already scorched through and full of fire for a long time, he too becomes infected; and it is plain that, unless he quickly flees back to us, he will be melted down along with him.
But I see," he said, "that I am doing just what Anthemion would be most eager for — offending the judges, and myself along with them — so I stop." And Anthemion said, "You have done us a service; for you ought from the start to have said something relevant to the matter at hand."
"Well then, I will say it," Pisias said, "having proclaimed in advance, as far as I am concerned, that I would be a lover of any woman whatsoever. My point is this: for the young man's sake, the woman's wealth must be guarded against, lest, by joining him to so great a mass and weight, we unwittingly make him vanish, the way tin disappears when mixed into bronze. For it would be a great advantage if a young man came together with a light and unassuming woman, so that the blending, as with wine, might leave him the dominant partner; but this woman we see is one who seems fit to rule and dominate — for it is not likely that she would have cast aside such reputation, such lineage, and such wealth to court a young man fresh out of the schoolboy's cloak, one who still needs a tutor to look after him, unless she meant to have the upper hand.
That is why sensible men themselves give up in advance and clip off, like wing-feathers, women's excess wealth — wealth which breeds luxury and unstable, empty vanities, lifted up by which women often fly away; and even if they stay, it would be better to be bound, as in Ethiopia, with golden fetters, than...
—on account of a woman's wealth.” “But you don't mention,” said Protogenes, “that we run the risk of turning Hesiod topsy-turvy in an absurd and ridiculous way. He says that neither falling much short of thirty years nor exceeding it by much is the season for marrying, and that the woman should come of age in her fourth year past puberty and be married in the fifth; yet we, by roughly that many years, are attaching an unripe, unseasoned young man—like grafting an unripe wild fig onto a cultivated one—to a woman older than himself.
“For, by Zeus, she is in love with him and burning for him. What then prevents her from reveling before his doors, singing the serenade to a locked door, garlanding his portraits, wrestling with her rival lovers? These are the acts of a lover. Let her knit her brow and give up her comforts, taking on the bearing proper to her passion. But if she is ashamed and exercises self-control, let her sit decorously at home, waiting for her suitors and wooers. As for a woman who declares that she is in love, one might well flee from her and be repelled by her—still less should one make such an unrestrained passion the beginning of a marriage.”
When Protogenes had finished, the father said, “Do you see, Anthemion, that once again they are turning this into a common cause, and forcing the argument upon us who do not deny it? Nor do they escape being fellow-dancers in the chorus of love that concerns marriage.”
“Yes, by Zeus,” said Anthemion, “so now defend yourself at greater length, since you are yourself in love; and further, come to the rescue on the matter of wealth, with which Peisias most tries to frighten us.” “Why,” said the father, “should it be made a charge against a woman if, on account of love and wealth, we are to cast off Ismenodora? She is burdensome and rich—but what if she is also beautiful and young? What if she is proud in birth and distinguished?
Do not sensible women too find a stern, scowling husband oppressive and hard to bear, and call such men Furies, angry with their husbands precisely because they are self-controlled? Is it then best to marry, straight from the marketplace, some Abrotonon the Thracian or Bacchis the Milesian, brought home unbetrothed through purchase and the customary showering of gifts? Yet we know that not a few men have been enslaved most shamefully even to women of that sort. And flute-girls—
Samian women, and dancing-girls—Aristonica, and Oenanthe with her tambourine, and Agathoclea—have risen to wear the diadems of kings. And the Syrian Semiramis was a house-bred slave, a concubine-attendant in the royal household; but when Ninus the great king met her and fell in love with her, she gained such mastery and such contempt for him that she demanded he allow her, for a single day, to sit upon the throne wearing the diadem and transacting the business of state. And when he had granted this,
and ordered everyone to serve and obey her exactly as they would him, she at first exercised her new commands with moderation, testing the bodyguard; but when she saw that they neither objected nor hesitated, she ordered them to seize Ninus, then to bind him, and finally to kill him. Once all this had been carried out, she ruled over Asia in splendor for a long time. And Belestiche—by Zeus, was she not a foreign woman bought in the marketplace, whose shrines and
temples the Alexandrians possess, since the king, out of love, inscribed her name as ‘Aphrodite Belestiche’? She shares a temple here and is a fellow-priestess of Eros, and at Delphi she stands gilded among the statues of kings and queens. With what dowry did she gain mastery over her lovers? No—just as those men, through their own weakness and softness, became, without realizing it, the spoils of women, so too there are other men, obscure and poor. Others, who have joined themselves to rich
and brilliant women, were not corrupted by it, nor did they surrender any of their pride, but lived out their lives honored and in command, in mutual goodwill. But the man who confines his wife and draws her into a narrow compass—like someone with thin fingers, afraid a ring might slip off—is like those who shear their mares and then lead them to a river or a pool: for each mare, seeing her own reflection made unlovely
and misshapen, is said to give up her proud spirit and submit to being mounted even by donkeys. To prefer a woman's wealth over her virtue or her family is unambitious and ignoble; but to shun wealth when it accompanies virtue and good family is simply foolish. Antigonus, writing to the man garrisoning the fortified height of Munychia, ordered him to make not only the collar strong but the watchdog lean, so that
it would not drain away the resources of the Athenians. In the same way, it is not fitting for a man married to a rich or beautiful wife to make himself, in turn, misshapen or poor; rather he should render himself, through self-control and good sense, and by being awed by nothing about her, her equal and unenslaved—adding, as it were, weight and counterpoise to the scale through his own character, so that he is governed and guided by it both justly and to his own advantage. And indeed,
as for the age suitable for marriage, a woman who still has the season for bearing and begetting children is well matched; and I am told that this woman is in her prime.” And smiling at Peisias as he said it, he added, “For she is older than none of the rival lovers, nor does she have gray hair, as do some of those who keep company with Bacchon. And if these men associate with him in due season, what prevents her, too, from caring for the young man better than any young woman whatsoever could? Young things are hard to blend,
hard to mix, and only after a long time do they let go their skittishness and unruliness; at the outset they surge and strain against the yoke, all the more if love comes upon them, and, like a gale when the pilot is absent, they throw the marriage into turmoil and confusion, since neither party is able to rule nor willing to be ruled. But if a nurse rules an infant, and a schoolmaster a child, and, for an adolescent,
a gymnasiarch rules, and a lover rules a youth, and once he has come of age, the law and a general rule him—for no one is without a ruler or wholly self-governing—what is so terrible if a sensible woman, though older, should guide the life of a younger husband, being useful to him through her good judgment, and at the same time sweet and gentle through her affection? In general,” he said, “being Boeotians, we ought to revere Heracles and not be troubled by
a marriage that oversteps the usual age, remembering that he too gave his own wife Megara in marriage to Iolaus, who was then sixteen years old, while she herself was thirty-three.” While such talk was passing among them, the father said, a companion of Peisias came riding in from the city on horseback, reporting some astonishing and daring deed. For Ismenodora, it seems, believing that Bacchon himself was not unwilling toward
the marriage but was ashamed on account of those who were dissuading him, resolved not to let the young man go. So, summoning those of her friends who were most youthful in their way of living and shared her passion, along with her closest women friends, and gathering them together, she watched for the hour at which Bacchon was accustomed, on his way to the wrestling grounds, to pass decorously by her house. So then, as he was approaching at that time with two or three companions,
freshly anointed with oil, Ismenodora herself went to meet him at the door and merely touched his cloak, while her friends seized the handsome young man—handsomely, cloak, mantle and all—and carried him off together into the house, all at once, and immediately shut the doors. At the same moment the women inside stripped off his little cloak and threw around him a bridal garment, while the household slaves ran round about wreathing
the doors with olive branches and laurel—not only Ismenodora's doors but Bacchon's as well; and a flute-girl, playing, passed through the lane. Among the Thespians and the visitors present, some laughed, others were indignant and provoked the gymnasiarchs, since these hold strict authority over the young men and pay very close attention to what is done by them. And there was no more talk
of the competitors; instead, abandoning the theater, everyone gathered at Ismenodora's doors, engaged in argument and rivalry with one another. So when Peisias' friend, having spurred his horse forward as if in battle, said in great agitation exactly this—that Ismenodora had seized Bacchon—Zeuxippus, the father said, laughed and, being as it happens a devotee of Euripides, said, ‘Woman, glorying in wealth, mortal things
are what you have in mind.’ But Peisias leapt up and shouted, ‘O gods, what end will there be to this license of ours that is overturning our city? Already, through excessive freedom, things are moving toward lawlessness. And yet perhaps it is absurd to be indignant about laws and rights, when nature itself is being violated, ruled over by women. What is Lemnos, compared to this? Let us go, let us go,’ he said, ‘so that
we may hand over the gymnasium and the council-chamber to the women as well, if the city has been utterly unmanned.’ As Peisias strode ahead, Protogenes did not fall behind, partly sharing his indignation, partly trying to calm him. But Anthemion said, ‘It is indeed a bold, youthful exploit, and truly Lemnian—since we ourselves are its victims—on the part of a woman deeply in love.’ And Socles, smiling faintly, said, ‘Do you really suppose this was an abduction
and an act of violence, rather than an excuse and a stratagem contrived by a sensible young man, who, escaping the embraces of his lovers, has deserted into the arms of a beautiful and wealthy woman?’ ‘Do not say such things, Socles,’ said Anthemion, ‘and do not suspect this of Bacchon; for even if he were not by nature simple and guileless in character, he would not have hidden it from me, since
he shares everything else with me, and in this matter too I see him as Ismenodora's most eager helper. Love is hard to fight, not ‘spirit,’ as Heraclitus says—for whatever it wants, it buys even at the price of the soul, and of money, and of reputation. Besides, what woman in the city is more decorous than Ismenodora? When has any shameful report, or suspicion of base conduct, ever touched her household? No—it seems
that the woman has truly been seized by some divine inspiration, one greater than human reasoning.’ And Pemptides, laughing, said, ‘Of course—there is also a disease of the body that people call “sacred”; so it is nothing strange if some also call the most maddening and greatest passion of the soul “sacred” and “divine.” Once, as it happens, in Egypt I watched two neighbors disputing, when a snake had crept into
the road: both called it a good spirit, and each claimed it as his own. Just so, seeing some of you just now dragging Eros toward the men's quarters and others toward the women's quarters, calling him a superhuman and divine good, I was not surprised that this passion has attained such power and honor, when it is precisely those who ought to be driving it out from everywhere and curbing it who are the ones magnifying it and
lending it dignity. Until now I have kept quiet, since I saw that the dispute concerned private matters rather than shared ones; but now that we are rid of Peisias, I should be glad to hear from you what those who first declared Eros to be a god had in mind when they made that pronouncement.’ When Pemptides had finished, and the father had begun to say something on the subject, another man arrived from the city, since
Ismenodora was sending for Anthemion; for the disturbance had grown worse, and the gymnasiarchs were at odds, one thinking Bacchon should be reclaimed, the other refusing to allow such interference. So Anthemion rose and set off. And the father, addressing Pemptides by name, said, ‘You seem to me to be laying hold of a great and hazardous matter, Pemptides—or rather, to be moving altogether things that ought not to be moved, in the belief we hold concerning the gods,
by demanding, in each case, an account and a proof. The ancestral and time-honored faith is enough by itself; one cannot state or discover any clearer evidence for it, not even if wisdom were found in its most perfect form. Rather, this faith is itself a kind of common foundation and footing underlying piety, and if in even a single case its stability and settled custom is disturbed and shaken, it becomes precarious
for everyone, and open to suspicion. You have surely heard how Euripides caused an uproar when he wrote the opening of that Melanippe of his: ‘Zeus, whoever Zeus may be—for I know him only by report’; but later, when he had a different chorus, and grew bolder, it seems, because the play had already been staged with great acclaim and elaboration, he changed the line to how it now stands: ‘Zeus, as truth itself declares.’ What difference is there, then, between
casting doubt and obscurity, through argument, upon the belief we hold concerning Zeus, or Athena, or Eros? For it is not now, for the first time, that Eros asks for an altar and a sacrifice, nor is he some newcomer arriving out of foreign superstition—like the so-called Attis-figures and Adonis-figures, who steal in secretly through effeminate men and women, reaping honors that do not belong to them, so that they must, as it were, stand trial
for fraudulent registration and illegitimate standing among the gods. But when you hear Empedocles say, ‘my friend, and among them Love, equal in length and breadth—her you must behold with the mind, and not sit gaping at her with your eyes,’ you ought to suppose that this too is said of Eros; for this god is not visible, but is, among the most ancient beliefs, an object of conviction for us. And of each of these beliefs, should you demand
proof, laying hold of every sacred thing and bringing a sophist's testing to every altar, you would leave nothing unaccused and nothing untested by your inquiry. Indeed, I need not go far afield: do you not see how great a goddess Aphrodite is? She it is who sows and bestows desire, of which all of us who dwell upon the earth are the offspring. Empedocles named her, most fittingly and aptly, ‘life-giving,’ and Sophocles, ‘rich in fruit.’ And yet, all the same, this
great and marvelous work belongs to Aphrodite, while it is merely incidental to Eros, when Eros is present alongside her; but when he is not present, what results is left altogether unenviable, ‘without honor and without love.’ For intercourse without love, like hunger and thirst that find their limit only in being sated, arrives at nothing good. But the goddess, through Eros, removes the excess from pleasure and creates affection and true blending. That is why Parmenides
declares that Eros is the eldest of Aphrodite's works, writing in his cosmogony, ‘first of all the gods she devised Eros.’ Hesiod, however, seems to me to do something more in keeping with nature by making Eros the very first-born of all things, so that all things might, through him, come to share in generation. If, then, we cast Eros out of the honors that have always been his, neither will Aphrodite's honors remain in place. For one cannot even say that
some people revile Eros while sparing Aphrodite; rather, we hear from one and the same stage: ‘for love, too, was born to make men idle, even in such pursuits’; and again: ‘O children, Cypris is not Cypris alone, but goes by the name of many things besides. She is Hades; she is imperishable force; she is raving madness’—just as scarcely any of the other gods, either, has escaped this same
abuse born of ignorance. Consider Ares, who occupies, as it were on a bronze tablet, the position directly opposite Eros: how great are the honors he has received from men, and yet again how ill he is spoken of—for, ‘blind, women, and seeing nothing, Ares with a boar's face stirs every evil into confusion.’ And Homer calls him ‘blood-stained’ and ‘ever-shifting,’ while Chrysippus, in explaining the name,
...brings an accusation and slander against the god: for he says that Ares means "destroy," giving grounds to those who suppose that the fighting, quarrelsome, spirited element in us is called Ares. Others in turn will say that Aphrodite is desire, Hermes is reason, the Muses are the arts, and Athena is wisdom. Do you see, then, the abyss of atheism into which we fall if we assign each of the gods to a passion, a power, or a virtue?
"I see," said Pemptides, "but it is not pious either to make the gods into passions, or in turn to regard the passions as gods." And the father said, "What then? Do you think Ares is a god, or a passion of ours?" When Pemptides answered that he considered Ares a god, one who adorns the spirited and manly element in us, the father cried out, "Then, Pemptides, the passionate, warlike, combative element has a god, but the affectionate, sociable, gathering element is godless? So there is some god, Enyalius or Stratius, who watches over and presides as umpire when men kill and are killed with weapons and missiles, in siege and plunder — but over the passion of marriage and love, ending as it does in harmony and partnership, no god has ever stood as witness, overseer, guide, or helper to us?
Yet when men hunt gazelles and hares and deer, some rustic god joins the baying and urges them on; and they pray to Aristaeus, who first devised traps for wild beasts, when they snare wolves and bears with pits and nooses. Heracles himself calls on another god when he is about to raise his bow against a bird — "may Apollo the hunter guide the shaft straight," as Aeschylus says. But when a man attempts the noblest quarry of all, to capture friendship, does no god or spirit guide and share in his impulse? For I myself think, dear Daphnaeus, that no oak, no wild olive, not even that vine which Homer solemnly named, is a finer or lesser growth than a human being, when that growth shows the flowering bloom and beauty of body and soul together."
And Daphnaeus said, "Who else could think so, in heaven's name?" "These men do, by Zeus," said the father, "all those who believe that the care of plowing, sowing, and planting belongs to the gods. Do they not have certain nymphs, the dryads, who have been allotted a life span equal to that of the tree? 'And may Dionysus, rich in joy, increase the pasture of the trees,' 'the pure light of the autumn fruit,' as Pindar says. Yet the nurture and growth of youths and children, as they are shaped and formed in their season of bloom, belong to none of the gods or spirits; no one cares whether a growing human being comes out straight into virtue, or is instead turned aside and has his nobility broken through want of a guardian or through the wickedness of those he happens to meet. Is it, perhaps, even offensive and thankless to say this, when we enjoy the love of the divine for mankind, spread everywhere and failing us in no need — even though some of these needs have an outcome more necessary than beautiful?
Consider, for instance, our very birth, which is far from seemly, coming as it does through blood and birth pangs; nevertheless it has a divine overseer, Eileithyia and Locheia. Indeed it would be better not to be born at all than to be born badly, deprived of a good guardian and protector. Nor, again, does a god withdraw from a man who is sick, once he has been allotted the charge and the power over this condition; nor even from a man who has died — there is one there who conveys him from here, who helps those who have reached their end, a settler and a guide of souls, like Sleep: 'for Night did not bear me to be lord of the lyre, nor a prophet, nor a healer, but a mortal, one among souls.'
And such matters as these present many difficulties. But of that god's province one cannot name a holier task, nor any contest or struggle more fitting for a god to watch over and judge, than the care and pursuit that lovers show toward the beautiful and the young. For there is nothing shameful or coerced in it, but persuasion and grace grant it — truly a 'sweet labor' and a 'toil easily borne,' as it guides men toward virtue and friendship, an outcome it reaches not without a god, having no other master and guide than the companion of the Muses, the Graces, and Aphrodite — Eros. For, 'sowing beneath the sweet summer of a man's heart with longing,' as Melanippides says, he mingles the most pleasant things with the most beautiful. Or how do we put it, Zeuxippus?" And Zeuxippus said, "Just so, by Zeus, beyond all question — for the opposite would surely be absurd."
"And is this too not absurd," said the father, "that though friendship has four kinds, as the ancients distinguished them — first the natural, then the kinship-based, third the companionable, and last the erotic — each of these has a presiding god, whether Philios, or Xenios, or Homognios and Patrous, while the erotic kind alone is left abandoned, as though it were unholy and ill-omened and without a master, and that too though it needs the greatest care and guidance of all?" "This too," said Zeuxippus, "has no small unreasonableness in it."
"But surely," said the father, "Plato's arguments would take hold of our discussion here, even as it wanders off course. For there is a madness that turns back from the body upon the soul through certain bad mixtures or combinations, or through some harmful vapor circulating within, and this kind is harsh, difficult, and diseased. But there is another kind, neither godless nor native to us, but an intruding inspiration, a diversion of the reasoning and thinking faculty, having its origin and motion from a greater power — the common name for which is an "enthusiastic" passion. For just as that which is filled with breath is called inspired, and that which is filled with understanding is called sensible, so this surge of the soul has been named enthusiasm, from its participation and communion with a more divine power.
Of enthusiasm, the prophetic kind comes from the inspiration and possession of Apollo, the Bacchic from Dionysus — 'and for the Corybantes too, dance,' says Sophocles, for the rites of the Mother and of Pan share in the Bacchic revels. 'A third kind, taking hold of a tender and untrodden soul from the Muses,' rouses and kindles the poetic and musical faculty. But this one, called martial and warlike, is plain to see which of the gods it is that lets loose and drives into frenzy — 'arousing Ares, danceless, lyreless, tear-bringing, and the war cry that dwells among the people.'
There remains, then, of the transformation and diversion that occurs in man, no dim or quiet portion, Daphnaeus, and it is about this that I wish to question our friend Pemptides here: which of the gods shakes the thyrsus laden with fair fruit, this loving enthusiasm concerning good and modest boys and women — by far the sharpest and hottest of all? Do you not see that the soldier, once he has laid down his arms, ceases from his warlike madness — 'and his joyful attendants then took the armor from his shoulders,' and he sits as an unwarlike spectator of the rest — while the Bacchic and Corybantic leapings are soothed and brought to rest by changing their rhythm from the trochaic and their tune from the Phrygian mode? And likewise the Pythia, once she has stepped down from the tripod and the vapor, passes the rest of her time in calm and quiet?
But the madness of love, once it has truly taken hold of a man and set him ablaze, no music, no charming incantation, no change of place can settle. Rather, present, lovers are in love, and absent, they long; by day they pursue, and by night they keep watch at the door; sober, they call out to the beautiful, and drinking, they sing of them. And it is not, as someone has said, that poetic fantasies are the waking dreams of men because of their vividness — rather it is the fantasies of lovers that are so, conversing as if with people present, embracing them, reproaching them. For sight seems to paint its other images as if on something wet, quickly fading and abandoning the mind; but the images of the beloved, painted by it as if in fire-fixed encaustic, leave behind in the memory living forms —
moving, living, speaking, and remaining for all the rest of time. Cato the Roman used to say that the soul of the lover dwells in that of the beloved; and the beloved's appearance, character, life, and actions, led by which the lover quickly covers a long road — just as the Cynics say they have discovered 'a journey at once intense and short to virtue.' For indeed toward friendship too, as if carried on a wave of passion, one is borne along together with a god. In sum, I say that the enthusiasm of lovers is not godless, nor does it have any other god as overseer and charioteer than this one to whom we are now holding festival and offering sacrifice.
Nevertheless, since it is above all in power and benefit that we judge and name a thing most godlike — just as, among human goods, we consider and call kingship and virtue the most divine of all — it is time to consider first whether Eros yields in power to any god. And yet Cypris too brings forth great strength in victories, as Sophocles says, and great too is the might of Ares; and in a way we see the power of the other gods divided in two between these — the one drawing us toward the beautiful, the other arraying us against the shameful, both implanted in souls from the beginning, as Plato too says somewhere of the Forms.
Let us consider straightaway, then, that the pleasure Aphrodite's work provides in love is worth a mere drachma, and that no one who is not in love has ever endured toil or danger for the sake of sexual pleasure. And — so that we need not name Phryne here, my friend, or some Lais, or little Gnathaenion, lighting her evening lamp and waiting and calling — she is often passed right by; but let a sudden gust of wind come, together with great passion and longing, and this very same thing is made worth as much as the talents of Tantalus, and his kingdom besides. So weak and so quickly sated is the grace of Aphrodite, when Eros has not breathed upon it.
You may see this even more clearly from the following: many have shared their sexual favors with others — not only courtesans but even their own wedded wives — acting as procurers. So it was, my friend, with that Roman, Galba, who was entertaining Maecenas, it seems; and seeing him exchanging glances and skirmishing with his little wife, he quietly bowed his head as though asleep. Meanwhile one of the servants crept up to the table from outside and began stealing the wine, and Galba, glancing up, said, "Wretch, don't you know that I sleep only for Maecenas?"
This, then, is perhaps nothing very terrible, for Galba was a buffoon. But in Argos, Nicostratus was a political rival of Phaullus; and when King Philip was visiting, Phaullus — whose wife was strikingly beautiful — was expected, if she consorted with Philip, to secure for himself some power and office. When Nicostratus and his party perceived this and stationed themselves patrolling before the doors of the house, Phaullus put boots on his wife and threw around her a cloak and a Macedonian cap, and smuggled her in unnoticed as one of the king's young attendants.
Well then, with so many lovers having existed and still existing, do you know of one who, for the sake of honoring Zeus, became a procurer of his own beloved? I think not — for how could there be, when even against tyrants no one speaks or acts in opposition, yet many oppose and rival them over the beautiful and the young? For you hear that Aristogeiton the Athenian, and Antileon of Metapontum, and Melanippus of Acragas did not quarrel with the tyrants even while watching them ruin and outrage everything; but when the tyrants made attempts on their beloveds, they spared not even themselves in defending them, as though defending sacred and inviolable, untouchable things.
It is said too that Alexander wrote to Theodorus, the brother of Proteas: "Send me the music-girl, taking ten talents for her, unless you are in love with her." And when another of his companions, Antipatrides, came to a revel with a harp-girl, and Alexander, finding himself pleasantly disposed toward the woman, asked Antipatrides, "Surely you are not in love with her, are you?" — and when he said, "I certainly am," Alexander said, "Then go hang, wretch," and held back and did not touch the woman.
"Consider then again," he said, "how far Eros surpasses even in deeds of war — not idle, as Euripides said, nor unwarlike, nor spending his nights on the soft cheeks of young girls. For a man filled full with Eros needs no Ares when he fights the enemy, but having his own god present with him, is ready to cross fire and sea and the blasts of the upper air for the sake of his beloved, whatever he may bid. Among Sophocles' Niobids, as they are being shot down and dying, one calls for no other helper or ally than his lover: 'O you who were sent forth on my account.'
And you surely know for what reason Cleomachus of Pharsalus died fighting." "We, at least, Pemptides' companions," they said, "have not heard, but would gladly learn it." "And it is indeed worth hearing," said the father. "He came as an ally to the Chalcidians in the Thessalian war, when the war against the Eretrians was at its height. The infantry seemed to be holding firm for the Chalcidians, but it was a great task to drive back the enemy's cavalry; so the allies urged Cleomachus, a man splendid in spirit, to be the first to charge into the cavalry.
He asked his beloved, who was present, whether he intended to watch the contest; and when the young man said yes, and embraced him affectionately, and set the helmet on his head, Cleomachus, exalted, gathered around himself the best of the Thessalians, rode out splendidly, and fell upon the enemy, so that he threw the cavalry into confusion and routed it. And from this, once the hoplites too had fled, the Chalcidians won a decisive victory. Cleomachus himself, however, happened to die; the Chalcidians show his tomb in the marketplace, on which a great column stands to this day; and though before this they had held love between males in reproach, from then on they honored and esteemed it above other peoples.
Aristotle, however, says that Cleomachus died in another way, after defeating the Eretrians in the battle, and that the one loved by his beloved was one of the Chalcidians from Thrace, who had been sent as an ally to the Chalcidians in Euboea — whence it is sung among the Chalcidians: 'O boys who have obtained the graces of noble fathers, do not begrudge fair youths their company with good men; for along with courage, limb-loosening Eros too flourishes in the cities of the Chalcidians.' Anton was the lover's name, and Philistus the beloved's, as Dionysius the poet recorded in his Aetia.
And among you Thebans, Pemptides, did not the lover give his beloved a full suit of armor when the boy was enrolled among the men? And Pammenes, a man given to love, changed and rearranged the order of the hoplites, finding fault with Homer as unloving, because he mustered the Achaeans by tribes and clans, not stationing the beloved beside the lover, so that it might come about, 'shield pressed on shield, and helmet on helmet,' Eros alone among the generals being unconquerable. For tribesmen and kinsmen, and, by Zeus, even fathers and children —
“...they never abandon: no enemy has ever yet passed through, or ridden through, the space between a lover and his beloved, though there was no need for them to display their love of danger and their disregard for life to anyone who did not ask it of them—as did Theron the Thessalian, who pressed his left hand against the wall and, drawing his sword, cut off his own thumb, in defiance of his rival lover. Another man, fallen face down in battle, when the enemy was about to strike him, begged him to wait a little, so that his beloved might not see him wounded in the back.
It is not only the most warlike of peoples who are the most given to love—the Boeotians and the Spartans and the Cretans—but also, among the ancients, Meleager, Achilles, Aristomenes, Cimon, Epaminondas; for he too had beloveds, Asopichus and Cephisodorus, who died with him at Mantinea and is buried beside him. And the man who became most terrible and formidable to the enemy, the first to stand his ground and strike, Eucnamus of Amphissa, received heroic honors from the Phocians.
As for Heracles, it would be a labor to tell of his other loves, on account of their number; but Iolaus, whom they believe to have been his beloved, they still to this day revere and honor, receiving oaths and pledges of love at his tomb from lovers and their beloveds. It is said, too, that Apollo, being skilled in medicine, saved Alcestis when she had been given up for dead, doing this as a favor to Admetus, whom he loved as a woman loves, though he himself had once been the beloved; for the myth tells that Apollo, having become Admetus’s lover, ‘served as his hireling for a great year.’
Somehow Alcestis has aptly come to our memory. For a woman has no great share in Ares, but the possession that comes from Eros leads her on to dare something contrary to nature, even to die. And if there is any use at all in myths for establishing belief, the story of Alcestis, and of Protesilaus, and of Eurydice the wife of Orpheus makes it plain that Hades, alone of the gods, does what is commanded of him for Love—though toward all others, as Sophocles says, he knows neither fairness nor favor, but loves only
sheer justice pure and simple; yet he respects lovers, and to them alone he is not unconquerable or implacable. Hence it is a good thing, my friend, to take part in the mysteries at Eleusis; but I for my part see that a better lot in Hades belongs to the celebrants and initiates of Love—not that I put faith in the myths, yet I do not disbelieve them altogether either; for indeed those who say, by some divine stroke of fortune, that there is
a way up from Hades into the light for those touched by love speak truly, though they do not know where or how, having lost the path, so to speak, which Plato was the first of men to discern through philosophy. And yet there are certain thin and dim outflowings of the truth scattered within the mythologies of the Egyptians, but they require a skilled tracker, one able to seize great things from small. Let us, then, leave these matters aside, and after considering
the power of Love, which is so great, let us now examine his kindness and favor toward mankind—not whether he provides many good things to those who make use of him (for these are plain to everyone), but whether he benefits the lovers themselves in greater and more numerous ways. For Euripides, though he was himself a lover of love, marveled at the very smallest of its effects when he said that Love teaches a man to be a poet, even one who was unmusical before.
For it makes a man intelligent, even if he was careless before; and it makes the timid man courageous, as has been said—just as those who forge iron make hard what was soft. Every lover becomes generous, simple, and magnanimous, even if he was miserly before, his pettiness and love of money being softened, like iron in the fire, so that he takes pleasure in giving to his beloved things which he would not take pleasure in receiving from others.
You surely know, I suppose, how it was with Anytus the son of Anthemion, who was a lover of Alcibiades and was entertaining guests lavishly and splendidly; Alcibiades burst in on the revel and, taking from the table half of the drinking cups, went away. When the guests were vexed and said, ‘The young man has treated you insolently and arrogantly,’ Anytus said, ‘No, rather with kindness; for though it was in his power to take everything,
he has left even this much for me.’ Zeuxippus, delighted, said, ‘By Heracles, how easily he settled his hereditary quarrel with Anytus, one going back to Socrates and philosophy, if he was so gentle and noble where love was concerned!’ ‘Well then,’ said my father, ‘does it not make men more kindly and pleasant toward their companions, out of those who are difficult and sullen? For when a fire is kindled, a house appears
more stately to look at, and a man, it seems, appears more radiant because of the warmth of love. But most people feel something strange: if they see a gleam of light in a house at night, they think it divine and marvel at it; yet when they see a soul that is small, humble, and ignoble suddenly filled with pride, freedom, ambition, grace, and generosity, they are not compelled to say, as Telemachus did, ‘Surely some god is within.’” “And is not this too,”
said Daphnaeus, “by the Graces, a wondrous thing—that the lover, while despising almost everything else, not only his companions and household, but also the laws and magistrates and kings, and fearing nothing, marveling at nothing, courting no one—yet is such as to endure even ‘the warrior thunderbolt,’ and the moment he sees the beautiful one, ‘he crouches like a slave-cock that has drooped its wing,’
and his boldness is broken and his proud spirit is cut down. It is fitting to remember Sappho here, among the Muses; for the Romans tell that the son of Hephaestus, Cacus, breathed fire and flame streaming out through his mouth; but she truly utters words mingled with fire, and through her songs conveys the heat that comes from her heart, ‘healing her love with the tuneful Muses,’
as Philoxenus says. But if you have not, on account of Lysander, Daphnaeus, forgotten the old love songs, remind us of the ones in which the beautiful Sappho says that when her beloved appears her voice fails and her body catches fire, and pallor seizes her, and wandering and dizziness.” When Daphnaeus had recited those verses, my father took them up and said,
“Are these not, by Zeus, a manifest seizure by a god? Is this not a divine tumult of the soul? What so great a thing does the Pythia suffer when she takes hold of the tripod? Which of those possessed by inspiration is so carried out of themselves by the flute, the rites of the Mother, and the drum? Many of us look on the same body and the same beauty, yet only the lover is seized—for what reason? For surely
we do not learn this, nor do we understand it, though we hear Menander say that the disease of the soul is opportunity, and the one who is struck is wounded within. But the god is responsible, touching this one and letting that one go. So then, what it would have been more fitting to say at the beginning, I think I shall leave unspoken even now—‘that now it has come upon my lips,’ as Aeschylus says—for indeed it is
a matter of vast scope. For perhaps, my friend, of all the other things too, as many as come to our understanding not through sense-perception, some have gained credence from the start through myth, some through law, and some through reason; but of the belief about the gods, in every respect, the leaders and teachers for us have been the poets and the lawgivers, and third, the philosophers,
all alike positing that gods exist, but differing greatly from one another concerning their number and order, their being and their power. For those gods of the philosophers are free from disease, free from old age, and untouched by toil, having fled the loud-roaring strait of Acheron; hence they do not admit the poets’ Strifes, nor Prayers, nor are they willing that Terror or Fear should be gods and acknowledged as children of Ares. They fight, too,
about many matters, with the lawgivers as well—just as Xenophanes bade the Egyptians, if they consider Osiris mortal, not to honor him as a god, but if they hold him to be a god, not to mourn him. And again, when the poets and lawgivers hear the philosophers making certain forms and numbers, monads and spirits, into gods, they can neither endure to listen nor are able to understand. In general, there is much inconsistency and
disagreement among these opinions. Just as there were once three factions at Athens—the Men of the Shore, the Men of the Highlands, and the Men of the Plain—harshly opposed and at odds with one another, and then all came together and, casting their votes, brought them all to Solon, and chose him in common as arbitrator, ruler, and lawgiver, since he was thought without dispute to hold the first place in virtue—so too the three factions concerning the gods, though divided in opinion
and each casting a different vote, and not readily accepting the view of another on any single point with firm agreement, nevertheless jointly enroll Love among the gods—the best of the poets, the lawgivers, and the philosophers alike, ‘praising him greatly with one united voice,’ just as Alcaeus said the Mytilenaeans chose Pittacus as tyrant. For us, then, Love is king and ruler and governor, brought down, crowned, by Hesiod
and Plato and Solon, from Helicon to the Academy, and he drives in, adorned, with many teams yoked in friendship and fellowship—not such as Euripides speaks of, yoked ‘in fetters unforged of bronze,’ a cold and heavy necessity imposed by shame in time of need, but rather that of a winged power borne toward the fairest and most divine of realities, concerning which it has been better spoken by others.”
When my father had said this, Soclarus said, “Do you see that, having fallen upon the same subjects twice now, you somehow drag yourself away and turn aside by force, unjustly cheating us, if I may say what appears to be the case, when the subject is a sacred one? For just now, too, you touched upon Plato and the Egyptians as if unwillingly, and passed on, and now you are doing the same thing.
As for what has been ‘said with perfect clearness’ by Plato—or rather by these goddesses through Plato, my good sir—‘you shall not speak, even if we bid you’; but as for the point at which you hinted that the Egyptian myth agrees with the Platonists concerning Love, there is no way for you to avoid uncovering and revealing it to us. We shall be content even if we hear only a little about great matters.” When the others also asked, my father said that the Egyptians
know two loves in a manner similar to the Greeks, the common one and the heavenly one, but they also consider a third Love to be the sun, and they hold Aphrodite in especially great reverence. “We, however,” he said, “see a great resemblance between Love and the sun, but none between Aphrodite and the earth; for neither of them is fire, as some suppose, but a radiance and a sweet, generative warmth, and the one
that comes from the sun provides nourishment, light, and growth to the body, while the one from Love does so for souls. And just as the sun is warmer when emerging from clouds and after a mist, so Love, after anger and jealousy, once the beloved is reconciled, is sweeter and more piercing; further, just as some think the sun is kindled and extinguished, so they think the same about Love, as being mortal and unstable.
And indeed, just as an unexercised condition of body cannot bear the sun, so the disposition of an uneducated soul cannot bear Love without pain; each alike is thrown into disorder and falls sick, blaming the power of the god rather than its own weakness. Except that in this respect they would seem to differ, in that the sun shows the beautiful and the ugly alike on the earth to those who see, whereas Love is a light
of beautiful things only, and persuades lovers to look and turn only toward these, and to overlook all else. They touch on no resemblance at all with the earth, but in calling the moon Aphrodite they touch upon a certain likeness; for she too is divine and heavenly, and is the region where the immortal mingles with the mortal, powerless in herself and dark when the sun does not shine upon her, just as Aphrodite is when Love is not present.
It is likely, then, that Aphrodite resembles the moon, and Love the sun, more than the other gods do, yet it is not that they are altogether identical; for body is not the same as soul, but different, just as the sun is visible while Love is intelligible. And if it will not seem too harsh a thing to say, one might also assert that the sun does the opposite of what Love does: for it turns the mind away from things intelligible toward things
perceptible by sense, bewitching and persuading it, by the grace and brightness of what is seen, to seek in itself and around itself, along with everything else, even truth itself, and nowhere else; so that we appear to be, as it were, poor lovers of this thing that gleams upon the earth, as Euripides says, through ignorance of another life, or rather forgetfulness of those things of which Love is a recollection. For just as, when men wake
into a great and bright light, everything that appeared to the soul in sleep vanishes and escapes, so it seems that of the things that happened here and changed, the sun strikes the memory senseless and drugs the understanding, since men forget those things through pleasure and wonder. And yet in truth it is there and about those things that the soul, as if truly awake, has its being, while here it welcomes the things of dreams,
and is amazed and awestruck at what is fairest and most divine. ‘And round about him she poured crafty, kindly dreams,’ the soul here being persuaded that everything is beautiful and precious, unless it happens upon Love, that divine and prudent physician, savior, and guide, who, coming to it by way of bodies, is a leader toward truth from Hades and toward ‘the plain of truth,’ where the great and pure and unfeigned
beauty is established, drawing up and sending back those who long, after so long a time, to embrace and be united with it, guiding them kindly, like a mystagogue standing by at an initiation. And here again, of those who are sent back, Love does not draw near to the soul itself by itself, but through the body. Just as geometers, for children who are not yet able to be initiated on their own into intelligible things belonging to incorporeal and impassive being, fashion tangible and visible likenesses of spheres and cubes and
dodecahedra to hold before them, so for us the heavenly Love, contriving mirrors of beautiful things—beautiful, yet mortal, things that suffer, perceptible copies of things divine and intelligible—shows them gleaming in the forms, colors, and beauty of the young, and gently stirs the memory, first kindled through these. Hence, through clumsiness, some of their friends and relatives, trying by force and without reason to quench the passion, gain
no benefit whatsoever from it, but either fill themselves with smoke and confusion, or, flowing toward dark and unlawful pleasures, wither away ingloriously. But as many as, with prudent reasoning and modesty, have taken away, as it were, only the madness of the fire, and have left the soul its brightness and light along with warmth, do not suffer, as someone has said, a convulsion that drives them toward seed and the slipping away of atoms through smoothness and titillation,
...but rather a marvelous and fertile diffusion, as in a plant that is budding and being nourished, opening channels of docility and friendliness. It would not be long before, passing beyond the body of their beloveds, lovers are carried within and take hold of their character, and, drawing out each other's gaze, look closely and come together for the most part through words and actions with one another, provided they have some fragment of the beautiful and an image of it in their minds. But if not, they let it go and turn to others, just as bees pass by many green and flowering plants that have no honey in them; but wherever they find some trace of the divine, some emanation and fawning likeness, being inspired with pleasure and wonder, and carried about by it, they are gladdened in memory and blaze up again toward that truly lovely and blessed object, dear and beloved to all.
"Now in most cases the poets seem to be playing games with the god when they write about him and sing in his revels, but a few things have been said by them in earnest -- whether by mind and reasoning, or by touching the truth with the god's help. One of these is the boldest saying about his birth: that swift, fair-sandaled Iris was born from union with golden-haired Zephyr -- unless the grammarians have persuaded you too, saying that the comparison was made with reference to the variegated, flowery character of the passion." And Daphnaeus said, "With reference to what else, indeed?" "Listen," said the father, "for the phenomenon itself forces one to put it this way. The rainbow is, I suppose, a case of the eye's being affected by reflection,
whenever the sight, falling gently on a moist, smooth cloud of moderate thickness, touches the sun by reflection, and, seeing the radiance around it and its light, produces in us the impression that the image is actually in the cloud. This, then, is the amatory device and sophistry: in well-natured, beauty-loving souls it produces a reflection of memory from the things that appear and are called beautiful here, back to that truly divine, lovely, blessed, and wondrous beauty. But most men, chasing and groping after its image as it appears in boys and women as though in mirrors, can grasp nothing more secure than a pleasure mixed with pain. Rather, this looks like the dizziness and wandering of Ixion, hunting
an empty object of desire in the clouds as though it were shadows -- like children eager to grasp the rainbow with their two hands, drawn on by its mere appearance. But there is another way, for the well-natured and temperate lover: for in him the reflection turns back toward the divine and intelligible beauty. Encountering the beauty of a visible body and using it as a kind of instrument of memory, he embraces and loves it, and, being together with it and rejoicing, is kindled all the more in his understanding. Such men, while still here in the body, do not sit yearning for and marveling at this light alone; nor, once they have arrived there after death, do they turn back here again and, running off like fugitives, roll about at the doorways of newlyweds and in bedchambers -- those wretched little phantoms of pleasure-loving and body-loving men and women who are not rightly called lovers at all. For the man who is truly a lover, once he has arrived there
and has consorted with the beautiful, as is right, is winged and initiated, and continues on high, dancing and circling about his own god, until he comes once more to the meadows of the Moon and Aphrodite, and, falling asleep there, begins another birth. But these matters," he said, "call for a larger discussion than we have time for now. Yet this too belongs to Love, as to the other gods:
as Euripides says, 'to rejoice in being honored by men' -- and the opposite as well, for he is most gracious to those who receive him harmoniously, but heavy upon those who behave arrogantly toward him. Neither does Zeus the God of Strangers pursue wrongs done to strangers and suppliants, nor Zeus the God of Birth avenge a parent's curses, as swiftly and readily as Love answers the call of lovers who have been treated with contempt -- a punisher of the ill-bred and the arrogant. What indeed could one say of
Euxynthetus, and of Leucomantis in Cyprus, who is still even now called 'the Peeping Woman'? But perhaps you have not heard of the punishment of Gorgo the Cretan, who suffered something similar to the Peeping Woman -- except that the latter was turned to stone as she peeped out to watch her lover being carried out for burial, whereas in Gorgo's case a certain Asander fell in love with her, a young man of decent character and brilliant birth, though he had come down from brilliant circumstances to humble and mean ones. Even so, he
was disdained by no one; and, being a kinsman, he asked for Gorgo -- who, on account of her wealth, was, it seems, much fought over and much courted -- as his wife, having many good men joined with him in wooing her, and having won over all the girl's guardians and relatives." "Further, as for the causes and origins of love that people speak of, they are peculiar to neither sex but common to both. For indeed the images
that enter into those in love, running through them, stirring up and titillating the body's mass, slipping down together with the other configurations into seed -- is this possible from boys but impossible from women? And these beautiful, sacred remembrances of that divine, true, Olympian beauty, by which the soul grows its wings -- what would prevent them from arising from boys and
young men, and equally from girls and women, whenever a pure, well-ordered character becomes visible through the bloom and grace of the form -- just as an upright shoe reveals the good shape of a foot, as Ariston used to say -- whenever those skilled at perceiving such things discern, in beautiful forms and unspoiled bodies, bright, settled traces of a soul that is upright and unbroken? For it is not the case that the pleasure-lover,
when asked whether he inclines more toward the female or the male, and answering 'wherever beauty is present,' seemed to give an answer suited to his own desire, being, as it were, ambidextrous, while the lover of beauty and the noble man bases his loves not on beauty or good form as such but on differences of anatomy. A lover of horses embraces the fine qualities of Podargus no less than those of 'Aithe, Agamemnon's mare'; and
a lover of hunting takes pleasure not only in male dogs but also raises Cretan and Laconian bitches. But the lover of beauty and of humanity is not uniform or alike toward both sexes; instead he thinks, as if there were differences between garments, that there are differences between loving women and loving men. And yet they say that youthful bloom is 'the flower of virtue,' while denying that the female sex can flower at all, or manifest any natural excellence
in relation to virtue -- which is absurd. Indeed Aeschylus rightly wrote: 'the burning eye of a young woman who has tasted a man will not escape my notice.' So then, do the signs of a bold, unchaste, corrupted character run across the features of women, while no light of orderliness and prudence attaches to their form at all? Or does much indeed attach and show itself there too, yet move nothing and call forth
no love at all? Neither answer is reasonable or true. Rather, as has been shown, these things belong in common to both sexes alike, since the contest, so to speak, is a shared one. So, Daphnaeus, let us take up arms against those arguments which Zeuxippus went through just now, making Love the same thing as unruly desire that carries the soul off toward licentiousness -- not that I myself am so persuaded, but because I have often heard it said by difficult,
loveless men. Some of these, dragging wretched little wives along with their dowries and money into household management and mean calculations, keep them constantly at hand, quarreling like yoke-mates day after day. Others, wanting children rather than wives -- just as cicadas discharge their seed onto a squill or some such plant -- likewise in haste beget offspring in whatever bodies happen to be at hand, and once they have gathered the fruit of it, let the marriage go its own way from then on, caring nothing
whether it lasts or not, and not thinking it worthwhile either to love or to be loved. But 'to be cherished' and 'to cherish,' differing by a single letter from 'to shelter,' seem to me to show at once an affection mixed, of necessity, with mere time and habit. But whomever Love seizes and breathes into, he will first of all have no 'mine' and 'not mine,' as in Plato's ideal city -- for it is not simply that
'friends' goods are held in common' among everyone, but only among those who, though bounded by separate bodies, forcibly bring their souls together and fuse them, wishing to be not two but one, and believing themselves so. Then again, chastity between partners, which marriage needs above all: in most married people it comes more from outside, from the laws, than from willingness, being constrained by shame and fear -- the work of many bridles and rudders together -- and it stands guard
constantly over those who live together. But Love has so great a share of self-control, order, and fidelity, that even if he ever touches a licentious soul, he turns it away from all its other lovers, cutting out its boldness, breaking its arrogance and unruliness, instilling shame, silence, and quiet, and clothing it in a decorous bearing, so that he makes it obedient to one alone. You know, I suppose, by report, that famous and much-desired Lais, how
she used to set Greece ablaze with desire -- indeed she was fought over by both seas. But when Love touched her because of Hippolochus the Thessalian, she left behind 'Acrocorinth, washed by pale-green water,' and, fleeing secretly from her great host of other lovers, went off in modest fashion. There the women, out of envy and jealousy over her beauty, led her out to the temple of Aphrodite, stoned her, and killed her; whence,
it seems, they still call that shrine 'Aphrodite the Man-Slayer' even now. We know, too, of slave-girls who flee their masters' embraces, and of commoners who look down on princesses, once they have taken Love as master within their soul. For just as in Rome, they say, once the man called Dictator has been proclaimed, those holding other offices lay them down, so too those in whom Love has become established as lord are freed and released from every other master and ruler,
and remain thereafter like temple slaves. And a noble woman joined to her lawful husband through Love would rather endure the embrace of bears and serpents than the touch and bed of another man." "Though there is no lack of examples for you, fellow initiates and devotees of the god, still it would not be right to pass over the story of Camma the Galatian; for she, being most striking in appearance,
had been married to Sinatus the tetrarch, when Sinorix, the most powerful of the Galatians, fell in love with her and killed Sinatus, since he could neither force nor persuade the woman while her husband lived. Camma's refuge and consolation for her grief was her ancestral priesthood of Artemis; she spent most of her time in the goddess's service, admitting no one, though many kings and potentates sought her hand. When, however, Sinorix ventured
to approach her about marriage, she did not shrink from the attempt, nor did she reproach him for what had happened, on the ground that Sinorix had been driven to it by goodwill and longing for her, not by any other wickedness. So he came, trusting her, and asked for the marriage. She met him, greeted him warmly, and, leading him to the goddess's altar, poured a libation from a bowl of honeyed milk which, it seems, had been poisoned. Then, drinking off about half
of it herself first, she handed the rest to the Galatian. And when she saw that he had drunk it, she cried out loudly in triumph, and, speaking the name of her dead husband, said: 'This is the day, dearest husband, that I have waited for: living apart from you until now, I lived in grief. But now receive me gladly -- for I have taken vengeance on your behalf against the vilest of men, and have gladly become his partner in death, as I once was your partner in life.'
So Sinorix, being carried off in a litter, died a short time later, while Camma, having lived through that day and the following night, is said to have died very bravely and cheerfully." "Since many such things have happened both among us and among barbarians, who could tolerate those who slander Aphrodite, as though, when joined with Love and present, she prevents friendship from coming into being? As for the union of male with male,
or rather -- one might well say, on reflection -- incontinence and assault, 'it is outrage, not Aphrodite, that brings this about.' For this reason we place those who take pleasure in submitting to it in the very worst class of vice, and grant them no share of fidelity, shame, or friendship. Truly, as Sophocles says, of such 'friends,' those who are deprived of them rejoice, while those who have them pray to escape them. But as for those
who, not being bad by nature, were deceived or forced into yielding and giving themselves up, these continue for the rest of their lives to suspect and hate, more than anyone else, the men who so used them, and take bitter revenge whenever the chance is given. Crateas killed Archelaus after having been his beloved, and Pythólaus killed Alexander of Pherae. Periander, the tyrant of the Ambraciots, once asked his beloved whether he was not yet pregnant, and the boy, provoked, killed him. But
for wedded wives, by contrast, such acts are the beginnings of friendship, like a shared participation in great mysteries. The pleasure involved is a small thing; but the honor, favor, mutual affection, and trust that grow from it day by day neither convict the Delphians of talking nonsense when they call Aphrodite 'Harmony,' nor Homer, when he calls such intercourse 'love-union.' It also bears witness that Solon proved himself the most expert
lawgiver in matters of marriage when he ordained that a husband must approach his wedded wife not less than three times a month -- not for pleasure's sake, one might ask? No: rather, just as cities from time to time renew their treaties with one another, so he wished the marriage likewise to be renewed, through such tokens of affection, against the vexations that build up on every occasion. But, it will be said, many love-affairs with women are base and mad. Well, are those with boys not even more so?
...gazing with tender intimacy, [the poet] slipped into loving a beardless, soft-skinned, handsome youth, wishing to fasten himself to him and die, and so win an epitaph. But just as this is boy-madness, so that other passion is woman-madness; neither of them is Love. It is absurd, then, to say that women have no share in virtue at all, or in any other excellence. Indeed, what need is there to speak of their prudence and understanding, and further their fidelity and justice, when even courage and
boldness and greatness of soul have shown themselves plainly in many of them? To grant that their nature is fine in every other respect, yet to fault it and declare it unfit for friendship alone, is altogether outrageous. For indeed they are devoted to their children, devoted to their husbands, and altogether affectionate by nature; and, like fertile, receptive soil for friendship, they are found wanting neither in persuasiveness nor in charm. Just as poetry, by fitting to plain speech the sweeteners
of melody, meter, and rhythm, makes its instructive element more moving and its harmful element less guarded against, so nature, by clothing woman with grace of appearance, persuasiveness of voice, and an attractive form of beauty, has, in the licentious woman, contributed greatly toward pleasure and deception, but in the chaste woman, toward a husband's goodwill and friendship. Plato, for his part, used to urge Xenocrates -- who was in other respects a noble man
and great, though very austere in character, Plato nevertheless urged him to sacrifice to the Graces. And one might advise a good and sensible wife to sacrifice to Eros as well, so that he may dwell in the marriage kindly disposed and be sweet toward its concerns, and so that the husband, not drifting off toward some other woman, may not be forced to speak the words from comedy: "What a wrong I do this woman — wretched man that I am!" For to be loved in marriage is a greater good than merely to love.
It frees one from many faults, or rather from all those that corrupt and ruin a marriage. As for the passionate, biting stage at the beginning, my dear Zeuxippus, do not fear it as though it were a wound or an itch; and yet even a kind of wound may be nothing terrible when it comes from growing together, like grafted trees, with a good woman. For a wounding is also the beginning of conception, since there is no mingling between things that have not been affected by one another.
Learning, too, disturbs children when they begin it, and philosophy disturbs the young; but neither in them does the biting quality remain forever, nor does it in lovers. Rather, just as when liquids fall together there seems to be some seething and disturbance at first, so too Eros, once it has settled and been calmed by time, produces the most stable disposition of all.
For this is truly what is called a blending "through and through" — the blending of lovers; whereas the union of those who merely live together in some other way resembles the contacts and interminglings described by Epicurus, full of collisions and reboundings, producing no such unity as Love creates when it takes hold of a marital partnership. For there are no greater pleasures to be had from others, nor more constant needs met by others, nor is the beauty of friendship found elsewhere so
glorious and enviable as when a husband and wife, of one mind in their thoughts, keep house together. Indeed the law assists it, and nature shows that even the gods have need of shared begetting and of Love. Thus the poets say that "the earth loves the rain," and the sky loves the earth; the natural philosophers say that the moon loves the sun, and unites with it, and conceives; and that the earth, too, mother
of men and of every animal and plant, would necessarily perish at some point and be utterly quenched, once the god's dread love or longing abandoned matter and matter ceased desiring and pursuing from that source its origin and motion. But, so that we may not seem to wander too far afield or talk sheer nonsense — you know how much is said about the instability of love for boys, and
how people mock it, saying that their friendship, like an egg, can be split with a hair; that such lovers, like nomads, pitch camp for a season among those in bloom and flower, and then strike camp again as though from hostile territory. Still more crudely, the sophist Bion used to call the hairs of handsome boys "Harmodiuses" and "Aristogeitons," since by their growth lovers are freed at once from a beautiful tyranny. These charges, however, are not justly brought against genuine lovers.
But what Euripides said is elegant: for he, embracing and warmly kissing the fair Agathon, already bearded, said that of fair men the autumn too is welcomed — the only season that grows gray in nothing, reaching its prime even with wrinkles, but remaining faithful all the way to tombs and monuments. And one could count few lasting unions born of love for boys, but countless born of love for women, sharing every trust together, faithfully and eagerly, to the very end. I wish
to relate one thing that happened in our own time, under the emperor Vespasian. Civilis, who stirred up the revolt in Gaul, had, naturally enough, many partners in the affair, among them Sabinus, a young man of no mean birth, but the most conspicuous of all in wealth and reputation. Having laid hold of great undertakings, they failed, and expecting to pay the penalty, some took their own lives, while others, in flight,
were captured. For Sabinus, everything else made it easy enough to slip away and take refuge among the barbarians; but the wife he had taken, the best of all women — there they called her Empona, though in Greek one might name her Heroïs — he could neither leave behind nor bring along with him. Now, having on his estate underground storerooms dug for his money, of which only two
of his freedmen knew, he dismissed the rest of the household servants, giving out that he meant to kill himself with poison, and taking the two trusted men with him went down into the underground chambers. To his wife he sent his freedman Martialius to report that he had died by poison and that the farmhouse had burned down together with his body; for he wanted to make use of his wife's genuine grief as proof of his supposed death, which
indeed came about. For, throwing herself down just as she was, amid laments and wailing, she held out for three days and nights without food. When Sabinus learned of this and grew afraid that she would utterly destroy herself, he had Martialius tell her secretly that he was alive and in hiding, and that he begged her to persevere a little longer in her mourning, and to make her pretense convincing.
So the rest of her performance was carried out by the woman in anguished keeping with the appearance of her grief; but, longing to see him, she went off by night, and came back again. From this point on, unbeknownst to everyone else, she came within a little of actually living with her husband in Hades itself, for more than seven months running, during which time, having disguised Sabinus with a change of clothes, a haircut, and a covering for his head, she brought him, unrecognized, with her to Rome,
on the strength of certain hopes that had been held out to her. But having achieved nothing, she went back again, and for the most part lived with him underground, though from time to time she would go up into the city to be seen by her women friends and relatives. And the most incredible thing of all: she managed to conceal that she was pregnant even while bathing with the other women, for the preparation with which women anoint their hair to make it golden and reddish contains a kind of oil
that builds up the flesh, or loosens it, so as to produce a sort of swelling or distension. Using this liberally on the rest of her body, she hid the swelling of her belly, since it too rose and filled out along with the rest. Her labor pains she bore entirely alone, diving down to her husband as a lioness does into her den, and she reared the male cubs that were born to her — for she bore two. Of these
sons, one fell and died in Egypt, while the other has only just recently been here among us at Delphi, a man named Sabinus. As for her, Caesar put her to death; but having killed her, he paid the penalty for it, since in a short time his whole line was utterly wiped out. For that reign produced nothing grimmer, and no other sight is likely to have turned away the eyes of gods and spirits more
than that one. And yet her boldness and her lofty words took away the pity of those watching — words with which she provoked Vespasian most of all, once she had given up hope of survival, when she urged him to trade places with her, saying that she had lived more sweetly in the darkness underground than he had in ruling as king. At this point my father said that their discourse on Love came to an end, since they were now close to Thespiae,
and that one of Pisias's companions, Diogenes, was seen approaching them at more than a walking pace. When Socles called out to him while he was still some way off, "Not news of war, I hope, Diogenes," the man answered, "Hush now — there is a wedding on, so keep quiet and come along faster, since the sacrifice is waiting for you." At this everyone was delighted, and Zeuxippus asked whether he was still being difficult.
"Why, he has already given in to Ismenodora," Diogenes said, "and now, willingly taking up a garland and a white cloak, he is ready to lead the way through the marketplace to the god." "Well then, by Zeus, let us go," my father said, "let us go, so that we may have our laugh at the man and pay our respects to the god; for it is plain that he is glad, and that he looks favorably on what is being done."

======== Moralia: An Recte Dictum Sit Latenter Esse Vivendum ========

But not even the man who said this wished to go unnoticed; for he said it precisely so that he would not go unnoticed, as though he were thinking something rather remarkable, and by an exhortation to obscurity procuring for himself an unjust reputation. "I hate the sophist who is not wise for himself": they say that Philoxenus, the son of Eryxis, and Gnathon of Sicily, so obsessed with delicacies, used to blow their noses into the side-dishes, so that by disgusting their fellow diners they alone might glut themselves on what lay before them; while those who are immoderately fond of reputation, and sated with it to excess, disparage it to others as though to rivals in love, so that they may win it without a contest, and they do the very thing that rowers do.
For just as rowers, looking toward the stern of the ship, assist the forward motion at the bow, so that, from the eddy created by the backward stroke, a current sweeping round drives the vessel onward together—so those who give such precepts pursue reputation even while, as it were, turned away from it. For why did this man need to say it? Why write it, and having written it, publish it for the time to come, if he who did not wish even those yet to be born to know of him did not even wish those now alive to know? But let us leave that aside. As for the thing itself, how is it not base—"live unnoticed"? As though one had robbed a tomb? But is it shameful to live in such a way that all remain ignorant of us? I,
for my part, would say: do not even live wickedly unnoticed, but be known, be brought to your senses, repent; if you possess virtue, do not become useless; if vice, do not remain untreated. But rather divide the question and define to whom you are giving this precept: if to one ignorant and wicked and senseless, you differ in no way from a man who says, "go unnoticed even while you have a fever, go unnoticed even while you are delirious—let not the physician know you"; go, cast yourself down into some
darkness, unknown along with your passions; and you too, go, suffering with vice an incurable and deadly disease, hiding your envies, your superstitious fears, as though they were certain pulses of a hidden malady, afraid to reveal them to those who are able to admonish and to heal. But the men of very old times used to bring even the visibly sick out into public: and each one of these, if he had some remedy—having suffered it himself, or having treated another who suffered it—would tell it to the one in need;
and thus, they say, out of experience gathered together a great art came to be. So too it was necessary that sickly lives, and the conditions of the soul, be laid bare before all, and that one take hold of each and, examining their dispositions, say: "Are you prone to anger? Guard against this. Are you jealous? Do that. Are you in love? I too was once in love, but I repented." But as it is, by denying, by hiding, by concealing, men only sink their vice deeper into themselves. And indeed, if to the
good you counsel to go unnoticed and unrecognized, you are saying to Epaminondas, "do not be a general," and to Lycurgus, "do not be a lawgiver," and to Thrasybulus, "do not slay tyrants," and to Pythagoras, "do not teach," and to Socrates, "do not converse"—and to yourself first of all, Epicurus, do not write to your friends in Asia, nor recruit followers from Egypt, nor act as bodyguard to the young men of Lampsacus; do not send round your books, displaying your wisdom to all men and women alike,
nor give instructions about your burial. For why the common meals? Why the gatherings of your intimates and fine friends? Why the tens of thousands of lines written and painstakingly composed against Metrodorus, against Aristobulus, against Chaeredemus? Is it so that not even in death might they go unnoticed—or is it that you would legislate amnesty for virtue, and inaction for skill, and silence for philosophy, and forgetfulness for good fortune? But if, as from a banquet, you remove the light of knowledge from
life, so that everything is done for pleasure and toward a hidden pleasure, then "live unnoticed." Very well indeed—if I am going to live with Hedeia the courtesan and dwell with Leontion, and "spit upon the noble," and place the good "in flesh and its titillations": such ends require darkness, these require night, upon these one must call down oblivion
and ignorance. But if a man, in matters of natural philosophy, hymns god and justice and providence, and in matters of ethics, law and community and citizenship, and in citizenship the honorable rather than mere expediency—why should he live unnoticed? So that he might educate no one, or become an object of emulation in virtue or a fine example to no one? If Themistocles had gone unnoticed by the Athenians, Greece would not have repelled
Xerxes; if Camillus had gone unnoticed by the Romans, Rome would not have remained a city; if Plato had gone unnoticed by Dion, Sicily would not have been freed. And just as, I think, light not only makes us visible but also useful to one another, so knowledge gives to virtues not only reputation but also active exercise. Epaminondas, at any rate, unrecognized for forty years, was of no benefit to the Thebans; but afterward,
once trusted and put in command, he saved his city when it was on the point of ruin, and freed Greece when it was enslaved—presenting his virtue as active, in the light of reputation, for the occasion; for like noble bronze it shines when put to use, but growing idle with time it decays—not only "the roof," as Sophocles says, but also the character of a man, gathering, as it were, mildew and old age through inactivity from lack of recognition. A deaf
quiet and a settled life laid up in leisure wastes away not only the body but the soul as well; and just as waters that lie unseen, being overshadowed and stagnant and not flowing away, grow foul, so too in unmoved lives, it seems, whatever useful power they possess withers and grows old along with them. Do you not see that as night comes on, sluggish heaviness seizes
the bodies, and torpor, robbed of strength, overtakes the souls, and reason, contracted into itself like a dim fire through idleness and dejection, "throbs, scattered into images ranging far and wide"—so faint a mark does mere living leave upon a man? But when the deceiving "sun has risen" and driven away dreams, and gathering all together as into one has turned and set in motion, together with the light, the actions and thoughts of
all men—as Democritus says, men "thinking new thoughts each day"—drawn to one another by mutual impulse as though by a taut cord, one from one place, another from another, rise up to their tasks. And I think that life itself, and altogether the fact of being born and having a share in human generation, was given by god for the sake of knowledge; but it is unclear and unknown throughout the whole heaven, and is carried along in small
scattered fragments; but when it comes to be, gathering itself together and taking on magnitude, it shines forth and becomes manifest out of the unmanifest, and visible out of the invisible. For knowledge is not, as some say, a path to being, but rather being is a path to knowledge; for it does not make each of the things that come to be, but reveals them—just as destruction is not the removal of what exists into nonexistence,
but rather the withdrawal of what has been dissolved into the unmanifest. Hence, in accordance with ancestral and ancient custom, men who regard the sun as Apollo call him Delian and Pythian; while the lord of the opposite portion, whether god or spirit he may be, they name Hades, as though we, when we are dissolved, go into what is unseen and invisible, marching by night, sunless, the lord of sleep that never toils. And I think
that the ancients called man himself "phos" [a being of light] for this very reason, because in each of us, through kinship, a strong desire to know and to be known is implanted. Indeed some philosophers hold that the soul itself is, in its essence, light, relying among other proofs on the fact that, more than anything that exists, the soul cannot bear ignorance and casts out everything dark, and is thrown into confusion
before what is obscure, full as it is of fear and suspicion toward it; whereas light is so pleasant and longed-for by the soul that it takes no delight even in any other naturally pleasant thing without light, in the midst of darkness—rather it is light that, mingled into every pleasure and every pastime and enjoyment like some common seasoning, makes them cheerful and humane. But the man who casts himself
into ignorance and wraps himself round with darkness and builds an empty tomb for his own life seems to find the very fact of his birth a burden, and to despair of existing at all. And yet, of reputation and of existing, there is by nature a place for the pious, where "the might of the sun shines upon their night below, in meadows red with roses," and for them a plain thick with the blossoms of fruitless flowering and scythian trees lies spread open, and certain rivers,
unrippled and smooth, flow through, and they have their pastimes in memories and discourse concerning the deeds and lives of the past, escorting and keeping company with themselves. But the third road is that of those who have lived impiously and lawlessly, thrusting their souls toward a kind of Erebus and pit, whence sluggish rivers of murky night belch forth boundless darkness, receiving and hiding in ignorance and oblivion those who are punished. For
neither do vultures forever tear at the liver of the wicked as they lie upon the ground—for it has been burned up or has rotted away—nor do the carryings of certain weights press down and afflict the bodies of the punished, for their flesh and bones no longer have sinews to hold them. Nor is there any remnant of body left to the dead capable of receiving the counter-blow of punishment; but there is truly one single place of chastisement for those who have lived wickedly:
obscurity and ignorance and utter obliteration, which, lifting them up, plunges them into the joyless river from Lethe, into an abyss and a vast, gaping sea, dragging along with it uselessness and inactivity and every form of ignorance and obscurity.

======== Moralia: An Seni Respublica Gerenda Sit ========

That you, Euphanes, being an admirer of Pindar, often have on your lips, as well and persuasively expressed by him, the words "pretext has cast excellence into steep darkness," we are not unaware. Since, however, most hesitations and reluctance toward political contests find many pretexts, and bring forward old age as their last resort—like the move "from the sacred line"—and since these pretexts, seeming above all to blunt and shame ambition, persuade us that there is a fitting close not only to an athletic career but to a political one as well, I think I ought to go over with you the reflections I often turn over in my own mind concerning statesmanship in old age.
How so? That neither of us will abandon the long companionship that has journeyed with us together up to now, nor cast aside political life, as if it were an agemate and familiar friend, to change over to another, unfamiliar life, one for which we no longer have time enough to make it familiar and our own. Rather, we shall abide by what we chose from the beginning, making the end of living and of living well the same—provided, that is, we are not going to convict, in the brief time remaining, the long time already spent, as having been wasted for nothing good.
For tyranny, as someone said to Dionysius, is not a fine shroud; rather, for that man, not ceasing from his monarchy, together with its injustice, made his misfortune all the more complete. And Diogenes spoke well when, later, seeing his son in Corinth living as a private citizen instead of a tyrant, he said, "How unworthily you are acting, Dionysius! For you ought not to be living here with us in freedom and without fear, but there, walled up in the tyrant's palace, to live out your life to old age as your father did."
But a democratic and law-abiding constitution, for a man accustomed to show himself no less useful as one who is ruled than as one who rules, truly adds a fine shroud—the reputation earned from his life—to his death; for this is the last thing that sinks beneath the earth, as Simonides says—except in the case of those in whom love of humanity and love of the noble die before the body does, and the zeal for what is good gives out before the desire for what is merely necessary, as if the practical and divine part of the soul faded more quickly than the passionate and bodily parts. This is not a thing fit even to say, nor to accept from those who say it: that we grow weary of nothing except making a profit. Rather, we should improve on the saying of Thucydides, and hold that it is not ambition alone that is ageless, but rather the social and political instinct, which persists even in ants and bees until the very end.
For no one has ever seen a bee turned into a drone by old age, as some think statesmen, once past their prime, ought to sit at home being fed and laid up in storage, looking on unconcerned while their practical virtue is quenched by idleness as iron is by rust. Cato used to say that, since old age already carries many evils of its own, one should not willingly add to it the disgrace that comes from vice; and among many vices, none disgraces an old man less than inactivity, cowardice, and softness—sinking down from political office into keeping house among the women, or in the country, watching gleaners and reapers at their work.
"Where now is Oedipus and his famous riddles?" For to begin a political career in old age, and not before—as they say Epimenides fell asleep a young man and woke an old man fifty years later—and then, laying aside so long and settled a quiet life, to plunge oneself into contests and public business, unaccustomed and untrained, having consorted neither with political affairs nor with men, might well give someone with a grievance occasion to say, in the Pythia's words, "You have come too late," as he seeks office and popular leadership, knocking on the general's door out of season, like some rather unskillful reveler arriving by night, or like a stranger changing not place or country but a way of life he has never tried.
For the saying "the city teaches the man," according to Simonides, is true of those who still have time left to be taught anew and to learn a fresh lesson—one worked out only with difficulty through many contests and much business—provided nature takes hold of it in its proper season, while still easily able to bear toil and hardship. One might suppose this said not unfairly against the man who begins his political career in old age. And yet we observe the opposite as well: sensible men turn boys and young men away from managing public affairs, and the laws themselves bear witness to this—in the assemblies, through the herald, it is not Alcibiadeses or Pytheases who are called up first to the platform, but men past fifty, summoned to speak and to give counsel; for lack of experience and boldness, and want of practice, weigh on each of them differently.
But Cato, defending himself in a lawsuit past his eightieth year, said it was hard, having lived among one generation, to defend oneself before another. As for the Caesar who overthrew Antony, all agree that his measures of state became far more kingly and beneficial to the people as he neared the end of his life; and when he was strictly disciplining the young by custom and by law, and they raised an outcry, he said, "Listen, young men, to an old man to whom, when he was young, old men used to listen."
Pericles' statesmanship reached its greatest strength in old age, when he persuaded the Athenians to take up the war; and when they were eager to fight, at an unfavorable moment, against sixty thousand hoplites, he stood firm and prevented it, all but sealing up the people's weapons and the keys of the gates. But indeed what Xenophon wrote of Agesilaus deserves to be quoted in his very words: "For what youth," he says, "did his old age not appear better than? Who, in the prime of life, was so feared by his enemies as Agesilaus at the furthest reach of his years? Whose removal gave the enemy more joy than that of Agesilaus, even though he died an old man? Who inspired greater confidence in his allies than Agesilaus, even though already at the very edge of life? What young man did his friends miss more than they missed Agesilaus, dead in old age?"
Since, then, time did not prevent those men from accomplishing such great deeds, shall we, who now live in ease amid political conditions involving no tyranny, no war, no siege—only unwarlike rivalries and contests of honor settled for the most part by law and by speech, with justice—shall we play the coward, confessing ourselves inferior not only to the generals and popular leaders of that time, but even to poets, sophists, and actors? For Simonides won victories with choruses in his old age, as the epigram shows in its closing verses: "Glory attended Simonides for his teaching, the eighty-year-old son of Leoprepes."
Sophocles, when prosecuted by his own sons on a charge of insanity, is said to have read out, in his defense, the entry-song from his Oedipus at Colonus, which begins: "Stranger, you have come to this land famed for horses, to the finest dwelling place on earth, gleaming Colonus, where the clear-voiced nightingale sings most often, sheltering beneath the green glens." And when the ode appeared marvelous, he was escorted from the courtroom, as if from a theater, amid the applause and shouting of those present. And this small epigram, too, is by common agreement his own: "Sophocles composed a song for Herodotus, being fifty-five years old."
Death overtook Philemon the comic poet, and Alexis too, while they were still competing on stage and being crowned. And Eratosthenes and Philochorus record that Polus the tragic actor, at seventy years of age, performed in eight tragedies over four days, shortly before his death.
Is it not shameful, then, that men of the political platform should be seen as less noble in old age than men of the stage, and that, truly withdrawing from sacred contests, they should lay aside the statesman's mask to take up I know not what in its place? For even the change from kingship to farming is a lowly one: if Demosthenes says that the Paralus, a sacred trireme, suffers indignity in ferrying timber, stakes, and cattle for Meidias, then surely a statesman who has given up the presidency of the games, the office of boeotarch, and the seats of honor among the Amphictyons, and is afterward seen measuring out barley-meal and olive-pulp and sheep's wool, will seem—though no one compels him—to be bringing upon himself nothing other than what is called "the old age of the horse."
And indeed, to take up some vulgar, market-place trade after a political career is like stripping a free and modest woman of her robe, fitting her with an apron, and setting her to keep a tavern stall: for in just this way the dignity and grandeur of political virtue are destroyed when dragged down to petty transactions and money-making.
But if, as remains to be considered, men urge the statesman, calling them ease and enjoyment, pleasures and luxuries, to grow old quietly wasting away amid these things, I do not know to which of two shameful images his life will then seem to correspond more closely: to sailors who spend all the time that remains in their love-affairs, never bringing the ship into harbor but leaving it still at sea; or, as some in jest poorly depict Heracles at Omphale's house, wearing a saffron robe, giving himself over to be fanned and have his hair braided by Lydian maidservants—just so, shall we strip the statesman of his lion-skin, lay him down, and feast him forever while he is serenaded with harp and flute?
Are we not even abashed by the words of Pompey the Great to Lucullus, who, after his campaigns and his public services, had given himself over to baths and banquets, daytime liaisons, much idle wandering, and the building of youthful-looking villas, yet reproached Pompey with love of power and ambition beyond his years? For Pompey said that luxury was more unseasonable in an old man than the holding of office. And when, in his illness, his physician prescribed a thrush for him, and it was hard to obtain out of season, and someone said that Lucullus kept many bred on his estate, Pompey neither sent for one nor accepted it, saying, "So then, if Lucullus did not live in luxury, Pompey could not go on living?"
And indeed, even if nature altogether seeks the pleasant and the joyful, the body of old men has given out for all pleasures but a few necessary ones, and it is not only Aphrodite who finds old men burdensome, as Euripides says, but old men themselves hold their appetites for food and drink mostly blunted and toothless, scarcely managing to whet and sharpen them. In the soul, however, one must cultivate pleasures that are neither ignoble nor illiberal—not as Simonides said to those who accused him of love of money, that being deprived by old age of all other pleasures, he was still, in his old age, nourished by the one pleasure that comes from gain.
But statesmanship holds the finest and greatest pleasures, the very ones the gods themselves are likely to enjoy, either alone or above all others; and these are the pleasures that doing good and accomplishing something noble yield. For if Nicias the painter so delighted in the works of his art that he often had to ask his servants whether he had bathed and had breakfast; and if servants had to drag Archimedes away by force from his drawing-board, strip him, and anoint him, while he went on sketching figures upon his own oiled body; and if Canus the flute-player, whom you too know, used to say that people did not realize that in playing the flute he delighted himself more than others—that he would sooner be paying a fee than receiving one from those who wished to listen—can we then fail to imagine how great are the pleasures that the virtues provide for those who practice them, arising from noble actions, from works of fellowship, and from works of humanity?
These pleasures do not scratch or enervate, as do those movements that grow smooth and soothing to the flesh; those bodily pleasures carry a tickling that is frenzied, unstable, mixed with throbbing, whereas the pleasures that come from noble deeds—deeds of which the man who governs rightly is the craftsman—lift the soul, which takes on greatness and a lofty spirit together with joy, borne aloft not on the golden wings of Euripides, but on wings like those Platonic, heavenly ones.
Remind yourself of what you have often heard. Epaminondas, when asked what had been the sweetest thing that ever happened to him, answered that it was winning the battle of Leuctra while his father and mother were still living. And Sulla, when, having cleared Italy of civil wars, he first drew near to Rome, did not sleep even a little that night, his soul lifted up as if by a great wind of joy and gladness; and he wrote as much of himself in his memoirs.
For let nothing, according to Xenophon, be sweeter to hear than praise; yet of all the things one might see, remember, or reflect upon, none brings so much delight as reviewing one's own deeds done in office and in public affairs, as if in bright and public places. Moreover, kindly favor bearing witness together with one's deeds, and praise contending alongside them—the leader of just goodwill—adds, as it were, a certain light and brightness to the man who takes joy in virtue; and one must not allow one's reputation, like an athlete's crown, to wither in old age,
but rather, by always bringing forward something new and fresh, revive the grace of one's earlier deeds, and make it better and lasting, just as the craftsmen charged with keeping the ship of Delos sound, by putting in new timbers in place of the failing ones and refastening them, were thought to preserve it eternal and imperishable from those ancient times onward. And the preservation and maintenance of both reputation and flame is not difficult, requiring only small kindling; but once either is quenched and cooled, no one could easily rekindle it again without effort.
As Lampis the ship-owner, when asked how he had acquired his wealth, said: "The great fortune, without difficulty; the small one, with toil and slowly"—so too it is not easy, at the outset, to attain political glory and power, but to increase it further and to preserve it once it has grown great is easy, whatever the circumstances that come along. For a friend, once he has become a friend, does not require many great services in order to remain a friend; small signs, given continuously, always preserve his goodwill. And the friendship and trust of the people, not always requiring one who funds a chorus, or pleads a case, or holds an office, is held together by eagerness itself, and by not abandoning beforehand, and not giving up, one's care and concern.
For military campaigns, too, do not always consist of battle-lines, fights, and sieges, but sometimes admit, in between, sacrifices and social gatherings and abundant leisure spent in games and idle amusement. Why, then, should one fear political life as something inconsolable, laborious, and burdensome, when there are also theaters, processions, distributions, and "choruses and the Muse and Splendor," and when the honor paid to some god, ever smoothing the furrowed brow of every office and council, gives back many times over what is delightful and pleasing?
The greatest evil that political life carries, then—envy—presses least of all against old age: for "dogs bark even at one they do not know," as Heraclitus says, and envy fights against the man just beginning, as it were at the very doors of the platform, and does not...
...does not give it entry. But the reputation that has grown up with age, familiar and long-standing, it endures not savagely nor harshly, but gently. This is why some compare envy to smoke: it billows up thick at the start, while the fire is being kindled, but once the flames have caught, it vanishes. Other kinds of superiority men fight over and dispute — excellence, birth, ambition — as though whatever they concede to another they thereby take from themselves. But the primacy that comes from time, properly called seniority, provokes no jealousy and is yielded willingly; for there is no honor whose bestowal so adorns the one who gives it as it does the one who receives it, as does the honor paid to the old. Moreover, not everyone expects to attain the power that comes from wealth, or skill in speech, or wisdom; but the respect and reputation to which old age leads, no one engaged in public life despairs of reaching.
So the man who, after fighting off envy in a long naval battle, then, once it has subsided and been calmed, backs his ship out of public life and abandons, along with his activities, his partnerships and friendships, is no different from a helmsman who has sailed dangerously against an adverse wave and wind, and then, when fair weather and calm air have come, seeks to put into harbor. For the longer time has gone by, the more friends and comrades-in-struggle it has brought him, whom he can neither lead off together with himself, like a chorus-trainer taking his chorus, nor rightly abandon. Rather, like old trees, a long political career, having many roots and being entangled with affairs, is not easy to uproot — and uprooting causes more turmoil and tearing to those who leave than to those who stay. And if any remnant of envy or rivalry toward old men still survives from their political struggles, this should be quenched by strength, rather than met by turning one's back and departing naked and unarmed; for men attack not so much out of envy toward those still contending, as out of contempt for those who have given up.
This is confirmed too by what the great Epaminondas said to the Thebans when, it being winter, the Arcadians invited them to come into the city and lodge in their houses. He would not allow it, but said, "Right now they admire you and watch you as you exercise and wrestle under arms; but if they see you sitting by the fire gulping down beans, they will think you no different from themselves." So too it is a dignified sight, an old man speaking and acting and being honored; but one who spends his day in bed, or sits in the corner of a portico chattering nonsense and wiping his nose, is easily despised. This, indeed, Homer too teaches those who listen rightly: Nestor, campaigning at Troy, was venerable and greatly honored, while Peleus and Laertes, staying at home, were cast aside and despised.
For the disposition of good sense does not remain the same in those who let themselves go; rather, relaxed and dissolved bit by bit by idleness, it always needs some exercise of thought to rouse and purify the reasoning and practical faculty — for it shines in use, like handsome bronze. Bodily weakness in those who take to the platform and the general's post beyond their expected age is not so great a harm to public life as is the good they bring in caution and prudence — not rushing blindly, sometimes through miscalculation, sometimes through empty vanity, into public affairs and sweeping the crowd along as the sea is stirred up by winds, but rather dealing with those they meet gently and with moderation.
Hence cities, whenever they stumble or take fright, long for the rule of older men; and often, bringing a man down from his farm who neither asked for it nor wished it, they have forced him, as though laying hold of the tiller, to bring their affairs to safety, pushing aside generals and popular leaders able to shout loudly and speak without pausing for breath and, by Zeus, able to cross over and fight the enemy well — as when the orators at Athens, putting forward Chares son of Theochares to strip for competition against Timotheus and Iphicrates, a man in the prime of bodily vigor and strength, demanded that such a man be the Athenians' general. But Timotheus said, "No, by the gods — such a man should rather be the one who carries the general's bedding, while the general should be one who sees affairs both before and behind at once, and whose reckonings about advantage are disturbed by no passion."
For Sophocles said that, having grown old, he was glad to have escaped the pleasures of love, as one escapes a savage and raging master; but in political life one must escape not one master — desire for boys or women — but many more frenzied than this: love of contention, love of glory, the desire to be first and greatest, a disease most productive of envy, jealousy, and faction. Of these, old age relaxes and blunts some, and utterly extinguishes and cools others, taking away not so much the impulse to act as it wards off the unrestrained and burning passions, so that it brings a sober and settled reasoning to bear on one's concerns.
Nevertheless, let there also be, and let it seem, a discouraging argument spoken against one who is beginning to play the youth in his gray hairs, reproaching an old man who, after long staying at home, rouses and bestirs himself, as though rising from a sickbed, for a generalship or some undertaking: "Stay, poor wretch, quietly in your bed." But the man who will not allow one who has lived his whole life in political action and struggle to advance to the torch and the crowning point of his life, but calls him back and bids him turn about as if from a long journey, is altogether unreasonable and in no way resembles the other case.
For just as the man who dissuades an old man preparing for marriage, garlanded and perfumed, by saying to him the words meant for Philoctetes — "What bride, what young maiden would accept you? Well indeed are you fit for marriage, poor wretch!" — is not out of place, since old men themselves make many such jokes at their own expense, "I am marrying in my old age, I well know it, and so do the neighbors" — yet the man who thinks that one who has long lived with and dwelt beside a wife blamelessly for many years ought, because of old age, to put her away and live by himself, or take a little concubine in place of his lawful wife, has left no room for greater absurdity. In the same way it makes some sense to admonish and restrain an old man approaching public life who is like Chlidon the farmer, or Lampon the ship-owner, or one of the philosophers of the Garden, and to keep him at his accustomed inactivity. But the man who takes hold of a Phocion, a Cato, or a Pericles and says, "Stranger, Athenian or Roman, withering in dry old age, you fret and fume — file your divorce from public life, abandon your occupations about the platform and the general's post and your cares, and hasten to the countryside to keep company with a hired hand in farming, or to spend your remaining time on some household management and accounts" — such a man persuades the statesman to do what is both unjust and thankless.
What then, someone might say — do we not hear in comedy a soldier saying, "Does not my white hair make me unfit for pay from now on?" Yes indeed, my friend; for it is fitting that the servants of Ares be young and in their prime, engaged as they are in the grim business of war and battle, in which, even if the old man's helmet hides his gray hairs, still his limbs are secretly weighed down, and his strength gives out before his eagerness does. But of the servants of Zeus the Counselor, of the Marketplace, and of the City, we require not deeds of feet and hands, but counsel and foresight and speech — speech that makes not surf and noise before the people, but has sense and prudent care and steadiness — to which the gray hair men laugh at, and the wrinkle, appear as a witness of experience, and lend it, as an ally, both persuasiveness and a reputation for character.
For youth is fit to obey, but old age to command; and a city is best preserved where the counsels belong to old men and the fighting spears to young men who trust in them, and the line "First he set the council of great-hearted elders beside Nestor's ship" is rightly admired. That is why the Pythian god called the aristocratic council yoked alongside the kings at Sparta "the elder-born," while Lycurgus called them outright "old men," and the Roman senate is called, even to this day, the "council of elders." And just as custom bestows the diadem and the crown, so nature bestows gray hair as an honored symbol of commanding dignity; and, I think, the word for a prize of honor, and the verb to honor, having derived from the word for old men, remain in use as solemn terms — not because old men bathe in warm water and sleep more softly, but because they hold a kingly rank in their cities by virtue of prudence, whose proper and perfect good, like that of a late-fruiting plant, nature scarcely yields before old age.
When, at any rate, the king of kings prayed to the gods, "Would that ten such counselors of the Achaeans were mine as Nestor was," none of the warlike, furious-breathing Achaeans found fault with him; all agreed that old age carries great weight not only in political life but in war as well, for one wise plan overcomes many hands, and a single judgment, backed by reason and persuasion, accomplishes the finest and greatest of public achievements.
And yet kingship, being the most complete and greatest of all constitutions, involves the most cares, labors, and preoccupations. They say, at any rate, that Seleucus used to remark that if the many knew how laborious a thing it is merely to write and read so many letters, they would not even pick up a diadem lying on the ground; and that Philip, when about to encamp in a fine spot, on hearing that there was no fodder for the pack animals, said, "Heracles! What a life ours is, if we must live even by the timetable of donkeys." It would then be time to advise a king, once he has grown old, to lay aside the diadem and the purple, and, taking up a cloak and a shepherd's crook, to spend his time in the countryside, lest he seem to be doing something excessive and unseasonable, reigning on in his gray hairs.
But if it is not fitting to say such things about Agesilaus, Numa, and Darius, and if we should not lead Solon out of the Council of the Areopagus, nor Cato out of the Senate, on account of old age, then let us not advise Pericles either to abandon the democracy. For it makes no sense, otherwise, that a man who leapt onto the platform while young and poured out those mad ambitions and impulses toward public life should then, once the age that brings good sense through experience has arrived, abandon and desert public life as though he had merely used a woman and cast her off.
For Aesop's fox would not let the hedgehog, who wished to remove her ticks, do so: "If you take these away," she said, "now that they are full, others will come who are hungry." A state that constantly casts off its old men is bound to be filled up with young men thirsting for glory and power yet lacking political sense — for how could they have it, if they are to be disciples and spectators of no old man engaged in politics? Does not, indeed, mere knowledge of navigation manuals fail to make men captains of ships, unless they have often stood in the stern as spectators of the struggles against wave and wind and stormy night, "when longing for the sons of Tyndareus strikes the sea-tossed sailor"? Could a young man rightly manage a city, and persuade a people or council, merely by having read a book or written a treatise on politics in the Lyceum, unless, having often stood by the rein and the tiller, swaying now this way, now that, along with the experience and fortunes of contending popular leaders and generals, he has gained his learning amid dangers and real affairs? One cannot say so. Rather, if for no other reason, the old man must remain in politics for the sake of the education and instruction of the young.
For just as teachers of letters and music themselves first strike up the tune and read aloud, leading the way for their pupils, so the statesman, not merely by speaking or dictating from outside but by actually conducting and administering public affairs, guides the young man aright, molding him vividly and shaping him by deeds together with words. For a man trained in this way — not in the wrestling-schools and safe practice-bouts of graceful sophists, but truly, as it were, in the Olympic and Pythian games — "runs alongside like a foal beside a mare," as Simonides says: as Aristides ran alongside Cleisthenes, Cimon alongside Aristides, Phocion alongside Chabrias, Cato alongside Fabius Maximus, Pompey alongside Sulla, and Polybius alongside Philopoemen. For, being young men attaching themselves to their elders, then sprouting alongside them, as it were, and rising up together with their political careers and actions, they acquired experience and familiarity with public affairs, together with reputation and power.
Now the Academic Aeschines, when certain sophists said that he only pretended to have been a pupil of Carneades without actually having been one, replied, "But it was then, at least, that I attended Carneades' lectures, when his discourse, having through old age let go its surf and noise, had drawn together into what was useful and companionable." For since the political activity of old men has been freed, not only in word but in deed, from pomp and popularity-hunting — just as they say that the iris plant, once it has grown old, breathes off its rank and murky smell and takes on a more fragrant, aromatic one — so no opinion or plan of an old man is agitated, but everything about him is weighty and settled.
That is why, for the sake of the young too, as has been said, the old man must engage in politics, so that, in the way Plato speaks of unmixed wine blended with water — "the mad god being chastened and disciplined by another, sober god" — so too the caution of old age, blended with the youth that seethes among the people, raging like a Bacchant under the influence of ambition and love of glory, may remove what is mad and altogether unmixed in it.
Apart from these considerations, those err who think that engaging in politics is like sailing or soldiering — something done for the sake of something else, and coming to an end once that goal is attained. For political life is not a public service that has an end once its need is met, but is the life of a creature that is civilized, political, and social by nature, born to live, for as long as is fitting, in a political, honor-loving, and humane way. That is why the duty is to be engaging in politics, not to have engaged in politics — just as it is one's duty to be speaking the truth, not to have spoken it once; to be acting justly, not to have acted justly once; and to be loving one's country and fellow citizens, not to have loved them once. For to this nature leads us, and it dictates these words to those not utterly corrupted by idleness and softness: "And your father begets you of great worth to mortals — let us never cease doing good to men."
Those who plead their infirmities and incapacities are really accusing sickness and disability, rather than old age; for many young men are sickly, and many old men are vigorous. So one must turn away not the old, but the incapable, and summon not the young, but the capable. Indeed, Arrhidaeus was young and Antigonus old, yet the one won for himself almost the whole of Asia, while the other was, as if on a stage, a mute stage-attendant — a mere name and mask of a king, insulted and abused by whoever happened to hold power at the time. So then, just as one who [would compare?] Prodicus the sophist, or Philetas the...
...the poet, to hold public office—young men indeed, but thin, sickly, and for the most part bedridden through weakness—would be foolish; just so is the man who prevents old men of this sort from ruling and commanding armies, men such as Phocion was, such as Massinissa the Libyan was, such as Cato the Roman was. For Phocion, when the Athenians were eager to make war at an inopportune time, ordered that all men up to sixty years of age take up arms and follow him, and when they protested, he said, "There is nothing dreadful in it; for I myself will be your general, though I am past eighty years old." Polybius reports that Massinissa died at ninety, leaving behind a four-year-old child born to him, and that a little before his death, having won a great battle over the Carthaginians, he was seen the next day in front of his tent eating coarse bread; and to those who marveled at this, he said that this was why he did it: "Bronze, kept in use, shines like a thing of beauty, but left idle in time it dulls and its roof sags," as Sophocles says—or, as we would put it, that brightness and radiance of the soul by which we reason, remember, and think. This is why kings, they say, become better in wars and campaigns than when they are at leisure.
Attalus, for instance, the brother of Eumenes, thoroughly enfeebled by long idleness and peace, was literally shepherded—like a fattened sheep—by one of his own companions, Philopoemen, so that the Romans, in jest, would constantly ask those sailing from Asia whether the king was thriving under Philopoemen's care. Among the Romans one could find few generals more formidable than Lucullus, so long as he kept his intelligence bound up with action; but once he gave himself over to a life of inactivity, a stay-at-home and carefree regimen, he wasted away and withered like sponges in calm water, and then, handing his old age over to a certain freedman, Callisthenes, to be fed and tamed, he seemed to be drugged by that man's potions and spells—until his brother Marcus drove the fellow off and himself managed and guided the rest of his life, which was not long.
But Darius, the father of Xerxes, used to say that he himself grew wiser in the face of dangers; and the Scythian Ateas said that he thought himself no different from his own grooms whenever he was at leisure. And Dionysius the Elder, when asked whether he ever had leisure, said, "May that never happen to me!" For a bow, they say, breaks when it is stretched taut, but the soul when it is slackened. Indeed, musicians lose their ear for a well-tuned instrument, geometers lose their skill in analysis, and arithmeticians their continuity in calculation, once they abandon these activities—their faculties growing dim along with their years, even though theirs are not practical but theoretical arts. But the statesman's faculty—good counsel, prudence, and justice, and besides these an experience skilled at gauging occasions and arguments, a power that is the craftsman of persuasion—is sustained by constantly speaking, acting, reasoning, and judging; and it would be a dreadful thing if, by fleeing from these activities, it should stand by and watch such great and so many virtues drain away from the soul. For it is likely that benevolence too would wither away, along with sociability and gratitude—qualities that ought to have no end or limit.
If, for instance, you had Tithonus for a father—immortal, yet needing, because of his old age, constant and abundant care—I do not think you would shrink from tending him, addressing him, and helping him, on the ground that you had already performed this service for a long time. But one's fatherland and motherland, as the Cretans call it, holding rights over us older and greater than those of parents, though long-lived, is not ageless nor self-sufficient, but always in need of care, help, and concern; it draws in and holds fast the statesman, laying hold of his garment and restraining him even when he is eager to hurry off.
And indeed you know that I have served the Pythian god through many Pythiads; yet you would not say, "Plutarch, you have done enough—you have sacrificed, processed, and danced in the choruses; now that you are older, it is time to lay aside the crown and abandon the oracle because of your age." So you must not think that you yourself, being a leader and prophet of the rites of the state, should give up the honors of Zeus Polieus and of Zeus Agoraios, since you were long ago initiated into their rites.
But, if you wish, let us set aside the argument that would tear us away from public life, and instead consider—let us now philosophize on this point—how we may take up no undertaking unbecoming or burdensome to old age, since public life has many parts fitting and suited to men of that age. For just as, if it were fitting to go on singing throughout one's life, one would have to choose, among the many pitches and modes of voice available—those which musicians call harmonies—not to pursue, once one has become old, the high and taut register, but the one in which ease attends along with fitting character; so too, since it is more natural for human beings than for swans to sing—that is, to act and speak—right up until the end of life, one must not abandon action altogether, as though letting go a lyre strung taut, but rather relax it toward what is light and moderate and befitting old men, retuning our political activities accordingly.
For we do not allow our bodies to become entirely motionless and untrained just because we can no longer use the spade or the jumping-weights, or throw the discus or practice fencing as before; instead we keep them moving with swinging exercises and walks, and some, lightly wrestling with a ball and conversing, keep the breath moving and fan the inner warmth. So too we should neither allow ourselves to become entirely frozen and chilled through inactivity, nor, on the other hand, should we grasp at every office and reach out for every kind of public undertaking, and thus force old age, once exposed, to be reduced to uttering words like these: "O right hand, how you long to grasp the spear; but in weakness you have lost your longing." For not even a man in his prime and at the height of his powers is praised if he takes all public affairs upon himself alone and is unwilling to yield any share to another—as the Stoics say of Zeus, weaving himself into everything and mixing himself with all things—out of an insatiable appetite for glory, or out of envy toward those who somehow share in any honor or power in the city.
For a man who is thoroughly old, even setting aside the disrepute of it, it is toilsome and wretched to nurse an ambition for office that shows up at every election, an officiousness that lies in wait for every opportunity of a court session or council, and a rivalry for honor that snatches up every embassy and every advocate's case for itself. For to do these things is burdensome for one's age even when done with good will; but in fact the opposite happens: such men are hated by the young, as not allowing them opportunities for action nor letting them come forward into the public eye, and their love of being first and love of office are held in no less disrepute among others than the love of wealth or love of pleasure is in other old men.
Just as Alexander, unwilling to burden Bucephalas now that he was growing old, used to ride other horses before the battle while going around the phalanx and setting it in order, and then, once he had given the signal and mounted the old horse, would immediately lead the charge against the enemy and share the danger—so the statesman, if he has sense, will act as his own charioteer, and once he has become old will hold back from what is not necessary, and will allow those in their prime to employ the city's resources for the lesser matters, while in the great ones he himself will contend eagerly. For athletes keep their bodies untouched and unimpaired by unnecessary exertions, reserving them for what is truly needful; we, on the contrary, letting the small and trivial matters go, will keep ourselves in reserve for what is worth the effort. For perhaps it is fitting, in Homer's words, for a young man to do "all things," and people accept and welcome this, calling the man who does many small things a man of the people and industrious, and the one who does brilliant and dignified things noble and high-minded; and there are occasions when even contentiousness and rashness have a certain bloom and charm becoming to men of that age.
But an old man in public life who submits to menial services—such as the auctioning of tax contracts, oversight of harbors and of the market—and who moreover runs off on embassies and journeys abroad to governors and potentates, missions in which there is nothing necessary or dignified but only flattery and currying favor, seems to me, my friend, pitiable and unenviable; and to others, perhaps, it seems oppressive and vulgar as well. For it is not becoming for a man of such an age to be carried into offices, except those that possess some real greatness and dignity, such as the one you now hold at Athens, the presidency of the Council of the Areopagus, and, by Zeus, the honorable office of the Amphictyonic presidency, which your fatherland has entrusted to you for your whole life, an office that has "sweet toil and labor well worth laboring." But even these honors ought not to be pursued; rather one should hold office while fleeing it, not by seeking it but by declining it, not as though taking office for oneself, but as giving oneself over to office.
For it is not, as Tiberius Caesar used to say, shameful for men past sixty years old to hold out their hand to the physician; rather it is more shameful to hold out one's hand to the people, asking for a vote or a shout of election—for that is ignoble and low. Whereas, on the contrary, there is a certain dignity and honor in it when one's country chooses and calls and waits for him, so that he comes down to it with honor and goodwill, truly venerable and conspicuous, to embrace and welcome the privilege of office.
In something like this manner too one should use speech in the assembly once one has become old: not leaping up to the platform continuously, nor always crowing back at every speaker like a rooster, nor by wrangling and provoking loosening the young men's respect for oneself, nor cultivating in them a habit and familiarity with disobedience and unwillingness to listen, but sometimes yielding ground and even allowing them to toss their heads and grow bold for the sake of reputation, and not being present nor meddling where there is nothing great at stake for the common safety or for what is honorable and fitting. But there, where such things are at stake, one must press forward even beyond one's strength, though no one is calling, entrusting oneself to guides or being carried, as they say was done at Rome by Appius Claudius.
For when the Romans had been defeated by Pyrrhus in a great battle, and he learned that the Senate was entertaining proposals for a truce and peace, he found it intolerable, although he had lost both his eyes; yet he came, borne through the forum, to the senate-house, and entering and taking his stand in the midst, he said that formerly he had been grieved at being deprived of his sight, but that now he would even pray not to hear as well, given the shameful and ignoble deliberations and actions they were engaged in. Then, partly rebuking them and partly instructing and urging them on, he persuaded them at once to take up arms and fight to the finish for Italy against Pyrrhus.
And Solon, when it became clear that Pisistratus's demagoguery was a contrivance for tyranny, and no one dared to resist or hinder it, himself brought out his own weapons and, setting them down before his house, called upon the citizens to help. And when Pisistratus sent to him and asked what he was relying on to do this, he said, "On my old age." Thus matters of such necessity kindle and rouse up even utterly spent old men, so long as they still draw breath.
In other matters, however, as has been said, sometimes by declining he will act tunefully, avoiding the paltry and menial tasks—those which involve for the doer more trouble than the benefit and usefulness for whose sake they are undertaken. And sometimes, by waiting for the citizens to summon him, to wish for him, and to come and fetch him from home, he descends to their need with all the more credibility. Most of the time, even while present, he yields the floor in silence to the younger men, acting, as it were, as umpire of their rivalry for political honor; but if it exceeds due measure, he checks it gently and, with kindness, removes contentiousness, abusive language, and anger; and in matters of judgment, he comforts the one who errs without reproach, and teaches him, while praising fearlessly the one who succeeds, and often willingly lets himself be overcome, forgoing the satisfaction of persuading and prevailing, so that the young may grow and gain confidence; and in some cases he even fills out, with kindly words, what is lacking, as Nestor does: "No one of the Achaeans will find fault with your speech, nor will he speak against it in turn; and yet you have not reached the end of your speech. Indeed, you are still young, and you might well be my own son."
But it is even more statesmanlike than this, not to reproach openly and in public, without a sharp sting that cuts a man down and humbles him, but rather to offer suggestions privately to those naturally suited for public life, and kindly to help introduce good speeches and policies along with them, spurring them on jointly toward noble ends and helping to make their purpose more brilliant, and, like those who teach horsemanship, providing at the outset a people that is tame and gentle to mount; and if the young man should stumble in some matter, not looking on while he loses heart, but raising him up and comforting him—as Aristides did for Cimon, and Mnesiphilus for Themistocles, when they were at first disliked and spoken ill of in the city as reckless and undisciplined, lifting them up and restoring their courage.
It is said too that when Demosthenes was hissed off the platform before the assembly and was taking it hard, a certain old man, one of those who had heard Pericles, took him aside and told him that, resembling that man in nature as he did, he had judged himself unjustly. So too, when Timotheus was being hissed for his innovation and for seeming to transgress the laws of music, Euripides bade him take courage, since in a short time the theaters would be his to command.
And in general, just as at Rome the time of the Vestal Virgins is divided so that part of it is spent learning, part performing the established rites, and the third, finally, teaching others; and among those attending Artemis at Ephesus, likewise, each is called first a Melliere, then a Hiere, and third a Pariere—so too the fully accomplished statesman, in the first period, still engages in politics as one learning and being initiated, and in the last period, as one teaching and initiating others. For to oversee others as they compete is not itself to compete; but the man who trains a young man in matters of common and public concern, and prepares him for his fatherland to be "both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds," is useful in no small or trivial part of political life—indeed, in the very thing to which Lycurgus above all first devoted and habituated himself: to accustom the young to continue obeying every old man as though he were a lawgiver.
For with what in mind did Lysander say that men grow old most nobly in Lacedaemon? Was it because the elderly there are especially free to be idle, and to sit together lending money, or playing dice, or gathering for drinking at the proper hour? You would not say so; rather it is because all men of that age there hold, in a sense, the rank of magistrates, or a kind of guardians of the law, or tutors. They oversee not only the common affairs, but continually study each of the young men's doings, in their exercises, their games, and their ways of life, not as a side matter—being fearsome to those who err, but respected and longed for by the good. For the young are always attending upon them and seeking them out, since these old men foster what is orderly and noble in them and take pride, without envy, in their growth. This...
For this feeling, though fitting at no time of life, nevertheless finds decent names ready to hand among the young, being called rivalry and emulation and love of honor; but among old men it is utterly unseasonable, savage, and ignoble. Therefore the statesman in his old age must keep as far as possible from envy, and must not, like a spiteful old tree, plainly strip away and lop off the shoots and growth of those springing up and coming to life beneath him, but should welcome them kindly and give himself to those who reach for him and cling to him, setting them upright, leading them by the hand, and nourishing them—not only with guidance and good counsel, but also by yielding to them shares of public business that carry honor and reputation, or such services as bring no harm but are pleasant and gratifying to the many; while whatever is unpalatable and disagreeable—like medicines, which sting and pain at once but afterward yield what is good and beneficial—he should not thrust upon the young or subject them to public disturbances, since they are unused to the unreasonableness of crowds, but should himself take upon himself the odium incurred for the sake of the common advantage. For by this he will make the young both better disposed toward him and more eager in their other services.
Besides all this, one must remember that engaging in politics is not simply holding office and serving as envoy and shouting loudly in the assembly and raving about the speaker's platform while speaking or writing—things which most people suppose to constitute political life, just as, of course, they suppose that only those who converse from a professor's chair and conduct classes over books are practicing philosophy; but the constant political activity and philosophy that is seen daily, evenly, in deeds and actions, escapes their notice. Indeed, people say that those who pace back and forth in the colonnades are "walking," as Dicaearchus used to say, but no longer apply the word to those going to the country or to a friend's house. In the same way, engaging in politics is like practicing philosophy. Socrates, at any rate, neither set up benches nor sat upon a chair nor kept a fixed hour for discussion or for walking with his acquaintances, but by joining in play whenever it happened, and drinking together, and campaigning with some, and going to market with them, and finally even by being imprisoned and drinking the hemlock, he practiced philosophy—being the first to show that life, in every season and part of it, in every experience and circumstance whatsoever, admits of philosophy.
So too one must think about political life: that the foolish, even when they hold military command or act as secretary or address the assembly, are not truly engaging in politics but courting the mob, or holding festival, or stirring up faction, or performing compulsory public services; whereas the man who is truly sociable, humane, devoted to his city, solicitous, and a genuine statesman, even if he never puts on the general's cloak, is nonetheless always engaged in politics—by spurring on those who have power to act, by giving guidance to those in need, by standing alongside those who deliberate, by turning aside those who do mischief, by strengthening the well-disposed, by making it plain that he attends to public affairs not casually, nor goes to the theater or the council-chamber only where there is some eagerness or urging on account of primacy of place, and otherwise attends as a spectator or listener merely for pastime when it happens to occur; but rather, even if he is not present in body, he is present in mind and by inquiry, approving some of what is done and objecting to other parts.
For neither Aristides among the Athenians nor Cato among the Romans held office often, but throughout their whole lives they offered themselves ever active to their fatherlands. Epaminondas, for his part, accomplished many great things as a general, yet no less memorable than these is a deed of his when he was neither general nor holding any office, in Thessaly, when the generals had led the phalanx into difficult terrain and it was thrown into confusion (for the enemy were pressing hard upon them with missiles): recalled from the ranks of the hoplites, he first stopped the army's disorder and fear by encouraging them, and then, arranging and refitting the confused phalanx, led it out easily and drew it up facing the enemy, so that the enemy withdrew and turned away.
And when King Agis was already leading his army in Arcadia, drawn up for battle against the enemy, one of the elder Spartans cried out that he intended to cure one evil with another, showing that he wished this present ill-timed eagerness to be a recovery for the blameworthy withdrawal from Argos, as Thucydides says; and Agis, hearing this, was persuaded and withdrew.
Menecrates, too, had a chair set out for him daily beside the doors of the government office, and often the Ephors would rise and go to him to make inquiries and take counsel together on matters of the greatest importance. He was reputed to be a man of sound mind and known for his wisdom. And so, though his bodily strength was by now utterly worn away and he spent most of his days confined to bed, when the Ephors once sent for him to come to the marketplace, he set out, rising to walk, making his way forward with difficulty and hardship; then, meeting some small boys along the road, he asked them whether they knew of anything more necessary than obeying one's master. When they replied, "not being able to," he took this as marking the limit of his service and turned back home. For one must not let eagerness give out before one's strength does, but once strength has failed, one must not force the matter.
And indeed Scipio always used Gaius Laelius as an adviser, both in his generalship and in his political activity, so that some even said that Scipio was the actor of the deeds but Gaius their author. Cicero himself acknowledges that the finest and greatest of the counsels by which he set his country right during his consulship were composed together with the philosopher Publius Nigidius. Thus in many ways of engaging in political life, nothing prevents old men from benefiting the community with the best that they have—word and judgment and frank speech and prudent care, as the poets indeed say. For it is not our hands, nor our feet, nor the strength of our body that belongs to and forms a part of the city alone, but first of all the soul, and the beauties of the soul: justice, temperance, and wisdom. Since these are received into their own only late and slowly, it is absurd that a man should enjoy his house and his land and his other wealth and possessions, but no longer be of use in common to his fatherland and his fellow citizens on account of his age—age which takes away not so much his capacity for service as it adds to his capacity for leadership and statesmanship. This is why sculptors make the older images of Hermes without hands and without feet, but with the genital member fashioned in full, hinting that old men have the least need of those who are active through the body, provided they keep their reason active, as is fitting, and productive.

======== Moralia: An Virtus Doceri Possit ========

We deliberate and raise doubts about virtue, whether right thinking, right acting, and living well can be taught—and yet we do not find it strange that while the works of orators, pilots, musicians, builders, and farmers are countless, good men are only named and spoken of, like hippocentaurs and giants and Cyclopes, while a work faultless and unblemished in virtue cannot be found, nor a character untouched by passion and a life unstained by disgrace. But if nature does of its own accord produce something noble, it is dimmed by being mixed with so much that is foreign to it, as fruit is spoiled when mingled with wild and unclean soil.
People learn to play the harp, to dance, to read letters, to farm, to ride; they learn to put on shoes, to dress, and to anoint themselves. Men are taught to pour wine and to cook—can none of these things be done properly without having been learned? Yet the very thing for the sake of which all these are done, living well, is said to be untaught, irrational, unskilled, and spontaneous. O men, why, in calling virtue unteachable, do we make it nonexistent? For if learning is a coming-into-being, then the prevention of learning is its destruction. And yet, as Plato says, on account of the foot's
disproportion and disharmony with the lyre, neither does brother make war on brother, nor does friend quarrel with friend, nor do cities, coming into enmity with one another, do and suffer the worst extremities at each other's hands; nor can anyone speak of a civil strife that arose in a city over pronunciation—whether one should read "Telchines" or "Telchínas"—nor of a dispute in a household between husband and wife over the woof or the warp. And yet
no one who has not learned would take in hand a loom, a book, or a lyre, even though he would suffer no great harm by it, but he is ashamed to become an object of ridicule; for Heraclitus says, "It is better to hide one's ignorance." But is it possible to manage well a household, a marriage, a state, and an office of rule, without a wife, a servant, a citizen, a subject, and a ruler having learned how? When a boy was eating greedily, Diogenes gave the tutor
a blow, rightly making the fault not that of the one who had not learned, but of the one who had not taught. Again, one cannot share a side-dish or a cup with skill unless one has learned to do so, beginning straight from childhood—as Aristophanes says, not to giggle, nor to eat greedily, nor to cross one's feet; yet is it supposed that partnership in household, city, marriage, life, and rule can occur without reproach among people who have not
learned in what manner they must get along with one another? Aristippus, being asked by someone, "Are you everywhere, then?" laughed and said, "Then I am wasting my passage-fare, if indeed I am everywhere." So would you not say the same yourself: "If men do not become better through learning, then the wages of their tutors are wasted"? For these men, taking children first from the breast, just as nurses mold
the body with their hands, so they shape the character by habituation, setting it first upon some track of virtue. And the Spartan, when asked what he provides as a tutor, said, "I make good things pleasant to children." And yet tutors teach children to walk in the streets with head bowed, to lift dried fish with one finger, fish and bread and meat with two, to sit just so, to gather up the cloak just so.
What, then? The man who says that there is a medical art for lichen and for whitlow, but none for pleurisy and fever and phrenitis—how does he differ from the one who says that for small, childish duties there are schools, precepts, and instructions, but that for great and mature affairs there is only irrational habituation and chance occurrence? For just as the man who says that one must learn to row an oar, but that one pilots
without having learned, is ridiculous, so too the man who grants learning to all the other arts but takes it away from virtue seems to do the opposite of what the Scythians do: for they, as Herodotus says, blind their household slaves so as to hand things over to them; but this man, by implanting reason as an eye, so to speak, in slavish and menial arts, deprives virtue of it. And yet the general Iphicrates, to Chabrias's
Callias, who asked and said, "Who are you? An archer? A peltast? A horseman? A hoplite?" replied, "None of these, but the one who commands all of these." Ridiculous, then, is the man who says that archery, hoplite-fighting, slinging, and riding can be taught, but that generalship and the exercise of command come by chance, even to those who have not learned, whoever they happen to be. Still more ridiculous, then, is the one who declares that practical wisdom alone cannot be
taught, though without it there is no benefit or profit from the other arts at all. But if this alone, being the guide and order of all the others, and the arrangement that sets each thing to its proper use, then what pleasure is there at once in a dinner, however well-trained and well-taught the children who carve, roast, and pour the wine, if there is no arrangement or order among those serving?

======== Moralia: An Vitiositas Ad Infelicitatem Sufficia ========

...he endures, holding his body sold for a dowry, as Euripides says — a thing shown to be brief and insecure. But for him it is not through much ash but through some royal conflagration that he travels, scorched all around, full of gasping breath and fear and sweat from crossing the sea, since Fortune has added to him a kind of Tantalus-wealth which, for want of leisure, he is unable to enjoy. For that famous horse-breeder of Sicyon, being sensible, gave to the king of the Achaeans
a swift mare as a gift, so that he might not have to follow him to windy Ilium, but might remain at home and take his ease, reclining into deep abundance and untroubled leisure. But those who nowadays seem to be free of care and full of enterprise, though no one summons them, thrust themselves headlong into royal courts and escort-duties and toilsome all-night vigils at other men's doors, in hopes of chancing upon some horse, or brooch, or other such stroke of fortune.
Meanwhile his own wife was left behind at Phylace with her cheeks torn in mourning, and his house half-finished; he himself is dragged about and wanders, worn down by certain hopes and treated with contempt; and even if he does attain something he longs for, whirled about and made dizzy by fortune's seesaw, he looks for a way down and counts blessed those without repute who live securely — while they, looking up, see him carried high above them. In every way,
vice disposes all men to misery, being itself a self-sufficient craftsman of wretchedness; for it has need of neither instruments nor servants. Other tyrants, eager to make wretched those they punish, keep executioners and torturers in their pay, or devise branding-irons and clamps — for a soul without reason. But vice, apart from all such apparatus, once it has entered into partnership with the soul, crushes it and casts it down, filling
the person with grief, lamentation, heaviness of spirit, and regret. Here is the proof: many men, when cut, are silent, and when flogged, endure it, and when racked by masters or tyrants let out no sound, because the soul, closing itself off by reason, presses down and restrains the pain as though with a hand. But you could not command silence to anger, nor stillness to grief; you could not persuade a frightened man to stand firm, nor keep one distressed by remorse from crying out, or tearing his hair, or
beating his own thigh. So vice is more violent than fire or iron. Cities, of course, when they put out a contract for the building of temples or colossal statues, listen to the craftsmen competing for the commission and bringing their proposals and models, and then choose the one who can produce the same result at less expense, and better, and more quickly. Come, then, let us too put out to contract the production of
a wretched life and a wretched man, and let Fortune and Vice come forward as rival bidders for the work, contending with one another: the one laden with instruments of every kind and costly equipment for manufacturing a miserable and pitiable life — dragging along bands of robbers, and wars, and the bloody murders of tyrants, and storms from the sea, and thunderbolts from the sky, grinding hemlock, carrying swords, hiring false accusers as mercenaries, kindling fevers, and
clapping on fetters and building prisons round about. And yet most of these belong to Vice rather than to Fortune — but let it all be granted to Fortune anyway. Let Vice, then, standing by naked and needing nothing from outside, put this question to Fortune before the man: how will she make this man wretched and disheartened? 'Fortune, do you threaten him with poverty? Metrocles laughs at you — he who, sleeping in winter among
the sheep, and in summer in the porches of temples, used to challenge to a contest of happiness the King of Persia, who wintered in Babylon and summered in Media. Do you bring on slavery, chains, and being sold? Diogenes despises you — he who, being sold by pirates, proclaimed, 'Who wishes to buy himself a master?' Do you stir up a cup of poison? Did you not offer this same cup to Socrates before, and did he not, serene
and gentle, without a tremor and without any change of color or expression, drink it down quite readily? And as he was dying, the living called him blessed, since not even in Hades would he be without his share of the divine. Indeed, Decius the Roman general forestalled your fire, when, heaping up a pyre in the midst of the armies, he devoted himself as a sacrifice to Cronus in fulfillment of a vow, on behalf of the command.
And among the Indians, wives who love their husbands and are chaste vie and fight with one another over the fire, and the rest sing the winner blessed for being burned together with her dead husband. And none of the sages there is envied or called blessed unless, while still alive, in his right mind, and sound of body, he parts his soul from the flesh by fire and comes forth pure, having washed away the
mortal element. But will you bring a man down from a splendid estate, a house, a table, and luxury, into a rough cloak, a beggar's bag, and begging for his daily bread? These were the very beginnings of happiness for Diogenes, of freedom and glory for Crates. But will you nail him to a cross, or impale him on a stake? What does Theodorus care whether he rots above the earth or beneath it? Among the Scythians such things count as blessed burials; among the Hyrcanians, dogs — among the Bactrians,
birds — eat the dead according to their laws, when they attain a blessed end.' Whom, then, do such things make wretched? The unmanly and unreasoning, the untried and untrained, those who from infancy cling to the opinions they have formed. Fortune, then, is not by herself the accomplisher of misery, unless she has vice working together with her. For just as a thread saws through bone once the bone has been soaked through with ash and vinegar, and
as ivory, once it has been softened and made pliant with beer, can be bent and reshaped, though otherwise it cannot, so Fortune, falling upon what has already been affected and softened by vice, hollows it out and wounds it. And just as the Parthian poison, harmful to none of those who merely touch it and carry it about, if it once comes into contact with a wound, straightaway destroys the one who has been affected and who receives
its effluence: so one who is to be crushed by Fortune must already have his own sore within himself, and some evil of the flesh, so that what befalls him from outside may become cause for lament. Is vice, then, of such a kind that it needs Fortune in order to accomplish misery? Far from it. It does not raise up a rough and stormy sea; it does not gird desolate foothills with the ambushes of highway robbers; it does not burst hail-laden clouds over fruit-bearing plains; it does not urge on Meletus,
nor Anytus, nor hire Callixenus as a false accuser; it does not strip away wealth, nor bar a man from high command, in order to make men wretched. No — it makes men wretched even while they are rich, prospering, inheriting land, and sailing the sea; it has crept in and taken root, wasting them away with desires, burning them up with fits of anger, crushing them with superstitious fears, and tearing them apart through their own eyes.

======== Moralia: Animine An Corporis Affectiones Sint Piores ========

Homer, looking at the mortal races of living creatures and comparing them with one another in their ways of life and modes of subsistence, declared that nothing is more wretched than man, of all things that breathe and creep upon the earth—awarding to the human being an unhappy pride of place in the excess of its miseries. We, however, as though man had already been proclaimed the winner in misfortune and the most wretched of all living creatures, will compare him with himself, dividing body and soul against each other in a contest of their private evils—not uselessly but quite appropriately—so that we may learn whether it is through fortune or through ourselves that we live the more wretched life. For disease arises in the body through nature, but vice and depravity concerning the soul are first a deed and only then a suffering of the soul itself. And it is no small help toward peace of mind, if the worse part proves curable and lighter and without violent throbbing.
Now Aesop's fox, pleading her case against the leopard over which had the finer markings—since the leopard displayed her body and its surface as bright-flowered and dappled, while the fox's own tawny coat was rough and unpleasant to look upon—said, "But if you look at what is within me, judge, you will find me more variegated than she is," thereby showing the versatility of her character, which adapts itself in many ways to circumstances.
Let us then say to ourselves: many diseases and afflictions, O man, your body both produces from itself by nature and also receives, falling upon it, from outside. But if you open yourself up from within, you will find a varied and much-suffering storehouse and treasury of evils, as Democritus says—evils that do not flow in from outside, but have, as it were, indigenous and native springs of their own, which vice, being copious and abundant, sends forth for the passions.
If the diseases that occur in the flesh are detected by throbbing pulses and pale discolorations, and their fevers and sudden pains betray them, while the evils in the soul escape the notice of most people precisely because they are evils, is it not for this very reason that they are worse—because they additionally rob the sufferer of any perception of what he suffers?
For in the case of diseases of the body, reason, being sound, perceives them; but when reason itself is diseased along with the soul, it has no power of judgment concerning what it suffers, since it suffers in the very faculty by which it judges. And one must count folly as the first and greatest of the soul's ailments, through which vice, incurable, dwells with most people, lives with them, and dies with them. For the beginning of release from disease is, in the case of the body, the perception
that brings the sufferer to seek the help of one who can assist; but the soul, through disbelief in its own sickness, not knowing what it needs, refuses the remedy even when it is at hand. And indeed, among bodily diseases those accompanied by loss of sensation are the worst—lethargies, headaches, epileptic fits, strokes; and fevers themselves, when they intensify into delirium, disturb the sensation as if it were an instrument and set in motion strings
that ought to remain still in the mind. This is why physicians' apprentices wish, above all, that a man not be sick, but if he is sick, that he not fail to recognize that he is sick—a condition which befalls all the passions of the soul. For neither those who act foolishly, nor those who behave licentiously, nor those who commit injustice think they are doing wrong; some even think they are acting rightly. No one, after all, has ever called a fever health, or consumption a good constitution, or gout swiftness of foot, or jaundice a healthy glow—yet many people call anger
courage, and call passionate love friendship, and call envy rivalry, and call cowardice caution. And so the sick call in physicians, since they perceive what they need for the ills that afflict them; but the others flee from philosophers, since they think they are succeeding in the very things in which they are failing. Indeed, by this reasoning we might say that ophthalmia is a lighter thing than madness, and gout lighter than delirium. For the one who suffers from ophthalmia perceives it and calls
for the physician, crying out, and offers his eye to be treated by whoever is present, submits to having a vein opened, hands over his head to be treated; but of the raving Agave you hear, when in her madness she does not recognize her own dearest kin, "we bring from the mountain a freshly cut tendril to the halls, a blessed catch." And indeed the man sick in body immediately gives way, lies down upon his couch, and keeps quiet while being treated; but
if the body should somewhere leap up a bit and thrash about when inflammation sets in, someone sitting beside him says gently, "Be still, poor fellow," and steadies him and holds him quiet in his bed. Those, however, who are in the grip of the soul's passions are then most active, precisely when they are least at rest—for impulses are the beginning of actions, and the passions are the violent intensifications of impulses. That is why they do not allow the soul to be still,
but precisely when the man most needs solitude and silence and withdrawal, then they drag him out into the open; then anger, contentiousness, love, and grief lay him bare, compelling him to do many lawless things and say many things ill-suited to the occasion. For just as a storm that prevents putting in to harbor is more dangerous than one that merely prevents sailing, so the storms of the soul are heavier, since they do not allow a man
to make port, nor even allow his reasoning, once thrown into confusion, to come to a stop; but, unsteered and without ballast, tossed about in turmoil and wandering through ruinous and frenzied courses, he is dashed headlong into some fearful shipwreck and shatters his own life. And so, for these reasons and by these means, it is worse to be sick in soul than in body: for the body, it means only to suffer, but for the soul, it means both to suffer and to do
evil. And what need is there to speak at length of the passions, when the very occasion itself is a reminder of them? Do you see this great and motley crowd gathered here, surging and seething about the platform and the marketplace? These people have not come together to sacrifice to their ancestral gods, nor to share in rites common to their kin, nor to bring to Zeus of Ascra the firstfruits of Lydian crops, nor to celebrate for Dionysus
the sacred branch in holy nights and shared revels; but, as though in a yearly recurring cycle the crisis of a disease had roughened all Asia and driven it, arriving before its appointed time, to lawsuits and contests here in this place—a multitude, like gathered floods, has poured into a single marketplace, and it seethes and, in the poet's words, has broken forth "of those destroying and those being destroyed." What fevers, what chills produce these things? What blockages or relapses, what ill-mixture of hot
or overflow of moist humors? If you were to examine each lawsuit as you would a man, asking whence it was born, whence it came, you would find that this one was begotten by headstrong anger, that one by contentious rivalry born of madness, and another by unjust desire.

======== Moralia: Apophthegmata Laconica ========

Agasicles, the king of the Lacedaemonians, when someone marveled that although he was fond of listening he did not receive the sophist Philophanes, said, "I want to be a pupil only of those whose son I also am." And to one who asked how a man without a bodyguard could rule in safety, he said, "If he rules his people as fathers rule their sons."
Agesilaus the Great, once when he had drawn the lot to preside over a drinking party, was asked by the wine-steward how much he should pour for each guest. "If much wine has been prepared," he said, "give each as much as he asks; but if little, give an equal share to all." When some wrongdoer endured torture unflinchingly, he said, "What a thoroughly wicked man, to spend his endurance and fortitude on base and shameful deeds!" When someone praised an orator for his skill in magnifying small matters, he said, "Not even a cobbler is a good one who fits large shoes on a small foot."
When someone once said to him, "You have agreed," and kept repeating the same claim, he said, "Yes indeed, if it is just; but if not, I spoke, but I did not agree." And when the man added, "But surely kings must carry out whatever they nod their assent to," he replied, "No more than those who approach kings must ask for and speak what is just, aiming at what is timely and fitting for kings." Whenever he heard people blaming or praising someone, he thought it no less necessary to study the character of the speakers than the matter they spoke of.
Once, while he was still a boy, when the Gymnopaidiai were being celebrated, the master of the chorus placed him in an inconspicuous spot, and he accepted this even though he had already been declared king, saying, "Well done—for I will show that it is not places that make men honored, but men who make places honored." When a doctor prescribed for him a rather elaborate and complicated course of treatment, he said, "By the two gods, it is not my fixed purpose to live at all costs, nor do I accept every remedy."
Once, while he stood at the altar of the Goddess of the Bronze House sacrificing an ox, a louse bit him; he was not disturbed, but took it openly, in front of everyone, and killed it, saying, "By the gods, I gladly kill a conspirator even at the altar." On another occasion, seeing a mouse being dragged from its hole by a boy who held it, and when the mouse turned, bit the hand of its captor, and escaped, he pointed this out to those present and said, "When the smallest of creatures defends itself so against those who wrong it, think what men ought to do."
Wishing to launch a war against the Persian in order to free the Greeks living in Asia, he consulted the oracle of Zeus at Dodona, and when it bade him proceed, he reported the response to the ephors. They in turn ordered him to go to Delphi as well and inquire about the same matter. So he went to the oracle and asked in these words: "Apollo, do you approve of what my father also approved?" When the god assented, Agesilaus was chosen and set out on campaign accordingly.
When Tissaphernes, at first fearing Agesilaus, made a truce promising that the King would let the Greek cities be autonomous, but then, having summoned a large army from the King, declared war on him unless he withdrew from Asia, Agesilaus gladly welcomed this breach of the truce and set out as though he meant to advance into Caria. But when Tissaphernes had gathered his forces there, Agesilaus broke camp and invaded Phrygia instead, and after taking a great many cities and a quantity of money, he said to his friends, "To do wrong after making a truce is impious, but to outwit the enemy is not only just and glorious, but also pleasant and profitable."
Having been worsted in cavalry, he withdrew to Ephesus and directed the wealthy men to furnish a horse and a man each in his stead, so as to be excused from the campaign; and thus horses and capable men were quickly assembled in place of cowards and rich men. He said he was emulating Agamemnon, for that man too had accepted a fine mare and had excused a cowardly, wealthy man from campaigning. When, at his order, the sellers of booty put the captives up for sale naked, there were many buyers for their clothing, but people laughed at the bodies themselves—white and altogether soft from being raised in the shade—considering them useless and worth nothing. Agesilaus, standing by, said, "These are the things you fight for, and these are the men you fight against."
Having routed Tissaphernes near Lydia and killed a great many of his men, he overran the King's territory. When Tissaphernes sent him money and asked him to end the war, Agesilaus replied that it was the city's right to make peace, and that he took more pleasure in enriching his soldiers than in being rich himself, and that he considered it noble for Greeks not to accept gifts from their enemies but to win spoils instead.
When Megabates, the son of Spithridates, a young man of great beauty, approached him meaning to greet him with an embrace and a kiss, because he seemed to be greatly loved by him, Agesilaus drew back. When the boy stopped approaching him because of this, Agesilaus sought him out again. His friends said Agesilaus himself was to blame for having shrunk from the beautiful boy's kiss, and told him that if he did not now play the coward, the boy would still come to him. Agesilaus, after remaining alone with his thoughts for no little while and falling silent, said, "There is no need for us to persuade him after all; for I think I would rather rise above such desires than take by force even the most valorous city of those arrayed against me—since it is better to preserve one's own freedom than to strip others of theirs."
In most matters, then, this was the sort of man Agesilaus was; yet there were occasions when he made use of circumstance more for what was expedient. Once, when a rather chaotic breaking of camp took place, he left his sick beloved behind; and when the boy begged and called after him in tears, Agesilaus turned and said, "How hard it is to feel pity and to keep one's judgment at the same time."
Though otherwise exact and law-abiding, in matters concerning friends he regarded excessive strictness toward them as no more than a pretext. A short letter of his is preserved in which he intercedes for one of his friends, addressed to Idrieus the Carian, and reads thus: "If Nicias is not guilty, let him go; and if he is guilty, let him go for my sake; in any case, let him go."
As for his manner of life, he had nothing better than those around him: he abstained altogether from excess and drunkenness, and treated sleep not as a master but as something governed by the demands of his affairs. He bore heat and cold so well that he alone seemed always to make proper use of whatever the season brought. Camping in the midst of his soldiers, he slept in a bed no better than anyone else's. He continually said that a commander ought to surpass ordinary men not in softness, but in endurance and courage.
When someone asked what the laws of Lycurgus had won for Sparta, he said, "To despise pleasures." To one who marveled at the plainness of his clothing and food, and of the other Spartans besides, he said, "In exchange for this way of life, stranger, we reap freedom." When another urged him to relax his habits, on the ground that the uncertainty of fortune might never allow the occasion for such indulgence again, he replied, "But I train myself, I tell you, so as to seek no change amid any change." And even in old age he kept to the same regimen; to one who asked why, at his age, he went about without a tunic in the depths of winter, he said, "So that the young may imitate me, having as their example their eldest men and rulers."
When the Thasians, as he marched through their territory with his army, sent him barley meal, geese, sweetmeats, honey-cakes, and all sorts of other costly foods and drinks, he accepted only the barley meal and ordered the bearers to carry the rest back again, since it was of no use to his men. When they pressed and begged him earnestly to accept it all, he ordered it distributed to the helots instead. When asked the reason, he said, "It is not fitting for men who practice manly virtue to indulge in such delicacies, for the things that entice servile natures are foreign to free men."
On another occasion, because the Thasians believed they had been greatly benefited by him, they honored him with temples and divine rites and sent an embassy about the matter. Having read the honors the envoys brought him, he asked whether their homeland had the power to make men gods. When they said it did, he replied, "Come then, make yourselves gods first; and if you manage that, then I will believe that you can also make me one."
When the Greek peoples of Asia voted to set up statues of him in their most illustrious cities, he added in reply, "Let there be no image of me, painted, molded, or fashioned in any way." Once, seeing in Asia a house roofed with square-cut beams, he asked the owner whether square timber grew there. When the man said no, but round, Agesilaus said, "Well then—if it had been square, would you have made it round?"
When asked once how far the boundaries of Laconia extended, he brandished his spear and said, "As far as this can reach." When another asked why Sparta had no walls, he pointed to the citizens under arms and said, "These are the walls of the Lacedaemonians." And when someone else asked the same question, he said, "Cities ought to be walled not with stones and timber, but with the virtues of those who dwell in them." He urged his friends to strive to be rich not in money, but in courage and virtue.
Whenever he wanted some task done quickly by his soldiers, he himself was the first to set his hand to it, in full view of everyone. He took pride in working no less hard than anyone else, and in ruling himself more than in being king. Seeing a lame Spartan setting out for war and looking for a horse, he said, "Do you not see that war has need not of men who flee, but of men who stand fast?" When asked how he had won such great fame, he said, "By despising death." When someone asked why the Spartans went into battle to the music of pipes, he said, "So that, marching in step to the rhythm, both the cowardly and the brave may be made plain to see."
When someone called the king of the Persians blessed for being so very young, he said, "But Priam too was not unfortunate at that age." Having brought a great part of Asia under his own control, he resolved to march against the King himself, so as to put a stop to his sitting idle and corrupting the popular leaders of the Greeks.
But when he was recalled by the ephors because of the Greek war that had broken out around Sparta on account of money sent by the Persian, he said that a good ruler must be ruled by the laws, and sailed away from Asia, leaving behind him great longing among the Greeks there. Since the Persian coinage bore the stamp of an archer, as he broke camp he remarked that he was being driven out of Asia by thirty thousand of the King's archers—for so many gold darics had been carried to Athens and Thebes through Timocrates and distributed among the popular leaders that the peoples were stirred up to war against the Spartans.
And he wrote back to the ephors this letter: "Agesilaus to the ephors, greetings. We have subdued the greater part of Asia, driven back the barbarians, and made great quantities of weapons in Ionia. But since you bid me return within the appointed time, I am obeying the letter, and shall very nearly outrun it; for I hold my command not for myself, but for the city and its allies. And a ruler truly rules justly only when he is himself ruled by the laws and the ephors, or by whatever other officers there may be in the city."
When he had crossed the Hellespont and was marching through Thrace, he asked nothing of any of the barbarians there, but sent word ahead to each people, asking whether he should pass through their land as a friend or as an enemy. The rest received him in a friendly manner and escorted him on his way; but the people called the Trausi, to whom Xerxes too, it is said, had given gifts, demanded of Agesilaus as the price of passage a hundred talents of silver and as many women. He, mocking them, said, "Then why did they not come at once to take it?"—and advanced, and meeting them drawn up for battle, routed them, killed many, and passed through.
He sent the same question to the king of the Macedonians; and when that king said he needed to deliberate, Agesilaus said, "Let him deliberate, then—but we will be on our way." The king, marveling at his boldness and afraid, ordered him to be escorted forward as a friend. Since the Thessalians were allied with his enemies, he ravaged their country, and sent Xenocles and Scythes to Larissa to negotiate friendship. But when these men were seized and held under guard, the rest of the army, taking this hard, thought Agesilaus ought to encamp around Larissa and besiege it; he, however, said he would not wish to gain the whole of Thessaly at the cost of losing either of the two men, and instead recovered them under a truce.
When he learned that a battle had taken place near Corinth, in which very few Spartans had died but a very great number of Corinthians, Athenians, and their other allies, he was not seen to be overjoyed or elated by the victory; rather, he gave a heavy groan and said, "Alas for Greece, which has destroyed at her own hands so many men as would have sufficed to conquer all the barbarians!" When the Pharsalians harassed and molested his army, he routed them with five hundred cavalry and set up a trophy at Narthacium.
He cherished that victory above all others, because, having organized the cavalry entirely by himself, it was by this force alone that he overcame those who prided themselves most on their horsemanship. When Diphridas brought word from home that he should invade Boeotia at once, straight from the march, even though Agesilaus had intended to do this later with greater preparation, he did not disobey the authorities; instead, summoning two regiments from the troops campaigning around Corinth, he invaded Boeotia.
Engaging at Coronea with the Thebans, Athenians, Argives, Corinthians, and both branches of the Locrians, he was victorious, even though his body was in poor condition from many wounds—in what Xenophon calls the greatest battle of his time. Yet despite so many successes and victories, he changed nothing in his manner or mode of life once he returned home.
Seeing some of the citizens growing proud and arrogant on account of horse-breeding, he persuaded his sister Cynisca to enter a chariot at Olympia, wishing to show the Greeks that such things are a matter not of any virtue at all, but of wealth and expenditure. Keeping the wise Xenophon as a valued companion, he urged him to send for his sons and raise them in Lacedaemon, so that they might be trained in the noblest of all lessons—how to rule and how to be ruled.
On another occasion, when asked why the Spartans were held in greater esteem than other peoples, he said, "Because, more than others, they practice ruling and being ruled." When Lysander died, Agesilaus discovered that a large faction had been formed—one that Lysander, immediately upon his return from Asia, had organized against him—and he set out to expose what sort of citizen the man had truly been in life. And he read a speech left behind in a book, one that had been written by Cleon of Halicarnassus,
which Lysander had intended to take up and deliver to the people, concerning revolutionary measures and a change of the constitution, he wished to bring it out into the open. But when one of the elders went over the speech, and, fearing its cleverness, advised him not to dig up Lysander again but rather to bury the speech along with him, he was persuaded and kept quiet. As for those who openly opposed him, he did not harass them; instead he managed to have some of them regularly sent out as generals and magistrates, and then showed them, once they had gained power, to have become wicked and greedy for gain; and afterward, when they were brought to trial, he would come to their aid and fight on their side, thereby making them his own and winning them over to himself, so that no one remained his rival. Someone asked him to write on his behalf to his personal friends in Asia, so that he might obtain justice. "But my friends," he said, "do justice by themselves, even if I do not write."
Someone showed him the city's wall, strong and built with extreme solidity, and asked whether it seemed beautiful to him. "Yes, by Zeus," he said, "beautiful — but not as a dwelling for men, rather for women." When a certain Megarian was boasting to him grandly about his city, he said, "Young man, your words need a great deal of power behind them." Whatever he saw others admiring, he seemed not even to notice. Once Callippides, the tragic actor, who had a name and reputation among the Greeks and was courted by everyone, first came up to him and greeted him, and then, striding boldly, threw himself in among those walking with the king and made a show of himself, expecting that Agesilaus would begin some friendly exchange. At last he said, "Do you not recognize me, O king, and have you not heard who I am?" Agesilaus looked at him and said, "But are you not Callippides the mimic-player?" — for that is what the Spartans call actors. When he was invited to hear a man who could imitate the nightingale's song, he declined, saying, "I have heard the nightingale herself many times."
As for Menecrates the physician, since he had succeeded in some treatments given up as hopeless and had been called "Zeus," and made vulgar use of this title, and even dared to write to Agesilaus in these terms, "Menecrates Zeus to King Agesilaus, greeting," Agesilaus, without reading the rest, wrote back, "King Agesilaus to Menecrates, health."
When Conon and Pharnabazus, ruling the sea with the King's fleet, were besieging the coastal regions of Laconia, and the wall of Athens was rebuilt with money supplied by Pharnabazus, the Spartans made peace with the King; and they sent their citizen Antalcidas to Tiribazus, handing over to the King the Greeks of Asia, on whose behalf Agesilaus had gone to war. For this reason it fell out that Agesilaus had the least share in that disgrace; for Antalcidas was his enemy and pursued the peace by every means, on the ground that the war was making Agesilaus greater and more famous and powerful. Nevertheless, to the man who said that the Spartans were medizing, he replied that it was rather the Medes who were laconizing.
When he was once asked which of the virtues was better, courage or justice, he said that courage was of no use if justice were not present; but if all men became just, there would be no need of courage at all. Since the inhabitants of Asia were accustomed to call the King of the Persians "Great," he said, "How is he greater than I am, unless he is also more just and more temperate?" He used to say that the inhabitants of Asia, though free, were bad, while as slaves they were good. Asked how one might best win a good reputation among men, he said, "By speaking the best things and doing the noblest deeds." He said that a general ought to have boldness toward the enemy but goodwill toward those under his command. When someone asked what boys ought to learn, he said, "The very things they will use when they become men."
While he was judging a certain case, and the accuser had spoken well but the defendant poorly, saying to each point only, "Agesilaus, the king must uphold the laws," he replied, "And if someone were breaking into your house, or taking away your cloak, would you expect the builder or the weaver of the cloak to come to your aid?" When a letter was brought to him from the King of the Persians, after the peace had been made which the Persian envoy, together with Callias the Spartan, had brought about, concerning guest-friendship and alliance, he refused to accept it, saying that word should be sent back to the King: "Privately there is no need for him to send me letters; but if he shows himself a friend to Sparta and well-disposed toward Greece, then I too shall be his friend with all my power. But if he is caught plotting against us, let him be assured that I will be no friend to him, however many letters I receive."
Being exceedingly fond of his children, it is said that with his little ones he would ride astride a reed as if it were a horse, playing at home; and when he was seen by one of his friends, he begged him to tell no one, until he himself had become a father of children. While he was continually at war with the Thebans and had been wounded in battle, they say Antalcidas said to him, "You are getting fine lessons from the Thebans, having taught them, against their will and their ignorance, how to fight." And indeed they say that the Thebans became, at that time, the most warlike of all against themselves, because of the many campaigns the Spartans made against them. For this reason the ancient Lycurgus, in the so-called Rhetras, forbade making war repeatedly on the same people, so that they might not learn how to fight.
When he once heard that the allies were growing resentful because of the constant campaigns, since so few Spartans were followed by so many allies, wishing to demonstrate their true numbers, he ordered all the allies to sit down together, mixed with one another, while the Spartans sat apart by themselves. Then he had the potters called to stand up first; and when they had stood up, he had the smiths called next, then the carpenters and builders in turn, and each of the other trades. And so nearly all the allies stood up, but not one of the Spartans — for it was forbidden to them to practice or learn a manual trade. Then Agesilaus laughed and said, "You see, gentlemen, how many more soldiers we send out than you do."
In the battle at Leuctra, when many of the Spartans had fled and, under the law, were liable to the penalties for it, the ephors, seeing the city bereft of men and in need of soldiers, wished to lift the disgrace while still preserving the laws. They therefore chose Agesilaus as lawgiver; but he, coming forward before the assembly, said, "I would not become the maker of other laws — for to the laws that exist I would neither add anything, nor take anything away, nor alter anything; but as for the laws we already have, let it be resolved that they hold good from tomorrow onward."
When Epaminondas came on with such a torrent and flood of forces, the Thebans and their allies exulting greatly in their victory, Agesilaus nevertheless kept him from the city and forced him to turn back, though those within the city were few. In the battle near Mantinea he urged the Spartans to let everyone else alone and to fight only against Epaminondas, saying that only sensible men were truly brave, and that only they were responsible for victory: "If, then, we remove this man, we shall most easily bring the rest under our power; for they are witless and worth nothing." And this indeed came to pass; for while victory lay with Epaminondas and the Spartans were in flight, when he turned to rally his own men, one of the Spartans struck him a mortal blow, and after he fell, the men with Agesilaus turned back from their flight and made the victory an even match — the Thebans appearing far worse, and the Spartans far better, than before.
When Sparta was in need of money for war and for maintaining mercenaries, Agesilaus went to Egypt, summoned by the Egyptian king to serve for pay; but because of the plainness of his dress he came to be despised by the people there, for they expected to see the King of Sparta, like the King of Persia, resplendently adorned in body — holding as they did a poor opinion of what makes a king. He showed them, however, in the meantime, that greatness and worth ought to be won by intelligence and courage. When he saw that those about to stand with him were afraid of the coming danger because of the enemy's numbers — for they were two hundred thousand — and the fewness of his own men, before the battle line was drawn up he resolved
to offer sacrifice beforehand, unknown to the others; and on his left hand, which was covered, he wrote the word "Victory." And taking the liver from the diviner, he laid it upon the hand thus inscribed; and holding it for a good while, he pretended to be in doubt and perplexity, until the letters, being pressed into the liver, were imprinted upon it. Then he displayed it to those who were about to fight alongside him, saying that the gods had revealed victory through the writing. Thinking they now had a sure token of triumph, they took courage for the battle. When the enemy, because of their numbers, were digging a trench around his camp, and Nectanebo, his ally, wished to go out and fight it out, he said he would not prevent the enemy from making themselves equal in numbers to his own men. But when the trench lacked only a little of being complete, he drew up his forces at the still-open gap,
and, fighting against equal numbers on equal terms, routed them and made great slaughter of the enemy with the few soldiers about him, and sent much money to the city. On the voyage back from Egypt, as he lay dying, he instructed those about him to make no image of his body, molded, painted, or otherwise represented: "For if I have done any noble deed, that will be my monument; but if not, not even all the statues in the world will help — being the works of mere craftsmen, worth nothing."
Agesipolis, son of Cleombrotus, when someone said that Philip had razed Olynthus in a few days, said, "By the gods, he will not build another such city in many times that span." When another said that Agesipolis had been given as a hostage among the reigning kings in their prime, rather than their children or wives, he said, "That is only just; for it is right that we ourselves bear our own faults." When he wished to send for hunting dogs from home, and someone said, "There is no export of them allowed," he said, "Nor was there, formerly, of men either — but now there is."
Agesipolis, son of Pausanias, when the Athenians, in a dispute they had with the Megarians against one another, were taking the city of Megara as arbiter, said, "It is shameful, O Athenians, that you, the leaders of the Greeks, should know justice less well than the Megarians."
Agis, son of Archidamus, when the ephors once said, "Go, taking the young men, against the fatherland of this man; he himself will lead you to the acropolis," said, "And how, O ephors, can it be right to trust so many young men to a man who is betraying his own fatherland?" Asked what study is most practiced at Sparta, he said, "Knowing how to rule and be ruled." He said the Spartans did not ask how many the enemy were, but where they were. At Mantinea, when he was being prevented from fighting the enemy, who were more numerous, he said, "A man who wishes to rule many must be willing to fight many." When someone asked how many the Spartans were, he said, "As many as are enough to keep off the wicked." Passing along the walls of the Corinthians,
and seeing them high and strong and stretching for a great distance, he said, "What women live in this place?" When a certain sophist said, "Speech is the greatest of all things," he replied, "Then, if you keep silent, you are worth nothing." When the Argives, after their defeat, again met him rather boldly, and he saw his allies troubled, he said, "Take courage, men; for if we who are victorious are afraid, what do you think those we have defeated are doing?"
To the envoy from Abdera, who, after speaking at length, stopped and asked what he should report to his fellow citizens, he said, "That for as long a time as you wished to speak, I listened in silence." When some praised the Eleans because they were most just in the conduct of the Olympic games, he said, "And what great or wonderful thing do they do,
if once every five years, on a single day, they practice justice?" To those who said that some members of the other royal house were jealous of him, he said, "Then their own troubles will grieve them, and, besides these, my good fortune and that of my friends as well." When someone advised that a way of retreat should be given to fleeing enemies, he said, "How then
shall we fight against those who stand firm through courage, if we do not fight those who flee through cowardice?" When someone spoke of the freedom of the Greeks as not ignoble, yet difficult to accomplish, he said, "Your words, stranger, need power and money behind them." When someone said that Philip would make Greece impossible to set foot in, he said, "Our own occupations at home are enough for us, stranger."
An envoy who had come from Perinthus to Sparta spoke at great length; and when he stopped speaking and asked Agis what he should report to the Perinthians, he said, "What else, than that you scarcely stopped speaking, while I kept silent?" Going as envoy alone to Philip, when Philip said, "What is this? Do you come alone?" he said, "Yes — for it is to one man that I come." When one of the older men said to him, since he himself was old,
seeing that the ancient customs were being relaxed and other, corrupt ones creeping in, so that things at Sparta were now turned upside down, Agis said playfully, "Things are proceeding quite logically, if this is happening; for I too, when I was a boy, heard from my father that things had been turned upside down among them, and he said that his own father had told him the same thing when he was a boy — so that we should not be surprised if later things are worse than earlier ones, but rather if they should ever turn out better or even the same." Asked how a man might remain free, he said, "By despising death."
Agis the younger, when Demades said that the Laconian swords were so short that jugglers could swallow them, replied, "And yet the Spartans reach their enemies well enough with them." To a wicked man who kept asking who was the best Spartan, he said, "The one least like you." Agis, the last of the Spartan kings, seized by ambush and condemned by the ephors without trial, as he was being led to the noose, seeing one of the attendants weeping, said, "Stop weeping for me, fellow; for even though I am perishing so unlawfully
and unjustly, I am superior to those who are killing me." And having said this, he willingly gave his neck to the noose. Acrotatus, when his parents asked him to join them in some unjust act, refused for a while; but when they pressed him, he said, "While I was with you, I knew no notion of justice at all; but since you gave me over to my fatherland and its laws, and to justice besides,
and “goodness” as best you could, I shall try to follow these rather than you. Since you wish me to act rightly, and since what is right is right both for a private citizen and much more for a ruler, I shall do what you wish, but I must decline what you say.” Alcamenes, son of Teleclus, when someone asked how a man might best preserve his kingship, said, “If he does not set gain above honor.” When another asked why he would not accept gifts from the Messenians, he said, “Because if I take them, it is impossible to keep peace with the laws.” And when someone remarked that, though he possessed a sufficient fortune, he lived frugally, he said, “It is a fine thing for a man of many possessions to live by calculation and not by appetite.”
Anaxandridas, son of Leon, said to a man distressed at the exile that had been imposed on him by the city, “My good fellow, do not dread fleeing the city, but dread fleeing justice.” To a man who spoke rightly enough before the ephors, but at greater length than was needed, he said, “Stranger, you use what is needed not as it is needed.” When someone asked why the Spartans hand over their fields to the helots instead of tending them themselves, he said, “Because we acquired these men for our own sake, not to tend fields.”
When another said that reputation does harm and that the man who is rid of it will be happy, he said, “Then, by your reasoning, wrongdoers would be happy — for how could a man who commits sacrilege or injustice be concerned for his reputation?” When another asked why the Spartans face danger boldly in war, he said, “Because we practice reverence concerning life, not fear, as others do.”
When someone asked him why the elders judge capital cases over several days, and even if a man is acquitted he is nonetheless still liable to trial, he said, “They judge over many days because for those who err fatally in a matter of death there is no chance to reconsider; and the law requires that he remain liable, because it is also lawful, under this same law, to reconsider for the better.” Anaxander, son of Eurycrates,
when someone asked why they do not gather money into the public treasury, said, “So that those who become its guardians are not corrupted.” Anaxilas, to a man wondering why the ephors do not rise before the kings, even though they are appointed by the kings, said, “For the same reason that they also serve as ephors.” Androcleidas the Laconian, having been maimed in the leg, enrolled himself among
the warriors; and when some objected and tried to prevent him because he was maimed, he said, “But it is not the man who flees, but the man who stands his ground, who must fight the enemy ranged against him.” Antalcidas, being initiated at Samothrace, was asked by the priest what was the most terrible thing he had done in his life, and said, “If I have done any such thing, the gods themselves will know it.” To an Athenian who called the Spartans uneducated, he said, “At any rate, we alone
have learned no evil from you.” And when another Athenian said to him, “Yet indeed we have often driven you back from the Cephisus,” he said, “But we have never driven you back from the Eurotas.” When asked how a man might best please people, he said, “If he converses with them as agreeably as possible, but deals with them as helpfully as possible.” When a sophist was about to recite an encomium of Heracles, he said, “Who, then,
blames him?” To Agesilaus, who had been struck in battle by the Thebans, he said, “You are paying the tuition fee, having taught them to fight when they neither wished nor knew how.” For it seemed that through Agesilaus's repeated campaigns against them they had become warlike. He used to say that the young men were the walls of Sparta, and the points of their spears its boundaries. To a man who asked why the Spartans use short daggers in war,
he said, “Because we fight close to the enemy.” Antiochus, when he was ephor, on hearing that Philip had given the Messenians their territory, asked whether he had also given them the power to hold it by fighting for it. Areus, when some praised, not their own wives, but certain other men's wives, said, “By the gods, one ought not to speak carelessly about fine and good women at all — they should remain entirely unknown,
whatever sort they may be, except to those who live with them.” Once, passing through Selinus in Sicily, he saw an elegiac couplet inscribed on a monument: “These men, once quenching tyranny, bronze Ares took; around the gates of Selinus they died.” He said, “You died justly, for attempting to quench a tyranny while it was still burning — you ought instead to have let the whole thing burn to the ground.” Ariston, when someone praised the saying of Cleomenes
that when asked what a good king ought to do, he had said one should benefit one's friends and harm one's enemies, said, “And how much better, my good fellow, to benefit one's friends and make one's enemies into friends?” This saying, generally attributed to Socrates by everyone, is also credited to him. When someone asked how many Spartans there were in number, he said, “As many as
are enough to keep off the enemy.” When an Athenian was reading a funeral eulogy for those who had fallen at the hands of the Lacedaemonians, he said, “What sort of men, then, do you suppose ours are, who conquered these?” Archidamidas, to a man who praised Charilaus because he was gentle alike to everyone, said, “And how could a man be justly praised, if he is gentle even to the wicked?” When someone found fault with Hecataeus the sophist because,
though received at the common mess, he said nothing at all, he said, “You seem not to know that the man who knows how to speak also knows the occasion for speaking.” Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, when someone asked him who governs Sparta, said, “The laws, and the magistrates according to the laws.” To a man who praised a lyre-singer and admired his skill, he said, “My good fellow, what honor
will there be from you for good men, when you praise a lyre-singer so highly?” And when someone commending a harpist to him said, “This man is a good harpist,” he said, “Among us, this sort of man is a good soup-maker” — meaning that it makes no difference whether pleasure is produced through the sound of instruments or through the preparation of relish and soup. When someone promised to make his wine sweet, he said, “To what end? For
it will cost more and will make our men less fit for war.” When marching against the city of the Corinthians with an army, he saw hares starting up from the ground near the wall; so he said to his fellow soldiers, “Our enemies are easy prey.” When two men took him as their arbiter, he led them into the precinct of Athena of the Bronze House and made them swear to abide by his judgment; and when they had sworn, he said, “I decide,
then, that you shall not leave this precinct until you have settled your differences with one another.” When Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, sent costly clothing for his daughters, he did not accept it, saying, “I fear that if the girls put it on, they will appear ugly to me.” Seeing his son fighting rashly against the Athenians, he said, “Either add to your strength, or lessen your ambition.” Archidamus, son
of Agesilaus, when Philip, after the battle at Chaeronea, wrote him a rather harsh letter, wrote back, “If you were to measure your own shadow, you would not find it grown any larger than before your victory.” When asked how much territory the Spartans control, he said, “As much as they can reach with the spear.” Periander the physician, being of considerable repute in his art and praised in every way, but writing
poor poems, he said, “Why in the world, Periander, do you wish, instead of being called a fine physician, to be called a bad poet?” In the war against Philip, when some advised that the battle should be joined far from home, he said, “But that is not what one should look to, but rather where we shall be superior to the enemy in the fight.” To those who praised him when he won the battle against the Arcadians, he said, “It would have been better
if we had conquered them by good judgment rather than by force.” When he invaded Arcadia and learned that the Eleans were coming to their aid, he sent them a message: “Archidamus to the Eleans: quiet is a fine thing.” When the allies, in the Peloponnesian War, kept asking how much money would suffice, and demanded that the contributions be fixed, he said, “War does not feed on a fixed ration.” Seeing a catapult-shot
brought then for the first time from Sicily, he cried out, “Heracles, a man's valor is done for!” When the Greeks were unwilling to obey him and to break off their agreements with Antigonus and Craterus and the Macedonians, and to be free, on the ground that the Lacedaemonians would prove harsher masters than the Macedonians, he said, “A sheep always utters the same sound, but a man utters many and varied sounds, until he accomplishes what he has resolved.” Astycratidas, when someone said
to him after King Agis had been defeated in the battle against Antipater near Megalopolis, “What will you do, Lacedaemonians? Will you be slaves to the Macedonians?” said, “What then? Could Antipater prevent us from dying in battle for Sparta?” Bias, ambushed by Iphicrates the Athenian general, when asked by his soldiers what should be done, said, “What else,
than that you should be saved, and I should die fighting?” Brasidas, catching a mouse among some dried figs and being bitten, let it go; then he said to those present, “Nothing is so small that it cannot save itself by daring to defend itself against those who attack it.” In a certain battle, struck by a javelin through his shield, he pulled the spear out of the wound and with that very weapon killed the enemy; and when asked how he had been wounded,
he said, “By my shield betraying me.” Setting out for war, he wrote to the ephors, “Whatever I resolve, I shall do in the war, or I shall die.” When it happened that he fell while freeing the Greeks in the region of Thrace, and envoys sent to Lacedaemon came first to his mother Argileonis, she first asked whether Brasidas had died nobly; and when the Thracians praised him extravagantly and said
that there was no other man like him, she said, “You do not know what you are saying, strangers. Brasidas was indeed a good man, but Sparta has many better than he.” Damonidas, placed last in the chorus by the man arranging it, said, “Well done, chorus-master — you have discovered how even this position, though without honor, may become honorable.” Damis, in response to the message sent by Alexander
that they should vote him a god, said, “We grant Alexander, if he wishes, the title of god.” Damindas, when Philip invaded the Peloponnese and someone said, “The Lacedaemonians are likely to suffer terribly, unless they come to terms with him,” said, “You weakling, what terrible thing could we suffer, we who scorn death?” Dercyllidas, when Pyrrhus held his army in Spartan territory, was sent to him as an envoy; and when Pyrrhus demanded that they receive back
their Cleonymus, or else learn that they were braver than no other people, he answered, “If he is a god, we do not fear him, for we do no wrong; and if he is a man, he is no better than we are.” Demaratus, when Orontes had treated him rather harshly and someone said, “Orontes has treated you harshly, Demaratus,” said, “He has done me no wrong; for those who deal with men to please them do harm,
not those who deal with them in enmity.” When someone asked why they dishonor those who have lost their shields, but no longer those who have lost their helmets and breastplates, he said, “Because men put these on for their own sake, but the shield for the sake of the common formation.” Listening to a harpist, he said, “He seems to me to play the fool not badly.” In a certain council, asked whether
it was from folly or from lack of words that he was silent, he said, “But a fool, at least, could not be capable of keeping silent.” When someone asked why, though he was a king, he lived in exile from Sparta, he said, “Because the laws are stronger than the king.” When one of the Persians, because of his continual bribery, took away his beloved and said, “Laconian, I have hunted down your beloved,” he said, “By the
gods, you have not hunted him — you have bought him.” When one of the Persians revolted from the king and was persuaded by Demaratus to return, and the king was about to put the Persian to death, he said, “It is shameful, O king, that when he was your enemy you could not obtain justice from him for his revolt, but now that he has become your friend, you kill him.” To a man who fawned upon the king
and often mocked him about his exile, he said, “I will not fight you, stranger, for I have used up my life's allotted portion.” Ecprepes, as ephor, took an adze and cut off two of the nine strings of Phrynis the musician, saying, “Do not do violence to music.” Epaenetus used to say that liars were the cause of all faults and wrongs alike. Euboidas, hearing some men praising another man's wife, would not accept it,
saying that concerning a woman's nature there ought to be no talk at all among outsiders. Eudamidas, son of Archidamus and brother of Agis, seeing Xenocrates, already an old man, philosophizing with his disciples in the Academy, asked who the old man was; and when someone said that he was a wise man and one of those who seek virtue, he said, “And when will he use it, if he is only now seeking it?” And hearing a philosopher
argue that only the wise man is a good general, he said, “The argument is admirable, but the speaker is not to be trusted; for he has not been through the trumpet's call.” When Xenocrates had delivered his lecture and was concluding it, Eudamidas was present; and when one of his companions said, “It was just when we arrived that he stopped,” he said, “Quite right — if indeed he had already said what he intended to say.” And when the other said, “It
would have been good to hear,” he said, “Would we, then, having come upon a man who has already dined, think it right to make him dine again?” When someone asked why, when the citizens were choosing the war against the Macedonians, he alone judged it best to keep quiet, he said, “Because I do not wish to prove them liars.” When another cited the prizes of valor won against the Persians and urged him on to war, he said, “You seem to me not to know,
at least, that it is the same thing to fight fifty wolves after having conquered a thousand sheep.” When a certain harpist had had great success, they asked him what sort of man he thought him to be; he said, “A great charmer in a small matter.” When someone praised Athens, he said, “And who could rightly praise this city, which no one, once he had become better, has loved?” When an Argive said that
the Laconians grow worse when traveling abroad, since they depart from their ancestral laws, he said, “But you, at least, do not become worse but better when you come to Sparta.” When Alexander proclaimed at Olympia that all exiles might return to their own cities except the Thebans, he said, “An unfortunate proclamation for you, Thebans — but a glorious one, for Alexander fears you alone.” When asked for what reason before
...before dangers, they sacrifice to the Muses, "so that," he said, "their deeds might win a fitting report."
Eurycratidas son of Anaxandridas, when someone asked why the ephors judge contractual disputes with each state individually, said, "So that we may trust one another even in the midst of enemies."
Zeuxidamus, when someone asked why they keep the laws concerning courage unwritten, and do not give them to the young to read once they are enrolled, said, "Because we must accustom ourselves to deeds of manly virtue rather than attend to writings."
When an Aetolian said that for men capable of manly deeds war is better than peace, he said, "No, by the gods, but for such men death is better than life." Herondas, when at Athens a man had been convicted on a charge of idleness, being present and inquiring into it, ordered that the man who had lost this suit over his liberty be pointed out to him.
Thearidas, sharpening a sword, when asked if it was sharp, said, "Sharper than slander."
Themisteas, being a seer, foretold to King Leonidas the destruction that was to befall him and those campaigning with him at Thermopylae; and when Leonidas sent him away to Lacedaemon on the pretext of reporting what would happen, but in truth so that he would not perish with the rest, he would not consent, but said, "I was sent as a fighter, not a messenger."
Theopompus, to one who asked how a king might most safely guard his kingship, said, "By granting his friends a rightful freedom of speech, and by not overlooking, so far as he is able, wrongs done to his subjects." To the stranger who said that among his own citizens he was called a lover of Sparta, he said, "It would be better for you to be called a lover of your own city than a lover of Sparta." And when the envoy from Elis said that his fellow citizens had sent him away for this very reason, that he alone had emulated the Laconian way of life, Theopompus said, "And which is better — your life, or that of your other citizens?" When the man said his own, Theopompus said, "How then could that city be kept safe, when among so many only one man is good?" And when someone said that Sparta is kept safe because of her kings, since they are fit to command, he said, "No — because the citizens are fit to obey."
When the people of Pylos voted him greater honors, he wrote back that "time increases moderate honors, but effaces those that are excessive." When someone showed him a wall and asked whether it was strong and high, he said, "Not even if women had built it."
Thorycion, coming from Delphi and seeing Philip's army occupying the pass at the Isthmus, said, "Bad gatekeepers you have, Corinthians — the Peloponnese has."
Thectamenes, when the ephors had condemned him to death, went away smiling; and when one of those present asked whether he now despised the laws of Sparta, he said, "No — I am glad that I must pay this penalty without having asked or borrowed anything from anyone."
Hippodamus, when Agis was drawing up against Archidamus and Hippodamus had been sent with Agis to Sparta to see to necessary matters, said, "I shall die no nobler death than fighting bravely for Sparta" — he had already lived beyond eighty years — and after saying this he took up his arms, took his place at the king's right hand, and died fighting.
Hippocratidas, when the satrap of Caria wrote to him that a Lacedaemonian, aware of a certain conspiracy, had kept silent about it, and asked what he should do with the man, wrote back, "If you have done him some great benefit, kill him; but if not, banish him from your country as one worthless in respect of virtue." And once, when a boy he met, followed by a lover, was thrown into confusion, he said, "One ought to walk only with such companions that, seen in their company, you keep the same color."
Callicratidas the admiral, when Lysander's friends asked him to let them kill one of their enemies and take fifty talents for it — though he himself was in great need of money to pay the sailors — would not consent. Cleander, who was his adviser, said, "But I myself would have taken it, were I you." "So would I," he replied, "were I you." Arriving at Sardis before Cyrus the younger, who was an ally of the Lacedaemonians, to get money for the fleet, he sent word on the first day that he wished to meet with Cyrus; but on hearing that Cyrus was drinking, he said, "I will wait until he has finished drinking," and left for that day, since he judged it too discourteous to press the matter when he learned it was not possible to meet him. The next day, hearing again that Cyrus was drinking and would not come forward, he said, "One must not be so eager
to get money as to do anything unworthy of Sparta," and departed for Ephesus, calling down many curses on those who had first been corrupted by the barbarians and had taught them insolence through wealth; and he swore before those present that as soon as he reached Sparta he would do everything in his power to reconcile the Greeks with one another, so that they might be more formidable to the barbarians and no longer need the barbarians' strength against each other.
Asked what sort of men the Ionians are, he said, "As free men, bad; as slaves, good." When Cyrus sent ahead pay for the soldiers, and gifts for Callicratidas himself, he took only the pay and sent back the gifts, saying that there was no need for a private friendship between himself and Cyrus, since the friendship already existing in common between Cyrus and all the Lacedaemonians was enough for him as well.
When he was about to fight a sea battle off Arginusae, and Hermon the helmsman said it would be well to sail away, since the Athenian triremes were far more numerous, he said, "And what of that? To flee is shameful and harmful to Sparta; but to stand fast and either die or conquer is best." Having offered sacrifice beforehand, when he heard from the seer that the burnt offerings signified victory for the army but death for the general,
he was not at all dismayed, but said, "Sparta does not depend on one man; for if I die, my country will be no worse off, but if I yield to the enemy, it will be worse off." So, appointing Cleander commander in his place, he set out for the battle, and died fighting.
Cleombrotus son of Pausanias, when a certain stranger was disputing with his father about virtue, said, "Up to this point my father is better than you — until you too have begotten a son."
Cleomenes son of Anaxandrides said that Homer was the poet of the Lacedaemonians, and Hesiod that of the helots — the one having taught how one must make war, the other how one must farm. Having made a seven-day truce with the Argives, he watched for the third night, when they were sleeping because they trusted the truce, and fell upon them, killing some and taking others captive.
When reproached for breaking his oaths, he said he had not sworn to include the nights along with the days; and besides, whatever harm one does to one's enemies is held, by gods and men alike, to lie beyond the reach of justice. As it happened, he was repulsed from Argos, the city he had betrayed the truce to attack, because the women took up the arms hanging in the temples and defended it against him with them; and later, having gone out of his mind, he seized a small knife and cut himself open from the ankles up to the vital parts, and so ended his life, laughing and grinning. When the seer tried to dissuade him from leading the army against the city of the Argives, saying the retreat from it would prove shameful, he approached the city all the same,
and when he saw the gates shut and the women upon the walls, he said, "Does this retreat seem shameful to you, when, with their men dead, the women have shut the gates?" To the Argives who reviled him as a perjurer and an impious man, he said, "To speak ill of me lies in your power; to do ill to you lies in mine."
To the envoys from Samos who urged him to make war on Polycrates the tyrant, and made a long speech of it, he said, "Of what you have said, I no longer remember the beginning; and because of that I do not understand the middle; and the end I do not approve." When a pirate who had overrun the countryside, upon being captured, said, "I had no food for my soldiers,
so I came to take by force from those who had it but would not give it willingly," he said, "Concise wickedness." When some worthless fellow spoke ill of him, he said, "Is it for this reason that you speak ill of everyone — so that in defending themselves people will have no time to speak of your own vice?" When one of the citizens said that a good king ought to be gentle in every respect, he said, "Yes —
up to the point of not thereby inviting contempt." Struck down by a long illness, he began attending to purifiers and seers, though he had paid them no heed before; and when someone expressed surprise, he said, "Why are you surprised? I am not the same man now that I was then; and not being the same, I do not approve the same things." When a certain sophist was discoursing on courage, he laughed a great deal; and when the man said, "Why do you laugh, Cleomenes,
when you hear someone discoursing on courage — and that too though you are a king?" he said, "Because, stranger, if the swallow too were speaking of it, I would do the same; but if it were an eagle, I would keep quite still." When the Argives claimed to have made up for their earlier defeat, he said, "I am amazed if, by the addition of two syllables, you have now become better men than you were before." When someone reviled him and
said, "You are soft, Cleomenes," he said, "Better that than unjust; but you love money, though you have enough of it." A certain lyre-player, wishing to commend himself to him, praised the man in various respects and said he was the best lyre-player among the Greeks; but Cleomenes, pointing to one of those standing by, said, "By the gods, this man here is my soup-cook."
When Maeandrius, tyrant of Samos, fled to Sparta because of the Persian invasion, and displayed all the gold and silver cups he had brought, offering to give as much as he wished, Cleomenes took nothing; and being wary lest Maeandrius give them to some of the other citizens instead, he went to the ephors and said it would be better for Sparta if his guest-friend the Samian left the Peloponnese, so that he not persuade any of the Spartiates
to become corrupt; and they, heeding him, banished Maeandrius that very day. When someone said, "Why, though you have often defeated the Argives who make war on you, have you not destroyed them?" he said, "We would not destroy them, so that we might have training partners for our young men." When someone asked him why the Spartiates do not dedicate to the gods the spoils taken from their enemies, he said, "Because they come from cowards."
Cleomenes son of Cleombrotus, when someone gave him fighting cocks and said that they die fighting for victory, said, "Give me instead some of those that kill them — those are better than these." Labotas, when someone was making a long speech, said, "Why such a great preamble to me about small matters? However great the matter, so great should be the speech one uses for it." Leotychidas the first, when someone said that he was inconstant, said, "It is because of
circumstances," he said, "not, as with you, because of my own bad character." To one who asked how a man might best preserve the good things he already has, he said, "By not entrusting everything to fortune." Asked what free-born children ought above all to learn, he said, "Those things that will benefit them once they have become men." When someone asked why the Spartiates drink little,
he said, "So that others may not deliberate on our behalf, but we on behalf of others." Leotychidas son of Ariston, to the man who told him that Demaratus's people spoke ill of him, said, "By the gods, I am not surprised — none of them could speak well of anything." When a snake coiled itself around the bolt of the nearer gate, and the seers declared it a portent, he said, "It does not seem so to me —
but if the bolt had coiled itself around the snake, that would have been a portent." To Philip, the initiator into the Orphic rites, who was utterly destitute but claimed that those he initiated are happy after the end of life, he said, "Why then, you fool, do you not die as quickly as possible, so as at once to be rid of your misery and your poverty, and stop lamenting them?" When someone asked him why they
do not dedicate to the gods the arms taken from their enemies, he said that whatever is captured because of the cowardice of its owners is not fit either for the young to look upon or to be dedicated to the gods. Leon son of Eurycratidas, asked what kind of city a man should live in to live safely, said, "One where the inhabitants own neither too much nor too little, and where justice is strong and injustice weak."
Seeing the runners at Olympia straining at the start to gain an unfair advantage, he said, "How much more eagerly do runners strive for speed than for justice!" When someone spoke at the wrong moment about matters that were not without use, he said, "Stranger, you use the right thing at the wrong time." Leonidas son of Anaxandridas, brother of Cleomenes, to one who said, "Except for being king,
you are no different from us," said, "But I would not be king at all, were I not better than you." When his wife Gorgo asked him, as he was setting out for Thermopylae to fight the Persian, whether he had any instructions for her, he said, "Marry good men, and bear good children." When the ephors said he was taking too few men to Thermopylae, he said, "Too few for the task
we are going to — but not too few for any other." And when they said again, "Have you resolved to do anything other than block the passes against the barbarians?" he said, "In word, yes; but in deed, to die for the sake of the Greeks." Once at Thermopylae, he said to his fellow soldiers, "They say the barbarian is drawing near and we are wasting time; but we must already either kill these barbarians or ourselves be ready to die." When someone said, "Because of
the barbarians' arrows, one cannot even see the sun," he said, "Then it will be pleasant, if we are to fight them in the shade." When another said, "They are close upon us," he said, "Then we too are close upon them." When someone said, "Leonidas, do you really come to risk so much against so many with so few?" he said, "If you think I rely on numbers, not even all of Greece together is enough —
for it is a small fraction of their multitude; but if I rely on courage, this number is sufficient." When another man said the same thing, he replied, "Indeed, I am bringing many men — men who are going to die." And when Xerxes wrote to him, "It is possible for you, without warring against the gods, to be arrayed at my side and to rule Greece as sole monarch," he wrote back, "If you knew the good things of life, you would refrain from coveting what belongs to others; but as for me,
...but death on behalf of Greece is better than ruling as sole monarch over my own kinsmen." Again, when Xerxes wrote, "Send me your weapons," he wrote back, "Come and take them."
When he wished to attack the enemy at once, the polemarchs told him that he ought to wait for the rest of the allies. "Why," he said, "are not those present who intend to fight? Or do you not know that it is only those who respect and fear their kings who fight against the enemy?" He ordered his soldiers to take their breakfast as men who would dine in Hades. When asked why the best men prefer a glorious death to an inglorious life, he said, "Because they consider the one to belong to nature, the other to themselves."
Wishing to save the young unmarried men, but knowing that they would not openly consent to it, he gave each of them a dispatch-staff and sent them off to the ephors. He also wished to save three of the full-grown men; but they, realizing his intent, refused to take the staffs. Of these, one said, "I came here as a fighter, not a herald." The second said, "By staying here I shall prove myself the better man." The third said, "I will not be last of these, but first to fight."
Lochagus, the father of Polyaenides and Seiron, when someone reported to him that one of his sons had died, said, "I knew long ago that he had to die."
Lycurgus the lawgiver, wishing to transform the citizens from their former way of life into a more disciplined mode of living and to make them men of true worth — for they had grown soft in their habits — raised two puppies born of the same father and mother. One he left at home and accustomed to gluttony; the other he took out and trained in hunting. Then, bringing them into the assembly, he set out scraps of food together with a hare, and released the hare as well. When each dog rushed to what it was used to, and the one caught the hare, he said, "You see, citizens, that though of the same stock, through their manner of upbringing they have turned out very different from one another, and that training proves more effective than nature in producing excellence."
But some say that the puppies he brought forward were not in fact of the same parentage, but that one was from house-dogs and the other from hunting-dogs, and that he then trained the one of inferior stock for hunting and accustomed the one of better stock only to gluttony; and that when each rushed to what it was used to, he made it clear how much training contributes to making creatures better or worse, and said, "So too, citizens, the noble birth so admired by the many, and our descent from Heracles, does us no good at all unless we do the things by which he appeared the most famous and noble of all men — by training and by learning what is good throughout the whole of life."
Having carried out a redistribution of the land and allotted an equal share to every citizen, he is said, some time later, on returning from abroad and passing through the countryside just after it had been harvested, to have seen the heaps of grain lying side by side and level, and to have been delighted, and, smiling, to have said to those present that the whole of Laconia looked like the estate of many brothers newly divided among them.
And after introducing the cancellation of debts, he also attempted to divide equally all the property held within households, so as entirely to remove inequality and unevenness. But since he saw that people would not readily accept an outright confiscation, he abolished gold and silver coinage and ordered that only iron money be used, and set a limit on how much of one's whole property could be held in exchange for it. Once this was done, all wrongdoing vanished from Lacedaemon; for no one could any longer steal, take bribes, defraud, or plunder, since such money could neither be hidden away, nor was it desirable to possess, nor safe to use, nor could it safely be brought in or taken out.
In addition to this, he also carried out an expulsion of foreigners bringing in every kind of superfluous luxury, so that no merchant, sophist, seer, or itinerant charlatan, nor any craftsman of fine furnishings, entered Sparta. For he allowed them no coinage of easy use, but only the iron kind, worth by weight an Aeginetan mina, though in purchasing power only four coppers.
And intending to attack luxury and remove the eager desire for wealth, he introduced the common messes. To those who asked why he had established these and had divided the citizens under arms into small groups, he said, "So that they may promptly receive their orders, and so that, if any of them attempt some innovation, the wrongdoing may be confined to a few." There is equal sharing of food and drink among them, so that in food or drink, or even in bedding or furnishings or anything else, the rich man has no advantage whatsoever over the poor.
Having thus made wealth an object of no envy, since no one could use it or display it, he used to say to his companions, "How fine it is, my friends, to show through one's actions what wealth truly is: blind." He also took care that no one should dine beforehand at home and then go to the common mess already full of other food or drink; the rest would reproach the man who did not eat or drink with them, as being intemperate and too soft for the common way of life, and whoever was caught doing so was punished.
Indeed, when King Agis, after a long time, had returned from a campaign — he had defeated the Athenians — and wished to dine with his wife for a single day and sent for his portion, the polemarchs did not send it; and when this became known to the ephors the next day, he was fined by them for it. The wealthy, angered by such laws, rose up against Lycurgus, reviled him, and hurled things at him, wishing to stone him to death; and as he fled, pursued, he ran through the marketplace and outran the rest of them, taking refuge in the temple of Athena of the Bronze House. But Alcander, pursuing him, as he turned around, struck out his eye with a staff.
Though this man was handed over to him by public decree for punishment, Lycurgus neither mistreated him nor reproached him, but keeping him to live with him, made him into an admirer of himself and of the way of life he shared with him, and in general a devoted lover of his discipline. In commemoration of the suffering, he founded, in the precinct of Athena of the Bronze House, a shrine of Athena, calling her Optilletis; for the Dorians there call the eyes "optiloi."
When asked why he did not make use of written laws, he said, "Because men who are educated and brought up in the proper discipline can judge for themselves what is useful in each situation." Again, when some asked why he ordered that the roofs of houses be made only with an axe, and the doors only with a saw and no other tool, he said, "So that the citizens may be moderate in all they bring into their houses, and possess nothing that is envied among other peoples."
It is said that from this custom, King Leotychidas the elder, dining once at someone's house and seeing that the ceiling was expensively and elaborately coffered, asked his host whether trees grow four-square in that country.
When asked why he forbade repeated campaigns against the same enemies, he said, "So that they, growing used to constantly defending themselves, should not become experienced in war." For this reason it was thought no small fault in Agesilaus that, by his continual invasions and campaigns into Boeotia, he made the Thebans into a match for the Lacedaemonians. Indeed, seeing him wounded, Antalcidas said, "A fine reward you are receiving, for teaching men to fight who neither wished to nor knew how."
When another asked why he trained the bodies of the girls with running, wrestling, and throwing the discus and javelin, he said, "So that the seed of those to be born, taking a strong start in strong bodies, might grow well, and that the women themselves, enduring their labor pains with strength, might contend both easily and well against their pains, and, should the need arise, might be able to fight on behalf of themselves, their children, and their fatherland."
When some found fault with the girls appearing unclothed in the processions and asked the reason, he said, "So that, practicing the same pursuits as the men, they might fall short in nothing, neither in bodily strength and health, nor in ambition and excellence of soul, and might look down on the reputation prized by the common crowd."
A similar story is told of Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas: when some foreign woman, it seems, said to her, "You Spartan women alone rule your men," she answered, "Yes, because we alone give birth to men."
And by barring unmarried men from watching the Gymnopaediae and attaching disgrace to it, he took great care over the begetting of children, and he deprived unmarried men of the honor and service that the young owed their elders. And no one found fault with what was said to Dercyllidas, though he was a distinguished general: for when he approached, one of the younger men did not yield his seat to him, saying, "You, after all, did not father a son who would yield his seat to me."
When someone asked why he made it law that girls be given in marriage without dowries, he said, "So that some might not remain unmarried for lack of means, nor be sought after for their wealth, but that each man, looking to the girl's character, might make his choice on the basis of merit." For this reason too he banished cosmetic adornment from the city.
And when he had also fixed the proper age for both brides and bridegrooms, he told the one who asked about it that it was "so that children born might be strong, being born of parents in their prime."
To the man who wondered why he prevented a married man from sleeping with his wife, and instead ordered him to spend most of the day with his age-mates and to rest with them all through the night, being with his bride only secretly and with discretion, he said, "So that they may be strong in body, not growing sated with one another, and remain ever fresh in their affection, and produce hardier offspring."
And he banished perfume as a corruption and ruin of oil, and dyeing as a flattery of the senses, and made Sparta inaccessible to all craftsmen of bodily adornment, on the grounds that they debased their crafts through bad workmanship. Such was the chastity of the women in those days, and so far removed were they from the later looseness concerning them, that it was, until then, unthinkable that adultery could occur among them.
And a saying is recorded of a certain Geradas, one of the very ancient Spartans, who, when asked by a foreigner what happened to adulterers among them — since the foreigner saw nothing legislated on the matter by Lycurgus — replied, "Stranger, no one becomes an adulterer among us." And when the man rejoined, "But if one should?" Geradas said, "He pays a bull so large that, stretching up over Taygetus, it can drink from the Eurotas."
And when the man, astonished, said, "But how could there be so huge an ox?" Geradas laughed and said, "How, indeed, could there be an adulterer in Sparta, where wealth, luxury, and personal adornment are held in dishonor, while modesty, good order, and obedience to one's leaders are held in the highest esteem?"
To the man who demanded that a democracy be established in the city, Lycurgus said, "You first make a democracy in your own house."
When someone asked why he ordered the sacrifices to the gods to be so small and inexpensive, he said, "So that we may never fail to honor the divine." Since he permitted the citizens to compete only in those contests in which the hand is not raised in surrender, someone asked the reason; and he said, "So that none of them might become accustomed to giving up under exertion."
When someone asked why he ordered frequent changes of camp, he said, "So that we may do more harm to our enemies." When another asked why he forbade siege warfare against walls, he said, "So that our best men should not be killed by some woman, or child, or similarly insignificant person."
To Thebans who consulted him about the sacred rite and the mourning that they perform for Leucothea, he advised, "If you consider her a goddess, do not mourn her; if a mortal woman, do not perform sacred rites for her as though she were a god."
To citizens who asked, "How might we ward off an invasion of our enemies?" he said, "By remaining poor, and by not letting one man claim to be greater than another." And again, when some asked about city walls, he said that "no city is unwalled which is crowned with men rather than with bricks."
The Spartans also took care of their hair, recalling a saying of Lycurgus on the subject, that it makes handsome men more comely and ugly men more terrifying. He instructed that, in war, once they had routed and defeated an enemy, they should pursue only far enough to secure the victory, and then withdraw at once, declaring that it was neither noble nor Greek to slaughter those who had given way, but rather that such men should be spared.
This was not only honorable and magnanimous but also useful: for those fighting against them, knowing that the Spartans spared those who yielded but killed those who stood their ground, would judge that fleeing was more advantageous than standing fast. And when someone asked why he forbade the despoiling of the enemy dead, he said, "So that men, busying themselves over the spoils, should not neglect the battle, but should preserve their poverty along with their discipline" —
Lysander, when Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily sent expensive robes for his daughters, would not accept them, saying he feared that on account of them the girls would appear all the more unattractive. Yet a little later, sent as ambassador to the same tyrant from the same city, when Dionysius sent him two robes and told him to choose whichever he wished and bring it to his daughter, he said that she herself would choose better, and taking both, he departed.
Lysander, who had become a formidable sophist and embellished most of his affairs with deceptions, holding that justice consists solely in advantage and honor in expediency, used to say that truth is better than falsehood, but that the worth and value of each is determined by its usefulness.
To those who blamed him for accomplishing most of his business by trickery rather than by direct, straightforward success, as unworthy of Heracles, he laughed and said that where the lion's skin does not reach, one must sew on the fox's. When others reproached him for the oaths he had broken, which he had sworn at Miletus, he said, "Boys are to be deceived with knucklebones, men with oaths."
And having defeated the Athenians by an ambush at Aegospotami and pressing them with famine, he brought the city to submission, and wrote to the ephors, "Athens is taken."
And to the Argives, who were disputing with the Lacedaemonians about boundary lines and claiming that they had the more just case, he drew his sword and said, "He who holds this speaks best about boundary lines."
Seeing that the Boeotians were wavering as he marched through their country, he sent men to ask whether he should pass through with spears upright, or
...with spears upright or leveled, as he marched through their country. When a man of Megara spoke to him with frankness in a public assembly, he said, ‘Stranger, your words need a city behind them.’ When the Corinthians had revolted and he was passing along their walls and saw the Spartans hesitating to attack, and a hare was seen leaping across the ditch, he said, ‘Are you not ashamed, Spartans, to fear enemies of such a sort that hares sleep undisturbed beside their walls out of sheer idleness?’
In Samothrace, when he was seeking an oracle, the priest bade him tell what was the most lawless deed he had done in his life. So he asked, ‘Must I do this at your bidding, or at the gods’?’ When the priest said, ‘At the gods’,’ he said, ‘Then get out of my way, and I will tell them, if they ask.’
When a Persian asked him what constitution he most approved, he said, ‘One that assigns to the brave and to the cowardly what is fitting for each.’ To one who said that he praised him and greeted him with excessive affection, he said, ‘I have two oxen in my field; though both are silent, I know precisely which is idle and which does the work.’ When someone reviled him, he said, ‘Keep talking, my little stranger, keep talking and leave nothing out, if you can empty your soul of the evils of which you seem to be full.’
Some time later, after Lysander's death, a dispute arose among the allies, and Agesilaus went to Lysander's house to examine the papers concerning it, for Lysander had kept these in his own possession. There he found a book written by Lysander concerning the constitution, arguing that the kingship ought to be taken from the Eurypontids and the Agiads and put up for general decision, the choice being made from the best men, so that the honor should belong not to the descendants of Heracles, but to whoever, like Heracles, was judged by virtue — the very quality by which Heracles himself had been raised to honors among the gods. He was eager to publish this speech to the citizens, to show what sort of citizen Lysander had secretly been, and to discredit Lysander's friends. But they say that Lacratidas, who was then presiding over the ephors, fearing that the speech, once read aloud, might prove persuasive, restrained Agesilaus and told him that Lysander ought not to be dug up again, but that the speech ought to be buried along with him, composed as it was with such cunning and persuasive skill.
As for those who had become engaged to Lysander's daughters and then, after his death, when he was found to be poor, broke off the engagements, the ephors fined them, because, while they had courted him thinking him rich, once his poverty revealed him to be just and honest they had despised him.
Namertes, sent as an ambassador, when someone there congratulated him on having many friends, asked whether the man had any test by which one of many friends is tried; and when the other pressed to learn it, he said, ‘Misfortune.’
Nicander, when someone said that the Argives spoke ill of him, said, ‘Then they are paying the penalty for speaking ill of good men.’ And when someone asked why they wore their hair long and grew their beards, he said, ‘Because a man's own natural adornment is of all the finest and the least costly.’ When one of the Athenians said, ‘You Spartans, Nicander, cling too much to leisure,’ he said, ‘You speak the truth — but we are not busy, as you are, about whatever happens to come along.’
Panthoedas, on an embassy to Asia, when they showed him a strong fortification wall, said, ‘By the gods, strangers, what a fine women's chamber!’ And in the Academy, when the philosophers were discussing many serious matters, and afterward they asked Panthoedas what he thought of these arguments, he said, ‘What else but serious? Yet they are of no use, if you do not put them into practice.’
Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, when the Delians were pleading their case about the island against the Athenians, and saying that by their own law women do not give birth on the island and the dead are not buried there, said, ‘How then could this be your fatherland, in which none of you has been born and none will be?’ When exiles urged him to lead his army against the Athenians, saying that when he was proclaimed victor at the Olympic games they alone had hissed him, he said, ‘What then do you suppose men who hissed me when they were prospering will do, now that they are faring badly?’ When someone asked why they made the poet Tyrtaeus a citizen, he said, ‘So that our leader might never appear to be a foreigner.’ To a man weak in body who advised risking battle against the enemy both by land and by sea, he said, ‘Will you then strip and show us what sort of man you are, you who advise us how to fight?’
When some men marveled at the costliness of the barbarians' clothing among the spoils, he said, ‘Better that men themselves be worth much than that they possess things worth much.’ After the victory over the Medes at Plataea, he ordered his attendants to set out the Persian dinner that had been prepared beforehand; and when this proved to be of astonishing extravagance, he said, ‘By the gods, the Persian was a glutton, to come after our barley-cake when he had all this!’
Pausanias, son of Pleistoanax, to one who asked why it was not permitted among them to alter any of the ancient laws, said, ‘Because the laws must be masters of the men, not the men masters of the laws.’ When, in exile at Tegea, he was praising the Spartans, someone said, ‘Why then did you not stay in Sparta instead of going into exile?’ He said, ‘Because physicians too are accustomed to spend their time not among the healthy, but where the sick are.’
When someone asked him how they might be able to defeat the Thracians, he said, ‘If we appoint the best man as general.’ When a physician visited him and said, ‘You have nothing wrong with you,’ he said, ‘No — for I am not using you as my physician.’ When one of his friends reproached him for speaking ill of a certain physician, though he had had no experience of him and had suffered no wrong from him, he said, ‘Because if I had had experience of him, I would not be alive.’ When the physician said to him, ‘You have grown old,’ he said, ‘That is because I did not employ you as my physician.’ He used to say that the best physician was one who did not let the sick rot away slowly, but buried them as quickly as possible.
Paedaretus, when someone said that the enemy were many, said, ‘Then we shall be all the more glorious, for we shall kill more of them.’ Seeing a man who was soft by nature but was praised by the citizens for his gentleness, he said, ‘One ought not to praise men who are like women, nor women who are like men, unless some need overtakes the woman.’ When he was not chosen among the Three Hundred, the rank that held the foremost honor in the city, he went away cheerful and smiling; and when the ephors called him back and asked why he was laughing, he said, ‘Because I am glad on the city's behalf, that it has three hundred citizens better than I am.’
Pleistarchus, son of Leonidas, to one who asked why they were not named after the first kings, said, ‘Because those men needed to lead or to be kings, whereas their successors have no such need at all.’ When a certain advocate kept saying ridiculous things, he said, ‘Will you not take care, stranger, by joking constantly, not to become ridiculous yourself — just as those who wrestle constantly become mere wrestlers?’ To one who was imitating a nightingale, he said, ‘Stranger, I would rather listen to the nightingale itself.’ When someone said that a certain slanderer had praised him, he said, ‘I am amazed no one has told him that I am dead — for that man cannot speak well of anyone while he is alive.’
Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias, when a certain Attic orator called the Spartans uneducated, said, ‘You speak truly — for we alone of the Greeks have learned nothing bad from you.’
Polydorus, son of Alcamenes, when someone kept making frequent threats against his enemies, said, ‘Do you not realize that you are using up most of your vengeance beforehand?’ When he was leading his army out against Messene, someone asked whether he intended to fight against his brothers, and he said, ‘No — I am marching against the part of the country that has not yet been allotted.’ Again, after the Argives had been utterly defeated in the pitched battle of the Three Hundred, the allies urged Polydorus not to let the opportunity slip, but to advance upon the enemy's wall and take the city, since it would be very easy now that the men had perished and only the women were left. But he said to them, ‘To conquer my opponents by fighting on equal terms, that I hold to be honorable; but having fought only for the boundaries of our territory, to desire also to seize their city — that I do not consider just, for I came to recover land, not to capture a city.’ When asked why the Spartans face danger bravely in war, he said, ‘Because they have learned to respect their commanders, not to fear them.’
Polycratidas, on an embassy to the King's generals along with others, when they were asked whether they had come in a private or a public capacity, said, ‘If we succeed, publicly; if not, privately.’
Phoebidas, before the peril at Leuctra, when some said that this day would reveal the brave man, said that the day was worth a great deal, since it had the power to reveal the brave man.
Soüs, it is said, when besieged in a harsh and waterless place by the Cleitorians, agreed to relinquish to them the land he had won by the spear, on condition that all his men with him should drink from the nearby spring — which the enemy was guarding. When the oaths had been sworn, he gathered his men and offered the kingship to whoever did not drink; but no one held out, and all drank. He himself, however, came down last of all, only sprinkled himself with the water while the enemy still stood by, and then went away and kept possession of the land, on the ground that he had not drunk.
Teleclus, to one who said that his father spoke ill of him, said, ‘If he did not have reason to say it, he would not say it.’ When his brother said that the citizens did not treat him in the same way as they treated him, though they were of the same stock, but rather more inconsiderately, he said, ‘That is because you do not know how to be wronged, and I do.’ When asked why it was the custom among them for the young to rise before their elders, he said, ‘So that, by showing such respect toward those who are not their kin, they may honor their own parents all the more.’ When someone asked how much property he possessed, he said, ‘No more than is sufficient.’
Charillus, when asked why Lycurgus made so few laws, said, ‘Because men of few words have need of few laws too.’ When someone asked why they lead unmarried girls out in public unveiled but married women veiled, he said, ‘Because the girls still need to find husbands, while the married women need to keep the ones they have.’ When one of the helots behaved too insolently toward him, he said, ‘If I were not angry, I would kill you.’ When someone asked him what constitution he considered best, he said, ‘One in which the greatest number of citizens are willing to compete with one another in virtue, without civil strife.’ When someone asked why all their images of the gods were set up armed, he said, ‘So that we may never transfer to the gods the reproaches made against men for cowardice, and so that the young may never pray to the gods unarmed.’ To one who asked why they wore their hair long, he said, ‘Because among adornments, this one is natural and costs nothing.’
To Samian envoys who spoke at excessive length, the Spartans said, ‘We have forgotten the beginning, and we did not understand the end, because we had forgotten the beginning.’ When an orator drew out a long speech and asked for their answer so that he might report it to his citizens, they said, ‘Then report this: that you barely managed to stop talking, and we barely managed to keep listening.’ To the Thebans, who were disputing certain points with them, they said, ‘One must either think less of oneself, or have greater power.’
A Spartan, asked why he grew the hairs of his beard so long, said, ‘So that, seeing the white hairs, I may do nothing unworthy of them.’ Another, when someone asked, ‘Why do you use short daggers?’, said, ‘So that we may come to close quarters with the enemy.’ When someone was praising certain men as the best fighters, a Spartan said, ‘At Troy.’ Another, hearing that some men who had already dined were being forced to drink, said, ‘Are they also forced to eat?’ When Pindar wrote, ‘Athens, bulwark of Greece,’ a Spartan said that Greece would surely collapse, resting on such a bulwark as that. When someone, seeing in a painted panel Spartans being slaughtered by Athenians, said, ‘Brave men, these Athenians!’, a Spartan retorted, ‘In the painting, yes.’
To a man who kept lending an ear to slanderous accusations, a Spartan said, ‘Stop supplying your ears against me.’ To a man being punished who said, ‘I sinned unwillingly,’ someone said, ‘Then be punished unwillingly too.’ Someone, seeing men sitting on stools in a latrine, said, ‘May it never be my lot to sit in a place from which one cannot rise up for an elder.’
Once, when some Chians on a visit vomited after dinner in the ephors' hall and fouled the seats where the ephors themselves sat, at first the Spartans searched vigorously for the culprits, in case they should turn out to be citizens; but when they learned that they were Chians, they issued a proclamation that Chians were permitted to behave outrageously. When someone saw hard almonds being sold at double the price, he said, ‘Are stones so scarce, then?’ Someone, having plucked a nightingale and finding very little flesh on it, said, ‘You are a voice, and nothing else.’
One of the Spartans, seeing Diogenes the Cynic embracing a bronze statue when it was bitterly cold, asked him if he was cold; and when Diogenes denied it, he said, ‘Then what great thing are you doing?’ A man of Metapontum, reproached for cowardice by a Spartan, said, ‘And yet we hold no small share of other people's land.’ The Spartan replied, ‘Then you are not only cowards but unjust as well.’
A visitor to Sparta, lacing his sandal while standing upright on one leg, said to a Spartan, ‘I do not think you, Spartan, could stand on one foot as long as I can.’ The Spartan replied, ‘No indeed — but then, there is not a single goose that cannot.’ When someone was extolling himself for his skill in rhetoric, a Spartan said, ‘But by the twin gods, there neither is nor ever shall be an art that has laid hold of anything apart from truth.’
When an Argive once said, ‘Among us there are many graves of Spartans,’ a Spartan said, ‘But among us there is not a single grave of an Argive’ — meaning that they themselves had often set foot on Argive soil, while the Argives had never set foot on Spartan soil. A Spartan, taken captive and put up for sale, when the auctioneer announced, ‘I am selling a Spartan,’ silenced him by saying, ‘Cry me as a prisoner of war.’
One of the men serving as soldiers under Lysimachus, when he asked him whether he was one of the helots, said, ‘Do you really suppose that a Spartan would come to serve for your four obols a day?’ When the Thebans, having defeated the Spartans at Leuctra, came right up to the Eurotas, and someone boasted, ‘Where are the Spartans now?’, a Spartan who had been taken captive by them said, ‘They are not here — for otherwise you...
...came here." When the Athenians, after surrendering their city, asked to be allowed to keep only Samos, they said, "When you did not have even yourselves, do you now seek to have others too?" From this comes the proverb: "he who does not possess himself wants to have Samos."
When the Lacedaemonians took a city by force, the ephors said, "The wrestling-ground of the young men is gone; the young men will no longer have opponents." When the king of another city — one which had often caused trouble for the Spartans — promised to destroy it utterly, they would not allow it, saying, "By no means destroy or remove the whetstone of the young men."
They did not set trainers over the wrestlers, so that rivalry should arise not from skill but from courage. That is why Lysander too, when asked how Charon had beaten him, said, "By his resourcefulness."
When Philip wrote, on arriving in their country, to ask whether he should come to them as friend or enemy, they answered, "Neither."
Having sent an envoy to Antigonus, son of Demetrius, when they learned that he had addressed him as "king," they fined him — even though he was bringing each of them a bushel of wheat from Antigonus during a famine. When Demetrius complained that they had sent only one envoy to him, they said, "Is not one enough, when sent to one?"
When someone offered excellent advice but was himself a wicked man, they accepted the advice, but took it from him and credited it instead to another man who had lived well.
When brothers were quarreling with one another, they fined the father, because he allowed his sons to be at odds. They fined a lyre-player who had come to live among them, because he played the cithara with his fingers.
Two boys were fighting, and one wounded the other with a sickle, a mortal blow. When the wounded boy's companions, as they were about to be separated, promised to avenge him and kill the one who had struck him, he said, "By no means, in the gods' name — for it would not be just; I too would have done this, had I been quicker and proven the better man."
Another boy, when the season came in which it was customary for free boys to steal whatever they could, and it was shameful only to be caught, stole a live fox cub together with the boys who were with him and gave it to him to guard. When those who had lost it came looking for it, he happened to have hidden the cub under his cloak; and though the animal grew savage and tore into his side as far as his entrails, he kept still, so as not to be found out. Afterward, when those men had left and his companions saw what had happened and blamed him, saying it would have been better to show the fox cub than to hide it until death, he said,
"Not at all — better to die without yielding to the pain than to save one's life shamefully by being exposed through weakness."
Some people who met Spartans on the road said, "You are in luck — robbers just left this spot." They replied, "No, by Enyalius — rather, it is they who are lucky not to have met us." A Spartan, asked what he knew, said, "How to be free."
A Spartan boy, taken captive by King Antigonus and sold, was obedient to his purchaser in everything he thought fit for a free man to do; but when the man ordered him to carry a chamber pot, he would not bear it, saying, "I will not be a slave." When the man insisted, the boy climbed onto the roof and said, "You will learn the value of your purchase," then threw himself down and died.
Another, being sold, when someone said, "If I buy you, will you be useful?" replied, "Even if you do not buy me." Another captive, being sold, when the herald announced that he was selling "a slave," said, "Damn you — say 'a prisoner of war.'"
A Spartan had a fly as the device on his shield, and one no bigger than a real fly; when some mocked him, saying he had done this so as not to be noticed, he said, "No — so that I may be seen; for I approach the enemy so closely that they can see how big my device is."
Another, when a lyre was passed around at a symposium, said, "It is not Laconian to play the fool."
A Spartan, asked whether the road to Sparta was safe, said, "That depends on how you sit: for lions go wherever they please, but we hunt hares from where we sit."
In a wrestling match, when his opponent kept striking idly around his neck and dragging him to the ground, since the man who had fallen upon him outmatched him in strength, he bit his arm; and the other said, "You bite, Spartan, like the women." "No," said the first, "but like the lions."
A lame man going out to war, when some followed him mocking and laughing, turned and said, "Wretched fellows, one must fight the enemy not by running, but by standing firm and holding one's post."
Another, shot with an arrow and dying, said that what troubled him was not that he was going to die, but that he had been killed by an effeminate archer without having accomplished anything.
Someone who had put up at an inn and given meat to the innkeeper to prepare, when the innkeeper asked also for cheese and oil, said, "Well, if I had had cheese, would I still have needed meat?"
To someone who called Lampis the Aeginetan blessed, because he seemed to be the richest man, owning many merchant ships, a Spartan said, "I have no regard for prosperity that hangs from ropes."
When someone told a Spartan he was lying, he answered, "We are free men; but the others, if they do not speak the truth, will pay for it." When someone proposed to set a corpse upright, and though he tried every way could not, he said, "By the two gods, there must be something missing inside."
Tynnichus, when his son Thrasybulus died, bore it with fortitude; and an epigram was made about it: "Thrasybulus came to Pitana on his shield, without breath, having received seven wounds from the Argives, showing them all in front. And the old man Tynnichus, laying his bloodied son on the pyre, said this: 'Let cowards be wept for — but you, my child, I will bury without tears, you who were mine and Sparta's alike.'"
When a bath attendant poured a great deal of water over Alcibiades the Athenian, a Spartan said, "Why so much, as if for a clean man? You should pour more on someone truly filthy."
When Philip of Macedon commanded something by letter, the Lacedaemonians wrote back, "Concerning what you wrote to us — no." When he invaded Laconia and everyone thought they would be destroyed, he said to one of the Spartans, "What will you do now, Spartans?" "What else," the man replied, "than die bravely? For we alone of the Greeks have learned to be free and not to obey others."
After the defeat at Agis' hands, when Antipater demanded fifty boys as hostages, Eteocles, then ephor, said they would not give the boys, lest they grow up untrained in their ancestral discipline and so fail to become citizens; but they would give twice as many old men or women instead, if he wished. When Antipater threatened terrible things if he did not receive them, they answered together, "If you impose things harsher than death, we will die all the more readily."
An old man at Olympia, eager to watch the contest in progress, could not find a seat; and going about to many places, he was insulted and mocked, no one making room for him. But when he came to where the Lacedaemonians sat, all the boys stood up, and many of the men too, giving up their place. When the assembled Greeks marked this custom with applause and praised it highly, the old man, shaking his gray head and gray beard, and weeping, said, "Alas for the troubles of Greece —
all the Greeks know what is right, but only the Lacedaemonians practice it." Some say the same thing happened at Athens too: for during the Panathenaea the Athenians mistreated an old man, calling him over as if to give him a seat, but then, when he came, not receiving him; and as he passed through nearly everyone and reached the seats of the Lacedaemonian envoys, all of them rose from their benches and made way for him.
The crowd, admiring what had happened, applauded with great approval, and one of the Spartans said, "By the two gods, the Athenians know what is right, but they do not do it."
A beggar asked a Spartan for alms; he said, "But if I give to you, you will only beg the more; and the man who first gave to you is responsible for this disgrace of yours, since he made you idle." A Spartan, seeing someone collecting money for the gods, said, "I pay no heed to gods poorer than myself."
Someone who caught an adulterer with an ugly woman said, "Wretch, what compulsion drove you to it?" Another, hearing an orator turning out long, elaborate periods, said, "By the two gods, the man is bold indeed — he twists his tongue so skillfully around nothing at all."
Someone who came to Lacedaemon and saw the honor shown by the young toward their elders said, "Only in Sparta does it pay to grow old." A Spartan, asked what sort of poet Tyrtaeus was, said, "Good at kindling the souls of the young."
Another, suffering from his eyes, went out to war nonetheless; and when some said to him, "Where are you going in this state, and what will you accomplish?" he said, "Even if I do nothing else, I will blunt an enemy's sword."
Bulis and Sperthias, Lacedaemonians, went of their own will to Xerxes, king of the Persians, to pay the penalty which Lacedaemon owed by oracle, because they had killed heralds sent to them by the Persian king. Coming before Xerxes, they bade him deal with them however he wished on behalf of the Lacedaemonians. He, admiring them, released the men and asked them to remain with him. "And how could we live here," they said, "having abandoned our fatherland and its laws, and these men, for whose sake we have come so long a way to die?"
When the general Hydarnes pressed them further, saying they would receive honor equal to the king's closest and most favored friends, they said, "You seem not to understand what freedom is worth — no man of sense would exchange it for the kingdom of Persia."
A Spartan, since on the previous day his host had turned him away but on the next day received him lavishly with rich bedding, stepped onto the bedding and trampled it, remarking that it was because of things like this that he had not even slept on a mat the day before.
Another, coming to Athens and seeing the Athenians auctioning off salt fish and other provisions, collecting taxes, running brothels, and doing other shameful things without regarding any of it as disgraceful — when he returned to his own country and his fellow citizens asked him what things were like at Athens, he said, "All fine" — speaking ironically, and implying that at Athens everything is considered fine, and nothing shameful.
Another, asked about something, answered "No." When the questioner said, "You are lying," he replied, "Then you see how foolish you are, to ask about things you already know."
Some Spartans once came on an embassy to Lygdamis the tyrant; and when he kept postponing their meeting again and again, and someone remarked that in the end he was simply being weak about the whole matter, the envoys said, "Tell him that, by the gods, we have not come to wrestle with him, but to talk with him."
Someone initiating a Spartan into the mysteries asked him what was the most impious thing he was conscious of having done. He said, "The gods know." When the man pressed him further, saying, "You must tell me at all costs," the Spartan asked in return, "Must I tell it to you, or to the god?" And when the man said, "To the god," he said, "Then you may leave."
Another, passing a tomb at night and imagining he saw some apparition, charged at it, thrusting with his spear, and driving it home said, "Where are you fleeing from me, soul twice dead?"
Another, having vowed to throw himself from the Leucadian cliff, climbed up but turned back on seeing the height; when reproached for it, he said, "I did not think my vow needed a greater vow to carry it out."
Another, in battle, was about to bring his sword down on an enemy, but when the recall was sounded, he did not strike. When someone asked why, having his enemy at his mercy, he had not killed him, he said, "Because it is better to obey one's commander than to kill."
To someone defeated at Olympia, a man said, "Spartan, your opponent proved stronger than you." "No," he replied, "but better at throwing."

======== Moralia: Aquane An Ignis Sit Utilior ========

Water is best," says Pindar, while another poet calls blazing fire "golden"; so that this latter poet gave second place outright to fire. Hesiod agrees when he says, "Verily first of all came Chaos into being"; for most people think he named water this way, from the word for "pouring." But the testimony on each side is equal, since there are also those who declare fire to be the origin of the universe, holding that it is, as it were, a seed which makes all things out of itself and takes them back into itself at the conflagration. Let us leave these men aside, then, and consider which way the arguments on each side lead us.
Is it not, then, more useful, that of which we always and continually and most of all stand in need, as of a tool and instrument, and which, by Zeus, is present and ready as a friend at every season and every occasion? Fire, indeed, is not always useful; there are times when we find it burdensome and draw away from it. But the need of water is present both in winter and in summer, for the sick and for the healthy, by night and by day, and there is no time when a person does not need it. Indeed, people call the dead "alibantes" ("unmoistened"), as being in want of moisture — that is, of wetness — and it is on this account that those deprived of life are so called.
And there were many things without fire, but a human being never without water. Moreover, what is present from the beginning, together with the first origin of humankind, is more useful than what was discovered later; for it is clear that nature gave what is truly necessary, while art and a kind of contrivance discovered what serves mere abundance of use. As for water, one cannot say a time when it did not belong to human beings, nor is any discoverer of it named among gods or heroes — for it existed as soon as they came into being, and its very existence supplied it to them. But the use of fire, they say, is recent, dating from only yesterday, brought by Prometheus. Life existed with fire, but not without water. And that this story is not the invention of a poet is shown by
the way we ourselves live: for there are certain races of human beings who make their way of life without fire, houseless, hearthless, and living in the open air; and Diogenes the Cynic made the least possible use of fire, so that when he once swallowed an octopus raw he said, "For your sake, gentlemen, I am taking this risk." But without water no one has considered it either good or even possible to live. And why should I labor over trifling details in surveying the nature of human beings? For
among the many — indeed countless — races of living things, that of human beings is nearly alone in knowing the use of fire, while the rest live and are fed on diets without fire: grazing creatures, flying creatures, creeping creatures, all living on roots and fruits and flesh without fire. But without water nothing lives, neither creature of the sea nor of the land nor of the air; for even the flesh-eating animals, some of which Aristotle says do not drink,
nonetheless survive by using the moisture within their food. This, then, is more useful — that without which no form of life exists or endures. Let us pass on from the users to the things we use: plants and fruits. Of these, some partake not at all of heat, and some very little and imperceptibly; but the wet nature supplies all growing things, as they increase and bear fruit and
— why should I go on listing wine and oil and all the rest that we gather in the grape harvest and milk and gather as honey, lying there in plain sight, seeing that even fire, though thought to belong to dry nourishment, comes about through the change and decay and dissolution of moisture? Moreover, that is more useful which never does harm. Fire, then, when it runs loose, is most destructive, whereas the nature of water
is never harmful. Furthermore, of two things the more beneficial is the one that is cheaper and supplies its benefit from itself without need of any preparation. Now the benefit that comes from fire requires provision and fuel; for this reason the rich share in it more than the poor, kings more than private citizens. But water has this humane quality too, equality, likeness; for it needs no tools or instruments — it is a self-sufficient, complete
good. Furthermore, that which loses its benefit when multiplied is less useful; such is fire, a kind of all-devouring, ravenous beast that consumes what lies near it, and is beneficial more by method and skill and moderation than by its own nature; but water is never a thing to be feared. Moreover, of two things the one that is useful along with the other is more useful. Fire, then, does not admit the wet, nor is it useful in combination with it,
whereas water is beneficial even along with fire; at any rate hot springs are healing and readily responsive to treatment. One could never find fire that is wet, but water, just as it is beneficial when cold, is likewise beneficial to a human being when hot. Moreover, though there are four elements, water has of itself made the sea into a fifth element, so to speak,
no less beneficial than those others, both for other reasons and especially for the intermingling it produces; for although our life was wild and without common bond, this element joined it together and made it complete, correcting it through mutual aid and exchange, and creating fellowship and friendship. Heraclitus, then, says, "If there were no sun, there would be night"; and one may likewise say that if
there were no sea, the human being would be the wildest and most destitute of all creatures. As it is, the sea has given the Greeks the vine from the Indians, and to the peoples beyond the sea the use of the fruits of Greece; from Phoenicia it brought letters, as reminders against forgetfulness, and it kept the greater part of humankind from being wineless and fruitless and uneducated. How, then, is water not more useful,
being superabundant in this element? Or might someone argue from this very point to the opposite conclusion? Because there are four elements lying subject to god, like a craftsman, for the working of the universe, and among these, again, there is a difference from one another: earth and water are laid down like matter, being shaped and molded and sharing in order and arrangement, and in producing and generating, they say, only to the extent that they receive a share
from the others — namely from wind and fire, which do the making and the crafting, and which raise up into generation what had lain there dead until then. And of these two, again, fire rules and takes the lead. This is clear from the following: earth without the substance of heat is barren and fruitless, while fire, molten and diffusing, presents itself as eager for generation — for one could find no cause
why barren rocks and the parched parts of mountains are barren for everyone, except that they have no share of fire at all, or only a little. And in general water is so far from being self-sufficient for preservation or for the generation of other things that its very own destruction is the lack of fire; for heat holds each thing together in its being and preserves it in its own substance,
just as it does water among other things too; but when heat withdraws and fails, water rots, and death and destruction for water is the failing of heat. Indeed, standing waters and marshy pools, and certain waters lying in hollows with no outlet, are foul and eventually rot from having least share in motion — the very thing which, by fanning the heat in each thing, preserves it — whereas among the most moving and flowing of waters,
because the heat is sustained through the motion, we accordingly speak of them as "living." How, then, is it not more beneficial, of two things, the one that has supplied the other with its very cause of being — as fire has done for water? Moreover, that whose complete removal destroys the living creature is clearly more beneficial; for it is plain that that whose privation makes existence impossible is the thing that supplied the cause of existence, when
it existed. Now moisture, indeed, is present even in the dead and is not entirely removed, since otherwise dead bodies would not rot, decay being a change into the wet from the dry, or rather a destruction of the wet elements within the flesh. But death is nothing other than the complete failure of heat; the dead, accordingly, are the coldest of things; and if one tries it, the edges
of razors are blunted by the extreme coldness of corpses. And within the living creature itself, the parts that share least in fire are the least sensitive, such as bones and hairs and the parts farthest removed from the heart; for the difference produced by the absence of fire is generally greater than that produced by its presence. As for plants and fruits, it is not moisture that brings them forth but warm moisture;
indeed, cold waters are less fruitful, or not fruitful at all. And yet, if water were fruitful by its own nature, it ought always and by itself to bring forth fruit; but the opposite is true, and it is actually harmful. To begin from another point: for the use of fire as fire, we have no need of water — on the contrary, water becomes an obstacle, for it quenches and destroys fire. But water,
for most of its uses, cannot be used without fire; for when heated it becomes more beneficial, and cold, it is harmful. So that of the two, the one that supplies its usefulness from itself, without need of the other, is better. Furthermore, water is beneficial in only one way, by contact — for those who bathe or wash — whereas fire benefits through every sense; for it is perceived both by touch and, from a distance, by sight, so that its usefulness extends to others beyond
itself, and even its extravagance is felt at a distance. For to say that a human being could at some time exist entirely without fire is simply impossible. There are differences within a single class, just as there are among different things. And it was heat that made the sea more beneficial, as being the warmer part of waters, since otherwise, taken by itself, it would not differ from the rest. And even those creatures that do not need
fire from outside are not in this state because they lack it, but because of an abundance and excess of heat within themselves; so that on this count too the usefulness of fire proves superior, as one would expect. Water is never so self-sufficient as to have no need of things outside itself, whereas fire, through great excellence, is even self-sufficient; just as the better general is the one who has made his city need no
allies from outside, so too is the element superior that often supplies outside help without itself needing any. This same argument should be made about the other animals too, as many as have no need of fire. And yet one might take the opposite view — that the more useful thing is the one that we alone use, we who are especially able to grasp the better by reasoning; for what is more useful to human beings, or more
profitable, than reason? But the irrational creatures do not have it. What then? Is a thing, for that reason, less beneficial when it is discovered through the foresight of what is better? And since it is by reason that we have come to this point, what is more profitable to life than skill and craft? And fire both discovered and preserves every craft; for this reason they make Hephaestus their founder. Moreover, since only a short span of time and life is given to human beings,
Ariston says that sleep, like a toll-collector, takes away half of it; but I would say rather that this is why darkness stays perpetually awake through the night, and yet there is no benefit from that wakefulness, unless fire supplied us with the good things of day and removed the difference between day and night. If, then, nothing is more profitable to human beings than life itself, and fire
multiplies this many times over, how could it not be the most beneficial of all things? And moreover, would not that of which the mixture is shared most by the senses be most profitable? Do you not see, then, that the wet nature is not used by any of the senses in itself, without breath or fire mingled in, while of fire every sense partakes, since it produces, as it were, the very vital force, and above all
sight, which is the sharpest of the senses that work through the body, being a kindling of fire, and which has furnished proof of the gods; and further, as Plato says, we are able through sight to bring our soul into conformity with the motions of the heavenly bodies.

======== Moralia: Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti ========

ODYSSEUS: These things, Circe, I think I have learned and shall remember. But I would gladly ask you whether among these creatures you have any Greeks, men whom you have turned from human beings into wolves and lions. CIRCE: Many indeed, my longed-for Odysseus. But why do you ask this? ODYSSEUS: Because, by Zeus, it seems to me it would be a fine ambition toward the Greeks, if by your favor I could take these men and restore them once more to their human companions, and not stand by and watch them grow old, contrary to nature, in the bodies of beasts, living a life so pitiable and dishonored.
CIRCE: This man thinks that his ambition ought to become a misfortune not only for himself and his companions, but even for those who have nothing to do with him — out of sheer foolishness. ODYSSEUS: Now you are stirring up another such brew of words, Circe, and drugging me besides — quite simply turning me into a beast myself, if I am to be persuaded that it is a misfortune for a man to become a human being out of a beast. CIRCE: Have you not already done things stranger than these — you, who abandoned the deathless and ageless life with me for a mortal woman, and, as I say, an already-aging one, and through countless further troubles you hasten on, so that you may become, from this, still more looked-upon and celebrated than you are now, pursuing an empty good and a phantom instead of the truth?
ODYSSEUS: Let that be as you say, Circe. Why should we quarrel so often over the same matters? But release these men for me and grant them to me. CIRCE: Not so simply, by Hecate — for they are not just anyone's to give. Rather, ask them first whether they wish it. And if they say no, then argue with them, noble sir, and persuade them; but if you fail to persuade them, and instead they get the better of you in argument, let that be proof enough of how badly you have counseled both yourself and your friends. ODYSSEUS: Why do you mock me, blessed one? For how could these creatures either give an account or receive one, so long as they are asses and swine and lions? CIRCE: Take courage,
most ambitious of men — I will provide you with beings who both understand and can converse; or rather, one alone will suffice, both to give and to receive an account on behalf of all. Here, speak with this one. ODYSSEUS: And what shall we call him, Circe? Or who was this man among men? CIRCE: What has that to do with the argument? But call him, if you like, Gryllus. I shall withdraw from the two of you, lest it seem to him that he is arguing to please me against his own judgment.
GRYLLUS: Greetings, Odysseus. ODYSSEUS: And to you, by Zeus, Gryllus. GRYLLUS: What do you wish to ask? ODYSSEUS: Knowing that you have been human beings, I pity all of you who are in this condition, but it seems likely to me that I should feel more for those of you who, being Greeks, have fallen into this misfortune. So now I have made a request of Circe, that she release whichever of you wishes it, restore him again to his original form, and send him back with us.
GRYLLUS: Stop, Odysseus, and say nothing further — for we all despise you as well, seeing that you seemed in vain to be a formidable man and to surpass the rest of mankind by far in wisdom, you who feared this very thing — the change from worse to better — without even examining it. For just as children fear the physicians' medicines and flee the treatments that, by changing them from sick and senseless, make them healthier and wiser,
so you shrank from becoming other than you were; and now you yourself, trembling and full of dread, live with Circe in fear that she may unknowingly turn you into a pig or a wolf, and you try to persuade us — who live amid boundless good things — to abandon these together with her who provides them, and sail off with you, we who are the most fortune-loving of all creatures, to become human beings once more. ODYSSEUS: To me, Gryllus, it seems that you have had not only your form but also your mind corrupted by that draught, and have become full of strange and thoroughly disfigured opinions — or has some pleasure of long familiarity bewitched you toward this body? GRYLLUS: Neither of these, O
king of the Cephallenians. But if you are willing rather to converse than to abuse, I shall quickly change your mind, since I have experience of both ways of life, as to why we reasonably prefer this one to that. ODYSSEUS: Well then, I am eager to listen. GRYLLUS: And we, in turn, are ready to speak. We must begin first from the virtues, on account of which we see you men pride yourselves greatly, supposing that you far surpass the beasts in justice
and prudence and courage and the other virtues. Answer me then, wisest of men: I once heard you telling Circe about the land of the Cyclopes, how, though it is not ploughed at all, nor does anyone plant anything in it, it is so good and noble in its nature that it brings forth all its fruits of itself. Which, then, do you praise more —
that land, or your own goat-pasturing, rugged Ithaca, which, only after much labor and through great toil, yields small and meager returns scarcely worth anything to those who till it? And do not take it hard that, contrary to what appears true, you answer out of affection for your homeland. ODYSSEUS: But one must not lie. I love and cherish my own homeland and country more, yet I admire
and marvel at that other. GRYLLUS: Shall we not then say this holds true — that the wisest of men thinks it right to praise and approve one thing, but to choose and cherish another? And I think you have made the same judgment concerning the soul as well; for it is the same case as with the land — that the better soul is the one which, without toil, brings forth virtue like a spontaneous crop, as if of its own nature. ODYSSEUS:
Let that too stand as you say. GRYLLUS: Do you now, then, agree that the soul of beasts is by nature better suited to the production of virtue, and more complete — since, unordered and untaught, like a field unsown and unploughed, it brings forth and increases, according to nature, the virtue proper to each kind? ODYSSEUS: And of what virtue, pray, Gryllus, do beasts have a share? GRYLLUS: Of what virtue indeed do they not have a greater share than even the wisest of
men? Consider first, if you will, courage — the very virtue in which you take such pride, and are not ashamed to be called "bold" and "sacker of cities," you who, most wretched of men, deceiving with tricks and stratagems men who knew only the plain and noble way of war and were inexperienced in deceit and falsehood, attach the name of virtue to what is in fact cunning — though virtue least of all admits of cunning. But as for the beasts, look at their
struggles against one another and against you — how guileless and artless they are, and how, with open and naked confidence, they make their defenses out of genuine strength; and neither summoned by law nor fearing indictment for desertion, but by nature fleeing being mastered, each endures to the very end and preserves its unconquered spirit — for they are not defeated in spirit even when overpowered in body, nor do their souls give up, but
they die fighting in the struggle itself. And often, when many are dying, their strength, together with their spiritedness, withdraws somewhere and, gathering about some one part of the body, resists the one who is killing it, and leaps up and rages, until, like a fire, it is utterly quenched and perishes. There is no supplication in them, no plea for pity, no admission of defeat; nor does lion serve lion, or horse serve horse, out of cowardice,
as man serves man, readily embracing the name that cowardice earns him. As for those creatures that men have subdued by traps or trickery, the ones already full-grown, having refused food and endured thirst, welcome and embrace death before slavery; but their young — cubs and chicks — being, because of their age, tractable and soft, men win over with many deceptive blandishments and gentle contrivances, drugging them and making them taste
pleasures contrary to nature, and in time reduce them, through their manner of life, to helplessness, until they accept and submit to what is called "taming" — a kind of emasculation, as it were, of their spirit. From this it is above all clear that beasts are by nature well-disposed toward courage. But for men, plain speaking of the truth is itself something contrary to nature; and from this, most excellent Odysseus, you might best learn it: among beasts, nature balances the capacity for combat equally,
and the female is in no way inferior to the male; both toil at the labors that necessity demands and contend in the struggles on behalf of their young. Why, you have heard of a certain sow of Crommyon, a female creature, who caused Theseus a great deal of trouble; and that Sphinx — her cleverness, sitting up on Mount Phicium and weaving riddles and puzzles,
would have done her no good had she not far surpassed the Cadmeans in strength and courage. And they say that a Teumessian vixen too was "a fearsome thing," and near Delphi a serpent once fought Apollo alone in single combat over the oracle. And your own king took the mare Aethe from the man of Sicyon as the price of exemption from military service — counseling well indeed, since he preferred a good and eager-to-win mare to a cowardly man. And you yourself
have often seen leopardesses and lionesses, how the females yield nothing to the males in spirit and courage — unlike your own wife, who, while you are at war, sits at home by the hearth-fire — not even the swallows, though females, fail to defend themselves against those who approach them and their nests, and that though they are but ordinary birds. Why then should I still mention to you the women of Caria or of Maeonia?
But from these examples it is clear that men do not possess courage by nature; for otherwise women too would possess strength equally. And so you men, under the compulsion of laws — not willingly nor gladly, but enslaved to customs and to reproaches and to opinions imposed from outside and shaped by argument — you practice courage and undertake toils and dangers, not because you have confidence in the face of these things,
but because you fear other things more than these. Just as, among your own companions, the one who is first to leap up for the light oar does so not out of contempt for it, but out of fear and flight from the heavier one — so too the man who endures a blow, in order not to receive wounds, and who, to avoid some outrage or death, wards off an enemy, is not bold in the face of that danger but a coward in the face of the other. Thus
your courage has been revealed to be a prudent cowardice, and your boldness a fear that has learned to avoid one thing by means of another. And in general, if you think you are better than the beasts in respect of courage, why is it that your own poets call those who fight most valiantly against the enemy "wolf-hearted" and "lion-spirited" and "like a boar in strength" — but none of them ever calls a lion "man-spirited"
or a boar "like a man in strength"? But just as, I suppose, they call the swift "wind-footed" and the beautiful "godlike," surpassing them by their images, so too, when praising those formidable in battle, they liken them to their betters. And the reason is that spiritedness is, as it were, the tempering and hardening of courage, and the beasts employ it undiluted in their struggles, whereas in you men,
when it mingles with reasoning, it withdraws before danger like wine mixed with water, and abandons the critical moment. And some among you say that spiritedness ought not to be admitted into battle at all, but should be set aside, so that one may make use of sober reasoning — speaking rightly as regards safety and self-preservation, but most disgracefully as regards strength and defense. For how is it not absurd
to blame nature for not furnishing your bodies with stings, or defensive teeth, or hooked claws, while you yourselves strip away and curtail the innate weapon of the soul? ODYSSEUS: Well now, Gryllus, you seem to me to have become a formidable sophist, seeing that even now, speaking out of your pig's estate, you have set upon this subject so vigorously. But why do you not go on next to discuss temperance?
GRYLLUS: Because I thought you would take issue with what I had already said. But you are eager to hear about temperance, since you are the husband of a most chaste wife, and think you yourself have given proof of temperance by scorning the delights of Circe's bed. And in this respect you differ not at all from any of the beasts as regards self-restraint — for they too have no desire to consort with their betters, but direct their pleasures and
their loves toward their own kind. It is no wonder, then, if — just as the Mendesian he-goat in Egypt, they say, though penned with many beautiful women, was not eager to mate with them but was rather smitten with the she-goats — so you too, delighting in accustomed pleasures, though a man, are unwilling to sleep with a goddess. As for the chastity of Penelope, countless crows, cawing, will make it a laughingstock and hold it in contempt,
for each of them, if her mate dies, remains a widow not for a short time but for nine generations of men — so that your fair Penelope falls nine times short in chastity of whichever crow you please. But since you have not escaped my notice as a sophist yourself, come, let me use some order in my argument, first setting a definition of temperance, and then dividing the desires by kind. Temperance, then, is a certain brevity
and order of the desires, doing away with those that are imported and superfluous, while adorning, with timeliness and moderation, those that are necessary. Among the desires you observe, I suppose, countless differences: that concerning food and drink has, along with what is natural, also what is necessary; but the desires of sexual pleasure, to which nature gives the beginnings, may also, I think,
be adequately satisfied by one who abstains from indulging them — natural, but not called necessary. As for the class that is neither necessary nor natural but poured in from outside through empty opinion, owing to want of taste, it has, among your kind, all but hidden away nearly all the natural desires beneath its multitude — possessing them the way a foreign, immigrant crowd forces its way among a people, overpowering the native citizens. But the beasts, keeping their souls utterly untrodden by
and unmixed with these imported passions, and their lives, far removed as if from the sea of empty opinion, fall short of living in a refined and extravagant manner, but temperance, and even more, good order among their desires — desires that dwell with them neither in great numbers nor as strangers — is very strictly preserved. I myself, at any rate, was once no less struck than you are now by gold, as a possession comparable to nothing else,
and silver and ivory captivated me; and whoever possessed the most of these seemed to me a blessed and god-favored man, whether he were a Phrygian or a Carian, baser than Dolon and more ill-fated than Priam. And so, ever hung upon my desires in this matter, I derived neither gratitude nor pleasure from other things, though they were abundant and sufficient, but found fault with my own
life, as though it were deprived of the greatest goods and left destitute of blessings. So too, as I remember seeing you in Crete, adorned in festal attire, I did not admire your prudence or your virtue, but doted and stood agape at the exquisite fineness of your tunic and the crimped richness and beauty of your purple cloak — and there was something, I think, in the brooch too, a gold trinket wrought with fine engraving — I followed after you bewitched, like the women.
But now, freed from those empty opinions and purified of them, I disregard gold and silver, passing them by like any other stones, and I would find no more pleasure, by Zeus, in your fine mantles and carpets than I would in being sunk to my fill in deep, soft mud and reposing there. Such desires, imported from outside, take root in none of our souls; rather, our life is governed for the most part by desires and pleasures that are necessary, and for the rest by desires that, while not necessary, are natural — desires which we indulge neither disorderly nor insatiably. Let us go through these first.
The pleasure that arises, appropriately, from things fragrant and stimulating to the sense of smell by their exhalations serves, besides the benefit it gives freely and simply, also a certain use: it contributes to the discernment of food. For the tongue is the judge — and is said to be the judge — of the sweet, the pungent, and the astringent, whenever the various flavors, coming into contact with the organ of taste, produce some blending; but our sense of smell, being a judge of each thing's quality even before the flavors reach the tongue, and perceiving far more discerningly than the royal food-tasters, admits what is proper within and drives away what is foreign, not allowing it even to touch or trouble the taste, but denouncing and condemning its worthlessness before any harm is done.
But other things do not trouble us at all — as they trouble you: your incense and cinnamon and spikenard and leaves and Arabian reeds, which by a certain dread and staining art called perfumery you are compelled to blend and combine into one and consume together, buying at great cost an effeminate, girlish luxury useful for nothing whatsoever. And though it is such a thing, it has corrupted not only all women but by now most men as well, so that they are unwilling even to have intercourse with their own wives unless the women come to them reeking of perfumes and powders.
But boars seek out sows, and goats seek out she-goats, and other females draw their mates to themselves by their own natural scents, redolent of pure dew and meadows and green grass, and come together for mating out of a shared goodwill — the females not coyly withholding themselves nor putting forward, in place of desire, deceits and enchantments and refusals, nor the males, driven by frenzy and lust, purchasing the act of generation with payments and toil and servitude, but pursuing an Aphrodite that is guileless and unbought, in season, who, rousing the desire of animals at the proper time of year as she rouses the budding of plants, straightway extinguishes it again — the female no longer admitting the male once she has conceived, nor the male still attempting her. So small and weak a value does pleasure hold among us, and so entirely does nature govern instead. Hence neither male with male nor female with female has the desire of beasts, up to this very day, brought about any such union.
But among you many such things occur even among the solemn and the good — I say nothing of the worthless. Agamemnon roamed all Boeotia hunting the fleeing Argynnus, falsely blaming the sea and the winds for his failure, and then, plunging himself, handsome as he was, into the Copaic lake, thinking there to quench his passion and free himself of his desire. Heracles likewise, in pursuit of a beardless companion, fell behind the champions and betrayed the expedition. And in the round temple of Ptoan Apollo someone of yours secretly inscribed, 'Achilles is beautiful' — though Achilles by then already had a son; and I am told the letters remain to this day. A cock that mounts another cock, in the absence of a hen, is burned alive, according to some seer or interpreter of portents who declares the thing to be a great and terrible omen.
Thus even among human beings themselves it is agreed that beasts have more claim to self-control, and do not do violence to nature for the sake of pleasures. But your unbridled appetites, having not even the law as an ally, nature confines within no bounds, but they are borne along, as if by a torrent, and in many places, driven by desire, produce dreadful outrage and disorder and confusion in the province of nature's own sexual order. Indeed men have attempted intercourse with goats and sows and mares, and women have gone mad with lust for male beasts; for from such unions arise, among you, Minotaurs and Aegipans and, I suppose, Sphinxes and Centaurs as well. Yet a dog, driven by hunger, has once eaten a man out of necessity, and a bird has tasted human flesh; but no beast has ever attempted to use a human being for intercourse.
But men treat beasts as objects for this purpose and for many others besides, doing violence and transgressing law for the sake of pleasure. And so, base and incontinent as they are with regard to the desires just mentioned, men are shown to be still further wanting in self-control with respect to the necessary desires, falling far short of beasts — I mean those concerning food and drink. We take our pleasure always together with some measure of need, but you, pursuing pleasure rather than what accords with nature in your diet, are punished with many long illnesses, which, drawn from the single source of surfeit, fill your bodies with all manner of foul and hard-to-purge humors.
For in the first place, to each kind of animal one food is proper by nature — to some grass, to others a certain root or fruit; and those that eat flesh do not turn to any other kind of prey, nor do they take away the food of the weaker, but allow them to graze in peace: the lion lets the deer feed, and the wolf the sheep. But man, led on by gluttony to all pleasures, trying and tasting everything as though he had not yet learned what is fitting and proper for him, has become the only omnivorous creature among all that exist. And he makes use of flesh in the first place not out of any want or helplessness, when it is always in his power, according to the season, to gather and take and pluck one thing after another from plants and seeds without wearying from their abundance; but out of luxury and satiety with what is necessary, he pursues unfit and impure foods through the slaughter of animals, proving far more savage than the wildest beasts. Blood and slaughter and flesh are the proper food of kite and wolf and serpent, but for man they are a relish.
Then again, though he makes use of every kind, unlike the beasts, which abstain from most and war against only a few out of the necessity of food, there is virtually nothing winged or swimming or land-dwelling that escapes what are called, by you, your civilized and hospitable tables. Well then — but you use these as relishes to season your food: why then do you go after these very things themselves as if they were your food? But the practical wisdom of beasts gives no place to useless and vain arts, but produces the necessary ones not as imported from others nor taught for hire nor glued together laboriously by practice, piecing each item of knowledge to the next, but brings them forth from itself, at once, as if native-born and innate.
We hear that all the Egyptians are physicians; but every single animal is not only self-taught in the art of healing, but also in providing for its sustenance, and for defense, hunting, guarding, and whatever measure of music befits each according to its nature. From whom, indeed, did we learn, when sick, to go to the rivers for the sake of crabs? Who taught tortoises, after eating viper, to eat oregano afterward? Or the Cretan goats, whenever they are struck by arrows, to seek out dittany, which when eaten causes them to expel the arrowheads? For if you say — as is true — that nature is the teacher of these things, you thereby attribute to the beasts' practical wisdom the most sovereign and wisest of principles; and if you think this ought not to be called reason or wisdom, then it is time to look for a finer and more honorable name for it, since indeed it also displays, through its works, a power both better and more admirable — not ignorant nor untaught, but rather self-taught and self-sufficient, not through weakness but through the strength and perfection of a virtue that accords with nature, content to forgo the borrowed collecting of wisdom from others through learning.
Whatever things, at any rate, men pursue in their idleness or their play by way of learning and practicing, in these the animals' intelligence, even against the nature of their bodies, and by sheer abundance of understanding, takes up the lessons. I say nothing of hounds tracking by scent or colts practicing to walk in rhythm, but rather of crows conversing and dogs leaping through revolving hoops. Horses and oxen in theaters master reclinings and dances and precarious postures and movements not at all easy even for men, learning and remembering them, though they serve no useful purpose at all beyond a display of aptitude for learning.
And if you doubt that we learn arts, hear also that we teach them. Partridges, in fleeing with their chicks, train them to hide themselves and, falling on their backs, to hold up a clod of earth in place of themselves with their feet; and you see how, on the rooftops, the grown storks guide their young, still practicing, in the art of flight. Nightingales teach their young to sing beforehand; but those that are caught still very young and reared in human hands sing worse, as though they had graduated from their teacher too soon. Now that I have sunk into this body, I marvel at those arguments by which I was once persuaded by the sophists to consider all creatures except man irrational and senseless.
Odysseus: Well then, Gryllus, you have now so changed that you make out even the sheep and the ass to be rational?
Gryllus: Yes indeed, most excellent Odysseus, precisely from these very examples one must draw conclusions about the nature of beasts — that it is not without a share of reason and understanding. For just as no one tree is more or less inanimate than another, but all stand equally toward insensibility, since none of them has any share in soul, so it did not seem that one animal was more sluggish and slower to learn than another in the matter of intelligence, unless all of them shared, in different measure, in reason and understanding — some more, some less. Consider also that the stupidity and dullness of some are exposed by the cunning and sharpness of others, when you compare fox and wolf and bee to ass and sheep — just as if you compared Polyphemus to yourself, or that Corinthian, Homer, to your grandfather Autolycus.
For I do not think the distance between one beast and another is as great as that between one man and another in intelligence, reasoning, and memory.
Odysseus: But take care, Gryllus, lest it be a fearful and violent thing to deny reason to those in whom no notion of god arises.
Gryllus: Then are we not to say, Odysseus, that you, being so wise and outstanding, have become a second Sisyphus?

======== Moralia: Comparationis Aristophanes Et Menandri Compendium ========

To speak generally and as a whole, he decidedly prefers Menander; but speaking in particular, he adds this as well: "The vulgar," he says, "the theatrical, and the coarse in diction belong to Aristophanes, but to Menander not at all. For the uneducated common man is captivated by what the former says, while the educated man will be offended" — I mean by the antitheses, the matching case-endings, and the plays on words.
For the one [Menander] employs such devices sparingly and with due reason, judging them worthy of care, while the other [Aristophanes] employs them often, at the wrong moment, and coldly. "For he is praised," it is said, "because he 'dipped' the treasurers (tamiai), who are not treasurers but Lamiai [monsters]"; and this fellow "breathes either a north-west gale or slander," and speaks of "belly-blows," and of "the guts" and "the colons," and "from laughter" —
"I shall come to Gela — and what then shall I do to you, wretched jar, cast out like a potsherd?" "For it does us savage harm, women, having itself been raised among wild vegetables." "But indeed moth-eaten things have devoured my crest." "Bring here the gorgon-backed circle of the shield." "And give me too the cheese-backed circle of a cake" — and many things of this kind. Now, in the composition of
his vocabulary there is the tragic, the comic, the pompous, the pedestrian; obscurity and banality; grandiosity and bombast; rambling gossip and seasick nonsense. And though his diction contains so many differences and incongruities, it does not assign to each character what is fitting and proper to it — I mean, grandeur to a king, forcefulness to an orator, simplicity to a woman, plainness to a common man, vulgarity to a market-tradesman. Instead, as if by lot,
he distributes to his characters whatever words come to hand, so that one could not tell whether the speaker is a son or a father, a rustic or a god, an old woman or a hero. "But Menander's diction is so tightly woven and breathes together, blended with itself, that although it moves through many emotions and characters and is fitted to persons of every sort, it still appears as one thing and preserves its consistency,
using words that are common, familiar, and suited to practical use. And if the matter should require some marvel or noise, he draws out, as it were, every stop of the pipe, then quickly and convincingly closes it again and restores his voice to its proper pitch. Though there have been many celebrated craftsmen, no shoemaker has ever made the same sandal, no mask-maker the same mask, nor has anyone made the same cloak fit at once for a man,
a woman, a youth, an old man, and a house-born slave. But Menander so blended his diction that it is fitted to every nature, disposition, and age alike — and this although he took up the craft while still young, and died at the very peak of his powers as a poet and producer, precisely when, as Aristotle says, matters of style make their greatest advance
for writers. If, then, one were to compare the earliest of Menander's plays with the middle ones and the last, one would recognize from them how much more he would have added to them, had he lived longer." Among those who produce plays, some write for the crowd and the common people, others for the few; but it is not easy to say of any of them all that he achieved
what suits both classes at once. Aristophanes, then, is neither pleasing to the many nor tolerable to the sensible, but is like a courtesan of poetry past her prime who then apes a lawful wife: the many cannot bear her self-will, and the dignified loathe her licentiousness and malice. Menander, on the other hand, has made himself, with grace above all, sufficient unto himself — in theaters, in schools, and at symposia — reading matter and study material
and the most universal subject of contest among the fine things Greece has produced, offering his poetry and showing what skill in speech truly was and of what kind, going everywhere with an inescapable persuasiveness and winning over every ear and mind that speaks the Greek tongue. For what else is truly worth an educated man's going to the theater, if not for Menander's sake? When else are the theaters filled with lovers of learning, once a comic mask is put on display? At
symposia, to whom does the table more rightly yield its place, and to whom does Dionysus grant room, than to philosophers and lovers of learning? Just as painters, when their eyes have grown weary from hard labor, turn to fresh, flowery, verdant colors, so Menander is a rest from those unmixed and intense pursuits, receiving the mind as into a meadow in full bloom, shaded and full of breezes. Although this age produced many good and capable comic actors
for the city to enjoy, the comedies of Menander partake of abundant wit and sacred grace, as though born of that very sea from which Aphrodite was born. But Aristophanes' wit, being bitter and harsh, has a sharpness that wounds and bites; and I do not know in what it consists, this cleverness so celebrated in him — whether in his language or in his characters — since indeed even what he has imitated
he has imitated for the worse: the rogue in his hands is not shrewd but malicious, the rustic not artless but stupid, the comic not playful but ridiculous, and the erotic not cheerful but licentious. For the man seems to have written his poetry for no moderate audience at all, but rather the shameful and lewd for the licentious, and the abusive and bitter for
the envious and malicious.

======== Moralia: Conjugalia Praecepta ========

After the ancestral rite by which the priestess of Demeter joined you together as you were being shut in the bridal chamber, I think that a discourse, too, taking hold of you together and joining in your wedding-song, might do something useful and be in tune with the custom. For among musicians they used to call one of the flute-tunes the "horse-goad," a melody that, it seems, gave the horses an impulse rousing them toward mating; but in philosophy,
though there are many fine discourses available, none deserves study less than this nuptial one, which, singing its charm over those who are coming together into a partnership of life, renders them gentle and tractable toward one another. So then, drawing together the main points of what you have often heard while being brought up in philosophy, arranged under a few brief comparisons so that they may be more easily remembered, I send you both a gift held in common, praying that Aphrodite may be attended by the Muses
and work together with her, so that neither lyre nor lyre-string may be more closely fitted to them than the harmony that concerns marriage and household, achieved through reason and concord: for this too belongs to philosophy. Indeed the ancients set up Hermes beside Aphrodite, implying that the pleasure that belongs to marriage stands most of all in need of reason; and they set up Persuasion, too, and the Graces beside her, so that by persuading one another husband and wife may obtain from each other
what they wish, without fighting or contentiousness. Solon bade the bride, on lying down beside the bridegroom, first nibble a quince, hinting, it seems, that the charm proceeding from mouth and voice should first be harmonious and sweet. In Boeotia they veil the bride and crown her with a wreath of asparagus-thorn; for that plant yields the sweetest fruit from the roughest and thorniest bush, and likewise the bride, to the husband who does not flee or shrink in irritation from
her first show of harshness, will in time provide a tame and sweet life together. Those who cannot endure the first differences with young girls behave no differently from those who, because of the sourness of the unripe grape, give up the ripe cluster to others. And many newly married women, vexed by their husbands' first advances, suffer a fate like that of people who put up with the sting of the bee but then let go the
honeycomb. It is above all at the beginning that married people must guard against quarrels and clashes, seeing that even pieces of furniture that have been joined together are, at first, easily pulled apart by any chance pretext, but once time has let the joints set firm, they are with difficulty separated even by fire and iron. Just as fire is kindled easily in chaff, in a lamp-wick, and in hare's
fur, but is quenched all the sooner unless it takes hold of some other material able both to contain and to feed it, so the sharp passion for the newly married, kindled from the body and from youthful bloom, must not be counted as lasting or secure unless, settling upon character and taking hold of the rational faculty, it acquires a living disposition. The hunting of fish by means of drugs quickly and easily catches and takes
the fish, but renders it inedible and worthless: just so, women who by contriving certain love-charms and sorceries master their husbands through pleasure find themselves living with men who are senseless, foolish, and corrupted. Even Circe got no benefit from the men she had drugged, nor did she make any use at all of them once they had become swine and asses; it was Odysseus, who kept his wits and lived with her prudently, whom she came to love above all. Women who would rather
rule over senseless men than obey sensible ones are like people on a road who would rather guide the blind than follow and be guided by those who see and know the way. They refuse to believe that Pasiphaë, though wife to a king, fell in love with a bull, and yet they can see that some women, finding austere and self-controlled men burdensome, take more pleasure in the company of men compounded of licentiousness and love of pleasure, as if they were dogs or goats. Those who, out of weakness or
softness, teach the very horses they mount to crouch down and submit to them are like some men who, having taken wives of noble birth or wealth, do not make themselves better but instead clip their wives' wings, so as to rule more easily over women who have been humbled. One ought, rather, while preserving the horse's stature, to use the bit that suits the wife's dignity. When the moon is far from the sun we see her full and shining bright, but she grows faint
and hides herself when she comes near him: the virtuous woman, on the contrary, ought to be seen most when she is with her husband, and to keep to the house and stay out of sight when he is away. Herodotus was not right to say that a woman puts off her modesty along with her tunic; on the contrary, the virtuous woman puts modesty on instead, and husband and wife use their utmost mutual reverence as the token of their utmost mutual love. Just as
when two notes are struck together in concord, it is the deeper note that carries the melody, so too every action in a well-ordered household is performed by both partners in agreement, but it shows forth the husband's leadership and initiative. The Sun once defeated the North Wind. For when the wind tried by force to strip the man of his cloak and blew hard and cold, the man only wrapped his garment more tightly and held his covering close about him; but when
the sun, after the wind had ceased, grew warm and then scorching, the man, growing heated and then overheated, took off not only his cloak but his tunic as well. This is what most wives do: when their husbands try by force to strip away their luxury and extravagance, they fight back and grow angry; but if they are persuaded through reasoning, they lay these things aside gently and become moderate. Cato expelled from the Senate a man who had kissed his own wife in his daughter's presence. This,
perhaps, was rather too severe; but if it is shameful, as indeed it is, for husband and wife to embrace and kiss and caress one another in the presence of others, is it not more shameful still to abuse and quarrel with one another in the presence of others? Ought they not rather to keep their tender exchanges and endearments private toward the wife, while reserving admonition, reproach, and plain speaking for open display? Just as a mirror set with gold
and precious stones is of no use at all if it does not show a true likeness, so too there is no benefit in a rich wife unless she makes her life match her husband's and her character harmonize with his. If, when a man is glad, the mirror gives back a sullen image, and when he is vexed and scowling it gives back a cheerful, grinning one, it is faulty and worthless. In just the same way a wife is faulty and ill-timed who acts sullen
when her husband is in a mood to play and be affectionate, and who plays and laughs when he is being serious: the one betrays unpleasantness, the other indifference. Just as geometers say that lines and surfaces do not move on their own but move together with the bodies they belong to, so too a wife ought to have no feeling of her own apart from her husband, but should share with him in seriousness and play, in thoughtfulness
and laughter. Men who do not like seeing their wives eat with them teach them to gorge themselves once they are alone. In the same way, husbands who do not spend their time cheerfully with their wives, nor share in play and laughter with them, teach their wives to seek their own private pleasures apart from them. Among the kings of the Persians, their lawful wives sit beside them at dinner and share the feast; but when the kings wish to be merry and drink, they send these wives away, and
call in the singing-girls and concubines instead — and in this they do rightly, because they do not allow their lawful wives to share in their licentiousness and drunken excess. So if a private citizen, lacking self-control in matters of pleasure and ill-bred, does something wrong with a courtesan or a servant-girl, his wife ought not to be indignant or angry, but should reason that it is out of respect for her that he shares his drunken excess, licentiousness, and outrage with another woman. Kings
who love music make many men musicians; those who love learning, men of letters; those who love athletics, athletes. In just the same way, a husband devoted to the body makes his wife a woman devoted to adorning herself, one devoted to pleasure makes her a courtesan-like and licentious woman, while one devoted to goodness and beauty of character makes her modest and well-ordered. A Spartan girl, when someone asked whether she had already gone to a man, replied, "Not I, but he has come to me." This, I think,
is the proper way for the mistress of the household to behave: neither to avoid nor to be vexed at such advances when her husband initiates them, nor to take the initiative herself; for the one is the mark of a courtesan and forward, the other of a haughty and unaffectionate woman. A wife ought not to acquire friends of her own, but should make use of those her husband has in common with her; and the gods are the first and greatest of friends. It is therefore fitting that a wife should worship and recognize only those gods her husband believes in, and
should keep her outer door closed to strange rites and foreign superstitions; for no god takes pleasure in sacred rites performed in secret and stealth by a woman. Plato says that a city is happy and blessed in which the words "mine" and "not mine" are least heard, because the citizens, so far as possible, treat as common whatever is worth caring about; and much more should such language be
banished from marriage. Yet just as physicians say that blows on the left side are felt in sensation on the right, so it is good for the wife to share sympathetically in her husband's concerns and the husband in his wife's, so that, just as ropes gain strength from one another through their interweaving, the partnership may be preserved through the goodwill each returns to the other. For indeed
nature, by mingling us through our bodies, takes a part from each and blends it, so as to render the offspring common to both, in such a way that neither parent can mark off or distinguish which part is one's own and which another's. Such, then, is also the kind of partnership in property that is most fitting for married people, who ought to pour everything together into one estate and mix it so thoroughly that they consider none of it their own part and
none another's, but all of it their own and none belonging to another. For just as we call a mixture wine even though it contains more water, so too the estate and the household ought to be spoken of as the husband's, even if the wife has contributed the greater share. Helen was a lover of wealth, Paris a lover of pleasure; Odysseus was prudent, Penelope virtuous. That is why the marriage of the latter pair was blessed and enviable, while that of the former brought upon Greeks and barbarians alike an Iliad
of troubles. A Roman, being reproached by his friends because he had divorced a wife who was virtuous, wealthy, and beautiful, held out his shoe to them and said, "This too is handsome to look at and new, but no one knows where it pinches me." A wife, then, ought to be trusted not on account of her dowry, her family, or her beauty, but in those respects by which she touches her husband most nearly —
in companionship, character, and mutual accommodation — she ought to make these qualities not harsh or distressing day by day but harmonious, painless, and endearing. For just as physicians fear more the fevers that arise from obscure causes and gather little by little than those that have obvious and great causes, so too the small, continual, everyday frictions between wife and husband, unnoticed by most people, do more
to separate and ruin their life together. King Philip fell in love with a Thessalian woman who was accused of having bewitched him with drugs. Olympias therefore was eager to get the woman into her power; but when the woman came into her presence and appeared attractive in looks and spoke to her neither basely nor without intelligence, Olympias said, "Away with the slanders — you carry your
drugs in yourself." An invincible thing indeed a wedded and lawful wife becomes, if, having placed everything in herself — dowry, family, drugs, and the very girdle of Aphrodite — she wins her husband's goodwill through character and virtue. Again, when a certain young courtier had married a beautiful woman of bad reputation, Olympias said, "This man has no judgment: otherwise he would not have
married with his eyes." One ought not to marry with the eyes, nor with the fingers either, as some do who reckon up how much a woman brings and take her without judging how she will live together with them. Socrates used to urge young men who looked at themselves in mirrors — those who were ugly, to correct the defect through virtue, and those who were handsome, not to disgrace their good looks by baseness of character. It is good, likewise, for the mistress of the household, whenever she holds the mirror in her
hands, to say to herself, the plain one, "What then, if I do not become virtuous?" and the beautiful one, "What then, if I too become virtuous?" For it is a greater distinction for a plain woman to be loved for her character than for her beauty. The Sicilian tyrant sent garments and costly jewelry to the daughters of Lysander, but Lysander refused them, saying, "These
ornaments will disgrace my daughters rather than adorn them." Before Lysander, Sophocles had said the same thing: "Not ornament, no, unhappy one, but rather disorder would your finery seem, and the wantonness of your mind." For ornament, as Crates used to say, "is what brings order" — and what brings order is what makes a woman more orderly. It is not gold, nor emerald, nor scarlet that makes her such, but whatever
clothes her with an air of dignity, good order, and modesty. Those who sacrifice to Hera on the occasion of a wedding do not burn the gall along with the other parts of the offering, but remove it and cast it away beside the altar, the lawgiver hinting thereby that gall, that is, anger, must never have a place in marriage. For the mistress of the household ought to be like wine: her austerity should be beneficial and pleasant, not bitter like aloes nor medicinal. Plato used to urge
Xenocrates, who was rather too grave in character, though good and noble in every other respect, to sacrifice to the Graces. I think, too, that the virtuous wife has especial need of graciousness toward her husband, so that, as Metrodorus used to say, "he may live with her happily and not be resentful because she is virtuous." For neither should the plain woman neglect cleanliness, nor should the wife devoted to her husband neglect affectionate warmth; for harshness makes a wife's
good order unpleasant, just as slovenliness makes simplicity unattractive. The woman who is afraid to laugh with her husband or to joke with him, for fear of seeming bold and licentious, is no different from one who, so as not to seem to perfume her hair, refuses even to have it anointed, and who, so as not to seem to rouge her face, refuses even to wash it. We see also that poets and orators
who avoid what is vulgar, ignoble, and affected in their diction take pains instead to move and stir their listener by their subject matter, their arrangement, and their characterization. In the same way the mistress of the household, while she does well to avoid and refuse everything excessive, courtesan-like, and theatrical, ought rather to cultivate skill in the graces of character and daily life toward her husband, accustoming him to what is good along with pleasure. But if a woman happens by nature to be
...it was not possible for them to spend the whole day at home. Take away from most women their gilded sandals, bracelets, anklets, purple, and pearls, and they stay indoors. Theano let her arm show as she wrapped her cloak around her. When someone said, "What a lovely forearm," she replied, "But not for the public." Not only the forearm but the speech of a modest woman ought not to be public,
and she should be as ashamed of exposing her voice to outsiders as of exposing her body, and guard against it; for in her speaking one can see her feeling, character, and disposition. Phidias made the Aphrodite of the Eleans standing on a tortoise, a symbol for women of staying at home and of silence. For a woman ought to speak either to her husband or through her husband, and not be vexed if, like a flute-player,
she sounds more dignified through another's mouthpiece. Rich men and kings, by honoring philosophers, adorn both themselves and those philosophers, but philosophers who court the rich do not make the rich famous; they only make themselves less esteemed. The same thing happens with women: by submitting themselves to their husbands they are praised, but those who wish to rule rather than be ruled behave more disgracefully than the ruled. A husband should rule his wife
not as a master rules a possession, but as the soul rules the body, sympathizing with it and growing together with it through goodwill. Just as one can care for the body without being enslaved to its pleasures and desires, so one can govern a wife while delighting and gratifying her. Of bodies, the philosophers say, some are made of separate parts, like a fleet or an army; others are made of joined parts, like a house or
a ship; and others are unified and organically grown together, as each living creature is. So too, roughly speaking, is marriage: that of people in love is unified and organic; that of people marrying for a dowry or for children is made of joined parts; that of people who do not share a bed is made of separate parts — people one might consider to be living in the same house rather than sharing a life together. And just as the natural philosophers say of liquids
that a thorough blending takes place, so with married people bodies, property, friends, and relations should all be mingled together through one another. Indeed the Roman lawgiver forbade married couples from giving and receiving gifts from one another, not so that they would share in nothing, but so that they would regard everything as held in common. In Leptis, a city of Libya, it is traditional that on the day after the wedding
the bride sends to the bridegroom's mother to ask for a cooking-pot; and the mother does not give it, and says she has none — so that the bride, understanding from the very start the proverbial harshness of mothers-in-law, will not be angry or resentful if something rougher happens later. The wife ought to recognize this and treat the pretext accordingly: it is a kind of jealousy the mother feels over the goodwill shown to her son. There is one cure for
this feeling: to win the husband's goodwill for herself privately, without drawing it away from his mother or diminishing it. Mothers seem to love their sons more, since their sons are able to help them, while fathers love their daughters more, since daughters need their fathers' help; but perhaps also, out of mutual regard for one another, each spouse wishes to show the greater affection for what belongs to the other, embracing and
showing love for it more openly. This perhaps makes no real difference; but here is something graceful: if the wife, in showing honor, inclines rather toward her husband's parents than her own, and is seen to do so, and if something grieves her, brings it to them rather than concealing it from her own parents. For to trust someone makes one seem trusted in turn, and to love makes one seem loved. The generals accompanying Cyrus instructed
the Greeks that if the enemy advanced with shouting, they should receive them in silence, but if the enemy fell silent, they should charge them with a shout. Sensible women, when their husbands are shouting in anger, keep quiet, but when the men fall silent, speak to them and soothe them with comforting words. Euripides is right to blame those who play the lyre over wine, for music ought rather to be summoned to anger and grief
than added to those who are already enjoying pleasure. So you should consider that those who go to bed together for pleasure's sake do no wrong, but that when they are caught up in some anger or dispute, they should rest apart and, above all, not call upon Aphrodite at such a time — she is the best physician for troubles of that sort. As the poet somewhere teaches, making Hera say,
not "with adornment," but that she "will resolve their bitter quarrels by bringing them to bed to be joined in love." One must always and everywhere avoid the husband giving offense to the wife or the wife to the husband, and must guard against this most of all when resting and sleeping together. The woman in labor, in her distress, said to those laying her down, "How
could the bed cure what I suffered because of the bed?" The quarrels, abuse, and anger that the bed produces are not easily dissolved in another place or at another time. Hermione seems to speak a certain truth when she says, "It was the visits of wicked women that ruined me." This does not happen simply on its own, but when disagreements and jealousies toward husbands
open to such women not only their doors but also their ears. Then, above all, the sensible wife must shut her ears and guard against whispering gossip, lest fire be added to fire, and she should keep ready Philip's saying. For it is said that when he was provoked by his friends against the Greeks, on the ground that they were treated well and yet spoke ill of him, he said,
"What then, if we should also treat them badly?" So whenever slanderers say, "Your husband wrongs you though you love him and are faithful," you should answer, "What then, if I too should begin to hate him and wrong him?" The man who, after a long time, caught sight of his runaway slave and was chasing him, and when the slave got ahead of him and took refuge in a mill, said, "Where else
would I rather have found you than here?" So a wife who out of jealousy writes a bill of divorce and is filled with resentment should say to herself, "Where would the woman who is jealous of me be more pleased to see me, and doing what, than grieving and quarreling with my husband and abandoning my very house and bedroom?" The Athenians hold three sacred plowings: the first at Skiron, in memory of the oldest of
sowings; the second in the Rharian field; the third below the city, at the place called the Bouzygion. Of all these the most sacred is the marital sowing and plowing for the begetting of children. Sophocles rightly called Aphrodite "fruitful Cytherea." For this reason husband and wife should, above all, approach this act with reverence, keeping themselves pure and unpolluted by unholy and unlawful relations with others, and not
sow seed from which they wish nothing to grow for themselves — yet if fruit does come of it, they are ashamed and hide it. When the orator Gorgias delivered a speech at Olympia on concord among the Greeks, Melanthius said, "This man is advising us about concord, when he has not persuaded himself, his wife, and his maidservant — three people — to live in concord with one another." For it seems there was some passion of
Gorgias's, and jealousy on his wife's part toward the little maidservant. A household, then, must be well harmonized by the man who intends to bring city, marketplace, and friends into harmony; for the failings of women, or against women, tend to escape most people's notice more than other faults do. If, just as they say a cat is thrown into confusion and driven wild by the smell of perfumes, so
women too became savage and deranged from perfumes, it would be terrible for men not to abstain from perfume, but instead, for the sake of their own brief pleasure, to look on unconcerned while women were harmed so badly. Since, then, women suffer these things not because men wear perfume but because men consort with other women, it is unjust for the sake of a small pleasure to cause women such great grief and turmoil, and not, just as
bees are said to dislike and attack men who have been with women, so approach one's own wife pure and undefiled by intercourse with others. Those who approach elephants do not wear bright clothing, nor do those who approach bulls wear scarlet cloaks, for these animals are driven especially wild by such colors; and they say tigers, when surrounded by drumming, go utterly frantic and tear themselves apart. Since, then, among men too, some are upset at the sight of scarlet and purple garments, while others
are annoyed by cymbals and drums, what is so terrible about women abstaining from such things and not disturbing or provoking their husbands, but living together with them in calm and gentleness? A certain woman, when Philip was dragging her along against her will, said, "Let me go — every woman is the same once the lamp is taken away." This was well said with reference to adulterers and the unchaste, but the wedded wife ought,
above all, once the light is removed, not to be the same as ordinary women, but even when her body cannot be seen, to make visible her modesty and her own constancy and devotion toward her husband. Plato urged the old, more than the young, "to be ashamed before the young," so that the young in turn might feel modesty before them; for "where old men are shameless," no shame or restraint at all is instilled
in the young. Remembering this, a husband ought to feel shame before no one more than before his wife, since the bedroom will become for her a school of either good order or license. The man who himself enjoys the same pleasures while turning his wife away from them is no different from one who commands his wife to fight the very enemies to whom he himself has surrendered. As for love of adornment — you, Eurydice, should read
what Timoxena wrote to Aristylla, and try to keep it always in mind. And you, Pollianus, must not suppose that your wife will refrain from excess and extravagance if she sees that you do not despise these things in other contexts, but rather delight in gilded drinking-cups, paintings on the walls of rooms, and the finery of mules and horse-trappings. For it is not possible to banish extravagance from the women's quarters when it is roaming about in the very midst of the men's quarters. And you,
since you are now of an age to practice philosophy, should adorn your character with what is said with demonstration and reasoned argument, associating and keeping company with those who do you good; and for your wife, gathering what is useful from every quarter, like the bees, and carrying it within yourself, share it with her and talk it over with her, making the best of your discussions her familiar friends. For though "father" you are to her, and "revered mother,"
and "brother" too, it is no less impressive to hear a wedded wife say, "Husband, but you are to me also" teacher and philosopher and instructor in all that is noblest and most divine. Such studies draw women away from base pursuits before anything else: for a woman learning geometry will be ashamed to dance, and one charmed by the words of Plato and Xenophon will not open herself to magic incantations. And if someone
professes to be able to pull down the moon, she will laugh at the ignorance and foolishness of the women who believe such things, since she is not unschooled in astronomy and has heard of Aglaonice, daughter of Hegetor of Thessaly, who, being skilled in the eclipses of the full moon and knowing in advance the time when the moon would be caught by the earth's shadow, deceived the women and persuaded them that she herself was pulling down the moon.
For no woman is ever said to have produced a child without union with a man, yet the shapeless, fleshlike growths that take form within a woman from corruption are called moles. This is exactly what must be guarded against arising in women's souls. For if they do not receive the seeds of worthy discourse, nor share in learning with their husbands, then left to themselves they conceive many absurd and base intentions
and passions on their own. So you, Eurydice, above all try to keep company with the sayings of the wise and good, and always to have on your lips those words which, even as a girl, you used to take up from us, so that you may delight your husband and be admired by other women, adorned in this way exceptionally and with dignity, and at no cost at all. For the pearls of this rich woman here
and the silks of that foreign woman there cannot be acquired or worn without buying them at great expense; but the adornments of Theano, Cleobulina, Gorgo the wife of Leonidas, Timocleia the sister of Theagenes, Claudia of old, and Cornelia the daughter of Scipio, and all the other women who have been admired and celebrated — these one may wear as a dowry, and be adorned with them gloriously while
living both a happy and a blessed life. For if Sappho, because of the beauty of her lyric composition, was proud enough to write to a certain rich woman, "You will lie dead, and no memory of you will remain, for you have no share in the roses of Pieria," how much more will it be possible for you to be proud of yourself, and illustrious, if you have a share not of roses but of the very fruits
that the Muses bring and bestow on those who admire learning and philosophy?

======== Moralia: Consolatio Ad Apollonium ========

I grieved with you long ago, Apollonius, and shared your distress when I heard of the untimely passing of your son, who was dear to all of us, a young man of great decency and self-control, and one who scrupulously kept what was right and holy both toward the gods and toward his parents and friends. At the time, right at the moment of his death, it would not have been fitting for me to approach you and urge you to bear the event in a merely human way,
since your body and soul were both overcome by that irrational calamity, and it was necessary for me to share your suffering; for even the best physicians do not immediately apply remedies through drugs to sudden onsets of inflammation, but let the oppressive swelling settle by itself, apart from the application of external salves, until it has undergone its own process.
But now that time — which is accustomed to bring all things to ripeness — has come upon your grief, and your condition seems to call for the help of your friends, I thought it well to share with you some words of consolation, toward the relief of your pain and the cessation of your mournful and useless lamentations. For words are the physicians of a sick soul, when someone
softens the heart at the right moment. For as wise Euripides says: "one remedy lies against one affliction, another against another: for one who grieves, the kindly speech of friends; but for one who is excessively foolish, admonitions." For among the many afflictions of the soul, grief is by nature the harshest of all: "for through grief," they say, "madness comes upon many," and incurable illnesses, and some have even destroyed themselves through
grief. Now to feel pain and to be stung at the death of a son has its origin in nature, and is not within our control. For I myself do not agree with those who praise that savage and hard insensibility, which lies beyond both what is possible and what is beneficial; for it would strip us of the goodwill that comes from loving and being loved, which above all else must be preserved.
But to be carried beyond due measure and to increase one's mourning I say is contrary to nature, and arises from a base opinion within us. For this reason it must be avoided as harmful, base, and most unbecoming to serious men, while moderation of feeling is not to be rejected. "May we not fall ill," says the Academic Crantor, "but if we do fall ill, may some sensation remain to us, whether something of what is ours
is being cut away or torn from us. For this absence of pain does not come to a person without great cost: for it is likely that in the one case the body has become brutish, in the other the soul." Reason, then, does not require that sensible men become either unfeeling in the face of such misfortunes or excessively afflicted by them: the one is unyielding and beastlike, the other is dissolute and womanish.
The reasonable man is one who keeps to his own proper measure and is able to bear gracefully both the pleasant and the painful things that happen in life, and who has grasped beforehand that, just as in a democracy the offices are allotted by lot, and one who is chosen must rule while one who is not chosen must bear his fortune without resentment, so too one must follow the distribution of affairs blamelessly and obediently. For this is
something those who cannot do even in good fortune could not bear wisely and with moderation. For among the things well said there is this too, in the manner of a precept: "Let no piece of good fortune, however great, so exalt you that you think more highly of yourself than you ought, nor, if some hardship befalls you, be brought low again; but always remain yourself, safeguarding your own nature securely — as gold is tested
in fire. It belongs to educated and self-controlled men to remain the same both toward what seem to be good fortunes and, toward misfortunes, to guard nobly what is fitting." For it is the work of good sense either to guard against evil that is approaching, or to correct it once it has occurred, or to reduce it to the smallest extent, or to prepare for oneself a manly and noble endurance. For indeed, concerning the good, practical
wisdom operates in four ways: either acquiring good things, or guarding them, or increasing them, or using them skillfully. These are the standards of prudence and of the other virtues, and they must be applied to both kinds of fortune. For there is no man who is happy in all things — yes, by Zeus: what is fated cannot be made unfated. For just as among plants there is at one time abundance of fruit and at another barrenness,
and among animals at one time abundant offspring and at another sterility, and at sea calm weather and storms, so too in life many and varied circumstances arise that turn men's fortunes to their opposites. Looking upon these, one might not unreasonably say: "Not on all good things did Atreus beget you, Agamemnon. You must both rejoice and grieve,
for you were born mortal. Even if you do not wish it, the will of the gods will nevertheless prevail." And there is also the saying of Menander: "If you alone, dear child, of all men had been born on the condition that, when your mother bore you, you would go through life doing whatever you wished and always faring well, and some god
had made this agreement with you, then you would be right to be indignant, for he has deceived you and done something monstrous. But if you drew the common air on the same terms as the rest of us — to speak to you rather in tragic style — you must bear these things better and reckon with them. The sum of the matter is: you are a human being, and no living creature undergoes a swifter reversal from
the heights to lowliness once more. And rightly so: for being by nature the weakest of creatures, man is set in charge of the greatest affairs, and when he falls, he shatters a great many good things. But you have not lost overwhelming and extraordinary blessings, dear child; what now afflicts you is a moderate evil. So bear what remains as something falling between the two extremes." But even though matters stand thus, some people are so senseless because of their folly, and so vainly boastful, that
lifted up a little by an abundant excess of money, or by the greatness of some office, or by certain positions of political precedence, or by honors and reputation, they threaten those weaker than themselves and grow insolent, not considering the instability and insecurity of fortune, nor that lofty things easily become lowly and lowly things again are raised on high, shifting with the swift-turning changes of fortune. To seek
something stable among unstable things is to reason wrongly about affairs; for as the wheel turns, now one part of the rim is uppermost, now another. The best remedy against grief, then, is reason, and the preparation gained through it against all the changes of life. For one must know not only that one is by nature mortal oneself, but also that one shares by lot in a mortal life
and in circumstances that easily shift to their opposite. For truly, the bodies of men are mortal and short-lived, and mortal too are their fortunes and passions, and, simply put, everything in life, which a mortal cannot escape or evade at all, but "the depth of unseen Tartarus presses him down with hammered bonds of necessity," as Pindar says. Hence it was rightly that Demetrius of Phalerum, when Euripides had said,
"prosperity is not secure but short-lived," and that "small are the things that overthrow it, and in a single day it casts some things down from on high and lifts others up," said that in other respects he spoke well, "but it would have been better still if he had said not a single day, but a single moment of time. For the cycle is the same for the fruitful plants of the earth and for the race of mortals." For
the life of some grows, while that of others withers and is cut down again. Pindar, in another place, says: "What is anyone? What is he not? Man is a dream of a shadow" — using a most vivid and artful exaggeration, he revealed the life of men. For what is weaker than a shadow? And its dream no one else could describe so clearly. Following the same line, Crantor too,
consoling Hippocles on the death of his children, says: "For all this is what ancient philosophy as a whole says and urges. Even if we accept nothing else of it, this at least is true — that life is in many ways toilsome and hard. For even if it is not so by nature, it has come to this state of corruption because of us.
This obscure fortune has followed us from far off, indeed from the very beginning, and is attached to none of us in a healthy way; but as we grow, a certain portion of evil is mingled in with all of us: for the seeds of our being, being mortal from the start, share in this same cause, from which comes both the soul's natural deficiency and the diseases and sorrows and fate of mortals that creep upon us from that source." Now why have we turned to this subject? So that we might know that
it is nothing new for a man to suffer misfortune, but that all of us have undergone the same thing. "For fortune is unpredictable," says Theophrastus, "and terrible at snatching away what has been laboriously achieved, and at overturning what seemed to be prosperity, having no fixed season." These things, and others like them, are easy for each person to work out for himself, and also to hear from other ancient and wise men, of whom the first is the divine Homer, who said: "Nothing
more feeble does the earth nurture than man." For he says that a man never expects to suffer evil in the future, so long as the gods grant him strength and his knees move freely; but when the blessed gods bring grievous things upon him too, he bears even these unwillingly, with an enduring heart. "For such is the mind of men upon the earth, as is the day that the father of gods and men brings upon them." And elsewhere: "Great-hearted son of Tydeus, why
do you ask about my lineage? As is the generation of leaves, so too is that of men. Some leaves the wind scatters on the ground, but the flourishing forest brings forth others when the season of spring arrives; so too with the generations of men — one grows while another ceases." That he made good use of this image of human life is clear from what he says elsewhere in another passage: "On behalf of mortals
I do battle — cowardly men, who are like leaves, who at one time flourish vigorously, eating the fruit of the field, and at another time waste away lifeless, and there is no strength in them." Simonides, the lyric poet, when King Pausanias of the Lacedaemonians was continually boasting loudly of his own achievements and, with mockery, bade him say something wise, understanding the man's arrogance, advised him to remember that he was a man.
Philip, king of the Macedonians, when three pieces of good fortune were reported to him at the same time — first, that he had won at Olympia with the four-horse chariot; second, that his general Parmenio had defeated the Dardanians in battle; and third, that Olympias had borne him a male child — raised his hands to heaven and said, "O deity, set some moderate reversal against these blessings," knowing that fortune is
naturally inclined to envy great successes. And Theramenes, who became one of the Thirty Tyrants at Athens, when the house in which he was dining with a large company collapsed, was the only one saved, and while everyone was congratulating him on his good fortune, he cried out in a loud voice, "O Fortune, for what occasion, then, are you keeping me?" And not long after, he was tortured to death by his fellow tyrants. The poet appears remarkably successful in the art of consolation,
when he makes Achilles say to Priam, who had come to ransom the body of Hector, these words: "Come now, sit upon this chair, and let us allow our griefs to lie quiet in our hearts, sorrowful though we are; for there is no profit in chill lamentation. For thus have the gods spun the thread for wretched mortals, that they should live in sorrow; but they themselves are free of care. For two jars stand
on the floor of Zeus's palace, containing his gifts, one of evils, the other of blessings. To whomever Zeus who delights in thunder gives a mixture of both, that man meets now with evil, now with good; but to whomever he gives only from the jar of sorrows, he makes that man an object of scorn, and cruel hunger drives him over the bright earth, and he wanders honored neither by gods nor by mortals." And after him,
in reputation and in time, though he too proclaimed himself a pupil of the Muses, Hesiod, having likewise shut up evils in a jar, represents Pandora as opening it and scattering its abundance over every land and sea, saying as follows: "But the woman, removing with her hands the great lid of the jar, scattered its contents, and devised grievous cares for mankind. Only Hope remained there within its unbreakable house, inside,
at the rim of the jar, and did not fly out the door; for before that could happen, the lid of the jar closed it in. But countless other griefs wander among men: the earth is full of evils, and the sea is full. Diseases come upon men by day, and others by night, uninvited, bringing evils to mortals in silence, since wise Zeus took away their voice." In perfect accord with this, the comic poet, concerning those who suffer
grievously in such misfortunes, says this: "If tears were a remedy for our troubles, and the one who wept always ceased from his suffering, we would exchange tears for gold by giving it up. But as it is, circumstances pay no heed to this and take no notice of it, master, but proceed along the same path whether you weep or not. What good, then, does it do? None at all. Grief
has this fruit, as trees have theirs: tears." And Dictys, consoling Danae in her suffering, says: "Do you think that Hades cares at all for your laments, and will send back your child, if you wish to lament? Stop. But looking at the misfortunes of your neighbors you would become more at ease, if you were willing to consider how many mortals are held fast in chains, how many grow old
bereft of their children, and how many have fallen from the height of a most prosperous tyranny to nothing — these are the things you ought to consider." For he bids her take to heart the sufferings of those in equal or greater misfortune, since this will make her own lighter to bear. Here one might also invoke the saying of Socrates, who thought that if we were to pool our misfortunes together into a common store, so that each person took an equal share,
most people would gladly go away again with their own. Antimachus the poet made use of just such a method. For when his wife Lyde died, to whom he was tenderly devoted, he composed for himself, as a consolation for his grief, the elegy called "Lyde," enumerating the misfortunes of the heroes, and so making his own grief lighter by means of the sufferings of others. So it is clear that the one who consoles a grieving person must, in turn,
...showing that his misfortune is common and shared by many, and less than what has befallen others, changes the sufferer's opinion and produces in him a certain conviction that what has happened is less than he supposed it to be. Aeschylus seems rightly to rebuke those who think death an evil, speaking as follows: that mortals do not justly hate death, which is the greatest bulwark against many evils. For the one who said, "O Death the Healer, come," imitated this same thought; for truly Hades is a "harbor." It is a great thing to say with confident assurance, "Who is a slave, being unconcerned about dying?" and "Having Hades as my ally, I do not tremble at shadows." For what is harsh, what is grievous, in being dead?
The circumstances of death, however familiar and connatural they may be to us, still seem somehow, I know not how, painful. For what is strange if what is cuttable has been cut, if what is meltable has melted, if what is burnable has burned, if what is perishable has perished? For when is death present in us, or not present? And, says Heraclitus, "the same thing is in us living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old; for these things, having changed, are those, and those again, having changed, are these." For just as one can mold figures from the same clay, dissolve them, and mold them again, doing this one after another without ceasing, so too nature, from the same matter, long ago raised up our forefathers, then in succession begot our fathers, then us, and will in turn bring round others upon others. And the river of generation, flowing thus continuously, will never stop; and likewise the opposite river, that of destruction, whether called Acheron or Cocytus by the poets. The same first cause that showed us the light of the sun also leads us to gloomy Hades. And perhaps the air around us is an image of this, making day and night follow one another in turn, ushering in life and death, sleep and waking.
For this reason living is said to be a debt owed to fate, something to be repaid, which our forefathers borrowed. And this debt ought to be paid back easily and without groaning whenever the lender demands it; for so we would appear most grateful. I think, too, that nature, seeing the disorder and brevity of life, made the appointed day of death uncertain, for this was better. For if we knew it in advance, some would waste away beforehand with grief and would have died before dying. Consider also the painfulness of life, and how it is drenched with many cares, which, if we wished to enumerate, we would condemn life far too much, and we would confirm the opinion held by some that it is better to be dead than to live.
Simonides, at any rate, says of men: "small is the strength of men, their cares unavailing, in a brief span toil upon toil; and death, inescapable, hangs equally over all, for of it an equal portion is allotted both to the good and to the bad." And Pindar: "for every one blessing the immortals apportion mortals two afflictions, which fools cannot bear with grace." And Sophocles: "do you grieve for a mortal man who has perished, not knowing whether death brings any gain?" And Euripides: "do you know the nature of mortal affairs? I think not — how could you? But listen to me: death is owed by all mortals, and there is no one among them who knows for certain whether he will be alive tomorrow; for where the outcome of fortune will lead is unseen."
Since, then, the life of men is of the sort these poets describe, how is it not more fitting to congratulate those released from its servitude than to pity and lament them, as most people do out of ignorance?
Socrates used to say that death resembles either the deepest sleep, or a long and lasting journey abroad, or, thirdly, a kind of destruction and disappearance of both body and soul — and that in none of these is it an evil. And he went through each point in turn, taking the first one first: "if death is a kind of sleep, and nothing evil happens to those who sleep, then clearly nothing evil could happen to those who have died either. And that the deepest sleep is the sweetest, what need is there even to say? The fact itself is plain to all men, and Homer too bears witness to it, saying of such sleep, 'unwakable, sweetest, most like to death'; and elsewhere he says this too: 'there he encountered Sleep, brother of Death,' and 'Sleep and Death, twin brothers' — showing by that image their likeness, for twins above all display likeness. Again, somewhere he calls death 'sleep of bronze,' hinting at our lack of sensation. Nor did the one who called sleep 'the lesser mysteries of death' seem to speak without art; for sleep is truly an initiation, a preliminary rite, for death."
And very wisely too the Cynic Diogenes, when overtaken by sleep and about to depart from life, said, when the physician woke him and asked whether anything troubled him: "Nothing," he said, "for the brother is only getting ahead of the brother" — meaning that Sleep was merely anticipating Death.
If, again, death resembles a journey abroad, not even so is it an evil; perhaps it is even the opposite — a good. For to live unenslaved to the flesh and its passions, by which the mind, dragged down, is filled with mortal folly, is something happy and blessed. "For the body," says Plato, "affords us countless distractions because of the necessary provision of food, and further, if any diseases befall it, they hinder our pursuit of reality; and it fills us with desires and fears and phantoms of every kind and with so much nonsense that, as the saying truly goes, because of it we are never able, in any real sense, to think clearly about anything at all. For wars and factions and battles are produced by nothing other than the body and its desires; for all wars come about on account of the acquisition of wealth, and we are compelled to acquire wealth because of the body, being enslaved to its service; and because of all this we have no leisure for philosophy. And the last point of all is that, even if we do get some leisure from it and turn to consider something, it keeps intruding everywhere into our inquiries, producing confusion and disturbance and astonishment, so that we are unable, because of it, to discern the truth. In fact it has truly been shown to us that if we are ever to know anything purely, we must be freed from the body and view the things themselves with the soul alone. And then, it seems, we shall have what we desire and what we claim to love — namely wisdom — once we have died, as the argument indicates, but not while we are alive. For if it is not possible to know anything purely together with the body, then one of two things holds: either knowledge cannot be attained at all, or only after death; for only then will the soul be by itself, apart from the body — not before. And while we live, it seems we shall come closest to knowing if we have as little as possible to do with the body and do not associate with it, except so far as is entirely necessary, and are not infected by its nature, but keep ourselves pure from it, until god himself releases us. And in this way, freed from the folly of the body, we shall, in all likelihood, be among beings of the same kind, seeing through ourselves everything that is unmixed — and this is the truth; for it is perhaps not permitted for the impure to lay hold of the pure." So that even if death does seem to be a transfer to another place, it is not an evil; indeed it may even turn out to be among the good things, as Plato showed.
For this reason Socrates also spoke most wondrously to his judges: "To fear death, gentlemen, is nothing other than to seem wise without being so; for it is to seem to know what one does not know. For no one knows whether death does not happen to be the greatest of all goods for a man, and yet men fear it as though they knew for certain that it is the greatest of evils." Nor does the one who said, "let no one fear death, a release from toils, but rather fear the greatest of evils," seem out of harmony with this. And it is said that the divine bears witness to these things too, for we have received an account of many who, because of their piety, obtained this gift from the gods. Of these I will pass over the rest, sparing the proportions of my composition, but I will recall those that are best known and on everyone's lips.
First, then, I will relate to you the story of Cleobis and Biton, the young men of Argos. For they say that their mother, who was priestess of Hera, when the time came for the procession up to the temple, and the mules that drew the wagon were late while the hour pressed on, these young men put themselves under the yoke of the wagon and drew their mother to the temple. And she, overjoyed at the piety of her sons, prayed that the best thing possible among men be given to them by the goddess; and they, having lain down to sleep, never rose again, the goddess having granted them death as the reward of their piety.
And concerning Agamedes and Trophonius, Pindar says that, having built the temple at Delphi, they asked Apollo for their wage, and he promised to pay them on the seventh day, bidding them feast in the meantime; and they, having done as instructed, lay down to sleep on the seventh night and died. It is also said that when men sent by the Boeotians, at Pindar's own urging, inquired of the god what was best for men, the prophetess answered that he himself was not ignorant of it, if indeed what was written concerning Trophonius and Agamedes applied to him; but that if he wished to test it, it would soon become clear to him. And so, upon hearing this, Pindar is said to have reckoned that it concerned his own death, and after a little time had passed, he died.
Concerning Euthynous the Italian, they say the following took place. He was the son of Elysius of Terina, a man first among the people there in virtue, wealth, and reputation, and Euthynous died suddenly from some unclear cause. Elysius then entertained the thought — as perhaps anyone else might have — that his son had perhaps perished by poison, since Euthynous was his sole heir to his great estate and fortune. Being at a loss as to how he might obtain proof of this, he went to an oracle of the dead, and having made the preliminary sacrifice as custom prescribes, lay down to sleep and saw a vision of the following kind. He seemed to see his own father come to him, and, having seen him, discourse with him at length about the fate of his son, and beg and entreat him to help discover the cause of the death. And his father said, "It is for this that I have come; but receive from this one here what he brings you, for from it you will learn everything about which you grieve." The young man he indicated was following him, resembling his son both in age and in bearing, and he asked who this was. And the father said, "I am the guardian spirit of your son," and thereupon handed him a small written tablet. Unrolling it, he saw inscribed these three lines: "Truly the minds of men wander foolishly in their ignorance. Euthynous lies dead by a fated death; for it was not good for him to live, nor for his parents either."
Such, then, are these tales as recorded among the ancients as well. But if indeed death is a complete destruction and dissolution of both body and soul — for this was the third of Socrates' comparisons — not even so is it an evil; for according to this view a kind of insensibility occurs, and a release from all pain and care. For just as no good attaches to us in that state, so neither does any evil; for just as the good is naturally present with regard to what exists and has substance, in the same way is the evil as well; but with regard to what does not exist, but has been removed from among existing things, neither of these applies. Those who have died, therefore, are placed in the same condition as before birth. Just as, then, nothing was good or evil for us before birth, so too nothing is after death. And just as the things before us were nothing to us, so too the things after us will be nothing to us; for truly no pain touches a corpse.
For I call not being born equal to dying; the same condition holds after death as before birth. But do you suppose there is a difference between not being born at all, and having been born, then ceasing to be? Unless you also suppose there is some difference between our house or our clothing, after their destruction, and the time before they were made. But if in those cases there is no difference, clearly there is none in the case of death either, compared with the condition before birth. Graceful indeed is the saying of Arcesilaus: "This thing called an evil, death, alone among the other things reckoned as evils, has never yet grieved anyone while present, but grieves only when absent and anticipated." For indeed many die because of the worthlessness of, and the slander cast upon, death, in order that they may not die well. Rightly, then, Epicharmus says: "It was compounded, and it was dissolved, and it departed again to whence it came — earth to earth, and spirit above. What is harsh in this? Nothing at all." And Cresphontes, somewhere in Euripides, speaking of Heracles, says: "For if he dwells beneath the nether earth, among those no longer existing, he would have no power" — one could rephrase this and say just as truly: "if he dwells beneath the nether earth, among those no longer existing, he would suffer nothing."
Noble too is the Laconian saying: "Now it is we who flourish, before us it was others, and presently it will be others still, whose generation we shall no longer see"; and again: "those who died, having accounted neither living nor dying as the noble thing, but rather the doing of both of these nobly." And very nobly too does Euripides speak, concerning those who endure long illnesses: "I hate those who wish to prolong life, by means of foods and...
food and drink and magic spells, diverting the channel so as to avoid death. Such people, once they can be of no further use to the earth, ought to die, be gone, and get out of the way of the young." And Merope, uttering manly words, stirs the theaters when she says such things as: "My children are dead, and not to me alone of mortals, nor have I alone been deprived of a husband; countless others have drained to the dregs the same life as I have." To these lines one might fittingly attach: "Where now are those solemn things? Where is Croesus, the great lord of Lydia, or Xerxes who yoked the heavy neck of the Hellespontine sea? All have gone to Hades and to the House of Forgetfulness, their wealth destroyed along with their bodies."
But indeed, someone may say, it is untimely death above all that moves the many to grief and lamentation. Yet even this is so easily consoled that it has been observed even by ordinary poets, and has found its consolation. Consider what one of the comic poets says on this subject to a man grieving over an untimely death: "Then, if you knew that this life, which he did not live out, would have brought him good fortune had he lived, his death was untimely; but if this life would in turn have brought him some irreparable harm, then perhaps his death has proved kinder to you than life would have been." Since, then, it is unclear whether it was to his advantage that he ceased from life and was released from greater evils, or not, we ought not to bear it so heavily, as though we had lost all we thought to gain from him.
Indeed the Amphiaraus of the poet does not seem to console the mother of Archemorus badly, when she was distressed that her child, being an infant, had died all too untimely a death. For he speaks thus: "No mortal has ever been born who does not suffer. He buries children and in turn begets new ones, and he himself dies; and at this mortals grieve, carrying earth to earth. But it is a necessity that life be reaped like a fruitful ear of corn, and that one man live while another does not. Why must we lament these things, which we must pass through according to nature? Nothing that is necessary is dreadful to mortals."
For, in general, one ought to consider — reasoning earnestly both with oneself and with another — that it is not the longest life that is best, but the most earnest one. For it is not the man who has played the lyre the most, or spoken in public the most, or piloted a ship the longest who is praised, but the one who has done it well. For the good must be reckoned not by length of time, but by virtue and by fitting proportion; this is held to be happy and dear to the gods. It is for this reason, at any rate, that the poets have handed down to us that the most eminent of the heroes, even those born of gods, departed from life before old age — like that one whom "Zeus who bears the aegis and Apollo loved with every kind of affection in his heart, yet he did not reach the threshold of old age." For it is timeliness rather than longevity that we everywhere observe to hold the first place. And indeed, among plants too, the best are
those that produce the most fruit in a short span, and among animals, those from which in no great time we derive much benefit for our life. And, of course, whether a span is long or short seems to make no difference at all when set against unending eternity. For a thousand years, or ten thousand, according to Simonides, are but an indeterminate point, or rather the smallest fraction of a point. Since indeed, if those animals which they say occur around the Black Sea have but a single day's life — born at dawn, in their prime at midday, and growing old and completing their life by evening — would not this same experience of ours have been theirs as well, if some human soul and power of reasoning had been present in each of them, and the same things would surely have befallen them: those that failed before midday causing lamentation and tears,
while those that lived through the whole day would be accounted altogether fortunate? For the measure of life is what is good and honorable, not length of time; and we must regard as foolish and full of great naivety such exclamations as "But he ought not to have been snatched away while young." For who could say what ought to have happened? There are many other cases too concerning which one might say "this ought not to have been done," and yet it has been done, and is being done, and will often be done again. For we have not come into life to legislate, but to submit to what has been ordained by the gods who govern the whole, and to the statutes of fate and providence. What then? Do those who mourn for such people who have died in this way mourn for their own sake, or for the sake of the departed? If for their own sake, because they have been deprived
of the pleasure, or usefulness, or care in old age that came from the dead, then the pretext for their grief is self-regarding; for they will be shown to be longing not for those persons themselves, but for the benefits derived from them. But if they mourn for the sake of the dead, then, once they understand that the dead are in no evil condition, they will be freed from their grief, persuaded by the ancient and wise saying which advises us to make good things as great as possible, and to diminish and
belittle evil things. If, then, grief is a good thing, we must make it as extensive and as great as possible; but if, as truth in fact holds, we agree that it is an evil, we must contract it and make it as small as possible, and erase it as far as we can. That this is easy is made clear by the following consolation. They say that one of the ancient philosophers, coming in to Queen Arsinoe
as she mourned her son, made use of such an argument, saying that at the time when Zeus was distributing honors among the divinities, Grief happened not to be present, and came later, after the honors had already been distributed. So then Zeus, since Grief demanded that an honor be given to her too, being at a loss because all the honors had already been used up on the others, gave her this one: the honor that occurs in connection with those who have died — that is, tears and
sorrows. "Just as, then, the other divinities are loved by those whom they honor, so also is Grief." "If, then, you dishonor her, woman, she will not come near you; but if she is carefully honored by you with the honors given to her — grief and lamentation — she will love you and will always be present with you in some such way, so as to be continually honored by
you." This man seems to have persuaded the woman most remarkably by his argument, and to have taken away her grief and her laments. And in general one might say to the mourner: "Will you ever cease from your distress, or do you think you must grieve forever, throughout your whole life? For if you remain forever in this state of suffering, you will bring upon yourself complete wretchedness and
the bitterest misery, through weakness and cowardice of soul. But if you will at some point change, why do you not change now, and draw yourself up out of your misfortune at once? For whatever arguments you will use, as time goes on, to free yourself from grief, attend to these very arguments now, and free yourself from your affliction. For even in the case of bodily ailments, the quickest path to recovery is the better one. So whatever you intend to grant to time,
grant it now to reason and to education, and free yourself from your troubles." "But," he says, "I did not expect this to happen to me, nor did I anticipate it." But you ought to have anticipated it, and to have judged beforehand the uncertainty and nothingness of human affairs, and then you would not now have been caught unprepared, as though suddenly attacked by enemies. For Theseus, in Euripides, appears to have been well prepared for such things; for he says: "I, having learned this from a certain wise man, cast my mind toward troubles and misfortunes, imposing upon myself exile from my own country, untimely deaths, and other paths of evil, so that if I should suffer anything of what I imagined in my mind, it might not bite me the more, coming upon me as something fresh." But those of meaner and untrained disposition sometimes take no time at all to deliberate about
what is fitting and advantageous, but turn instead to the extremes of wretched behavior, punishing a body that is guilty of nothing, and forcing parts that are not sick to suffer along with it, as the Achaean poet says. This is why Plato seems to give very good advice, when he urges that in such misfortunes one should "keep quiet, since neither the evil nor the good is clear, and nothing is gained for the future by
one who bears it badly; for grieving becomes an obstacle to deliberating about what has happened, and, just as in the fall of dice, one should arrange one's own affairs according to what has fallen, in whatever way reason judges best. One ought not, then, having stumbled, to cry out like children clutching the part that was struck, but to accustom the soul to turn as quickly as possible to healing and setting right what
has fallen and become sick, banishing lamentation by means of the healing art." They say that the lawgiver of the Lycians ordered his citizens, whenever they mourned, to mourn dressed in women's clothing, wishing to show that grief is a womanish affection and not fitting for well-ordered men who have laid claim to a liberal education. For mourning is in truth something feminine, weak, and ignoble; for women are more given to grief than men, and barbarians more than Greeks,
and inferior men more than better ones; and among the barbarians themselves, it is not the noblest — the Celts and the Galatians, and all who are by nature full of a more manly spirit — but rather, if anyone, the Egyptians and Syrians and Lydians, and all who are similar to these. Of these it is recorded that some go down into certain pits and remain there for many days, unwilling even to see
the light of the sun, since the deceased too has been deprived of it. Ion the tragic poet, at any rate, not unaware of the folly of these people, has made a certain woman say: "I have come out, a suppliant to you, the nurse of your grown children, leaving the pits of mourning." Some of the barbarians even cut off parts of the body, mutilating noses and ears and the rest of the body, thinking they are thereby doing some favor to the dead,
as they cling to what is contrary to the natural moderation of feeling that ought to prevail in such matters. But indeed, some, interposing an objection, think that mourning ought not to occur for every death, but only for untimely ones, on the ground that the dead has not obtained any of the goods reckoned as such in life — for instance, marriage, education, maturity, a public career, offices of state. These, they say, are what most grieve those who suffer misfortune in the case of untimely deaths, because they have been deprived
of their hope before it was due — not knowing that untimely death, as regards human nature, makes no difference at all. For just as, when a journey to a common homeland lies before all, necessary and inescapable, some go ahead and others follow after, but all arrive at the same place, in the same way, of those journeying toward what is fated, those who arrive later gain nothing more than
those who arrive sooner. And indeed, if untimely death is an evil, then the deaths of infants and children would be the most untimely of all, and even more so those of the newly born. But we bear the deaths of these easily and cheerfully, while we bear those of people already advanced in years with difficulty and with mourning, because of the false hopes we have built up, since we already suppose that the continuance of such people
is secure. But if the span of human life were twenty years, we would consider one who died at fifteen to have died not untimely but already having reached a sufficient measure of age; while one who completed the full term of twenty years, or came close to the number of twenty years, we would altogether have counted blessed, as having lived through the happiest and most complete of lives. And if it were two hundred years, then
one who died at a hundred years we would in every case have regarded as untimely, and turned to lamentations and dirges. It is clear, then, that so-called untimely death too is easily consoled, both for these reasons and for those stated earlier. Indeed, Troilus truly wept less than Priam, and Priam himself would have wept less had he died before his time, while his kingship and the great fortune which he later lamented were still flourishing. Consider, at any rate, what he said to
his own son Hector, urging him to withdraw from battle with Achilles, where he says: "But come within the wall, my child, that you may save the Trojan men and women, and not grant great glory to the son of Peleus, while you yourself are deprived of dear life. Pity me too, still in my senses, wretched as I am, doomed, whom the son of Cronus, my father, will destroy at the threshold of old age by a grievous fate,
after I have witnessed many evils: my sons destroyed, my daughters dragged away, my chambers plundered, and infant children dashed to the ground in dreadful slaughter, and my daughters-in-law dragged off by the cruel hands of the Achaeans. And I myself, last of all, when someone has struck me with the sharp bronze or has struck me down with a spear and taken the life from my limbs, shall be torn apart at my own front doors by ravenous dogs — the very dogs I reared
in my halls at my own table as watchdogs of my doors, who then, having drunk my blood, and their minds gone wild, will lie there at my gates. For a young man, it is altogether fitting when he is slain and torn by the sharp bronze, to lie there dead; and though he be dead, everything that shows is honorable, whatever may be seen. But when the dogs defile the grey head and the grey
beard and the private parts of an old man who has been killed, this is the most pitiable thing that befalls wretched mortals." So spoke the old man, and with his hands he tore the grey hair from his head, but he did not persuade the heart of Hector. Since, then, you have so very many examples concerning these matters, consider that death frees not a few people from great and grievous evils, which, had they lived on, they would certainly have experienced.
These things, out of regard for the proper proportion of my discourse, I have passed over, being content with what has been said, so as not to need to go beyond what is natural and moderate into fruitless mourning and ignoble lamentation. For Crantor says that not to be suffering evil through one's own fault is no small alleviation of misfortune; but I would say it is the greatest remedy for freedom from grief. And loving
and cherishing the one who has passed away does not consist in grieving for ourselves, but in benefiting the one we love; and the benefit for those who have been taken from us is the honor paid through good remembrance. For no good man deserves lamentations, but hymns and songs of praise; not mourning, but honored remembrance; not painful tears, but the yearly offerings of first fruits — if indeed the one who has passed on has come to share in some more divine life,
released from the servitude of the body and from these unwearying cares and misfortunes which those allotted a mortal life must necessarily endure, until they complete the span of life allotted to them by fate, which nature gave to us not for all time, but apportioned to each according to the measure assigned by the laws of fate. For this reason those who think rightly
ought not, in the case of those who die, to turn aside beyond what is natural and moderate in grief over fortune, into fruitless and barbarous mourning, and to wait for the very thing that has already befallen many — namely, to die worn down by their grief before they have cast it off, and to have their share in the ill-fated burial amid the very rites of mourning, suffering at once both the pains of grief and the evils that come from irrationality
...being buried along with them, so that one might quote the Homeric line: "and upon them, wailing, dark evening came." And often we ought to say to ourselves: "Well then? Shall we ever stop grieving, or shall we go on being joined to unrelenting misfortune for the whole of our life?" For to think that mourning has no end is the height of folly, even though we can see that even the most heavily grieved and most sorrowful people often become the gentlest with time; and at the very tombs over which they once agonized so bitterly, wailing and beating their breasts, they now hold splendid feasts with musicians and every other kind of diversion. It is madness, then, to suppose that grief will remain permanent in this way. But if people reasoned that it will cease once a certain thing has happened, they would also have to reckon that time evidently brings that thing about; for what has already happened cannot, even by a god, be made not to have happened. What has now occurred contrary to our hope and contrary to our expectation shows, by the very facts, what is accustomed to happen to many people.
What then? Are we truly unable to learn this through reason, or to reckon it out for ourselves — that "the earth is full of evils, and the sea is full," and that such evils beset mortals, and the spirits of death hover about them, and there is no empty entrance even into the upper air? For by many wise men, as Crantor says, human affairs have been lamented not only now but long ago, men who held that life is a punishment and that to be born a human being at all is the greatest misfortune. Aristotle says that Silenus, when captured by Midas, declared the very same thing. It is better to set down the philosopher's own words. In the dialogue entitled Eudemus, or On the Soul, he says the following:
"Therefore, O best and most blessed of all, besides holding the dead to be blessed and happy, we consider it impious to say anything false of them or to speak ill of them, on the ground that they have already become better and stronger beings. And this belief is so ancient and so old among us that no one at all knows either the beginning of the time or the one who first established it, but it has remained held as true throughout the whole of unending time. Besides this, you see that it is on everyone's lips, and has been repeated for many years." "What is that?" he asked. And the other, taking it up, said: "That not to be born at all is best of all, but that to have died is better than to live. And this has been testified by the divine power to many. This, they say, was told to Midas after the hunt, when he had caught Silenus and kept questioning and asking him what is best for human beings and what of all things is most to be chosen.
At first Silenus was unwilling to say anything, but kept an unbreakable silence; but when, with great difficulty, by every device, Midas at last induced him to utter something, forced to speak, he said: "O short-lived seed of a toilsome spirit and hard fortune, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be better for you not to know? For life is least painful when one is ignorant of one's own troubles. For human beings it is altogether impossible to attain the best thing of all, or to have any share in the nature of what is best — the best thing for all men and women alike is not to be born at all. But the next best thing, and the first among things attainable by man,
is this: having been born, to die as quickly as possible." It is clear, then, that since he declared existence in death to be better than existence in life, he made this pronouncement. One could set down countless further examples on this same topic, but there is no need to speak at length. We ought not, then, to lament for those who die young, on the ground that they have been deprived of the things generally reckoned goods in a long life;
for this, as we have said many times, is unclear — whether they happen to have been deprived of goods or of evils; for evils are by far the more numerous. We acquire goods only with difficulty and through much anxious care, while we acquire evils quite easily — for they say that evils are round and continuous, and drawn toward one another for many reasons, while goods are discrete and come together only with difficulty, and even then only near the very end of life.
We seem, then, to have forgotten that not only, as Euripides says, do "mortals possess no wealth as their own," but strictly speaking nothing of human affairs is truly ours. Therefore in every case we must say that we hold and care for what belongs to the gods; and whenever they wish, they take it back again. We ought not, then, to be aggrieved if what they lent us for a little while, they demand back again — just as
bankers, as we are accustomed to say often, when the deposits they hold are called in, do not become vexed at the repayment, if they are reasonable men. To those who do not repay easily, one might fairly say: "Have you forgotten that you received this on condition of repaying it?" This is exactly the situation of all mortal beings. We hold our life as though deposited with us by the gods out of necessity, and there is no fixed time set for its repayment,
just as there is none for bankers regarding the repayment of deposits, but it is unclear when the one who gave it will demand it back. How, then, is a man who is himself about to die, or who is excessively grieved over the death of his children, not plainly forgetting that he himself is a human being, and that he has begotten mortal children? For it is not the mark of a sane person to be ignorant that man is a mortal creature, or that he has been born
in order to die. If, then, Niobe, according to the myths, had readily entertained the thought that even one flourishing in life and laden with the growth of children would one day see the sweet light no more, she would not have been so distressed as even to wish to abandon life itself because of the magnitude of her misfortune, and to call upon the gods to be snatched away herself to the most grievous destruction. There are two
of the Delphic maxims most necessary for life: "Know thyself" and "Nothing in excess"; for upon these all the others depend. These sayings are in harmony and accord with one another, and each seems, so far as it can, to be revealed through the other. For within "know thyself" is contained "nothing in excess," and within the latter is contained
"know thyself." Hence Ion speaks of the first of these thus: "Know thyself — this saying is not a great one in words, but its accomplishment is as great as Zeus alone among the gods can know." And Pindar says that the wise men also praised the saying "nothing in excess" exceedingly. Whoever, then, keeps these things in mind as sound precepts from the Pythia, applicable to all
the affairs of life, will be able to apply them easily and to bear those affairs with grace, looking both to his own nature and to the need not to be carried, beyond what is fitting, either into arrogance amid good fortune, or into abasement and collapse into wailing and lamentation, on account of the soul's weakness and the fear of death implanted in us through ignorance of what is accustomed to happen in
life according to the portion allotted by necessity or fate. Well did the Pythagoreans exhort us, saying: "Whatever pains mortals have by divine fortunes, whatever portion you have, bear that portion and do not be aggrieved." And the tragedian Aeschylus says: "It belongs to just and wise men not to rage against the gods even amid terrible things." And Euripides says: "Whoever among mortals submits to necessity
is wise in our judgment, and understands the divine." And elsewhere: "Whoever among mortals bears well what befalls him seems to me to be the best man and truly to have self-control." But the majority find fault with everything, and believe that everything that happens to them contrary to their hopes comes about through the malice of fortune and of the spirits. Hence they lament over everything, groaning and blaming their own misfortune.
To such people one might justly reply, taking up the words: "God gives you no trouble at all — you yourself are the cause," and it is folly and derangement, born of a lack of education, that is truly responsible. Because of this deceived and false opinion, then, people find fault with every death. For if someone dies while away from home, they lament, saying: "Ill-fated one — his father and revered mother will not even close his eyes." But if
someone dies in his own homeland with his parents present, they lament that he was snatched from their very hands and left the pain forever in their eyes. And if he died without a word, having said nothing to anyone, they cry out, saying: "You spoke to me no wise word that I might always remember," whereas if he had said something, they always keep that ready at hand as fuel for their grief. If death comes swiftly, they lament,
saying: "He was snatched away." If it comes slowly, they blame it, saying that he wasted away and died in torment. Every occasion is sufficient to stir up grief and lamentation. It is the poets who have set all this in motion, and first and foremost among them Homer, who says how a father laments over his son's bones as he burns them — a bridegroom, one whose death brought grief to his poor parents, and caused his parents unspeakable wailing and mourning.
And in this case it is not yet clear whether his grief is justified; but consider what follows: "an only, cherished son, amid much wealth." For who knows whether God, caring in fatherly fashion for the human race and foreseeing what is going to happen, leads some away from life before their time? Hence one should not think that what they suffer is something to be shunned — for nothing that is necessary for mortals is truly terrible, whether it comes about
through a leading cause or as a consequence of one; and most deaths occur in place of other, greater misfortunes; and for some it would not even have been advantageous to be born at all, for others it was better to die as soon as they were born, for others after advancing only a little in life, and for others in the prime of life. Toward all these kinds of death, then, one must bear oneself lightly, knowing that fate cannot be escaped; and it belongs to educated
people to have grasped, further, that those who seem to have been deprived of life before their time have merely taken the lead over us by a brief span; for even the longest life is short and a mere point compared to unending eternity, and that many of those who mourned too long soon after followed those whom they had mourned, having gained no benefit at all from their grief, but having in vain tormented themselves with
hardships. Since the span of our sojourn in life is exceedingly brief, we ought not to destroy ourselves in parched grief or in the most wretched mourning, wearing ourselves out with pains and bodily self-torment, but rather to turn toward what is better and more humane, striving earnestly to seek out men who will not share and stir up our grief through flattery, but rather those who will remove
our griefs through noble and dignified consolation, giving ear and keeping in mind that Homeric line which Hector spoke to Andromache in consoling her in turn, thus: "My strange one, do not grieve too much at heart for me; for no man will send me to Hades before my fated time; and I say that no man has escaped his fate, be he coward or
brave, once he has been born." This same fate, the poet says elsewhere, "the thread of destiny spun for him at his birth, when his mother bore him." Taking these thoughts to heart, we shall be freed from useless and empty excess of grief, since the time that lies between birth and death is altogether brief. We must therefore be careful to pass this time cheerfully and undisturbed by the pains of mourning, laying aside
the outward marks of grief, and giving thought to the care of the body and to the safety of those who live with us. It is also good to recall the arguments which, in all likelihood, we ourselves once used toward relatives or friends who found themselves in similar misfortunes, consoling and persuading them to bear the common misfortunes of life in common fashion, and human troubles in a human way, and not to be able to help others
toward freedom from grief while being of no help to ourselves through the recollection of these same arguments, by which the pain of the soul must be healed "with the healing remedies of reason," since delay must be made for anything rather than for freedom from grief. And yet, he says, the man who in any matter is "slow to act wrestles with disasters" — this saying that circulates among everyone — but far more, I think, does the man who postpones
the burdensome and hostile sufferings of his soul wrestle with what is to come with time. One should also look to those who have borne, nobly and with greatness of soul, the deaths of their sons, and endured them gently — Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and Demosthenes the Athenian, and Dion of Syracuse, and King Antigonus, and many others both of the ancients and of our own time. Of these, Anaxagoras
we have received the account, as they say, that while engaged in natural philosophy and conversing with his associates, on hearing from one of those who brought him the news of his son's death, he paused only briefly and said to those present: "I knew that I had begotten a mortal son." And Pericles, called "the Olympian" because of his surpassing power in eloquence and understanding, on learning that both his sons had departed this life,
Paralus and Xanthippus, is said by Protagoras to have spoken as follows: "For though his sons were young men and handsome, and died within the same eight days, he bore it without excessive grief; for he held to his accustomed calm, from which he gained much benefit every day toward good fortune and freedom from pain, and toward his reputation among the many; for everyone who saw him bearing his own sorrows with vigor
thought him great-souled and manly, and superior to himself, knowing well his own helplessness in such matters." This man, immediately after the announcement of both his sons' deaths, nonetheless, crowned according to ancestral custom and dressed in white, addressed the assembly, "opening with good counsels," and further urged the Athenians on toward the war. And Xenophon the Socratic, while once sacrificing, on learning from the
messengers from the war that his son Gryllus had died fighting, took off his garland and asked in what manner he had died. When those who brought the news told him that he had fought bravely, distinguishing himself and killing many of the enemy, he fell completely silent for a short time, holding back his emotion by reasoning, then put his garland back on and completed the sacrifice, and said to the messengers:
"I prayed to the gods not that my son be immortal or long-lived — for whether that would be advantageous is unclear — but that he be good and a lover of his country, which indeed he became." And Dion of Syracuse, while sitting in council with his friends, when a disturbance and a great outcry arose in the house, on asking the cause and hearing what had happened — that his son had fallen from the
...had died after falling from the roof, he was not at all overwhelmed: he ordered the body of the deceased to be handed over to the women for the customary burial, while he himself did not set aside the business he had been deliberating about.
It is said that Demosthenes the orator emulated this man's example, though he lost his only and dearly beloved daughter. Aeschines speaks of her in the passage where, professing to accuse him, he says the following: "On the seventh day after his daughter's death, before he had mourned her or performed the customary rites, he put on a garland, dressed in white clothing, sacrificed oxen, and broke the law — he who, the wretched man, had lost the only child who had ever called him father." This man, then, meaning to accuse him rhetorically, ran through these details without realizing that in doing so he actually praises him, for setting aside his mourning and showing his love of country ahead of sympathy for his kin.
King Antigonus, on learning of the death of his son Alcyoneus, which had occurred in battle, looked with great-souled composure at those who brought him the news of the misfortune; and after pausing briefly and showing his grief, he said, "O Alcyoneus, you departed this life somewhat too late, since you rushed out against the enemy with such disregard for your own safety and without heeding either your own preservation or my advice."
Now everyone admires and is amazed at the greatness of soul of these men, but they are unable to imitate them in practice, because of the weakness of spirit that comes from lack of education. Yet, though there are many examples handed down to us through history, both Greek and Roman, of men who conducted themselves nobly and well at the deaths of those close to them, what has been said will suffice for setting aside the most grievous of all griefs, and the fruitless toil that goes with it, which serves no useful purpose.
For that those who excel in virtue, as being dear to the gods, pass on to what is fated, I reminded you a while ago through my earlier words, and now too I shall try to run through it very briefly, adding my testimony to what was well said by Menander: "He whom the gods love dies young." But perhaps you would reply, dearest Apollonius, that the young man was very much subject to Apollo and to the Fates, since it was under that god, once he himself had reached his fullness, that you ought to have been laid to rest when you departed this life — for that would be in accordance with nature, our human nature, that is, though not in accordance with the providence that governs the whole and the ordering of the cosmos. But for him who has been blessed, it was not in accordance with nature to wait beyond the time allotted to him for this life here, but rather, having fulfilled it in due order, to return to the journey ordained by fate, since fate itself, as the saying goes, was already calling him to herself.
But did he die before his time? Then for that very reason he is the more fortunate, and has had no experience of evils: for, as Euripides says, "life is a name only, and what is real is misfortune, once one is born." He, however, in the very flower of his youth, departed whole and undefiled, an object of envy and admiration to all who knew him, having shown himself a lover of his father, a lover of his mother, a lover of his kin, and a lover of wisdom — in a word, a lover of humanity: respecting the elder among his friends as fathers, cherishing those of his own age and his companions, honoring his teachers, most gentle to strangers and to citizens alike, gracious and dear to all, both because of the charm of his appearance and because of his affable kindness.
But indeed that young man, having secured for all time to come the good report that becomes both your piety and his own, departed from this mortal life, as it were from a banquet, before falling into any of the unseemly excess that accompanies extreme old age.
And if the account given by the ancient poets and philosophers is true, as is likely, then for the pious among the departed there is a certain honor and precedence, as is said, and a place set apart in which their souls dwell; and you ought to have good hopes concerning your blessed son, that he has been numbered among these and dwells with them. Pindar the lyric poet says the following about the pious in Hades: "For them the strength of the sun shines during the night here below, and in meadows of red roses their suburb is shaded with frankincense and laden with golden fruit. And some of them delight in horses and in exercises, others in draughts, and others in lyres, and among them all flourishing prosperity blooms, and a lovely fragrance spreads always through that region, as they mingle all manner of offerings with far-shining fire upon the altars of the gods." And going on a little further, in another dirge speaking about the soul, he says: "But all, by a blessed fate, attain an end that releases them from toil. And the body follows death, which is mighty over all, but a living image of eternity is left behind, for that alone comes from the gods. It sleeps while the limbs are active, but to those who sleep it reveals in many a dream a judgment of pleasant and harsh things that is coming."
Now the divine Plato has said a great deal about the immortality of the soul in his dialogue On the Soul, and no little in the Republic, the Meno, and the Gorgias, and scattered remarks in the other dialogues as well. The statements made in the dialogue On the Soul I shall present to you set down separately in my own notes, as you requested; but for the present purpose, what was said to Callicles the Athenian, a companion and pupil of Gorgias the orator, will be timely and useful. For the Socrates of Plato says: "Listen, then," they say, "to a very fine account, which you, I think, will consider a myth, but which I consider a true account; for what I am about to tell you I shall tell you as being true. As Homer says, Zeus, Poseidon, and Pluto divided the rule among themselves when they took it over from their father. Now there was this law concerning men, in force even in the time of Cronus, and still in effect now among the gods: that the man who has passed through life justly and piously departs, when he dies, to the Isles of the Blessed, and dwells there in complete happiness free from evils, while the one who has lived unjustly and impiously goes to the prison of justice and retribution, which they call Tartarus.
"Of these men the judges, in the time of Cronus and still recently, when Zeus had just taken over the rule, were living men judging the living, on the very day on which they were about to die. Consequently the cases were not being judged well. So Pluto and the overseers who came from the Isles of the Blessed went and told Zeus that unworthy men were coming to them from both directions. Zeus then said, 'Well, I will put a stop to this happening. For at present the cases are being judged badly, because,' he said, 'those who are being judged are judged while clothed, that is, while still alive. Many, therefore,' he went on, 'who have wicked souls are clothed in beautiful bodies, good birth, and wealth, and when the judgment takes place, many come forward to testify on their behalf, that they have lived justly. The judges, then, are overawed by these witnesses, and at the same time they themselves judge while clothed, having their own eyes and ears and their whole body wrapped as a veil before their soul. All this stands as an obstacle before them — both their own garments and those of the ones being judged.
"'First, then, we must stop them from foreknowing their death in advance, for at present they know it beforehand. This has already been arranged with Prometheus, so that he may put a stop to it. Next, they must be judged naked, stripped of all these things — for they must be judged after death. And the judge too must be naked, dead, beholding with his very soul, itself alone, the soul itself of each person the moment after he has died, bereft of all his kin and having left behind on earth all that adornment, so that the judgment may be just. Now I, having realized this before you did, have made my own sons judges: two from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthys, and one from Europe, Aeacus. These, then, once they have died, shall judge in the meadow, at the crossroads from which the two roads lead, one to the Isles of the Blessed, the other to Tartarus. And those from Asia Rhadamanthys shall judge, and those from Europe, Aeacus; and to Minos I shall give the privilege of deciding as an arbiter of last resort, if the other two are at a loss over anything, so that the judgment concerning the journey of men may be as just as possible.'
"This, Callicles, is what I have heard and believe to be true; and from this account I reckon that the following follows, that death, as it seems to me, happens to be nothing other than the separation of two things from each other, the soul and the body."
Having gathered these things together for you, dearest Apollonius, and having composed them with much care, I have produced this consolatory discourse for you, which is most necessary for you both for relief from your present grief and for a respite from the most painful mourning of all. It also contains the honor due to your most god-beloved son Apollonius, an honor most longed for by those who have been consecrated — the honor that comes through good remembrance and unceasing praise for all time to come.
You will therefore do well both to be persuaded by this discourse and, in gratifying your blessed son, to turn from the profitless affliction and ruin of body and soul and come to the manner of life that is customary and natural for you. For just as, while he was living with us, he took no pleasure in seeing either you or his mother downcast, so now too, being with the gods and feasting with them, he would not be pleased by such conduct on your part. Take up, then, the resolve of a good, noble, and child-loving man, and free yourself and the young man's mother and his relatives and friends from such wretchedness, passing over to a calmer and more agreeable manner of life, one more pleasing both to your son and to all of us who care for you as is fitting.

======== Moralia: Consolatio Ad Uxorem ========

The man you sent to bring news of our little daughter's death seems to have missed you on the road to Athens; I, on reaching Tanagra, learned of it from my granddaughter. As for the funeral, I imagine everything has already been done; I only hope it was arranged in a way that will bring you the least pain now and for the future. But if there is something you wanted to do and have not yet done, but are waiting
for my judgment, thinking you will bear it more easily once you know my mind, that too shall be settled, free of all excessive fuss and superstition, neither of which is at all like you. Only, wife, watch over me and yourself in the face of this suffering, and hold us both to our settled state. For I myself know and can measure just how great this event is; but if I find you giving way to grief beyond measure, that will trouble me more than
what has happened. And yet I myself was not "born of oak or of rock," as you yourself know, having shared with me the rearing of so many children, all of them brought up at home under our own care. As for this one, because she was born to you, after four sons, when you longed for a daughter, and gave me the chance to give her your own name, which I longed to do, she became exceptionally dear to me. There was, besides, a peculiar sharpness
in the affection one feels for a child at that age, and the delight such children give is pure and unmixed with any anger or complaint. She herself, by nature, had a wonderful sweetness and gentleness of temper, and the affection and favor she returned brought us pleasure together with an understanding of her loving-kindness: for not only to other babies, but even to objects that pleased her, and to her toys, she would bid her nurse give
the breast and offer it, and she would call them to her own table, as it were, out of affection, sharing with those who delighted her whatever sweet things she knew of and had. But I do not see, wife, why these things and others like them, which delighted us while she lived, should now grieve and disturb us when we recall them. Yet I fear, on the other hand, that in casting off the pain we may also cast off the memory,
as Clymene says, "I hate the well-curved bow of cornel wood, and the gymnasium" — forever fleeing and trembling at the reminder of her son, because the recollection brought grief along with it: for nature flees everything that causes distress. But just as she herself, while alive, gave us the sweetest of greetings, sights, and sounds, so too the thought of her should dwell with us and live alongside us, bringing more
— indeed many times more — of what delights than of what grieves, if indeed any of the arguments we have often spoken to others is likely to be of use to us as well in this moment of need, and we are not to sit shut in, repaying those former pleasures with griefs many times over. And this too people who were present remark with wonder: that you did not even change your dress, nor did you bring in any attendants
for slovenly display; nor was there any preparation of showy extravagance for the funeral, but everything was done decently and in silence, with only what was necessary. For my part I was not surprised that you, who never adorned yourself for the theater or a procession, and who indeed considered extravagance useless even for occasions of pleasure, should in this sorrowful time have kept to what is simple and plain. For it is not only "amid Bacchic revels"
that a woman of sound mind must remain uncorrupted, but she must think that the turmoil and agitation of feeling amid mourning need self-control no less — a self-control that struggles not against natural affection, as most people suppose, but against the intemperance of the soul. To natural affection we grant the longing, the honoring, and the remembering of those who have passed; but the insatiable desire for lamentation, which
drags one into wailing and beating of the breast, is no less shameful than intemperance in pleasures, yet it wins pardon in people's talk, because its pain and bitterness attach to what is shameful in place of what is pleasant. For what is more unreasonable than to curb excesses of laughter and exuberant joy, and yet to let loose without restraint the streams of weeping and lamentation, which flow from the very same source? And
is it not strange that some men contend fiercely with their wives over perfume or purple dye, yet allow mourning haircuts, black-dyed garments, unseemly postures of sitting, and painful modes of reclining? And — what is hardest of all — if their household servants or maids are punished immoderately and unjustly, they intervene and stop it, yet look on unmoved while these same women are being cruelly and bitterly punished by their own selves, in circumstances and misfortunes that call for ease and
kindness? But between us, wife, there has never been need of that first kind of contest, nor do I think there will be need of this second kind. In frugality of dress and simplicity of way of life, is there any philosopher whom you have not astonished, once he came into familiar acquaintance with us? And is there any of our fellow citizens to whom you do not offer, in temples and sacrifices and theaters, a display of
your own plainness? And already, in matters such as this, you have shown great steadiness — when you lost your eldest child, and again when that fine boy Chaeron left us. For I remember that when strangers, traveling with me from the coast, had been told of the child's death and came together with the others into the house, they found such great composure and calm that, as they later
related to others, they supposed nothing terrible had happened, but that some empty report had simply gone out — so wisely did you keep order in the household at a time that gives every excuse for disorder, even though you had nursed that child at your own breast and endured the tearing when the nipple was bruised: for such things are noble and show true affection. We see most mothers, when their children have been washed and adorned by others,
take them into their arms as if they were toys, and then, when they die, pour themselves out into empty and graceless mourning — not out of true affection (for affection is reasonable and noble), but because a small natural feeling, mixed heavily with a craving for empty reputation, makes their grief wild, frenzied, and hard to appease. And this does not seem to have escaped Aesop's notice: he said that when Zeus
was distributing honors among the gods, Grief too asked for a share, and so Zeus granted it to her — but only among those who choose her and are willing to receive her. In the beginning, then, this is how it happens: each person of his own accord admits grief into himself. But once it has settled in over time and become a familiar companion and housemate, it does not depart even when one is quite willing to be rid of it. That is why one must fight it at the door and not let it in —
guarding oneself with dress, or with a haircut, or with some other such thing, which, meeting and reproaching us daily, makes the mind small, narrow, closed off, harsh, and fearful, as though it had no part in laughter, or light, or a kindly table, wrapped up and occupied as it is with such things because of grief. And neglect of the body follows upon this evil, along with a distaste for
anointing, bathing, and the rest of one's regimen — when the very opposite is needed, that the soul, suffering as it is, be helped through a body kept strong. For much of what causes pain is blunted and relaxed, just as a wave in calm weather, when the body's tranquility spreads through it. But if dryness and roughness set in from poor regimen, and the body sends up to the soul nothing kindly or wholesome,
but only pains and griefs, like some bitter and harsh vapors, then it becomes hard to recover, even for those who wish it. Such are the sufferings that seize a soul thus ruined. And indeed — the greatest and most fearsome danger in this matter — I would not fear "the visits of wicked women" and their voices and shared lamentations, which wear down and sharpen grief, if you did not allow it, neither by others nor by
yourself, to be worn away. For I know what struggles you fought not long ago, helping Theon's sister and battling those who came from outside with wailings and shrieks, as though carrying, quite literally, fire to fire. For when people see their friends' houses burning, they extinguish the fire as quickly and as forcefully as each can; but when souls are ablaze, these same people bring them fuel instead. And to a man with sore eyes
they do not allow anyone who wishes to lay hands, nor do they touch the inflamed part; but the mourner sits there, offering himself to everyone who comes along, as it were a stream to be stirred and roughened further, so that the suffering, from a small irritating and stirring cause, is scratched open into a great and grievous wound. These things, then, I know you will guard against. Try, rather, by shifting your thought, to carry yourself back often to that
time before this child was even born, when we had no complaint against fortune; then join the present moment to that earlier one, as though our circumstances had again become the same as they were then. For otherwise, wife, we shall seem to resent the child's very birth, making the time before she existed appear less troubled for us than it should. The two years in between must not be removed from
memory, but rather set down among our pleasures, as having afforded us joy and delight; and we must not count a small good as a great evil, nor, because fortune did not add what we hoped for, show ingratitude for what was given. For speaking well of the divine, and a spirit gracious and uncomplaining toward fortune, always yields a fine and pleasant fruit; whereas in such
circumstances as ours, the one who draws especially on the memory of good things, and turns and carries his thoughts from the dark and troubling toward the bright and shining, either wholly extinguishes what pains him or, by mixing in its opposite, makes it small and dim. For just as perfume always delights the sense of smell, yet is also a remedy against foul odors,
so too the recollection of good things amid evils supplies, for those who do not avoid remembering what was kind and do not blame fortune for everything and in every way, the service of a necessary help. This is something we ought not to suffer — to slander our own life, as though it were a book with a single blot amid all the rest that is clean and unmarred. For that
happiness depends on ending in a settled disposition arrived at through sound reasoning, and that the shifts of fortune do not produce great deviations nor bring on confused slippages of life, you have heard many times. But if we too, like most people, must be steered by outward circumstances, and reckon up what comes from fortune, and use ordinary men as judges of happiness, then do not look now at
the tears and lamentations of those who come to visit, performed toward each person out of some worthless habit; consider rather how you continue to be envied by these very people for your children, your household, and your life. And it is strange that others would gladly choose your fortune, blemish and all — even with this thing for which we now grieve added to it — while you find fault and chafe at possessing it, and do not even perceive, from the very thing that
stings you, how much gratitude is owed for what remains to us: like those who pick out Homer's headless and tailless verses while overlooking, quite unfairly, the many great passages of his poetry, so too, to scrutinize and slander the base things in life while dealing with its good things in a vague and confused manner, is to suffer something like what the illiberal and money-loving suffer, who, gathering much, do not use what they have
but lament and chafe over what is lost. But if you feel pity for her as one who died unmarried and childless, you may in turn find comfort in reflecting that you yourself have not been left without a share in these things, having become no stranger to any of them. For these are great goods to those who lack them, but small to those who possess them. And she, having reached a state beyond pain, has no need to grieve us; for what harm can come to us
from her, if nothing now causes her pain? Indeed, even the loss of great things ceases to pain us once we come to feel we no longer need them. And your Timoxena has been deprived only of small things, for she knew only small things and delighted in small things; and of things she never perceived or even conceived, how could she be said to be deprived? And as for what you hear from others, who persuade many
by saying that nothing at all is evil or painful for what has been dissolved, I know that our ancestral tradition and the mystic symbols of the rites of Dionysus, which we who share in them understand among ourselves, prevent you from believing this. Think, then, of the soul as indestructible, and that it undergoes something like what happens to captured birds: if it has been nurtured a long time within the body and has grown
tame to this life through many activities and long habituation, it settles down again into another body and does not release itself, nor does it cease to entangle itself here in the sufferings and fortunes that come through successive births. For do not suppose that old age is reviled and spoken ill of because of its wrinkles, its gray hair, and its bodily weakness; rather, the hardest thing about it is this: that it
makes the soul stale with memories of things here and clinging to them, and bends and presses it down, preserving the shape it took on from the body while it was subject to these experiences. But the soul that is taken by higher powers is held fast, as though springing back from a moist and yielding bend toward its true nature. For just as fire, if someone puts it out and then immediately rekindles it,
is fanned back to life and quickly recovers — so it is best to pass through the gates of Hades as swiftly as possible, before too great a love for the affairs of this world takes hold, and before one is softened toward the body and dissolved into it as if by drugs. The truth about these matters is shown more clearly in our ancestral and ancient customs and laws. For to their own infants who have died, people neither pour
libations nor perform the other rites customary for the dead, since infants have no part in earth or in earthly things; nor do people linger about their graves, tombs, and lyings-in-state, nor sit beside their bodies — for the laws do not permit mourning for those so young, holding it impious to mourn those who have passed into a better and more divine portion and place. Since it is harder for us
to disbelieve this than to believe it, let us keep our outward observance as the laws prescribe, but keep what is within us still more unstained, pure, and sound of mind.

======== Moralia: De Alexandri Magni Fortuna Aut Virtute ========

This is Fortune's argument, when she claims Alexander as her own private achievement and hers alone. But one must speak on behalf of philosophy — or rather on behalf of Alexander, who would be vexed and indignant if it should appear that he received his empire as a free gift even from Fortune, an empire which he purchased at the price of much blood and wound upon wound, lying awake through many sleepless nights, and passing bloody days waging war against irresistible
forces and countless tribes and impassable rivers and cliffs no arrow could reach, arraying against them good counsel, endurance, courage, and self-control. I think he himself would say to Fortune, when she inscribes his successes to her own name: "Do not slander my valor, nor rob me of my glory by claiming it for yourself. Darius was your handiwork — him you made lord of the Persians out of a slave and a royal courier; and so was Sardanapalus,
whom you crowned with the diadem of kingship while he was carding purple wool. But I have gone up in victory to Susa by way of Arbela, and Cilicia opened wide Egypt to me, while the Granicus opened Cilicia — the Granicus, which I crossed by trampling over the corpses of Mithridates and Spithridates. Go adorn yourself and take your dignity from unwounded and bloodless kings — for those were your fortunate favorites, the Ochuses and Artaxerxeses, whom you set upon the throne of Cyrus straight from birth.
But my own body carries many tokens of a Fortune who fought against me, not one who fought beside me. First, among the Illyrians, I was struck on the head with a stone and on the neck with a club; then at the Granicus my head was split open by a barbarian's sword, and at Issus my thigh by a blade; at Gaza an arrow pierced my ankle, and I was thrown from my seat and spun heavily to the ground with a dislocated shoulder; and near Maracanda arrows shattered the
bone of my shin. As for the rest, there were the blows and violent assaults of Indian fury: among the Aspasians an arrow struck my shoulder, among the Gandridae my leg; among the Malli an arrow from a bow drove into my chest and the iron sank deep, and a club-blow landed by my neck, when the scaling-ladders that had been set against the walls broke — and there Fortune shut me in alone,
not with brilliant opponents, but granting so great a feat to obscure barbarians. If Ptolemy had not held his shield over me, if Limnaeus had not fallen before me facing countless missiles, if the Macedonians had not torn down the wall with fury and force, that nameless, barbarous village would have had to become the tomb of Alexander." And indeed, the hardships of the campaign itself were storms, droughts, unfathomable rivers, sheer
heights no bird could reach, monstrous sights of wild beasts, savage ways of life, changes of rulers, repeated betrayals; and before the campaign even began, Greece was still writhing from the wars with Philip, Thebes was shaking the dust of Chaeronea from its armor as it rose again from its fall, and Athens was joining hands with her in outstretched appeal; all Macedonia was seething with treachery, looking toward Amyntas and the sons of Aëropus; the Illyrians were breaking out in revolt,
and the Scythian threat hung over the neighboring peoples who were themselves stirring to rebellion; Persian gold, flowing everywhere through the demagogues in each city, was setting the Peloponnese in motion; and Philip's treasuries were empty of money, with a debt besides, as Onesicritus records, of two hundred talents. In the midst of such poverty and such turmoil of affairs, a mere youth just past the age of boyhood dared to set his hope on Babylon and Susa — or rather
to fix his mind on the empire of all mankind — trusting to thirty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry, if we are to believe it: for that was their number, as Aristobulus says; though according to King Ptolemy, thirty thousand infantry and five thousand cavalry; and according to Anaximenes, forty-three thousand infantry and five thousand five hundred cavalry. And the splendid, great provision made ready for him by Fortune was seventy
talents, as Aristobulus says; though according to Duris, it was only thirty days' worth of supplies. Was Alexander, then, reckless and rash to set out toward so vast an undertaking from such slender means? Not at all. For who set forth with greater or nobler resources — the greatness of soul, the understanding, the self-mastery, the manly courage with which philosophy equipped him for the campaign — and with more provisions from Aristotle his teacher than from
Philip his father, when he crossed over against the Persians? We believe those writers, and honor Homer for it, who say that Alexander once declared that the Iliad and the Odyssey accompanied him as provisions for the campaign; but if someone should say that the Iliad and the Odyssey followed along merely as consolations for toil and pastimes for pleasant leisure, while the true provisions were in fact the discourse drawn from philosophy and the
treatises on fearlessness and courage, and further on self-mastery and greatness of soul, we look down on this — evidently because he wrote nothing about syllogisms or propositions, held no walks in the Lyceum, and delivered no theses in the Academy: for it is by these marks that those who consider philosophy to be words rather than deeds define it. And yet neither Pythagoras wrote anything, nor Socrates, nor Arcesilaus, nor Carneades — the most esteemed of
philosophers; and those men were not occupied with wars so great, nor with taming barbarian kings, nor with founding Greek cities among savage nations, nor with teaching law to lawless and unruly tribes and bringing them peace — rather, even in their leisure, they left the writing to the sophists. From what, then, were those men believed to practice philosophy? From what they said, or from how they lived, or from what they taught. By these same standards let
Alexander too be judged — for he will be found, in what he said, in what he did, and in what he taught, to be a philosopher. And first, if you wish, consider the most paradoxical point of all: set Alexander's pupils side by side with those of Plato and of Socrates. Those men educated gifted young men who spoke their own tongue, understanding nothing else but the sound of Greek — and yet they failed to persuade many of them; rather men like Critias and Alcibiades and Cleitophon spat out the bit of reasoned argument and turned aside in some other direction.
But if you look at Alexander's education, he taught the Hyrcanians to marry, taught the Arachosians to farm the land, persuaded the Sogdians to support their fathers rather than kill them, and taught the Persians to revere their mothers rather than marry them. O what a marvelous philosophy, through which the Indians worship Greek gods, and the Scythians bury their dead instead of eating them! We marvel at the power of Carneades, that he made Cleitomachus — once called Hasdrubal, and Carthaginian by
birth — into a Greek in speech; we marvel at the disposition of Zeno, that he persuaded Diogenes the Babylonian to take up philosophy. But while Alexander was civilizing Asia, Homer became reading-matter, and the sons of Persians and Susians and Gedrosians sang the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles. And whereas Socrates was convicted on a charge of introducing foreign divinities, at the hands of Athenian informers, because of Alexander Bactria and the Caucasus came to worship the gods of the Greeks.
For Plato, having written a single constitution, persuaded no one to adopt it, because of its severity; but Alexander, having founded more than seventy cities among barbarian peoples and sown Asia throughout with Greek institutions, overcame its untamed and bestial way of life. And while few of us read Plato's Laws, tens of thousands have made use of Alexander's laws and continue to use them: those who were conquered by him proved happier than those who escaped him,
for no one ever put a stop to the wretched lives of the latter, while the victor compelled the former to prosper. And so, what Themistocles said, when he had fled into exile and received great gifts from the [Persian] king, and had been granted three cities to furnish him tribute — one for bread, one for wine, one for meat — "Children, we would have been ruined, had we not been ruined" — this may more justly be said of those who were conquered by Alexander.
They would never have been civilized had they not been conquered: Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor would a Greek city dwell beside the Caucasus — cities by whose founding the savagery was quenched and the worse was transformed as it grew accustomed to the better. If, then, philosophers take the greatest pride in civilizing and reshaping the harsh and untutored elements of character,
and Alexander is seen to have transformed countless races and beast-like natures, he might reasonably be considered the greatest of philosophers. And indeed the much-admired constitution of Zeno, founder of the Stoic school, comes down to this single point: that we should not live divided into separate cities and peoples, each group marked off by its own notions of justice, but should regard all people as our fellow-citizens and countrymen, and that there should be one life
and one order, like a single flock grazing together and nurtured by a common law. This Zeno wrote down as a dream or an image of a philosopher's well-ordered constitution, but it was Alexander who gave the actual deed to match the theory. For he did not follow Aristotle's advice to him — to treat the Greeks as a leader and the barbarians as a master, caring for the one as friends and kin and treating the others as though they were animals
or plants — for that would have filled his empire with many wars, exiles, and treacherous uprisings. Instead, believing that he had come as a divinely sent governor and reconciler of the whole world, he brought together by force of arms those whom he could not unite through reason, mixing together, as in a loving-cup, the lives, customs, marriages, and ways of living of peoples from every quarter. He commanded all to consider the inhabited world
their fatherland, the army camp their citadel and garrison, the good their kinsmen, and the wicked their foreigners; he taught that Greek and barbarian should not be distinguished by cloak or shield, by scimitar or caftan, but that the mark of the Greek should be virtue, and of the barbarian, vice; that clothing, tables, marriages, and manner of life should be held in common, blended together through the bonds of blood and of
children. And so Demaratus of Corinth, one of Philip's guest-friends and companions, when he saw Alexander at Susa, was overjoyed and, bursting into tears, said that those Greeks who had died before were deprived of a great joy, in that they never saw Alexander seated on the throne of Darius. "But as for me," he said, "by Zeus, I do not envy those who saw that spectacle, which was, after all, a matter of chance
and common to other kings as well; rather I think I would gladly have been a witness of that beautiful and sacred marriage-procession, when, gathering under one gold-roofed pavilion, at one common hearth and table, a hundred Persian brides and a hundred Macedonian and Greek bridegrooms, he himself, crowned, was first to raise the wedding hymn, chanting it like a song of loving union, joining in fellowship, with the greatest and most powerful families, one
bridegroom himself, yet at the same time the escort and father and matchmaker of them all, coupling them together pair by pair. For I would gladly have said: "O barbarous and senseless Xerxes, who labored so vainly over your bridge across the Hellespont — see how truly wise kings join Asia to Europe, not with timbers nor with rafts nor with lifeless, unfeeling bonds, but by lawful love and chaste marriages and the shared bearing of children, joining races
together." With his eye fixed on this ideal order, Alexander did not adopt the Median dress, but the Persian, which was far plainer than the Median. For, rejecting the extravagant and theatrical elements of barbarian costume — such as the tiara, the caftan, and the trousers — he wore, as Eratosthenes has recorded, a robe blended from Persian and Macedonian fashion, using, as a philosopher would, whatever was indifferent in itself,
but as a common leader and a humane king he was, by the honor he paid to their dress, winning back the goodwill of the conquered peoples, so that they might remain steadfastly loyal, cherishing the Macedonians as rulers rather than hating them as enemies. For it would have been the mark of an unwise and puffed-up mind to admire the plain, undyed cloak while resenting the purple-bordered robe, or, conversely, to despise the one while being dazzled by the other — like a small
child clinging to the wrapping which native custom had put around him, as a nurse would. Men hunting animals put on the hides of deer, and men attempting to catch birds clothe themselves in feathered tunics; men are careful not to be seen by bulls wearing scarlet, nor by elephants in white tunics, for these animals are provoked by such colors and driven into a frenzy. If, then, a great king, in taming and gentling nations that were unruly and combative like wild animals,
soothed and calmed them by adopting their own familiar dress and customs, winning over their sullenness and easing their gloom, do people find fault with this rather than admire the wisdom by which, through a mere change of costume, he won over the goodwill of Asia — subduing their bodies by arms, but winning their souls by his dress? And yet people admire Aristippus the Socratic, because whether wearing a plain cloak or a fine Milesian
mantle, he preserved his dignity through either; but they find fault with Alexander, because, while adorning himself in the dress of his own people, he did not disdain also the dress he had won by the spear — laying, as he was, the foundations of great enterprises. For he did not overrun Asia like a bandit, nor did he intend to snatch and strip it as though it were mere plunder and spoil of unhoped-for good fortune, as later Hannibal did to Italy, and earlier the Treres did to Ionia and the Scythians to Media — rather, wishing to bring all
things upon earth into subjection to one reasoned order and one form of government, and to make all mankind a single people, he shaped himself accordingly. And if the divinity who had sent his soul down here had not swiftly called it back again, one law would have looked upon all mankind, and they would have been governed as by one common light directed toward a single justice. But as it is, that portion of the earth which never saw Alexander has remained without its sun.
Accordingly, in the first place, the very design of his campaign shows the man to be a philosopher, since he intended it not to secure luxury and extravagance for himself, but to provide harmony and peace and fellowship for all mankind with one another. Let us next consider, in the second place, his sayings as well, since it is above all in their sayings that the characters of other kings and rulers, too, reveal their souls. Old Antigonus, when some sophist
offered him a treatise on justice, said: "You are a fool, to talk to me about justice when you see me battering other people's cities." Dionysius the tyrant used to bid his men deceive children with knucklebones and grown men with oaths. And on the monuments of Sardanapalus is inscribed: "These things I have, as many as I ate and as many outrages as I committed." Who would not say that of these sayings one reveals a love of pleasure,
another godlessness, and another injustice and greed? But if you strip away from Alexander's sayings the diadem, and Ammon, and his noble birth, they will appear to you to be the sayings of Socrates, or of Plato, or of Pythagoras. Let us not, that is, examine those boastful phrases which the poets inscribed upon his portraits and statues, aiming not at his moderation but at his power — the
bronze figure gazing up at Zeus seems to be saying: "I set the earth beneath me; you, Zeus, keep Olympus," and "I, Alexander, am the son of Zeus." These, as I said, were addressed to him by poets flattering his fortune; but of Alexander's genuine sayings, one might first go through those of his boyhood — for, being the swiftest runner among the young men of his age, and being urged by his companions to
He asked whether kings compete in the games. When they said they do not, he replied that the contest would be unfair, since if he won he would be beating mere private citizens, but if he lost he would be beaten though a king. When his father Philip had his thigh pierced by a spear among the Triballi, and, having escaped the danger, was distressed at his lameness, Alexander said, "Be of good courage, father, and go forward with a glad face, so that at every step you may be reminded of your courage." Is this not the mark
of a philosophical disposition, one that, through its enthusiasm for noble things, already rises above the body's deficiencies? For how do you suppose he gloried in his own wounds, recalling with each part of his body a nation and a victory, cities captured and kings surrendering — not hiding or concealing his scars, but carrying them about like images engraved with courage and manly virtue? And indeed, whenever
there arose, in the schools of philosophy or at symposia, a comparison of Homer's verses, with one man preferring one line and another man another, he himself judged this line to surpass all others: "both a good king and a mighty spearman" — reasoning that the line which time had already given as praise to another was, for him, laid down as a law, so that one might say Homer, in the same meter, had adorned both Agamemnon's manly courage and Alexander's,
prophesied in advance. So when he crossed the Hellespont he viewed Troy, re-enacting in his mind the heroic deeds; and when one of the local people offered to give him the lyre of Paris, should he wish it, he said, "I have no need of that one's lyre; for I possess Achilles', to whose accompaniment he used to rest, singing \"the glorious deeds of men\" — whereas Paris's lyre played, no doubt, some soft and effeminate harmony to erotic songs." Is it not the mark of a philosophical
soul, then, to love wisdom and to admire wise men above all? This quality belonged to Alexander as to no other king. How he stood toward Aristotle has already been told, and how he considered Anaxarchus the musician the most honored of his friends, and gave ten thousand gold pieces to Pyrrho of Elis on their first meeting, and sent fifty talents as a gift, unasked, to Xenocrates, Plato's companion. And Onesicritus,
the disciple of Diogenes the Cynic, was appointed by him commander of the pilots, as many have recorded. And when he came into conversation with Diogenes himself at Corinth, he was so struck and amazed by the man's life and dignity that he often, in recalling it, would say, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes" — that is, "I would have devoted myself to arguments, had I not been pursuing philosophy through deeds."
He did not say, "If I were not a king, I would be Diogenes," nor "If I were not rich and an Argead" — for he did not rank fortune above wisdom, nor the purple robe and diadem above the beggar's wallet and cloak. Rather he said, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes" — that is, "If I were not intent on blending barbarian ways with Greek, and on traversing every continent
to civilize it, on finding the limits of land and sea and joining Macedon to the ocean, and on sowing Greece abroad and pouring out justice and peace over every race, I would not be sitting in idle luxury and inactive privilege, but would be emulating the frugality of Diogenes. As it is, forgive me, Diogenes: I imitate Heracles, and I emulate Perseus, and I follow in the footsteps of Dionysus, the god who is the ancestor and forefather of our race, wishing once more
that victorious Greeks might dance together in India, and remind the mountain-dwelling, savage peoples beyond the Caucasus of the revels of Bacchus. There are said to be, even there, certain men versed in a hardy and unadorned wisdom, holy and self-governing men, devoted to god, more frugal even than Diogenes, needing no wallet at all — for they store up no food, always having what is fresh and new from the earth; their drink flows from rivers; leaves of trees
are strewn for them, and grass of the earth to lie upon. Through me, they too shall come to know Diogenes, and Diogenes shall come to know them. I too must adulterate and counterfeit the barbarian coinage with a Greek citizenship." Well then — do his actions display the spontaneous working of chance and the violence and forceful seizure of war, or great courage and great justice, together with great self-control and gentleness, joined with order and understanding, all done with a sober
and clear-headed reasoning governing everything? For it is not possible for me to say, distinguishing among them, by the gods, that this deed belongs to courage, this to humanity, this to self-mastery; rather, every deed of his seems to be a blend of all the virtues together — confirming that Stoic doctrine, that whatever the wise man does, he does in accordance with every virtue; and one virtue, it seems,
takes the leading role in each action, summoning the others and directing them toward the goal. One can see, at any rate, in Alexander, that his warlike quality was humane, his gentleness manly, his generosity prudent, his temper easily reconciled, his passion for love self-controlled, his relaxation not idle, his labor not without comfort. Who else has mingled festivals with wars? Who has mingled revels with campaigns? Who
has mingled sieges and battle-lines with bacchic rites and weddings and marriage-songs? Who has been harsher to wrongdoers, or gentler to the unfortunate? Who has been heavier upon enemies in battle, or more considerate to suppliants? I am reminded to transfer here the saying of Porus. For when he was led before Alexander, and Alexander asked how he wished to be treated, he said, "Like a king, Alexander." And when asked again, "Nothing more?" he said, "Nothing — for everything is contained in
'like a king.'" And I too am moved to exclaim, at every one of Alexander's deeds, "philosophically" — for in that word everything is contained. Falling in love with Roxane, the daughter of Oxyartes, when he saw her dancing among the captive women, he did not violate her but married her: philosophically. Seeing Darius transfixed by javelins, he did not offer sacrifice nor sing a paean of victory, as though the long war had reached its end, but he took off his own cloak and threw it over the corpse, as though to cover up
a royal fortune's act of vengeance: philosophically. And once, when reading a confidential letter from his mother while Hephaestion, as it happened, sat beside him and simply read along, he did not stop him, but pressed his own ring to Hephaestion's lips, sealing his silence with the pledge of friendship: philosophically. If these things are not philosophical, what else could be? Let us set beside them the deeds of acknowledged philosophers. Socrates endured Alcibiades sleeping at his side; but Alexander, when Philoxenus,
the governor of the coastal region, wrote that a boy had appeared in Ionia unmatched in beauty and grace, and asked in his letter whether he should send him on, wrote back sharply: "Basest of men, what have you ever known of me, that you should flatter me with such pleasures?" We admire Xenocrates for not accepting the fifty talents Alexander sent him as a gift — but not the giving? Or do we not think alike
of one who scorns money and one who freely gives it away? Xenocrates had no need of wealth, because of his philosophy; but Alexander needed it, because of his philosophy, in order to have something to give to such men. How many times did Alexander say this while under fire, while hard pressed? And yet we suppose that right judgments exist in all men by nature — for nature itself is a guide toward the good; but philosophers differ from the mass of men in having their
judgments strong and fixed in the face of terrors. Since it is not with such settled preconceptions that men say "one omen is best" and "death is the appointed end for all men" — rather, crises shatter men's reasoning in the face of danger, and the imaginings of nearby perils knock their judgments aside. For "fear," as Thucydides says, not only "strikes memory from the mind," but also
strikes down every purpose and ambition and impulse, unless philosophy has bound them fast with restraints. It has, it seems, escaped us to say — as though only yesterday — that the age of Alexander was fortunate enough to produce many arts and many great natures; or rather, that this was not due to Alexander's fortune but to theirs, in getting as witness and spectator one able to judge achievement best and to reward it most generously. It is said,
at any rate, that long afterward, when Archestratus had become a charming poet but lived in poverty and obscurity, someone said to him, "Ah, if you had lived in Alexander's time, he would have given you Cyprus or Phoenicia for a line of verse." And I think that the foremost craftsmen of that age became so not merely in Alexander's time, but through Alexander. For a fine climate and a light atmosphere produce abundance of crops, but the growth of the arts and of fine natures is called forth by
the goodwill and honor and generosity of a king; and, on the contrary, all such growth is quenched and withers under the envy and pettiness or contentiousness of rulers. Dionysius the tyrant, for instance, they say, on hearing a certain lyre-singer perform to great acclaim, promised him a talent as a gift; but the next day, when the man demanded payment of the promise, Dionysius said,
"Yesterday, while you delighted me with your singing, I in turn delighted you with hopes — so that you received your payment for the pleasure you gave, delighting in it as you gave delight." Alexander of Pherae, the tyrant — though he ought to have borne only that name and not disgraced its meaning — watching a tragic actor, was so overcome with pity that he leapt up from the theater and hurried out faster than a walk, saying it would be a terrible thing
if, after slaughtering so many citizens, he should be seen weeping over the sufferings of Hecuba and Polyxena. This man very nearly had the tragic actor punished by law, for having softened his soul like iron in the fire. And to Archelaus, who seemed rather stingy in his gifts, Timotheus, when singing, would repeatedly insert this little phrase: "but you praise silver born of the earth." And Archelaus answered, not without wit,
"And you ask for it." And Ateas, king of the Scythians, having taken Ismenias the flute-player captive, ordered him to play the flute at a drinking-party. And when the others were amazed and applauded, he himself swore that he found more pleasure in hearing his horse neigh. So far had his ears camped away from the Muses, and he kept his soul in the manger, fit to listen not to horses but to asses. Who, then,
could expect the growth or honor of art, and of such a Muse, under kings like these? Indeed, such men are unwilling even to tolerate rival practitioners of the art, and for this reason, out of envy and ill will, they destroy the truly skilled. Such was, again, Dionysius, who threw the poet Philoxenus into the stone quarries because, ordered to correct one of his tragedies, he simply erased the whole thing from beginning
to end. Philip too, in these matters, was somewhat diminished and made rather juvenile by his own late-acquired learning; hence they say that once, arguing with a lyre-player about the finer points of his playing and seeming to refute him, the man smiled quietly and said, "God forbid, O king, that you should ever fall so low as to know these things better than I." But Alexander, knowing of what things he ought to be a spectator and a listener, and of what things
a competitor and a doer himself, always trained through arms to be formidable, and, in Aeschylus's words, was "a mighty warrior in armor, deadly to his foes." This craft he held as an inheritance from his ancestors, from the Aeacids, from Heracles; but the other arts he honored without emulating them, according to their fame and charm, without being easily seduced by their pleasure into imitating them. There lived in his time tragic actors,
namely Thettalus and his circle, and Athenodorus, who competed against one another; the kings of Cyprus financed the production, and the most eminent of the generals judged it. When Athenodorus won, Alexander said, "I would rather have lost part of my kingdom than have seen Thettalus defeated." But he did not go to the judges nor find fault with the verdict, thinking that in all things one should prevail, but yield to what is just.
Among comic actors there were Lycon of Scarphea and his troupe; when this man, in the course of a comedy, inserted a line asking for money, Alexander laughed and gave him ten talents. Among lyre-singers there was, among others, Aristonicus, who fell fighting gloriously when he came to the rescue in a certain battle. Alexander therefore ordered that a bronze statue of him be made and set up at Delphi, holding a lyre and with a spear thrust forward, honoring not only
the man, but also honoring music as maker of men, as filling with especial fullness those who are genuinely nurtured on it with enthusiasm and impulse. Indeed, he himself, when Antigenides once played the chariot-tune on the flute, was so moved and set ablaze in spirit by the music that he leapt up and laid his hands upon the weapons lying nearby, bearing witness to the Spartans' song, "for excellence in the lyre creeps close beside the sword."
There lived also, in Alexander's time, Apelles the painter and Lysippus the sculptor, of whom the one painted the Thunderbolt-Bearer so vividly and with such blending of color that men said there were two Alexanders: the one, son of Philip, unconquered; the other, son of Apelles, inimitable. And when Lysippus first modeled Alexander, looking upward with his face toward the heavens, just as Alexander himself was accustomed to look, gently turning
his neck, someone inscribed upon it, not implausibly: "The bronze figure, gazing at Zeus, seems about to speak: 'I set the earth beneath me; Zeus, you keep Olympus.'" For this reason Alexander ordered that Lysippus alone should fashion his images. For he alone, it seems, revealed in bronze his character, and displayed together with the outward form his inner virtue; whereas the others, wishing to imitate the turn of
his neck and the melting softness and moistness of his eyes, failed to preserve his manly and lion-like quality. Among the other craftsmen was also Stasicrates, an architect who pursued nothing showy or merely pleasant and persuasive to the eye, but employed a hand capable of grand works and a disposition matching the lavishness of royal patronage. This man came to Alexander and found fault with the paintings
and sculptures and statues being made of him, as the works of timid and ignoble craftsmen. "I," he said, "O king, have resolved to fashion your likeness in imperishable and living matter, possessing eternal roots and an immovable, unshakeable mass. For Thracian Mount Athos, greatest and most conspicuous of all mountains, rises up with proportions of breadth and height and
limbs and joints and intervals matching a human form, so that, worked and shaped, it could be called and be an image of Alexander, its feet touching the sea, one hand embracing and holding a populous inhabited city of ten thousand men, and its right hand pouring out from a bowl an ever-flowing river emptying into the sea. As for gold and bronze and ivory and wood and dyes,
small castings, bought and stolen and melted down — let us cast those aside." Hearing this, Alexander admired the craftsman's boldness of spirit and his daring, and praised him, but said, "Let Athos remain in its place; it is enough that it stand as a monument to one king's arrogance. As for me, the Caucasus will display me, and the Emodian range, and the Tanais, and the Caspian Sea — these shall be the boundary-markers of my works
..."images." But come, in the name of the gods, suppose such a work were actually completed and appeared before us: is there anyone who, on seeing it, would suppose that its shape and arrangement and form had come about by chance and of its own accord? No one, I think. What of the thunderbolt-bearer? What of the figure named for the spear-point it carries? Well then, the mere size of a statue could not, without art, come to be through chance, even when chance pours out and lavishes upon it gold and bronze and ivory and abundant, costly material.
But can a great man—indeed the greatest of all who have ever lived—be produced apart from virtue, through mere fortune, which supplies only arms and money and cities and horses? These, in the hands of one who has not learned how to use them, are a danger, not a strength or an adornment, but a proof of weakness and littleness. Antisthenes put it rightly when he said, "We ought to pray our enemies every good thing except courage; for in that way such goods become the possession not of those who hold them, but of those who conquer them." This, they say, is also why nature has fitted the stag, the most cowardly of creatures, with horns marvelous in size and roughness for its defense—teaching us that strength and weaponry are of no use to those who cannot stand their ground and keep their courage.
So too Fortune, often fastening power and command upon the timid and the foolish, in whom such gifts sit unbecomingly, only serves to set off and confirm that virtue alone constitutes a man's true greatness and beauty. As Epicharmus says, "If mind sees and mind hears, all else is blind and deaf." For while the senses seem to have their own private impressions, it is mind that benefits, mind that adorns, and mind that is the conquering, ruling, kingly element; everything else, blind and deaf and lifeless, only burdens, weighs down, and disgraces its possessors when virtue is absent—as one can see from the facts themselves.
Given the same power and command, Semiramis, though a woman, manned fleets, armed phalanxes, founded Babylons, and sailed round the Red Sea subduing Ethiopians and Arabs; whereas Sardanapalus, born a man, sat at home carding purple wool, seated cross-legged among his concubines. When he died, they set up a stone statue of him mounted as if riding, in barbarian fashion, snapping its fingers above its head, and inscribed upon it: "Eat, drink, make love: all else is nothing." And Crates, on seeing a golden statue of the courtesan Phryne standing at Delphi, cried out that this was a trophy of the licentiousness of the Greeks.
One might likewise say, on viewing the life—or the tomb—of Sardanapalus (for I think there is no difference), that this is a trophy of the good gifts of Fortune. What then? Shall we allow Fortune to lay her hand on Alexander right after Sardanapalus, and to claim a share in his greatness and his power? What more, after all, did she give him than she gave to the rest of the kings who received their portion from her—arms, horses, missiles, money, bodyguards?
Let Fortune make a great Aridaeus out of these, if she can; let her make a great Amasis, or Ochus, or Oarses, or Tigranes the Armenian, or Nicomedes of Bithynia out of these. Of these men, one flung his diadem at the feet of Pompey and shamefully lost his kingdom, which became mere plunder; Nicomedes shaved his head, put on a freedman's cap, and proclaimed himself a freedman of the Romans.
Let us then say that Fortune makes men small, fearful, and mean-spirited; but it is not right to charge either cowardice to misfortune or courage and wisdom to good fortune. Was Fortune "great" simply in that she gave Alexander rule? For in him she was also glorious, unconquered, magnanimous, free of arrogance, and humane. Yet as soon as he was gone, Leosthenes said that his power, left to wander and stumble on its own, resembled the Cyclops after his blinding, groping everywhere with hands reaching toward no fixed goal—so did that vast power roam about, treading on emptiness and reeling from lack of a guiding head.
Rather, it was like a corpse: once the soul has departed, the body no longer holds together or coheres, but comes apart and dissolves, its parts falling away and fleeing from one another. So it was once it had let go of Alexander: his power convulsed, twitched, and inflamed—passing to Perdiccas and Meleager and Seleucus and Antigonus, like hot breaths and pulses still darting through it and pulling it apart in different directions—until at last, withering and wasting away, it seethed around itself with something like maggots, the base kings and commanders who fought over its death throes.
Alexander himself, it seems, said as much when he rebuked Hephaestion for quarreling with Craterus: "What would your power or your achievement amount to," he said, "if someone were to take Alexander away from you?" And I will not hesitate to say the same thing to that Fortune of his day: "What is your greatness, what your glory, where your power, where your invincibility, if someone takes Alexander away from you?" That is to say: if someone takes away his mastery of arms, his generosity with wealth, his self-control amid extravagance,
his boldness in what he contended for, his gentleness in what he mastered—make someone else great, if you can, without his showing generosity with money, without his taking the lead in danger before his armies, without his honoring his friends, without his showing mercy to captives, without his exercising restraint amid pleasures, without his staying vigilant in moments of crisis, without his being easily reconciled after victories, without his showing kindness in his successes. Who is great, holding power, along with folly and depravity?
Take virtue away from the fortunate man, and he is small everywhere: small in gracious acts through pettiness, small in hardships through softness, small before the gods through superstition, small toward good men through envy, small among men through fear, small among women through love of pleasure. For just as inferior craftsmen, by setting large pedestals under small offerings, only expose their own smallness all the more, so too Fortune, when she raises up a petty character
with affairs that carry a certain weight and conspicuousness, only displays and disgraces him the more, as he stumbles and reels from his own lightness. Hence greatness lies not in the possession of good things but in their use, since even infant children inherit their father's kingdom and rule, as did Charillus, whom Lycurgus carried, swaddling-clothes and all, into the public mess and proclaimed king of Sparta in his own stead.
And it was not the infant who was great, but the man who restored to the infant his father's due honor and did not seize it or deprive him of it. Who, on the other hand, could have made Aridaeus great—a man no different from an infant, whom Meleager, all but swaddling him in purple, set upon Alexander's throne, doing well thereby, so that men might see, for a few days at least, how men reign by virtue and how by fortune.
For he brought in an actor to play the part of a ruler in a contest that called for a real contender, or rather he paraded the diadem, mute, through the inhabited world as if upon a stage: "Even a woman might carry the burden, once a man has set it in place." One might indeed say the opposite—that to receive and to be entrusted with power and wealth and rule is within the capacity even of a woman or a child: it was the eunuch Bagoas who lifted up and set the Persian kingship upon Oarses and Darius.
But to take on great power and bear it and manage it, without being crushed or twisted out of shape by the weight and magnitude of affairs, belongs to a man possessed of virtue and intelligence and judgment—such as Alexander had, though some charge him with drunkenness and wine-bibbing. He was great precisely in this: that amid great affairs he remained sober, never intoxicated or driven to frenzy by power and authority, of which
others, partaking even a little and getting no more than a taste, are unable to master themselves: base men, once glutted with money or, falling into some position of civic honor, prance about, unable to bear an unexpected stroke of good fortune. Cleitus, after sinking three or four Greek triremes off Amorgos, was proclaimed a Poseidon and went about carrying a trident. Demetrius, to whom Fortune, tearing off a small piece of Alexander's power, gave a share, was addressed by the title "Descender," and cities sent to him not envoys but sacred deputations, calling his replies oracles.
Lysimachus, having secured the region of Thrace as if it were some remote outpost of his kingdom, reached such a pitch of arrogance and boldness that he said, "Now the Byzantines come to me, now that I touch the sky with my spear." Pasiades of Byzantium, who was present, replied, "Let us withdraw, lest he puncture the sky with his spear-point."
And yet what should one say of these men, who were entitled, because of Alexander, to think somewhat highly of themselves, when even Clearchus, having become tyrant of Heraclea, carried a scepter and named one of his sons Thunderbolt; and Dionysius named himself son of Apollo, inscribing that he had sprung from a Dorian mother through union with Phoebus. His own father, after killing ten thousand or more of his fellow citizens, after betraying his own brother to the enemy out of envy, and, rather than waiting for his aged mother to die a few days later of natural causes, strangling her instead—this same man, writing in a tragedy of his own, "Tyranny is the mother of injustice," nevertheless named one of his daughters Virtue, another Temperance, and another Justice. Some such men proclaimed themselves Benefactors, some Gloriously Victorious, some Saviors, some Great.
As for their successive marriages, indulged in without restraint like stallions among herds of mares spending whole days at it, and their corruptions of boys, and their tambourine-revels among transvestites, and their daytime dicing, and their flute-playing in theaters, and their nights spent at dinner running over into days spent at breakfast—no one could adequately recount it all in words. But Alexander took his morning meal sitting down at dawn, dined toward late evening, and drank only after sacrificing to the gods;
he played dice with Medius while running a fever; he amused himself on the march by learning archery and how to leap down from a chariot in motion. He married Roxane out of love for her alone; but Statira, the daughter of Darius, he married for the sake of the kingdom and its affairs, since the mixing of the two peoples was advantageous. Over the rest of the Persian women he exercised such mastery in self-control as the Persians themselves showed in courage: he never saw one against her will, and those he did see he passed by more readily than those he had never seen.
And though he was humane toward everyone else, toward beautiful women alone he behaved with a kind of proud reserve. Concerning the wife of Darius, who was exceedingly beautiful, he never so much as heard a word spoken in praise of her looks; but when she died, he adorned her body so royally and wept so sympathetically that it seemed almost incredible that his self-control should coexist with such humanity, and that his very kindness should incur a charge of wrongdoing.
For Darius himself was so moved by Alexander's power and by his youth—being himself still one of those who believed that Alexander prevailed through Fortune—that when, after testing the truth from every quarter, he came to know it, he said: "It is not, then, altogether a bad thing for the Persians, nor will anyone say that we, defeated by such a man, are utterly cowardly or unmanly. For my part, I pray the gods for good fortune and success in war,
so that by doing well I might surpass Alexander; yet a certain rivalry and zeal possesses me to appear gentler than he is. And if my cause is lost, O Zeus, ancestral god of the Persians, and you royal gods, may no one else but Alexander ever sit upon the throne of Cyrus." This was, in effect, an adoption of Alexander by Darius, with the gods as witnesses. Thus do men conquer by virtue. Credit Fortune, if you like, with Arbela and
Cilicia and the rest of what came about through force and war. Say Fortune shook Tyre for him, and Fortune opened Egypt to him; say that through Fortune Halicarnassus fell and Miletus was taken, and Mazaeus left the Euphrates undefended, and the Babylonian plain was filled with corpses. But it was not from Fortune that he was self-controlled, nor from Fortune that he was master of himself; nor did Fortune keep his soul unconquerable by pleasure and
invulnerable to desire, shutting it up and standing guard over it. And yet it was precisely these qualities by which he turned Darius himself to flight; all the rest were defeats inflicted by arms and horses, battles and slaughter and the flight of men. But the great and undeniable defeat that Darius suffered, and before which he yielded, was a defeat by virtue and magnanimity and courage and justice, as he marveled at that invincibility amid pleasure, hardship, and acts of grace. For
in shields and long spears and battle-cries and clashes of arms, Tarrias son of Deinomenes, and Antigenes of Pellene, and Philotas son of Parmenion, were likewise unconquered; but against pleasures and women and gold and silver they proved no better than captives. Tarrias, indeed, when Alexander was freeing the Macedonians of their debts and settling with their creditors on behalf of everyone, falsely claimed to owe money himself,
bringing forward a supposed creditor to the pay-table; but when he was found out, he very nearly killed himself—had not Alexander, on learning the truth, released him from the charge and let him keep the money anyway, remembering that when Philip was fighting before Perinthus and was struck in the eye by a missile, Tarrias had not allowed the missile to be removed from his own body until he had first routed the enemy. Antigenes, meanwhile, mixed himself in among those being sent home to Macedonia on account of
sickness and disability, and had himself registered among them, though he had been found to have nothing wrong with him but was merely feigning some ailment—a man of war whose body was covered with wounds, and whose appearance vexed Alexander when he found him out. When Alexander asked the reason, Antigenes confessed that he was in love with Telesippa and could not bear to be left behind when she went off toward the sea, but had to follow her. "And whose woman," said Alexander, "is she, and to whom must one speak about her?"
When Antigenes replied that she was free-born, Alexander said, "Well then, let us persuade her to stay, with promises and gifts." So much more indulgent was he toward any lover other than himself. And indeed Philotas son of Parmenion also had, as nurse to his troubles, a certain lack of self-control. Antigona was a woman of Pella among the captives taken near Damascus; she had earlier been captured by Autophradates while sailing to Samothrace,
and her looks were striking enough; she quite captivated Philotas once he had become involved with her. And that man of iron, softened by her, could not master his reasoning amid his pleasures, but, opening up to her, let slip many of his secrets. "For what, after all, was that Philip, if not Parmenion? And what is this Alexander, if not Philotas? Where is Ammon, and where
the serpents, if we are unwilling?" These words Antigona repeated to one of her women friends, who told Craterus; and Craterus secretly brought Antigona herself before Alexander. He did not touch her body but held back from her; but by secretly keeping her under watch, he thoroughly detected the whole of Philotas's designs through her—and though more than seven years passed, he never once, in his cups,
betrayed this suspicion, drunk though he became; nor, quick-tempered as he was, did he ever reveal it in anger; nor did he reveal it to a friend, though he trusted Hephaestion in everything and shared everything with him. Indeed, it is said that once, when he had opened a secret letter from his mother and was reading it silently to himself, Hephaestion quietly leaned his head over and read it along with him; and Alexander, though he did not bear to stop him, took off his own ring and pressed it to
...the seal on Hephaestion's mouth. But one could go on endlessly listing such things, by which he shows himself disposing of his power in the noblest and most kingly fashion. Indeed, even if he became great through Fortune, he is greater still because he made good use of Fortune; and the more one praises his Fortune, the more one thereby increases his virtue, through which he became worthy of that Fortune.
Yet I now turn to the first stages of his rise and the beginnings of his power, and I examine what work Fortune performed in those events, on account of which they say Alexander became great through Fortune. For how could it not be so — the unwounded man, O Zeus, the bloodless one, the man who never took the field, whom a neighing horse set upon the throne of Cyrus, as it did Darius son of Hystaspes before him? Or a man flattered into kingship by a woman, as Darius made Xerxes king through Atossa? Did the diadem of kingship come to him at his very door, as it came to Oarses through Bagoas, so that, stripping off a courier's garb, he put on the royal robe and the upright tiara? Did he suddenly and unexpectedly obtain the kingship of the inhabited world by lot, as at Athens the lawgivers and magistrates are chosen by lot? Do you want to learn how men become kings through Fortune?
Once the line of the Heraclids failed among the Argives, from whom it was their ancestral custom to be ruled; and when they sought and inquired, the god gave an oracle that he would show them an eagle. A few days later an eagle appeared overhead and, swooping down, settled upon the house of Aegon, and Aegon was chosen king. Again at Paphos, when the reigning king proved unjust and wicked, Alexander drove him out and sought another, since the line of the Cinyradae seemed already to be dying out and failing. They said that one man alone survived, a poor and undistinguished man, living neglected in some garden. Those sent went to him and found him watering the vegetable beds; and he was thrown into confusion when the soldiers seized him and ordered him to come along. Brought before Alexander in a cheap linen garment, he was proclaimed king and received the purple robe, and became one of those called Companions; his name was Abdalonymus. Thus does Fortune make kings — dressing them up anew, rewriting their roles quickly and easily, while men merely wait and hope for it.
But what came to Alexander undeservedly, without sweat, without bloodshed, as a free gift, without his laboring for great things? He drank from rivers mingled with blood and crossed others bridged with corpses; he ate, out of hunger, grass that he had never seen before; and nations and cities buried deep in snowdrifts he dug his way out of beneath the earth; he sailed a sea that fought against him; and journeying over the waterless sands of the Gedrosians and Arachosians, he saw a plant growing in the sea before he ever saw one on land. For if it were possible to address Fortune with free speech on Alexander's behalf, as one would address a man, would she not be told: 'Where and when did you ever clear the way for Alexander's deeds? What rock did he take, thanks to you, without bloodshed? What city did you hand over to him unguarded, or what phalanx unarmed? What lazy king or careless general or sleeping gatekeeper was ever found for him? No — not even a river easy to ford, nor a mild winter, nor a summer without hardship.
'Go instead to Antiochus, son of Seleucus; go to Artaxerxes, brother of Cyrus; go to Ptolemy Philadelphus. Those men their fathers proclaimed kings while still living; those men won battles without shedding a tear; those men spent their time feasting in processions and theaters, and each of them grew old reigning through good fortune. But of Alexander, if nothing else, look at his body, covered with wounds: from the crown of his head to his feet it has been gashed and battered, struck by his enemies with spear and sword and huge stones — at the Granicus his helmet was cut through by a sword down to his hair; at Gaza he was struck by a missile in the shoulder; at Maracanda he was hit by an arrow in the shin, so that a piece of the shinbone was broken off by the blow and flew out; near Hyrcania he was struck by a stone on the neck, from which his eyesight was also dimmed, and for many days he lived in fear of blindness; among the Assacenians an Indian arrow struck his ankle, at which time, smiling, he said to his flatterers, "This is blood, not ichor, such as flows from the blessed gods." At Issus he was wounded in the thigh by a sword, as Chares says, when King Darius himself closed with him hand to hand. Alexander himself, writing plainly and with complete truthfulness to Antipater, says: "It happened that I too was struck in the thigh with a dagger; but nothing untoward resulted from the wound, either at the time or afterward." Among the Mallians, he was struck through his breastplate into the chest by an arrow two cubits long; and, according to Aristobulus's account, another arrow, driven in low, caught him at the neck. And after crossing the Tanais against the Scythians and putting them to flight, he pursued them on horseback for a hundred and fifty stades, all the while afflicted with dysentery.'
'Well done, O Fortune — you increase Alexander and make him great by boring through him from every side, undermining him, laying open every part of his body! Not like Athena, who before Menelaus deflected the arrow into the strongest part of his armor, and by breastplate, belt, and girdle robbed the blow of its force, letting it merely graze the body enough to draw a token flow of blood — no, this Fortune instead lays bare the vital parts to the missiles, drives the blows through the very bones, runs circling around the body, besieges the eyes and the feet, hinders his pursuits, twists away his victories, overturns his hopes.'
To my mind, no king seems to have endured a heavier Fortune, though she has fallen harshly and spitefully upon many; but while she cut down and destroyed the others like a thunderbolt, her hostility toward Alexander became a matter of rivalry, contention, and stubborn resistance, as it was toward Heracles. For what Typhons or monstrous giants did she not raise up as adversaries against him? Or what enemies did she not fortify with vast numbers of arms, or with deep rivers, or with rugged cliffs, or with the ferocity of strange wild beasts? And if Alexander's spirit had not been great, and had it not, springing from great virtue, held out and stood firm against Fortune, he would surely have grown weary and given up amid the endless drawing up of battle lines, the arming, the sieges, the pursuits, the countless revolts, the sudden turnings and uprisings of nations, the insubordination of kings, Bactra, Maracanda, the Sogdians — amid untrustworthy and treacherous peoples, forever cutting down a hydra that kept sprouting new wars.
I shall say something that will seem strange, but it is true: because of Fortune, Alexander very nearly lost his claim to being the son of Ammon. For what son of the gods, other than Heracles, son of Zeus, ever toiled through contests so perilous, so laborious, and so wretched? Yet in Heracles's case it was a single insolent man who ordered him to capture lions, chase off boars, and scare away birds — so that he would have no time to spare for greater tasks, such as punishing Antaeuses and putting a stop to murderous Busirises. But for Alexander, it was virtue that laid on him his royal and divine labor, whose end and purpose was not gold carried about on ten thousand camels, nor Median luxuries and banquets and women, nor Chalybonian wine, nor Hyrcanian fish, but rather to adorn all mankind with a single order, making them subject to a single rule and accustomed to a single way of life.
Alexander had this longing implanted in him from childhood, nurtured and growing along with him; so that when envoys arrived from the Persian king to Philip, who was not at home, Alexander received and entertained them, and asked none of the childish questions others might ask, about the golden vine or the hanging gardens, or how the king was adorned, but was wholly absorbed in the matters most vital to empire, asking in detail how great the strength of the Persians was, where the king took his position and fought in battles — like that Odysseus asking where his martial gear lay and where his horses were — and what were the shortest roads for those journeying inland from the sea; so that the visitors were astonished and said, 'This boy is a great king; ours is merely rich.'
When Philip died, Alexander set out at once to cross over into Asia, and, already committed heart and soul to his hopes and preparations, was eager to lay hold of it; but Fortune stood in his way, turned him back, dragged him backward, and hemmed him in with countless distractions and delays, seizing every occasion to hold him up. First she stirred up against him the barbarian tribes on his borders, contriving wars with the Illyrians and Triballians. Pursuing these as far as Scythia by the Ister, he was drawn away from his higher enterprises, and after running through and accomplishing everything amid great dangers and struggles, he again set out and hastened to make the crossing; but again she threw Thebes at him and cast a Greek war in his path, forcing upon him a grim necessity of defending himself, through slaughter and iron and fire, against men of his own race and kin — a most joyless conclusion.
After this he made the crossing, having, as Phylarchus says, provisions for thirty days, or, as Aristobulus says, seventy talents; and of his possessions and royal revenues at home he distributed the greater part among his Companions. Perdiccas alone, when Alexander offered, took nothing, but asked, 'And what do you leave for yourself, Alexander?' When Alexander answered, 'My hopes,' Perdiccas said, 'Then we too shall share in these; for it is not right for us to take what is yours, but rather to await what will be Darius's.'
What, then, were the hopes with which Alexander crossed into Asia? Not a strength measured by the walls of cities of ten thousand men, nor fleets sailing through mountains, nor whips and fetters, those mad and barbaric instruments for punishing the sea; but, on the outward side, with meager arms, great ambition, rivalry among men of the same age, and competition for glory and virtue among his Companions; while he himself carried within him the great hopes -- piety toward the gods, faithfulness toward friends, frugality, self-control, experience, fearlessness of death, courage, humanity, an agreeable manner in company, a truthful character, steadiness in counsel, swiftness in action, love of glory, and a purpose that carried through to completion in what is noble.
For Homer, neither fittingly nor convincingly, assembled the beauty of Agamemnon out of three separate images, likening him — in eyes and head — to Zeus who delights in thunder, in his girdle to Ares, and in his chest to Poseidon. But as for Alexander's nature, if indeed the god who begot him composed and fitted it together out of many virtues, should we not say that he had the spirit of Cyrus, the self-control of Agesilaus, the intelligence of Themistocles, the experience of Philip, the daring of Brasidas, and the political skill and eloquence of Pericles? And compared with men still more ancient, he was more self-controlled than Agamemnon: for Agamemnon preferred a captive woman over his own wife, while Alexander, even before he was married, abstained from those he had taken captive. He was more magnanimous than Achilles: for Achilles ransomed the corpse of Hector for a small sum of money, while Alexander buried Darius at great expense; and Achilles, reconciled with his friends, took payment in place of his wrath, while Alexander, on the contrary, enriched his enemies even while conquering them. He was more pious than Diomedes: for Diomedes was ready to fight even against the gods, while Alexander believed that he accomplished everything through the gods. He was more dearly missed by his kin than Odysseus: for that man's mother died of grief, while for Alexander even the mother of his enemy died together with him, out of devotion.
In sum, if Solon governed through Fortune, and Miltiades commanded through Fortune, and Aristides was just through Fortune, then Virtue is no achievement at all, but merely a name and a word carrying a certain reputation, that idly runs through the course of life, fashioned by sophists and lawgivers. But if each of these men and their like became poor or rich, or weak or strong, or ill-favored or handsome, or long-lived or short-lived, through Fortune, while each nonetheless made himself great as a general, great as a lawgiver, and great in offices and public affairs through virtue and reason — then come, let me view Alexander, comparing him with all of them.
Solon carried out a cancellation of debts at Athens, calling it the 'shaking-off of burdens'; Alexander instead himself paid off, on behalf of the debtors, the debts owed to their creditors. Pericles, taxing the Greeks, adorned the Acropolis with temples from the money he collected; Alexander, taking the money of the barbarians, sent it to Greece, ordering that temples be built for the gods at a cost of ten thousand talents. What made Brasidas famous throughout Greece was his running past the enemy's camp near Methone while under fire, along the shore; but Alexander's leap among the Oxydracae — that terrifying leap, incredible to those who only hear of it and dreadful to those who witnessed it, when he flung himself from the walls among the enemy, who awaited him with spears, arrows, and bared swords — to what could one liken it but to a bolt of lightning, breaking loose and borne along with the wind, such as once struck down upon the earth, 'a vision of Phoebus, gleaming with flame-like weapons'? At first the enemy, struck with terror and trembling, fled in panic and drew back; then, seeing that it was a single man attacking so many, they turned to resist.
It was there, indeed, that Fortune displayed the great and shining proof of her goodwill toward Alexander — casting him into an obscure and barbarous stronghold, shutting him in, and walling him about; while those who were rushing to his aid from outside in their haste, straining to reach the walls, she tripped up and hurled down by breaking and shattering their scaling ladders. Of the three men alone who had managed to reach the wall and, letting themselves down, to take their stand beside the king, one was instantly snatched away and killed outright, while another, pierced through with many arrows, was so near to death that he could barely still see and feel. Outside, the Macedonians' rushing and shouting came to nothing, for no siege engine and no equipment was at hand; in their haste they could only strike the walls with their swords and try, with bare hands, to tear them apart and all but gnaw through them, forcing their way in.
And so the fortunate king, always guarded and attended by Fortune, was caught like a wild beast in a net, alone and without help — and not even for the sake of taking Susa or Babylon or Bactra, nor of conquering the great Porus; for in famous and great contests, even if they end badly, there is at least no disgrace attached. But Fortune was so contentious and spiteful, so partial to the barbarians and so hostile to Alexander, that, as far as lay in her power, she sought to destroy not only his body and his life, but even his fame, and to ruin his glory.
For it would not have been terrible for Alexander to lie fallen by the Euphrates or the Hydaspes, nor ignoble to die falling into Darius's hands, with the Persians defending their king with horses, swords, and scimitars; nor to have stumbled and fallen, mounting the walls of Babylon, from so great a hope. Such, in the case of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, was a death belonging to virtue, not to misfortune, for men of such stature. But what, then, is the achievement of the Fortune now under examination? To have enveloped and hidden away the king and lord of the inhabited world in the remotest corner, by a barbarian riverside, within the walls of some obscure little town, with dishonorable weapons and makeshift gear such as happened to be at hand...
to perish, struck down and pelted with missiles. Indeed, a blade struck his head clean through the helmet, and someone's arrow-shot cut through his breastplate, and when it had lodged in the bones near his breast and stuck fast, the shaft projected, weighing him down, while the iron head of the point measured four fingers in width and five in length. And, worst of all his sufferings, he still defended himself against those
who came at him face to face, and the man who had shot him and dared to close in with a sword he himself, striking first with his dagger, felled and killed. In the midst of this someone ran up from a mill and dealt him, from behind, a blow on the neck with a pestle, which confounded his senses as he grew faint with darkness. But Valor was there, instilling courage in him and, in those around him, strength and eagerness. For the men of Limnae and
the Ptolemies and the Leonnatuses, and all who had scaled or breached the wall and taken their stand before him, were themselves a wall of valor, offering up their bodies, their faces, and their souls out of goodwill and love for their king. For it is not through Fortune that the companions of good kings die before them of their own free will and face danger in their place, but out of love for Valor, as if drawn by love-charms, they come to their ruler and cling fast to him, like bees to their leader. Who,
then, watching then as a spectator out of danger, would not have said that he was beholding a great contest between Fortune and Valor, and that the barbarian side prevails undeservedly through Fortune, while the Greek side holds its ground beyond its strength through Valor? And if the former should prevail, it will be the work of fortune and a jealous spirit and of nemesis; but if the latter should win, Valor and daring and friendship and
loyalty will carry off the victor's prize. For these alone stood by Alexander's side, while of all his other power and equipment, his fleets and horses and armies, Fortune set the wall between him and them. The Macedonians then routed the barbarians, and when they had fallen, razed their city over them. But it was of no help to Alexander, for he had been struck down along with the arrow, and he had the shaft lodged within his
vitals, and the missile was, for him, both a bond and a nail fastening his breastplate to his body. And when they tried to force it out, as if by the root, from the wound, the iron would not yield, for it had lodged firmly in the solid parts of the chest before the heart; and they did not dare to saw off the projecting part of the shaft, but were afraid that the bone, torn by the wrenching, might cause excessive pain
and that a rupture of blood might occur from deep within. Seeing much helplessness and delay, he himself undertook to cut off the arrow-shaft close to the breastplate with his small sword; but his hand grew weak and had a numb heaviness from the inflammation of the wound. He therefore ordered those who were unwounded to lay hold of it and not be afraid, encouraging them; and he railed at those who wept and were overcome with grief, and called those who did not dare to help him
deserters. And he cried out to his companions, "Let no one be a coward on my account either: I am disbelieved when I say I do not fear death, if you yourselves fear it."

======== Moralia: De Amicorum Multitudine ========

Menon the Thessalian, who thought himself sufficiently trained in argument and fond of quoting Empedocles' line about "frequenting the summits of wisdom," was asked by Socrates what virtue is. When Menon answered rashly and glibly that there is a virtue of the child and of the old man, of man and of woman, of ruler and of private citizen, of master and of servant, Socrates said, "Well done — asked for one virtue, you have stirred up a whole swarm of virtues," not badly guessing that a man who knew no single virtue was naming many. Might not the same be said of us, if, fearing lest we slip unnoticed into having no friend at all, we run instead into having a multitude of friends — mutilated and blind friendship, as it were — through fear of having none? For we differ hardly at all from a man who, when someone jeers that he has not yet acquired even one friendship, hastens to become a hundred-handed Briareus or an all-seeing Argus, so as not to be mocked for possessing not even a single friend.
And yet we praise to excess the young man in Menander who says it is a wonderful thing to count each good fortune blessed, if one has but the shadow of a friend; whereas, on the contrary, among many other things, the appetite for having many friends works no less against the acquiring of friendship, just as the passion of licentious women, through coupling often and with many, is unable to master its first attachments, which are neglected and allowed to slip away. Rather, like Hypsipyle's nursling, who sat down in the meadow and plucked one flower after another, gathering his harvest of blooms with a delighted but insatiable childish soul, so each of us, through love of novelty and fickleness, is always drawn on by whatever is freshest and in bloom, and shifts among many incomplete beginnings of friendships and intimacies at once, passing over what has already been grasped in eager pursuit of what is still being chased.
First, then, let us begin, as it were, from the hearth, taking as both witness and counselor for our argument that long and ancient testimony of life which has bequeathed to us the reputation attaching to steadfast friends — the long ages in which, paired in friendship, are named Theseus and Pirithous, Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes and Pylades, Phintias and Damon, Epaminondas and Pelopidas. For friendship is not a herd-animal, nor a creature that flocks like jackdaws; and to regard one's friend as another self, and to address him as "companion," is nothing other than to use the number two as the measure of friendship.
For it is not possible to acquire either slaves or friends, many of them, from a small stock of coin. What, then, is the coin of friendship? Goodwill and grace joined with virtue — and nature has nothing rarer than these. Hence it is not possible to love intensely, and be loved intensely, by many at once; rather, just as rivers, once split into many channels and cuttings, flow weak and thin, so love, which by nature is a strong force in the soul, is dimmed when divided among many. This is why, even among animals, affection for offspring is implanted more strongly in those that bear only one at a time; and Homer calls a son "beloved," "an only child, late-born" — that is, one born to parents who neither have nor will have another.
We, for our part, do not require that a friend be "only"; but let him, even along with another, be a "late-born" and cherished one, sharing with us that proverbial peck of salt eaten together over time — not as so many now-called friends do, who gather their friendship in a moment, from having drunk together once, or lodged together once, or diced together once, out of an inn, a wrestling-school, or the marketplace. In the houses of the rich and the powerful, seeing a great crowd and commotion of people greeting, shaking hands, and forming an escort, people count those with many friends blessed. And yet they see still more flies in their kitchens. But neither do the flies stay for anything but the tasty morsel, nor do the others stay once their usefulness runs out.
Since true friendship seeks above all three things — virtue, as something noble; intimacy, as something pleasant; and usefulness, as something necessary (for one must approve a friend upon judging him, delight in his company, and make use of him in time of need) — and all of these run counter to having many friends, and most of all the most decisive of them, judgment itself — we must first consider whether it is even possible, in a short time, to test dancers who are to dance together, oarsmen who are to row in unison, servants who are to be stewards of one's property or tutors of one's children, let alone many friends who are to strip down together for the contest of every fortune,
each of whom, when he himself fares well, brings his good fortune into the common store, and when he draws the lot of misfortune, is not resentful of sharing it. For no ship is launched to face so many storms at sea, nor do people who fence in their properties with walls, or their harbors with breakwaters and moles, expect so great and so many dangers as those against which friendship, rightly and firmly tested, promises refuge and help; whereas of those attachments accepted without examination, like counterfeit coins once exposed, those who have been deprived of them rejoice, while those who still have them pray to be rid of them.
And this is a hard thing, and not easy — to flee from, or to lay aside, a friendship that has become displeasing. Rather, just as a harmful and distasteful food can neither be kept down without causing pain and doing damage, nor thrown up as easily as it went in, but comes up loathsome and befouled and strange, so a worthless friend, whether he stays on causing pain and doing harm, or is forcibly ejected with hostility and ill will, comes out like some bitter bile.
Therefore one must not readily accept, nor readily attach oneself to, all who present themselves, nor love those who pursue us, but rather pursue those worthy of friendship. For what is easily caught should not on that account be chosen. Indeed we step over and push aside cleavers and briars that catch at us as we walk, on our way to the olive tree and the vine.
So too one should never make a companion of the man who is easily embraced, thinking that a fine thing, but should test carefully those worthy of the effort and of benefit, and embrace them. Just as Zeuxis, when some accused him of painting slowly, said, "I admit I paint over a long time — for it is also for a long time," so friendship and intimacy must be preserved by taking them up only after they have been judged over a long time.
Is it, then, not easy to judge many friends, but easy enough to live in company with many at once — or is even this impossible? And yet the enjoyment of friendship lies precisely in that intimacy, and the sweetest part is in being together and spending one's days together — for, as Homer says, we would not, sitting apart from our comrades, deliberate our counsels; and concerning Odysseus, Menelaus says: "nor would anything else have parted us, loving and delighting in each other, until the black cloud of death enveloped him."
The thing called having many friends seems to produce the very opposite effect. For true friendship draws together and unites and holds fast, thickening by frequent meetings and shows of affection — as, according to Empedocles, "as when fig-juice curdles and binds white milk" — for such a unity and compacting is what friendship seeks to make; whereas having many friends pulls apart and tears away and turns aside,
by calling and drawing one now to this friend and now to that, not permitting the blending and cementing of goodwill to take place in intimacy poured out and set firm. And this immediately gives rise also to inequality and awkwardness in the rendering of services; for the useful offices of friendship become hard to render on account of having many friends. For, in the words of the poet, "the cares of other men, in other ways, keep waking us," since our natures do not incline in their impulses toward the same things, nor do we always find ourselves in circumstances of the same kind,
and the opportunities for action, like winds, favor some and thwart others. And yet, even if all one's friends need the same thing at the same time, it is hard to satisfy everyone at once when they are all deliberating, or campaigning for office, or seeking honor, or entertaining guests. But if at one and the same time, meeting with different affairs and different feelings, they call on us together —
one who is sailing wants us to travel with him, one on trial wants us to plead his case, one who is judging wants us to sit as fellow-juror, one who is selling or buying wants us to help manage the deal, one who is marrying wants us to join the sacrifice, one who is burying a dead relative wants us to join the mourning — while the city all at once is filled with incense on one side, and on the other with paeans and lamentations from having many friends — it is impossible to be present to all, and strange to be present to none, and it is grievous to offend many by serving one. For no one is glad to be neglected, even by one he loves.
And yet people bear more mildly the negligence and carelessness of friends, and receive without resentment excuses of this sort from them: "I forgot," "I did not know." But the man who says, "I did not stand by you when you were on trial, because I was standing by another friend," and "I did not visit you when you had a fever, because I was busy entertaining friends at another man's banquet" — making the attention he gave to others the excuse for his neglect — does not remove the complaint but adds jealousy to it.
But most people, it seems, look only at what having many friends can provide them, and overlook what it demands in return, forgetting that a man who makes use of many friends for what he needs must in turn serve many who are in need. Just as Briareus, with his hundred hands feeding fifty bellies, had no more than we do who manage a single belly with two hands,
so too, among friends, it is useful that a man render service to many, and share their anxieties, and join in their labors, and toil alongside them. For one must not be persuaded by Euripides when he says that mortals ought to mix moderate friendships with one another, and not go to the very marrow of the soul, but keep the affections of the heart easily loosened, so as to push away or draw tight, like the sheet of a ship, letting friendship out or drawing it in as need requires.
But this, Euripides, let us transfer instead to enmities, and bid men make their quarrels "moderate," and "not go to the very marrow of the soul," but keep their hatreds and angers and grudges and suspicions "easily loosened." Rather, let the Pythagorean precept guide us more in this: "do not offer your right hand to many" — that is, do not make many friends, nor embrace a friendship that is shared in common with everyone and open to all,
even against one's inclination, since it enters accompanied by many burdensome feelings, of which sharing in anxiety and grief and toil and danger is very hard to bear for free and noble spirits. And true is the saying of wise Chilon, who, when a man told him he had no enemy, replied, "It seems, then, that you have no friend either." For enmities immediately follow upon friendships and are entangled with them,
since it is not possible to be a friend without also sharing in the wrongs done to him, and in his disgrace, and in the hatred directed against him; for enemies immediately regard one's friend with suspicion and hatred, while friends themselves often feel envy and jealousy and pull one away. Just as the oracle given to Timesias about his colony foretold, "there will be a swarm of bees, but wasps too, perhaps," so those who seek a swarm of friends unknowingly fall in with a nest of wasps of enemies.
And the resentment of an enemy does not weigh the same as the gratitude of a friend. Consider what Alexander did to the friends and kin of Philotas and Parmenio, what Dionysius did to those of Dion, what Nero did to those of Plautus, what Tiberius did to those of Sejanus — torturing and putting them to death. For just as gold and the robe were of no help at all to Creon's daughter, but the fire that suddenly blazed up ran and clung to her and burned her, and destroyed those with her,
so too some friends, having gained no benefit from their friends' good fortune, perish along with them in their misfortune. And this happens most of all to lovers of wisdom and men of noble spirit — as Theseus was yoked, in shackles unforged by any smith's craft, to Pirithous in his punishment and bonds, out of shame; and Thucydides says that during the plague, those who most laid claim to virtue perished together with their sick friends, for they went unsparingly of themselves to visit those close to them.
Hence it is not fitting to be so unsparing of one's virtue, binding and entangling it now with one person, now with another, but rather to guard its fellowship for those who deserve it — that is, for those equally capable of loving and sharing in return. And indeed this is the greatest obstacle of all to having many friends: that friendship comes into being through likeness. For where even lifeless things, when forced by violence into mixture with things unlike themselves,
buckle and resist, fleeing from one another, but when blended with things akin and of similar nature, mix smoothly and welcome the union with goodwill, how could friendship possibly arise between characters that differ, and feelings that are unlike, and lives that follow opposite purposes? For the harmony of the lyre and the harp achieves its concord through opposites, some likeness arising somehow between high notes and low;
but of this concord and harmony of friendship, no part ought to be unlike, or uneven, or unequal; rather, out of elements all alike in condition, there must arise agreement, and shared counsel, and shared opinion, and shared feeling in every respect — as if a single soul were divided among several bodies. Who, then, is so tireless, so changeable, and so versatile a man,
as to make himself like many people and fit himself to them, without inviting mockery of Theognis's advice: "keep the mind of the many-colored octopus, which takes on the look of whatever rock it clings to"? And yet the octopus's changes have no depth, but occur only on the surface, taking on the emanations of whatever it touches through the astringency and looseness of its skin; whereas friendships seek to assimilate character to character,
and feelings, and words, and pursuits, and dispositions — the work of a sort of Proteus, not a fortunate or altogether decent one, but one who by magic keeps changing himself, often within the same moment, from one shape to another — reading together with lovers of learning, rolling in the dust together with wrestlers, hunting together with lovers of the chase, getting drunk together with drinkers, and campaigning together with politicians, having no hearth of his own character to call home. But just as
the natural philosophers say that the shapeless and colorless underlying substance and matter, changing of itself, is now set aflame, now turned to liquid, at one time made into air, and then again solidified, so too, it seems, having many friends requires that a soul underlie it that is subject to many passions, versatile, fluid, and readily changeable. But friendship seeks a stable and firm character, one unshaken and constant in a single
place and habit of life. That is why a steadfast friend is a rare and hard-to-find thing.

======== Moralia: De Amore Prolis ========

Appeals to outside courts and the practice of importing foreign judges were devised by the Greeks in the first place out of distrust of one another, as though justice, like some other necessity, did not grow among them and so had to be sought elsewhere. Is it not the same, then, with philosophers, who because of their disagreements with one another summon some of their problems before the nature of irrational animals, as though before a foreign city, and entrust the verdict to the passions and characters of those creatures, on the ground that they cannot be approached and cannot be bribed? Or is this too a common charge against human wickedness, that on the most necessary and greatest questions, being ourselves in doubt, we go looking among horses and dogs and birds to learn how we ourselves ought to marry and beget and rear children — as if there were no sign of nature within us, and we had to call in the characters and passions of beasts as witnesses
and accusers of our own great departure from and transgression of what is natural, since right from the beginning, at the very first steps, we become confused and disordered. For in those animals nature keeps what is her own unmixed, unadulterated, and simple; but in human beings, under the influence of reason and custom, she has suffered what oil suffers at the hands of perfumers — mixed with many added opinions and judgments,
she has become varied and artificial, and has not preserved what is properly her own. And let us not be surprised if the irrational animals follow nature more closely than rational beings do; for even plants follow her more closely than animals do, since to plants nature gave neither imagination nor impulse to unsettle them with desire for anything beyond what is natural, but, bound as it were in fetters, they remain confined and mastered, always traveling the single course along which nature
leads them as they go. As for wild beasts, they do not possess reason's gentleness, its refinement, or its excessive love of freedom, but having only irrational impulses and appetites, and given to wanderings and roamings, they nonetheless seldom drift far, but ride, so to speak, at anchor to nature; just as a horse walking along a road under rein and bridle can be shown to keep a straight path. But in man the master and
self-ruling faculty, reason, discovering ever new deviations and innovations, has left no clear or distinct trace of nature at all. Observe how much that is natural there is among animals with regard to marriage. In the first place, they do not wait for laws against celibacy or late marriage, as the citizens of Lycurgus and Solon do, nor do they fear the penalties attached to childlessness, nor do they chase after the honors given to fathers of three children, as many Romans marry and beget children
not so that they may have heirs, but so that they may be able to inherit. Next, the male does not mate with the female at all times, for pleasure is not the end they seek, but generation and offspring. For this reason, in the season of the year that has fertile breezes and a temperature suited to those about to give birth, the female, tame and desired, comes together with the male, delighting in the sweet scent of her own skin and her own
adornment of body, full of dew and pure grass; and when she perceives that she is pregnant and has conceived, she withdraws decorously and takes thought for the pregnancy and the safety of what will be born. It is not possible to describe worthily what is done, except to say that each of these acts occurs amid affection, forethought, endurance, and self-control. Yet we call the bee wise and think of her as scheming for golden
honey, flattering her for the sweetness that delights and tickles us, while we overlook the wisdom and skill of other creatures in giving birth and rearing their young. Take the halcyon, for instance: while still pregnant she builds her nest, gathering the spines of the sea-needle fish and weaving and threading them through one another, working the shape into something rounded like a fisherman's creel and elongated;
and by the fitting and closeness of the weave, having packed the spines tightly together, she sets it precisely beneath the wash of the wave, so that, being gently struck and compacted, the felted surface becomes watertight; indeed it becomes hard to split even with iron and stone. And what is still more astonishing, the mouth of the nest is shaped so exactly to the size and measure of the halcyon that no other creature, whether
larger or smaller, can enter it, and, as they say, not even the sea itself is admitted, not even the smallest amount of it. The dogfish, above all, bear their young alive within themselves, then let them go out and graze outside, and afterward take them back again and enfold them, letting them sleep within their own entrails. The bear, the most savage and grim of beasts, gives birth to shapeless and unformed young, and by shaping the membranes with her tongue as with a tool
she seems not merely to bear her offspring but actually to fashion it. And the lion of Homer, which, as it leads its cubs, is met in the woods by hunters, and glories in its strength, and draws its whole brow down, veiling its eyes — is it not likewise minded to come to terms with the hunters concerning its young? For, in general, affection for offspring
makes cowardly creatures bold, makes the lazy industrious, and makes the gluttonous frugal, just as Homer's bird, bringing food to her nestlings whenever she catches it, though it goes ill with herself — for she feeds her young at the cost of her own hunger, and holds and presses down with her beak the food that reaches for her own stomach, lest she forget herself and swallow it. And as
a bitch standing over her tender puppies barks and is eager to fight a man she does not even recognize, having taken on, as it were, a second passion in her fear for her young — so partridges, when pursued along with their young, let the young fly off and escape, while they themselves contrive to draw the hunters' attention, rolling and tumbling nearby and letting themselves almost be caught; then they run out a little way, and again stand still and offer
themselves within reach of hope, until, by thus courting danger before their chicks, they have drawn the pursuers far off from the young ones' safety. As for hens, we have before our eyes every day the way they care for their chicks — loosening their wings so that some may creep in underneath, while others climb upon their backs and creep up from every side, being received with a certain glad and affectionate clucking; but dogs and even snakes, if they are afraid
for themselves, flee, while if they are afraid for their young, they defend them and fight beyond their strength. Are we then to think that nature has implanted these feelings in creatures such as these — providing for the offspring of hens and dogs and bears — but has failed to move and touch us with the reflection that these are examples for those who follow them, while for the unfeeling they remain reproaches for their want of feeling, by which they accuse human nature alone
of not having affection freely given, and of not knowing how to love without some need for it? For it is admired in the theaters, that line of the poet: for pay does one man love another, according to Epicurus — the father the son, the mother her child, children their parents. But if beasts were given the power of reason, and someone gathered horses and cattle and
dogs and birds into a common theater, would he not proclaim, rewriting the line, that dogs do not love their puppies for pay, nor horses their foals, nor birds their nestlings, but freely and by nature — and this, once recognized in the feelings of all creatures, would be acknowledged as well and truly said? For it is shameful, O Zeus, that the begetting, birth-pangs, labor, and rearing of young among beasts should be a matter of nature and of grace, while those of human beings should be loans and wages and
pledges given for the sake of advantage. But this account is neither true nor worth listening to. For nature, just as in wild plants — wild grapevines, wild figs, wild olives — has implanted the unripe and imperfect beginnings of cultivated fruits, so too she has given to irrational creatures an affection for their offspring that is incomplete and does not extend far enough to amount to justice, nor does it go beyond mere need. But man, a rational and
political animal, she has led on toward justice and law and the honoring of gods and the founding of cities and mutual goodwill, furnishing noble and beautiful and fruit-bearing seeds of these things in the very gratitude and love felt toward one's offspring, following the first principles that were laid down. And these first principles lay in the very structure of our bodies. For everywhere nature is exact and skillful and complete and leaves nothing
unfinished, having, as Erasistratus said, "nothing paltry about her"; but what concerns generation cannot be worthily described, nor perhaps is it fitting to touch too precisely, in words and terms, on things that should remain hidden; rather one should, from what is set aside and concealed, infer the natural fitness of those parts for begetting and giving birth. It is enough that the working and management of milk should reveal her forethought
and care. For whatever surplus of blood beyond what is needed accumulates in women, through the sluggishness and slightness of their vital spirit, wanders about and weighs them down; at other times it has become habituated, through nature's opening of channels and passages, to being discharged in monthly cycles, thereby lightening and cleansing the rest of the body, while providing the womb, like earth for plowing and sowing
among plants, ready and fertile at the proper season. But when the womb receives the seed that falls upon it and enfolds it as rooting takes place — "for the navel is first, in the womb," as Democritus says, "anchored against tossing and wandering, a mooring-rope and a tendril" — for the growing and future fruit; then nature closes off the monthly and purifying channels, and, taking hold of the blood that is carried along, uses it as nourishment
and irrigates the embryo, now taking shape and being formed, until, having grown within to its proper measure, it needs, once born, another kind of nurture and place. Then the blood, more skillfully than any farmer or irrigator diverting water from one use to another and redirecting it, has already prepared, as it were, underground springs or fountains of flowing liquid, received not idly or without feeling but
with the power, through the gentle warmth and soft femininity of breath, to concoct, refine, and transform it; for such is the inner disposition and blending that the breast possesses. And the flow of milk is not like streams or spouts released all at once, but ends in flesh that is porous, filtering it gently through fine channels, offering to the infant's mouth a store that is gentle and pleasant to touch and to embrace. But
all these instruments for generation, and such management, ambition, and forethought, would be of no use at all, had nature not also worked affection and solicitude into the mothers who bear. "Of all things that breathe and creep upon the earth" — this saying does not lie, when applied to an infant newly born. For nothing is so incomplete, so helpless,
so naked, so unformed, so unclean, as a human being seen at birth — to whom alone, virtually, nature has not granted even a clean passage into the light, but, smeared with blood and covered with gore, and looking more like one that has been slaughtered than one that has been born, there is nothing for anyone to touch, lift up, greet, and embrace except one who loves by nature. Therefore, whereas in other animals the
udders that give suck hang beneath the belly, in women they have come to be placed high, near the breast, within reach for kissing and embracing and drawing the infant close, since the end of bearing and nursing a child is not utility but affection. Carry the argument back to the earliest people, of whom some were the first to bear children, and others the first to see a newborn infant being born: for them there was no law
commanding the rearing of children, nor any expectation of gratitude or of repayment "lent out upon the young." I should rather say that the mothers would have had reason to be harsh and to bear a grudge against their infants, given how great the dangers and labors that came upon them: as when a sharp and bitter arrow strikes a woman in labor, the arrow that the Eileithyiai, the daughters of Hera, who bring on hard labor, send forth, bearing bitter birth-pangs. It is not, women say, that Homer
but Homer's own mother wrote this, out of having borne a child, or while still in labor, having in her own vitals that mixture of pain, at once bitter and sharp. But natural affection bent and led her on regardless: still hot and in pain and trembling from her labors, she did not pass over the infant or flee from it, but turned toward it, and smiled, and lifted it up, and embraced it, reaping from it nothing sweet or useful, but taking it up
laboriously and wretchedly, warming and cooling it amid the ruins of its swaddling clothes, and exchanging one labor by night for another by day. For what wages or advantages did the earliest mothers do this? Not even for those of today; for the hopes involved are uncertain and lie far in the future. A man who digs a vineyard at the spring equinox harvests it by autumn; he sows wheat when the Pleiades set and reaps it when they rise again; cattle and horses and birds bring forth their young ready for
use. But for a human being, the rearing is full of toil and the growth is slow, and since maturity in virtue lies far off, most fathers die before it comes. Neocles did not live to see the Salamis of his son Themistocles, nor did Miltiades live to see the Eurymedon of his son Cimon; Xanthippus never heard Pericles addressing the assembly, nor did Ariston hear Plato philosophizing, nor did the fathers of Euripides and Sophocles know their sons' victories — they listened to them lisping and spelling out syllables,
and they lived to see their revels and drinking-bouts and love affairs, the sort of transgressions the young commit; so that it is remembered and praised as the only notable thing Evenus ever wrote, among his inscriptions: "a child is, to his father, fear or grief for all time." And yet men do not stop rearing children — least of all those who have the least need of children. For it is ridiculous to suppose that the rich sacrifice and rejoice at having children born to them because
they will have people to support them and to bury them — unless, by Zeus, they raise children for want of heirs; for it is not possible to find or obtain, for one who wishes to take what belongs to others. Sand or dust or the feathers of birds of many songs could not be poured out in a number as great as that of the would-be heirs. Danaus, the father of fifty daughters, if he had been childless, would have had more heirs, and not the same kind of
heirs, either. For children feel no gratitude and do not court or honor their parents for this reason, since they regard the inheritance as a debt owed to them; whereas from strangers, around a childless man, you hear cries like those in comedies: "O Demos, first bathe, then decide the one case, put it in, sip it up, nibble a bit, here's your three obols." And what Euripides says, that money finds men friends and
has the greatest power among human affairs, is not simply true, but true of the childless: for these are the ones the rich invite to dinner, the ones rulers court, the ones orators alone plead for without a fee. A rich man with an unknown heir is powerful. Many, at any rate, who had many friends and were greatly honored, a single child, once born, made friendless and powerless. Hence nothing that is truly advantageous comes from children,
But the whole power of nature is present no less in human beings than in wild animals. For this instinct too, like many others, is dimmed by vice, just as a thicket springs up alongside and chokes cultivated seed. Or are we to say that a human being does not by nature love even himself, because many slaughter themselves or throw themselves from cliffs? Oedipus struck his eyes, and "the bloody pupils together drenched his beard." Hegesias, by his arguments, persuaded many of his listeners to starve themselves to death. "Many are the shapes of things divine..."
But these are, like those other cases, diseases and afflictions of the soul that drive a person out of his natural condition, as the sufferers themselves bear witness against themselves. For if a sow that has just farrowed loses a piglet, or a dog has a puppy torn to pieces, they become dejected and agitated, and offer sacrifices of aversion to the gods and regard it as a portent — which shows that it is natural for all creatures to love what is born to them and to rear it, not to destroy it.
Yet just as in mines the gold, though mixed with much earth and buried in it, still shines through, so nature, even amid these corrupted characters and passions, reveals its affection for offspring. For the poor do not raise children, fearing that, if raised worse than is fitting, they will become servile, uneducated, and lacking in every good thing; for since they consider poverty the worst of evils, they cannot bear to pass it on to their children, as though it were some grievous and serious disease.

======== Moralia: De Animae Procreatione In Timaeo ========

Since the things often said and written piecemeal in various places by those expounding Plato's opinion about the soul, which he held (as we ourselves used to conjecture), you think ought to be gathered into one and given this discourse its own separate treatise — a subject not otherwise easy to handle, and one that, because it runs counter to most of the followers of Plato, needs some justification — I shall first set out the text as it is written in the Timaeus:
"Of the indivisible essence that is ever in the same state, and of that essence which becomes divisible in connection with bodies, he blended a third form of essence in between, out of both, concerning the nature of the Same, and again of the Different; and in this way he composed it in the middle, between the indivisible and that which is divisible in connection with bodies. And taking these three, being three, he blended them into one form, forcing the nature of the Different, which resists mixture, into union with the Same, mingling it together with the essence; and having made one whole again out of three, he distributed this whole into the portions to which it was fitting, each of these portions being a mixture of the Same, the Different, and the Essence. And he began to divide as follows" — how many differences these words have furnished to interpreters would be an immense task to go through at present, and, since you have already met with most of them together, would besides be superfluous.
But since, among the most reputable men, Xenocrates won some over by declaring the essence of the soul to be number itself, moved by itself, while others attached themselves to Crantor of Soli, who mixed the soul out of the intelligible nature and the nature concerned with sensible, opinable things — I think that once these views are uncovered, their clarification will provide us something like a starting point. The argument concerning both is brief.
Some think that nothing but the generation of number is signified by the mixing of the indivisible and the divisible essence: for the one, they say, is indivisible, and multitude is divisible, and out of these number arises, the one setting a limit to multitude and imposing a boundary on the unlimited, which they also call the indefinite dyad. And Zaratas, the teacher of Pythagoras, used to call this the mother of number, and the one its father; and for this reason those numbers are better which most resemble the monad. But this number is not yet soul, for it lacks the moving and the moved. But when the Same and the Different are mixed together — of which the one is a principle of motion and change, the other of rest — soul came to be, being no less a power of stopping and being stopped than of moving and being moved.
Those around Crantor, on the other hand, supposing that it is above all the soul's own function to judge both intelligible and sensible things, and the differences and likenesses that arise among these both in themselves and toward one another, say that the soul is compounded out of all things, so that it may know all things; and that these are four: the intelligible nature, ever in the same state and in the same way; the nature concerned with bodies, which is passive and changeable; and further the nature of the Same and of the Different, because each of those two natures partakes of both otherness and sameness. All these thinkers alike suppose that the soul did not come to be in time and is not something generated, but has several powers, and that Plato, resolving its essence into these for the sake of theoretical exposition, represents it in his account as coming to be and being blended together; and that he thinks the same about the cosmos as well — knowing that it is eternal and ungenerated, but that it is not easy for one to learn the manner in which it is arranged and administered without first presupposing, at the outset, either its generation or the coming together of the generative factors — this being the path he takes in Plato's Timaeus.
Such being the general opinions stated, Eudorus thinks that neither side is wholly without a share of the plausible; but to me both seem to miss Plato's own view, if probability is to be the standard, since they are not expounding their own private doctrines but trying to say something consistent with his.
For the mixture said to be made out of the intelligible and the sensible essence does not make clear in what way this, more than anything else one might name, is the generation of soul specifically. For this cosmos itself, and each of its parts, is composed out of bodily essence and intelligible essence, of which the one furnished matter and substrate, the other form and shape, to what came to be; and while the thing shaped by participation in and likeness to the intelligible is at once tangible and visible, the soul escapes all sensation. Indeed Plato never called the soul a number, but always motion, self-moved, and "the fountain and source of motion"; it is by number and ratio and harmony that he has ordered its essence, which underlies and receives the fairest form generated in it by these.
I think it is not the same thing for the soul to be composed according to number and for its essence to be number: since it is composed according to harmony, and harmony is not essence, as he himself demonstrated in his treatise On the Soul. And manifestly these thinkers have also missed the point about the Same and the Different: they say that the one contributes the power of rest, the other of motion, to the generation of the soul, whereas Plato himself, in the Sophist, sets down Being, the Same, and the Different, and besides these Rest and Motion — each differing from each, and being five in number, existing apart from one another and distinguished. These thinkers in common, and most of those who make use of Plato, out of fear and to console themselves, contrive and force and twist everything, supposing that they must veil over and deny some terrible and unspeakable thing — both the generation of the cosmos and that of its soul, and their coming-into-being — as though these had not existed from eternity, nor had the infinite span of time been of this character. This has been treated separately elsewhere, and for now it will suffice to say only this: that they confuse, or rather utterly abolish, the argument and reasoning that Plato himself admits he used, most ambitiously and beyond his years, against the atheists. For if the cosmos is ungenerated, then gone, for Plato, is the claim that the soul, being older than the body, takes the lead in every change and motion, established as guide and first author, as he himself has said. But who the soul is, and of what the body then consisted, when the soul is said to have come to be prior to and older than it, the argument will show as it proceeds; for this point, being misunderstood, seems to cause the greatest perplexity and disbelief regarding the true opinion.
First, then, I shall set forth the view I myself hold on these matters, supporting it by probability and softening, as far as possible, the unfamiliarity and paradox of the argument; then I shall bring in the very words of the text, joining together at once the exposition and the proof.
For this is how the matter stands, at least in my judgment. "This cosmos," says Heraclitus, "neither any god nor any man made" — as if he feared that, if we deny it to a god, we might suspect that some man had become the cosmos's craftsman. It is better, then, to follow Plato and say and sing that the cosmos came to be from god: "for it is the fairest of things that have come to be, and he the best of causes"; but that the essence and matter out of which it came to be was not itself generated, but always lay underlying, available to the craftsman for the arrangement and ordering of itself, and for assimilation to him, as far as it was possible to provide. For generation is not out of what is not, but out of what is not in a good or sufficient condition — as with a house, a garment, or a statue. For disorder existed before the generation of the cosmos; and this disorder was not incorporeal, nor motionless, nor soulless, but had its corporeal element shapeless and unformed, and its motive element erratic and irrational — and this was the disharmony of a soul possessing no reason. For god made neither body out of the incorporeal, nor soul out of the soulless, but just as we require of a man skilled in harmony and rhythm, not that he produce sound or movement, but that he produce sound that is tuneful and movement that is well-rhythmed, so god produced neither the tangible and resistant quality of body nor the imaginative and motive quality of soul himself; rather, taking over both principles — the one dim and dark, the other turbulent and unreasoning — both incomplete in what was fitting and unbounded, he arranged and ordered and fitted them together, and out of them wrought the fairest and most perfect living creature.
The essence of body, then, is nothing other than what he calls the all-receiving nature, the seat and nurse of things generated. But the indeterminacy belonging to soul he has called, in the Philebus, a privation of number and ratio, consisting in deficiency and excess and difference and unlikeness, having in itself neither limit nor measure; whereas in the Timaeus, the nature blended together with the indivisible and said to become divisible in connection with bodies should not be supposed to mean multitude in units and points, nor lengths and breadths — things that belong to bodies and pertain to bodies rather than to soul — but rather that disorderly and indefinite, yet self-moving and motive, principle, which in many places he calls Necessity, but in the Laws he outright calls a disorderly and maleficent soul. For this was soul by itself, before it partook of mind and reasoning and harmonious order, so that it might become the soul of the cosmos. For indeed that all-receiving, material magnitude possessed extension and interval and room, but was deficient in due measure of beauty and shape and form; and it obtained these, so that the manifold bodies and instruments of earth and sea and sky and stars, of plants and animals, might come to be once it was set in order.
But those who take the Necessity spoken of in the Timaeus, and, in the Philebus, the disproportion and indeterminacy concerned with the more and the less, deficiency and excess, and attribute them to matter rather than to soul — where will they place the fact that matter is always said by Plato to be shapeless and formless, and bereft of every quality and power of its own, and is likened to odorless oils, which perfumers take as a base for their scents? For it is not possible that Plato supposed the qualityless — that which is by itself inert and without inclination — to be the cause and principle of evil, and called it foul and maleficent indeterminacy, and again called Necessity a thing much at odds with and resistant to god. For the Necessity that "turns back" the heaven, as is said in the Statesman, and unwinds it in the contrary direction, and the "innate desire," and that trait bred together long ago with its nature, partaking of much disorder before it arrived at the present cosmos — whence did this come to attach itself to things, if the substrate was qualityless matter, devoid of any cause whatsoever, while the craftsman was good and wished to assimilate everything to himself as far as possible, and there was nothing third besides these? For it is the very perplexities of the Stoics that overtake us, when we introduce evil out of what is not, without cause and without generation; since, among the things that are, it is not likely that either the good or the qualityless furnishes the essence and origin of evil. But Plato did not suffer the same fate as the later thinkers, nor did he, like them, overlook the intermediate third principle and power between matter and god; rather he endured the strangest of arguments, making — I do not know how — the nature of evils an episode arising spontaneously, by accident. For they do not allow Epicurus's atom to swerve even a hairsbreadth, on the ground that this introduces motion without cause out of what is not; yet they themselves say that so great an evil and misfortune, together with countless other absurdities and difficulties concerning the body, having no cause among their first principles, came to be as a mere consequence.
Plato was not so; rather, freeing matter from all responsibility for the difference of things, and placing the cause of evils as far as possible from god, he wrote this about the cosmos in the Statesman: "from him who put it together it possesses all that is good, but from its former condition it has whatever harsh and unjust things occur in heaven, and these it both has itself and produces in living creatures." And going on a little further he says: "as time goes on, and forgetfulness arises in it, the affection of the ancient disharmony prevails more strongly, and it runs the risk of being dissolved and sinking back again into the boundless region of unlikeness" — but unlikeness does not pertain to matter, which is qualityless and indifferent. But along with many others, Eudemus too, in ignorance, mocks Plato, as though he did not do well in declaring that which is so often called by him mother and nurse to be also the cause and principle of evils. For Plato calls matter mother and nurse, but calls the cause of evil the motive element of matter — that disorderly and irrational, yet not soulless, motion which becomes divisible in connection with bodies, and which in the Laws, as has been said, he called a soul opposed and antagonistic to the beneficent one. For soul is the cause and principle of motion, but mind is the cause of order and concord within motion. For god did not raise matter up out of idleness, but brought to rest that which was being disturbed by an unreasoning cause; nor did he furnish nature with the origins of change and of the affections, but, since it already existed amid every kind of affection and disorderly change, he removed its great indefiniteness and disorder, using harmony and proportion and number as his instruments — whose function is not, by change and motion, to furnish things with the affections and differences of otherness, but rather to make them steadfast and stable, and like to those things which are ever in the same state and in the same way. Such, then, is Plato's thought, at least in my own opinion.
The first proof is the resolution of the alleged and apparent inconsistency and discrepancy of Plato with himself. For not even a drunken sophist — let alone Plato — could reasonably be charged with such confusion and unevenness, in the very arguments about which he was most in earnest, as to declare the same nature to be at once ungenerated and generated: ungenerated in the Phaedrus, with respect to the soul, but generated in the Timaeus. Now the doctrine in the Phaedrus is on nearly everyone's lips, establishing the soul's imperishability by its being ungenerated, and its being ungenerated by its self-motion; but in the Timaeus he says, "as for the soul, we are not undertaking to describe it as coming later than we now attempt — so, too, the god contrived it to be younger, for he would not have allowed the elder to be ruled..."
"...older than younger, but bound them together and let it go. But somehow we, sharing largely in what is casual and random, speak in this loose way too; he, however, constituted the soul as prior to and older than the body both in coming-to-be and in excellence, as mistress and ruler of what is to be ruled." And again, having said that "turning within itself it began a divine beginning of an unceasing and intelligent life," he says, "the body of heaven, then, came to be visible,"
"while the soul itself is invisible, but partakes of reasoning and harmony, having come to be, among things that always exist as objects of intellect, the best of things generated by the best cause." Here, calling god "best of things that always exist" and the soul "best of things generated," by this very clear distinction and opposition he has stripped from it its eternity and its being ungenerated.
What other correction of this is there, then, besides the one he himself provides for those willing to accept it? For he declares the soul to be ungenerated insofar as it moves everything in a discordant and disorderly way before the generation of the cosmos, but generated and subject to becoming again insofar as it is that which god, having fashioned it out of this disorderly substance together with that abiding and best substance, made intelligent and ordered like a form, and, having furnished from himself understanding for its perceptive part and order for its motive part,
established it as ruler of the whole. For in the same way he declares the body of the cosmos too to be in one sense ungenerated and in another generated: for when he says, "all that was visible was not at rest but was moving in disorder when god took it in hand to set it in order," and again, "the four kinds, fire and water and
earth and air, before the universe came to be set in order by them, caused a shaking in matter and were shaken by it because of their irregularity," he plainly represents the bodies as already existing and underlying before the generation of the cosmos. But when again he says that the body came to be younger than the soul and that the cosmos is generated because it is visible and tangible and has body,
and things of this sort, coming into being and generated, were plainly evident to everyone, he is clearly attributing generation to the nature of body. Yet it is far from the case that he is saying the opposite and contradicting himself so blatantly on the greatest matters. For he does not say that the same body both comes to be by god and exists before it comes to be in the same sense and as the same thing; that would be the statement of a man out of his mind. But
what one must understand by "generation" too, he himself teaches. "For before this," he says, "all these things were in a condition without reason or measure; but when the ordering of the universe was undertaken, fire first, and water and earth and air, though having certain traces of themselves, were nevertheless disposed altogether as anything is likely to be when god is absent from it — thus then, being of such a nature,
these were first given distinct shape by means of forms and numbers." And having said still earlier that it was the work not of one proportion but of two to bind together the mass of the universe, being solid and having depth, and having explained that god, placing water and air between fire and earth, bound and constituted the heaven, "from these," he says, "being four in such number,
the body of the cosmos was generated, agreeing through proportion, and it obtained friendship out of these, so that, having come together into the same thing with itself, it became indissoluble by anything else except by him who bound it together" — teaching most clearly that god was father and craftsman not simply of body nor of mass and matter, but of commensurability, beauty, and likeness in respect to body. These same things,
then, one must think also concerning soul: that the one part was neither generated by god nor is the soul of the cosmos, but is a certain power, self-moved and ever-moving, of an irrational and disorderly motion and impulse belonging to imagination and opinion; while the other part god himself, having harmonized it with the appropriate numbers and ratios, established as ruler of the cosmos once it had come to be, this part being generated. That he had in mind precisely these things and not merely for the sake of theoretical exposition, even though the cosmos had not come into being, he nonetheless posited a constitution and generation for the soul as well — this among many other things is evidence: that the soul is said by him to be both ungenerated, as has been said, and generated, whereas the cosmos is said always to have come into being and to be generated, but never ungenerated nor eternal. As for the passages in the
Timaeus, why should one need to cite them? For the whole treatise, entire, is about the generation of the cosmos, from beginning to end. As for the other dialogues, in the Atlanticus, Timaeus in his prayer names the one "who long ago came to be in deed, and now in speech, a god"; in the Statesman the stranger from Elea, Parmenides' follower, says that the cosmos, put together by god, "partakes of many good things, but if
there is anything base or difficult, it has this mixed in from its former condition of disharmony and irrationality"; and in the Republic, concerning the number which some call the "nuptial" number, Socrates, beginning to speak, says, "there is, for a generated divine thing, a period which a perfect number encompasses," calling nothing else "generated divine thing" than the cosmos. In the same way, as regards form and shape it remains constant,
while what comes to be about bodies is divisible, as a receptacle and matter, and the mixture is a common product completed from both. The undivided substance, then, ever remaining the same and in the same condition — not through smallness, as the smallest of bodies do — must be understood as escaping division: for its simple, unaffected, and pure and single-formed character is called "partless" and "undivided,"
by which, in some way touching the composite, divided, and differing things, it stops their multiplicity and settles them into a single condition through likeness. But as for the substance that becomes divisible about bodies, if one wishes to call it "matter," as a nature underlying and participating in that other substance, using the term homonymously, it makes no difference to the argument; but those who insist that a corporeal matter is mixed with
the undivided substance go wrong, first, because Plato uses none of that substance's own names for it — he is accustomed always to call that one "receptacle," "all-receiving," and "nurse," not as divisible about bodies, but rather as body divided into particulars. Next, how will the generation of the soul differ from that of the cosmos, if for both the constitution came to be out of matter and the intelligibles alike?
Yet Plato himself, as if pushing away from the soul any generation out of body, says that the corporeal element was placed by god within the soul, and only afterward wrapped about it from outside; and in general, having in his account first completed the soul, he only later introduces the hypothesis about matter, having needed nothing of it earlier, when he was generating the soul, as though it came to be
without matter. Similar objections can be made against the followers of Posidonius too; for they have not distanced themselves far from matter: having accepted that the substance of limits is said to be divisible about bodies, and mixing this with the intelligible, they declared the soul to be the form of that which is extended in every direction, constituted according to number and comprehending harmony — for the objects of mathematics are ranked between the primary intelligibles and
the objects of sense, and since the soul possesses the eternity of the intelligibles and the passibility of the objects of sense, it is fitting for its substance to exist in between. For it escaped even these men's notice that god, using the limits of bodies later, after the soul had already been completed, for the shaping of matter, was defining and enclosing its scattered and unconnected character by means of surfaces fitted together out of triangles.
Still more absurd is it to make the soul a form: for the one is ever-moving, the other unmoved; and the one is unmixed with the sensible, the other bound up with body. Moreover, god became an imitator of the form, as of a model, while he was the craftsman of the soul, as of a finished work. And that Plato does not posit number as the substance of the
soul, but rather as that which is ordered by number, has already been said. Common to both these views is this: that neither in limits nor in numbers does there inhere any trace of that power by which the soul is naturally able to judge the sensible; for the participation in the intelligible principle has produced in it mind and the capacity for thought, while opinions and beliefs and the imaginative and passible element come from
the qualities pertaining to body — something one could not conceive as arising simply out of units, or lines, or surfaces. And indeed, not only the souls of mortal things possess a cognitive power of the sensible, but also that of the cosmos, he says, "revolving upon itself, whenever it touches something whose substance is scattered, and whenever it touches something undivided, speaking as it is moved through the whole of itself
concerning that with which a thing is the same and that from which it differs, and in relation to what especially, and how and in what way it happens, according to what comes to be, that each thing stands and is affected in relation to each other thing" — in these words he is at once sketching an outline of the ten categories, and he makes this still clearer in what follows: "true reasoning," he says, "whenever it concerns the sensible and
the circle of the different, moving rightly, reports it throughout the whole soul, opinions and beliefs come to be firm and true; but whenever it concerns the rational and the circle of the same, running smoothly, makes it known, knowledge is necessarily brought to completion; and if anyone ever calls that in which these two come to be, in respect of existing things, by any other name than soul, he will say anything sooner
than the truth." Whence, then, did the soul get this apprehensive and opinion-forming motion directed at the sensible, distinct from that intellective motion which issues in knowledge? It is difficult to say, unless we hold firmly that here he is constituting not simply soul but the soul of the cosmos, out of underlying elements — both the better substance, the undivided one, and the
inferior one, which he has called divisible about bodies — this latter being none other than the opinion-forming, imaginative motion sympathetic with the sensible, not generated but subsisting eternally, just like the other. For the nature that possesses the intellective element also possessed the opinion-forming element; but the one is unmoved, unaffected, and established about the ever-abiding substance, while the other is divisible and wandering, inasmuch as it is in contact with matter that is being carried about and scattered.
For the sensible had not yet obtained order but was shapeless and indefinite, and the power ordered in relation to it had neither articulate opinions nor all its motions ordered, but for the most part dreamlike and erratic ones, disturbing what has bodily form, except so far as by chance it happened to fall in with the better; for it was in between the two and had a nature sympathetic and akin to both,
clinging on its perceptive side to matter, and on its judging side to the intelligibles. He himself, in fact, makes this fairly clear too by his very names: "let this," he says, "reckoned by my vote, be given as a summary statement — that being, and space, and becoming are three, existing separately three ways, even before heaven came to be." For he calls matter "space," as it were a seat, at times
and also "receptacle"; and that which is intelligible he calls "being"; and "becoming," while the cosmos had not yet come to be, he calls no other substance than that which exists in changes and motions, ranked between that which stamps the impression and that which receives it, transmitting here the images from there. For these reasons it was called "divisible," and also because the perceiving element must be distributed and coextend together with the sensible, and the imagining element with the imagined —
for the sensory motion, being proper to the soul, moves toward the sensible outside it; whereas mind itself, in itself, was abiding and unmoved, but coming to be within the soul and gaining mastery, turns it back upon itself and completes the circular motion around that which remains, ever touching most closely upon being. For this reason the association of the two has proved hard to blend, mixing the
divisible with the undivided and the everywhere-carried with that which is nowhere movable, and forcing the one to come together with the other into the same thing. But "the different" was not motion, just as "the same" was not rest, but rather a principle of difference and dissimilarity; for each descends from its own separate principle, the same from the one, the different from the dyad; and here for the first time they are mixed together concerning the
soul, bound together by numbers and ratios and harmonic means, and it makes the different, coming to be within the same, into difference, and the same, within the different, into order, as is clear in the primary powers of the soul: these are the judging power and the moving power. Motion, then, straightaway displays itself concerning the heaven, in the sameness the difference
by the revolution of the fixed stars, and in the difference the sameness by the order of the planets — for among the fixed stars the same prevails, while among the bodies near the earth the opposite holds. Judgment has two principles: mind, from the same, directed toward universals, and sense-perception, from the different, directed toward particulars. Reasoning is mixed
out of both, becoming intellection among the intelligibles and opinion among the sensibles, using as its intermediary instruments imaginations and memories, of which some produce the different within the same and others the same within the different. For intellection is a motion of the intellecting subject about that which remains, while opinion is a stationary state of the perceiving subject about
that which moves; and imagination, being an interweaving of opinion with sensation, he places in memory; and the same in turn moves the different again in the difference between before and now, touching at once upon difference and sameness. One must take the fusion that occurred concerning the body of the cosmos as an image of the proportion by which he fitted together the soul. For there, the extremes were fire and
earth, having a nature difficult to blend with one another, or rather altogether unmixable and unstable; whence, placing between them air before fire and water before earth, he first mixed these with one another, and then through these he mixed and harmonized those with these and with one another. Here again, the same and the different,
...the opposing powers and contrary extremities, he brought together, not by themselves, but by means of another substance placed between them—setting the indivisible substance before Sameness, and the divisible before Difference, adapting each appropriately to each—and then, blending with those already mixed substances, he wove the whole together into a single form of soul, as far as was possible, making one thing resembling out of different things, one out of many. Some do not do well
to say, as certain people do, that the nature of Difference was said by Plato to be hard to mix, not because it is unreceptive but rather fond of change, while the nature of Sameness, being stable and hard to alter, does not easily admit mixture but is repelled and flees it, so that it may remain simple, pure, and unchanged. But those who make this charge fail to recognize that Sameness is the form of things that are disposed alike,
while Difference is the form of things disposed differently; and the function of the latter, wherever it touches, is to separate, to alter, and to make many things out of one; while the function of the former is to bring together and to unite through likeness, gathering a single shape and power out of many things. These, then, are powers of the soul of the universe as a whole; but those powers that enter into mortal and passible instruments—being themselves imperishable powers of perishable bodies—in
these the character of the dyadic and indeterminate portion appears more prominently, while the character of the simple and monadic portion sinks more dimly out of sight. Yet one could hardly easily conceive of any human passion entirely free of reasoning, nor any movement of thought entirely without desire or love of honor or of feeling pleasure or pain attaching to it. For this reason, among philosophers some make the passions to be forms of reasoning, holding that every desire
and grief and anger are judgments; while others declare that the virtues themselves are passions—for indeed, they say, courage is a kind of fear, temperance a kind of pleasure, and justice a kind of self-interest. And further, since the soul is at once contemplative and practical, and contemplates both universals and particulars—understanding the former, as it seems, and perceiving the latter by sense—the common
reasoning faculty, always encountering Sameness in connection with Difference and Difference in connection with Sameness, attempts by definitions and divisions to separate the one from the many, and the indivisible from the divisible, yet is unable to remain purely within either, because the very principles themselves are interwoven and intermingled with one another in alternation. And it is for this reason that god constructed, out of the indivisible
and the divisible substance, a receptacle common to Sameness and Difference, so that order might arise amid difference—for this was what had to come about, since apart from these, Sameness would have had no difference, and so no motion and no coming-into-being; while Difference would have had no order, and so no coherence and no coming-into-being either. For even if it belongs to Sameness to be different from the
Different, and to the Different in turn to be the same as itself, such a mutual participation produces nothing generative by itself, but requires some third thing, a kind of matter, to receive and be disposed by both. And this is the substance which he first established, defining the unlimited character of that which is in motion around bodies by reference to the stability that belongs to intelligible things. Just as there is a sound that is inarticulate and without meaning, while speech is a meaningful
utterance of sound conveying thought, and harmony is that which arises out of pitches and intervals—a single pitch being one and the same, while an interval is a difference and otherness between pitches, and when these are mixed together, song and melody come to be—so too the passible part of the soul was indeterminate and unmeasured, until it was bounded by the introduction of a limit and a form upon the divisible and manifold character of its motion. Having grasped both Sameness
and Difference, through the likenesses and unlikenesses of numbers producing agreement out of difference, it becomes the intelligent life of the universe, and a harmony, and a reasoning that leads a persuasion mingled with necessity—which most people call fate, Empedocles calls Love together with Strife, Heraclitus calls "the backward-turning harmony of the universe, as of the bow and the lyre," Parmenides calls Light and Darkness, Anaxagoras calls Mind and the Unlimited,
and Zoroaster calls god and daemon, naming the one Oromasdes and the other Areimanios. Euripides, however, did not use the disjunctive correctly in place of the conjunctive when he wrote: "whether it be necessity of nature or mind of mortals, O Zeus"—for indeed both necessity and mind are the single power that pervades all things. The Egyptians, then, in their myth-making, hint at this darkly, when Horus is condemned in a lawsuit: to the father is assigned
breath and blood, but to the mother flesh and fat. Of the soul, nothing is pure or unmixed or left apart from the rest—"for hidden harmony is stronger than visible," as Heraclitus says—in which the differences and otherness the mingling god has hidden and submerged; yet it is still made manifest, in its irrational part by turbulence, in its
rational part by good order, in its senses by compulsion, and in its intellect by self-mastery. The defining faculty embraces the universal and the indivisible on account of kinship, while conversely the dividing faculty is drawn toward particulars, on account of the divisible; the whole soul rejoices in the unchanging owing to Sameness, and desires the change it needs owing to Difference. Not least
do the difference between the beautiful and the shameful, and that between the pleasant and the painful, and again the enthusiasms and agitations of lovers and their inner battles between love of beauty and unrestraint, reveal the mixed nature composed both of the divine and impassible and of the mortal portion, subject to passion in connection with bodies—of which he himself names the one
innate desire for pleasures, and the other an imported opinion reaching after the best. For the soul brings forth the passible element from itself, but it partakes of intellect from the superior principle that enters into it from outside. And this twofold association is not absent even from the nature that surrounds the heaven, but, inclining now to one side, now to the other, it is at present set upright by the revolution of Sameness, which holds mastery and steers the universe rightly; but there will
come a certain portion of time—and it has already come many times—in which the intelligent part is blunted and falls into slumber, filled with forgetfulness of what is properly its own, while the part accustomed to body from the beginning and sympathetic with it draws the soul along, weighs it down, and reverses the course it takes to the right of the universe; yet it cannot break free from it entirely, but again recovers the better part and looks back up toward the pattern, with god turning it about and
guiding it aright together. In this way it is shown to us from many directions that the soul is not wholly the work of god, but, possessing within itself an innate portion of evil, has been set in order by god—who, by defining the unlimited by means of the one, so that a substance might come to be that partakes of limit; and by mingling order, change, difference, and likeness through the power of Sameness and of Difference, has, so far
as was possible, produced a fellowship and friendship among all these with one another, by means of numbers and harmony. Concerning these matters, even though you have often heard of them and encountered them in many discourses and writings, it will not be amiss for me too to go through them briefly, setting forth first Plato's own words: "He took away one portion first from the whole, and after this he took away a portion double of that; and a third, half again as much as the second
but three times the first; a fourth double the second; a fifth three times the third; a sixth eight times the first; and a seventh twenty-seven times the first. After this he went on to fill up the double and triple intervals, cutting off still more portions from that original mass and placing them in between these, so that in each interval there were two means, the one exceeding and being exceeded by
the same fraction of the extremes, and the other exceeding and being exceeded by the same number as the extremes; and out of these bonds there arose, within the previous intervals, intervals of one and a half, of four thirds, and of nine eighths; and with the interval of nine eighths he filled up all the intervals of four thirds, leaving over in each of them a fraction, the interval of this fraction, remaining as number to number, having
its terms as two hundred fifty-six to two hundred forty-three." In these matters the inquiry concerns, first, the quantity of the numbers; second, their order; and third, their power. Regarding the quantity, one must ask what the numbers are that he takes among the double and triple intervals; regarding the order, whether all should be set out along a single line, as
Theodorus does, or rather, as Crantor does, in the shape of a Λ, with the first number placed at the apex and, apart from the doubles on one side and apart from the triples on the other, arranged in two rows beneath. And regarding the use and the power, what these numbers accomplish when taken up for the composition of the soul. First, then, concerning the first point, we shall set aside those who say that as regards the ratios themselves
it is enough to observe the nature possessed by the intervals and by the means that fill them up, whatever numbers one may suppose to occupy the places receptive of the aforesaid proportions, since the teaching is completed in the same way regardless. For even if what they say is true, it makes learning dim without examples, and it shuts out another kind of contemplation that has a charm not without philosophy. If, then, beginning from the monad,
we set out the doubles and triples in turn, as he himself lays down, they will come in this order, at one point the second, the fourth, and the eighth, at another the third, the ninth, and the twenty-seventh—seven numbers in all, counting the unit in common, proceeding as far as the fourth term by multiplication. For not only here, but in many other places, the affinity of the number four with the number seven
becomes evident. Now the tetraktys celebrated by the Pythagoreans, the six and the thirty, seems to have this marvel: that it is composed of the first four even numbers and the first four odd numbers, and comes to be as the fourth pairing of the numbers successively added together; for the first pairing is that of one and two, the second that of three and four,
the third that of five and six—of which none makes a square number, either by itself or together with the others—while the pairing of seven and eight, though it is the fourth, when added to the earlier pairings yields thirty-six, a square number. But the tetraktys of the numbers set forth by Plato has a more complete origin, since the even numbers are multiplied by even intervals and the odd
by odd intervals; it contains the unit, which is the common source of even and odd, and beneath it two and three, the first plane numbers; four and nine, the first square numbers; and eight and twenty-seven, the first cube numbers—the unit being placed outside the reckoning, by which it is also clear that he wishes them to be arranged not on a single straight line
but rather alternately and separately, the even numbers set alongside one another and again the odd numbers alongside one another, as has been described above. In this way the pairings of like numbers will correspond to like numbers, and will produce conspicuous numbers both by addition and by multiplication with one another. By addition, thus: two and three make five, four and nine make thirteen, and eight and
twenty-seven make thirty-five. Of these numbers the Pythagoreans called the five "nurse," that is, a musical tone, believing that among the intervals of the whole tone the fifth was the first that could be sounded; and they called the thirteen "remainder," following Plato, recognizing the impossibility of dividing the tone into equal parts; and the thirty-five they called "harmony," because it is composed of two first cubes, arising from
an even and an odd number, and out of four numbers, six and eight and nine and twelve, which contain the arithmetic and the harmonic proportion. But this power will be made clearer by means of a diagram. Let there be a rectangular parallelogram ABCD, having as one of its sides AB five, and the side AD seven; and when
the shorter side is cut into two and three at the point K, and the longer side into three and four at the point L, let straight lines be drawn from the points of section, cutting one another, at K M N and at L M O, and making the area A K M L six, the area K B O M nine, the area
L M N D eight, and the area M O C N twelve; and the whole parallelogram contains thirty-five, the ratios of the first musical concords, in the numbers of the areas into which it has been divided. Now the six and the eight are in the ratio of four to three, in which is the interval of a fourth; and the six and the nine are in the ratio
of three to two, in which is the interval of a fifth; and the six and the twelve are in the ratio of two to one, in which is the interval of the octave. And the ratio of the tone, which is nine to eight, is also present, in the nine and the eight; and for this reason they called the number that contains these ratios "harmony." This number, taken six times, produces the number two hundred and ten, the number of days
in which seven-month infants are said to be brought to full term. Again, from another starting point, by multiplication: twice three makes six, four times nine makes thirty-six, and eight times twenty-seven makes two hundred and sixteen; and six is a perfect number, being equal to its own parts, and is called "marriage" because of the union of even and odd; moreover it is composed
of the source and of the first even number and the first odd number. And thirty-six is the first number that is both square and triangular—square from the six, and triangular from the eight—and it comes about by the multiplication of two square numbers, four multiplied by nine, and also by the addition of three cubes, for one and eight and twenty-seven
added together make the number written above. It is further an oblong number from two sides, twelve taken three times or nine taken four times. If, then, the sides of the figures are set out—six of the square, eight of the triangle, and of the parallelograms, nine of the one and twelve of the other—they will produce the ratios of the concords. For there will be
the twelve to the nine, a fourth, as nete to paramese; to the eight, a fifth, as nete to mese; and to the six, an octave, as nete to hypate. And the cube of 216 is derived from six and is equal to its own perimeter. Since the numbers set out have such powers, a peculiar property belongs to the last of them,
27: that the sum of all the numbers before it is equal to it alone, and it is also the period of the moon. And among the melodic intervals the Pythagoreans place the tone in this number; that is why they call the thirteen a leimma ("remainder"), for it falls short of the half by a unit. That these numbers also contain the ratios of the concords is easy to learn. For the ratio of two to one, in which lies the octave, is double; the ratio of three to two, in which lies the fifth, is sesquialter; the ratio of four to three, in which lies the fourth, is sesquitertian; the ratio of nine to three, in which lies the octave-plus-a-fifth, is triple;
and the ratio of eight to two, in which lies the double octave, is quadruple. There is also the ratio of nine to eight, in which lies the tone, which is superoctave (epogdoic). If, then, the unit, being common to both, is counted together with the even numbers and with the odd, the whole series of numbers yields the total of the decad — for the numbers from one up to ten,
added together, make fifteen, a triangular number from the pentad; while the odd series yields forty, produced by addition from thirteen and twenty-seven, the numbers by which the mathematicians clearly measure the melodic intervals, calling the one a diesis and the other a tone; and produced by multiplication through the power of the tetraktys — for when each of the first four numbers is taken four times over, there result four,
eight, twelve, and sixteen: these together make forty, and they contain the ratios of the concords. For the sixteen is sesquitertian to the twelve, double to the eight, and quadruple to the four; and the twelve is sesquialter to the eight and triple to the four. These ratios comprise the fourth, the fifth, the octave, and the double octave. The forty is also equal to two squares and two cubes taken together: for one, four, eight, and twenty-seven — cubes and squares — add up to forty when combined. So the Platonic tetraktys is far more varied in its arrangement than the Pythagorean, and more complete. But
since the means being introduced find no room among the numbers as first laid down, it was necessary to take larger terms in the same ratios; and we must say what these are. But first, concerning the means: of these, the one that exceeds by an equal number and is exceeded by an equal number is now called arithmetic; the one that exceeds and is exceeded by the same fraction of the extremes is called sub-contrary ("harmonic"). The terms of the
arithmetic mean are 6, 9, and 12: for nine exceeds six by the same number by which it is exceeded by twelve. The terms of the sub-contrary mean are 6, 8, 12: for eight exceeds six by two and is exceeded by twelve by four, and two is a third part of six, while four is a third part of twelve. It follows, then,
that in the arithmetic mean the middle term is exceeded and exceeds by the same fraction of the extremes, whereas in the sub-contrary mean it falls short by one fraction of the extremes and exceeds by the same fraction — for there, the three is a third part of the middle term, but here the four and the two are each a third part of the respective extreme; hence it has been called sub-contrary. They also name this the harmonic mean,
because it provides the primary concords for its terms: for the greatest term to the least gives the octave, the greatest to the middle gives the fifth, and the middle to the least gives the fourth — because when the greatest of the terms is set at nete and the least at hypate, the middle term becomes the one at mese, which
makes the fifth to the greatest and the fourth to the least, so that the eight falls at mese, the twelve at nete, and the six at hypate. As for the method by which they take the said means, Eudorus demonstrates it simply and clearly. Consider first the case of the arithmetic mean. If you set out the extremes and take
half of each and add them together, the sum will be the mean, alike in the case of doubles and of triples. In the case of the sub-contrary mean, among doubles, if you set out the extremes and take a third of the lesser and a half of the greater, the sum becomes the mean; among triples, conversely, you must take
a half of the lesser and a third of the greater, for the sum thus produced becomes the mean. For example, let 6 be the least term and 18 the greatest in a triple ratio: if you take half of the six, namely three, and a third of the eighteen, namely six, and add them, you will get nine, which exceeds and is exceeded by the same fraction of the extremes. In this way
the means are obtained. But they must be inserted there and made to fill out the double and triple intervals. Of the numbers set out, some have no room at all in between, and others not enough; so by increasing them, while keeping the same ratios, they create room sufficient for the said means. And first, taking six in place of one as the smallest term, since six is the first
number to have both a half and a third part, they made all the terms set out below six times as large, as has been described, so that they would admit both means in both the double and the triple intervals. Since Plato speaks of "the sesquialter, sesquitertian, and superoctave intervals that arose from these bonds," in the previous intervals all the sesquitertian ratios were filled out by the interval of a superoctave, leaving over,
in each case, a fraction — and since this fractional interval, when left over, has its terms in the ratio of number to number, namely 256 to 243, it was on account of this expression that they were compelled once more to raise the numbers and make them larger. For it was necessary that two superoctave intervals follow in succession; but since six neither has a superoctave of itself, nor, if it were divided, could it be split into fractional parts without the learning becoming hard to follow, since the units would have to be broken into fractions, the very nature of the matter dictated the multiplication — just as in a change of key the whole diagram is stretched proportionally together with the first of the numbers. Now Eudorus, following Crantor, first took 384, which arises when six is multiplied by 64; and he was led to these numbers by the fact that 64 has 72 as its superoctave.
But it agrees better with what Plato says to posit half of this number; for its leimma will have the ratio, in numbers, that Plato states, namely 256 to 243, when 192 is set as the first number. But if double this number is set as the first, the leimma will have the same ratio but a doubled numerical value, the one that 512 has to 486: for 512 is the sesquitertian of 384, just as 256 is the sesquitertian of 192. And the reduction to this number is not without reason, but it also furnished Crantor's school with their justification: for 64 is both a cube derived from the first square
and a square derived from the first cube; and when multiplied by three — the first odd number, the first triangular number, and the first perfect number, and also sesquialter — it produces 192, which itself also has a superoctave, as we shall show. But first, so that you may better grasp what the leimma is and what Plato's intention is, let us briefly recall what is customarily said in the Pythagorean schools.
An interval in melody is anything comprehended between two notes unlike in pitch. One of these intervals is the so-called tone, by which the fifth is greater than the fourth. Some musical theorists suppose that when this is divided in two it makes two intervals, each of which they call a semitone; but the Pythagoreans denied that it could be cut into equal parts, and
since the two parts are unequal, they call the smaller one the leimma, because it falls short of the half. Hence, of the concords, some make the fourth consist of two tones and a semitone, others of two tones and a leimma. The theorists of hearing seem to be borne out by sense-perception, the mathematicians by demonstration, and the method of the latter is as follows: it was observed by means of instruments
that the octave has the double ratio, the fifth the sesquialter, the fourth the sesquitertian, and the tone the superoctave. It is possible even now to test the truth of this, either by hanging two unequal weights from strings, or by making, out of two pipes of equal bore, one double the length of the other: for of the pipes, the longer
will sound lower, as hypate to nete; and of the strings, the one stretched with double the weight will sound higher than the other, as nete to hypate — and this is the octave. Likewise, lengths and weights taken in the ratio of three to two will produce the fifth, and four to three the fourth, of which the latter has the sesquitertian ratio, the former
the sesquialter. And if the inequality of weights or lengths is as nine to eight, it will produce the interval of a tone, not a concord but, so to speak, merely melodic, in that the notes, if struck one after another, sound sweet and pleasing, but if struck together, harsh and unpleasant; whereas among the concords, whether struck together or in alternation, the
perception welcomes the combined sound gladly. Moreover, they demonstrate this also through ratio. For in harmony the octave is composed of the fifth and the fourth, and in numbers the double ratio is composed of the sesquialter and the sesquitertian: for twelve is sesquitertian to nine, sesquialter to eight, and double to six.
The double ratio, then, is compounded of the sesquialter and the sesquitertian, just as the octave is compounded of the fifth and the fourth; but there, the fifth is greater than the fourth by a tone, and here, likewise, the sesquialter is greater than the sesquitertian by a superoctave. It appears, then, that the octave has the double ratio,
the fifth the sesquialter, the fourth the sesquitertian, and the tone the superoctave. Now that this has been demonstrated, let us examine whether the superoctave ratio is naturally divisible in two; for if it is not, neither is the tone. Since nine and eight, the first numbers to produce the superoctave ratio, have no interval between them, but when both are doubled, the number that falls
in between produces two intervals, it is clear that if these two intervals were equal, the superoctave would be divided in two. But in fact, when doubled, nine becomes eighteen and eight becomes sixteen, and between these falls seventeen, so that of the two intervals one is greater and the other smaller: the first is a seventeenth part greater, the second a sixteenth part greater. So
the superoctave is divided into unequal parts; and if this is so, so too is the tone. Neither of the two parts resulting from its division is therefore a semitone, but it has rightly been called a leimma by the mathematicians. And this is what Plato means when he says: "filling up the sesquitertian intervals with superoctaves, the god left over a fraction of each of them, whose ratio is that which 256
bears to 243." For let the fourth be taken in two numbers containing the sesquitertian ratio, 256 and 192: of these, the lesser, 192, is to be set at the lowest note of the tetrachord, and the greater, 256, at the highest. It must be shown that when this interval is filled up with two superoctaves,
there remains an interval of the same size as that which, in numbers, 256 has to 243. For when the lower note is raised by a tone, which is a superoctave, it becomes 216; and when this in turn is raised by another tone, it becomes 243: for this exceeds 216 by 27, and 216 exceeds 192 by 24,
of which the 27 is an eighth part of 216, and the 24 is an eighth part of 192. Hence of these three numbers, the greatest is a superoctave of the middle, and the middle of the least; and the interval from the least to the greatest — that is, from 192 to 243 — is a double tone, being filled up
by two superoctaves. If this is subtracted, there remains, of the whole interval, the part left between 243 and 256, namely 13 — which is why they called this number the leimma. I myself think that Plato's meaning is most clearly shown by these numbers. But others, setting the terms of the fourth with the higher note at 288 and the lower
at 216, work out the rest proportionally in the same way, except that they take the leimma as lying between two tones: for when the lower is raised by a tone, it becomes 243; and when the higher is lowered by a tone, it becomes 256 — for 243 is a superoctave of 216, and 288 a superoctave of 256 — so that each of the intervals is a full tone, and what remains between
...between 243 and 256, which is not a semitone but less than one. For 288 exceeds 256 by 27 (and a fraction more), while 243 exceeds 216 by 27, and 256 exceeds 243 by 13; and this excess is less than half of either of those other excesses. Hence the fourth is found to consist of two tones and a leimma, not two and a half tones.
This, then, is the demonstration of these matters. But it is not very difficult to see, from what has been said, why Plato, after stating that intervals in the ratios of 3:2, 4:3, and 9:8 arise, and that the 4:3 ratios are filled up by the 9:8 ratios, made no mention of the 3:2 ratios but passed over them. For the 3:2 ratio, too, is filled up when a 9:8 interval is added to a 4:3 interval.
Now that these points have been demonstrated, I would, for the sake of practice, have left it to you yourselves to fill in the intervals and insert the means, even if no one had done this before; but since this has in fact been worked out by many good men, especially Crantor, Clearchus, and Theodorus of Soli, it is not without use to say a little about their disagreement on the matter. For Theodorus, not making two rows as they did, but arranging the doubles and the triples in succession on a single straight line, argues first from the so-called division of the substance according to length, which makes two portions out of one, not four out of two; and then he says that the insertions of the means ought to take their place in this way, since otherwise there will be confusion and disorder, and immediate transpositions into the first triple out of the first double, when each ought to be filled up separately.
Crantor and his followers, on the other hand, are supported by the positions of the numbers—plane matched against plane, square against square, and cube against cube—and by taking them not in sequence but alternating even and odd. For, placing the monad, which is common to both series, first, he takes the eight and then next the twenty-seven, all but showing us what place he assigns to each kind. These matters, then, it is more fitting for others to work out precisely; what remains belongs properly to the subject before us.
For Plato did not introduce the arithmetic and harmonic means as a display of mathematical theory in a physical hypothesis that had no need of them, but because this reasoning is especially appropriate to the constitution of the soul. And yet some seek the proportions in question in the speeds of the wandering spheres, others rather in their distances, some in the sizes of the stars, while those who think themselves extremely precise look for them in the diameters of the epicycles—supposing that the demiurge fitted the soul to the heavens for the sake of these things, divided as it is into seven portions.
Many also transfer the Pythagorean scheme to this subject, tripling the distances of the bodies from the center. This works out as follows: for fire the unit is set at one; for the counter-earth, three; for the earth, nine; for the moon, twenty-seven; for Mercury, eighty-one; for Venus, two hundred forty-three; and for the sun itself, seven hundred twenty-nine—which is at once a square and a cube, and this is why they sometimes call the sun 'the square' and 'the cube.'
In this way they force the other bodies also into the pattern of tripling, straying far indeed from what is reasonable—if there is any value at all in geometrical demonstrations. And they show that those who set out from that other starting point are far more plausible to compare with them, though even these do not achieve complete precision but speak only approximately: that the ratio of the sun's diameter to the earth's diameter is twelve to one; that the earth's diameter, in turn, is three times the moon's diameter; that the faintest visible of the fixed stars has a diameter no less than a third of the earth's diameter; that the whole sphere of the earth stands to the whole sphere of the moon as twenty-seven to one; that the diameters of Venus and the earth are in the ratio of two to one, while their spheres are in the ratio of eight to one; that the breadth of the eclipse-shadow is three times the moon's diameter; and that the moon deviates in latitude from the circle of the zodiac by twelve degrees on either side.
Its relations to the sun, at triangular and square distances, take the forms of half-moon and gibbous phases; and having traversed six signs, it renders the full moon like a kind of consonance, the octave within a span of six tones. As for the sun's motions, which are smallest around the solstices and greatest around the equinox—through which it subtracts from the day and adds to the night, or the reverse—the ratio is as follows: in the first thirty days after the winter solstice, it adds to the day a sixth of the excess by which the longest night exceeds the shortest day; in the next thirty days, a third; and half in the remaining days up to the equinox, the irregularity being equalized over intervals of time in the ratios of six to one and three to one.
The Chaldeans say that spring stands to autumn in the ratio of a fourth, to winter in the ratio of a fifth, and to summer in the ratio of an octave. And if Euripides is right in distinguishing four months of summer and an equal number of winter, and two of dear autumn and an equal number of spring, then the seasons change through the interval of an octave.
Some, assigning to the earth the place of the added note, to the moon the hypate, and moving Mercury and Venus among the notes called parhypate and lichanos, maintain that the sun itself, as the mese, holds together the octave, being distant from the earth by a fifth and from the fixed stars by a fourth. But neither does the ingenuity of these men touch upon any truth, nor do the others attain complete accuracy.
To those, then, who do not think these views are dependent on Plato's own thought, the following will seem to hold entirely to musical reasoning: that, there being five tetrachords—the hypaton, meson, synemmenon, diezeugmenon, and hyperbolaion—the planets are arranged within five intervals. Of these, one runs from the moon to the sun and to those that move together with the sun, Mercury and Venus; a second runs from these to fiery Mars; a third lies between this and Jupiter; then next comes the interval to Saturn; and the fifth, finally, runs from this to the sphere of the fixed stars—so that the notes bounding the tetrachords stand in the same ratio as the wandering stars.
Moreover, we know that the ancients set two hypatai, three netai, one mese, and one paramese, so that the fixed notes were equal in number to the planets. But the moderns, having placed the proslambanomenos—differing by a tone from the hypate—on the low side, made the whole system a double octave, but did not preserve the natural order of the consonances; for the fifth comes before the fourth, once a tone has been added below the hypate.
Plato, however, is clearly adding at the high end: for he says in the Republic that each of the eight spheres revolves, and that upon each stands a Siren who sings, each sending forth a single note, and that out of all of them a single harmony is blended together; and these Sirens, released to sing, chant and celebrate the divine, an eight-stringed melody of the sacred circuit and dance. For eight, too, was the number of the first terms of the double and triple ratios, when the unit is counted in with each series.
The elder tradition has handed down to us nine Muses as well: eight of them, as in Plato, concerned with the heavens, and the ninth charming the things around the earth, calling them back and settling into order the irregularity and confusion that arise from wandering and diversity. Consider, then, whether it is not the soul—having become most prudent and most just—that guides the heavens and the heavenly bodies by the melodies and motions proper to it; and it has become such through the ratios that constitute harmony, of which images exist reaching even into the incorporeal, in the visible and seen parts and bodies of the cosmos. The first and most sovereign power is visibly blended into the soul and renders it consonant and obedient to itself, with the best and most divine part always in harmony with all the rest.
For the demiurge, taking over disorder and discord in the motions of the unharmonized and unintelligent soul as it was at variance with itself, marked off and separated some elements, and gathered and arranged others together, employing harmonies and numbers. By these same means, even the most inert bodies—stones, wood, the bark of plants, the bones of animals, and rennets—when blended and fitted together, produce marvelous appearances in statues and marvelous powers in drugs and instruments. For this reason Zeno of Citium used to urge the young men to go and observe flute-players closely, to see what a sound is given off by horns and wood and reeds and bones when they partake of proportion and consonance.
For the claim that all things resemble number, in accordance with the Pythagorean pronouncement, requires an argument; but that in all the things among which, out of difference and dissimilarity, some fellowship and concord with one another has come to be, the cause of this is measure and order, insofar as they partake of number and harmony—this has not escaped the poets, who call things that are dear and friendly 'articulate,' and enemies and foes 'unfitted,' on the ground that difference is a kind of disharmony. The poet who composed the funeral ode for Pindar wrote: 'this man was fitted to strangers and dear to his townsmen'—clearly regarding good fittingness as virtue; just as Pindar himself somewhere says that Cadmus heard the god display true music. And the ancient theologians, the oldest of philosophers, used to place musical instruments in the hands of the images of the gods—not supposing that the gods somehow play the lyre or the flute, but thinking that no work of the gods is so fitting as harmony and consonance.
Just as, then, a man who looks for the ratios of 4:3, 3:2, and 2:1 in the yoke of the lyre, or in its sound-box, or in its pegs, is ridiculous—for while it is true that these parts, too, must be made proportionate to one another in length and thickness, that harmony itself is to be observed in the notes—so likewise it is reasonable that the bodies of the stars, the intervals of their circles, and the speeds of their revolutions, like the parts of an instrument, stand to one another and to the whole in fixed ratios and due measure, even though the precise quantity escapes us. As for those ratios which the demiurge employed, and the numbers, we should consider their work to be the very melodiousness and harmony of the soul with itself, by which, having come to be present in the heavens, it has filled them with countless blessings, and has ordered the things around the earth—with seasons and changes possessing due measure—in the best and most beautiful way for both the generation and the preservation of the things that come to be.

======== Moralia: De Capienda Ex Inimicis Utilitate ========

I see, Cornelius Pulcher, that you have chosen the gentlest style of political life, one that is most useful to the community while making you the least troublesome to those you deal with privately. But since a land without wild beasts—like the Crete of the historians—can be found, while a constitution that has produced neither envy nor rivalrous jealousy, the most fertile passions of enmity, has not yet come into being, it seems that, if nothing else, friendships entangle us in enmities as well. This is what the wise Chilon had in mind when, hearing a man say he had no enemy, he asked whether he had a friend either. It seems to me that the statesman ought to have thought through the whole subject of enemies as well, and to have taken seriously what Xenophon said—no idle remark—that it belongs to a man of sense to derive benefit even from his enemies.
This, then, is what occurred to me to say on the subject the other day; I have gathered it together under roughly the same headings and sent it to you, sparing you, as far as I could, what has already been written in the Political Precepts, since I see you often have that book at hand. For the ancients it was enough not to be wronged by foreign and wild animals, and that was the whole aim of their struggles against beasts; but their descendants, once they had learned to make use of them, derive benefit as well—being fed on their flesh, clothed in their hair, treated medicinally with their gall and rennet, and arming themselves with their hides—so that one might well fear that, once the wild animals run out, man's life would itself become bestial, resourceless, and untamed. Since, then, for most people it is enough simply not to be harmed by their enemies, but Xenophon says that men of sense actually derive benefit from those at variance with them, we ought not to disbelieve this, but rather to look for the method and skill by which this good may be secured for people who cannot possibly live without an enemy.
No farmer can cultivate every tree, nor can any hunter tame every wild animal; so each has sought to gain some other use—one from what bears no fruit, the other from what is wild. The sea's water is undrinkable and harmful, yet it feeds fish and everywhere serves as a highway and a vehicle for those who travel upon it. When the satyr first saw fire and wanted to kiss and embrace it, Prometheus said, "Goat, you will mourn your beard, for it burns whoever touches it"—but it also gives light and warmth and is the instrument of every art to those who have learned to use it. Consider, then, the enemy too: even though he is harmful in other respects and hard to deal with, he somehow offers a point of contact, a use of his own, and proves beneficial. Among our affairs there are many things unloved, hateful, and hostile to those who encounter them; yet you see that some men have used bodily illness as an occasion for leisure, and toils that befell many have strengthened and trained them.
Some have even made the loss of their country and the loss of their property a resource for leisure and philosophy, as Diogenes and Crates did. Zeno, when he heard that his ship had been wrecked, said, "Well done, Fortune, for driving us into the cloak of philosophy." For just as the sturdiest stomachs and the healthiest of animals digest snakes and scorpions when they eat them, and some even feed on stones and shells, changing them through the strength and heat of their internal fire, while the squeamish and sickly vomit up even bread and wine they take in—so the foolish corrupt even their friendships, while the wise are able to make skillful use even of their enmities.
First, then, it seems to me that the most harmful part of enmity could become most beneficial to those who pay attention. What do I mean by this? Your enemy is always awake, lying in wait over your affairs, seeking a handle from every quarter, and he patrols your whole life—not seeing only through oak trees, like Lynceus, nor only through stones and shells, but ferreting out what is done through a friend, a servant, and every intimate as far as possible, digging into and searching out your plans. For friends often fail to notice us even when we are ill and dying, through carelessness and neglect, but of our enemies we all but pry into their very dreams; illnesses, debts, and quarrels with their wives escape the notice of the very people involved sooner than they escape the enemy. He clings especially to our faults and tracks them down. Just as vultures are drawn to the smell of decaying bodies and have no sense of what is clean and healthy, so it is the sick, base, and afflicted parts of our life that stir the enemy, and it is toward these that those who hate us dart, seizing and tearing at them.
Is this, then, beneficial? Very much so—it makes us live cautiously and pay attention to ourselves, neither doing nor saying anything carelessly or thoughtlessly, but always keeping our life blameless, as if under a strict regimen. For this caution, which thus restrains the passions and holds the reasoning faculty together, produces practice and a settled purpose of living decently and irreproachably. Just as cities disciplined by wars with their neighbors and continual campaigns come to cherish good order and a sound constitution, so those who are compelled by certain enmities to stay sober in their conduct of life and to guard against carelessness and contempt, and to do everything with due care, without realizing it are led by habit into blamelessness and have their character set in order—provided reason also lends some small assistance. For the line "then indeed would Priam and Priam's sons rejoice" is always at hand for such people, and it turns them back, diverts them, and keeps them away from just those things over which their enemies rejoice and mock.
Moreover, we see that the artists devoted to Dionysus perform in a relaxed and half-hearted way, often without precision, when they compete in the theaters on their own; but whenever there is a contest and a rivalry against others, they focus not only themselves but their instruments more intently, tuning their strings, adjusting themselves more carefully, and playing their pipes with greater exactness. So whoever knows that his enemy is a rival for his reputation and his life pays closer attention to himself, watches over his affairs more carefully, and orders his life accordingly. For it is also a mark of vice to feel more shame before enemies than before friends for the wrongs we commit.
Hence Nasica, when some people thought and said that Rome's affairs were now secure, since the Carthaginians had been destroyed and the Achaeans enslaved, said, "In fact we are now in a precarious position, having left ourselves neither anyone to fear nor anyone before whom to feel shame." Take also, further, the saying of Diogenes, a very philosophical and statesmanlike one: "How shall I defend myself against my enemy?"—"By becoming good and noble yourself." Men are pained to see their enemies' horses winning renown, and their dogs praised; if they see a well-tended estate or a flourishing garden, they groan. What, then, do you suppose they feel when they see you showing yourself a just, sound-minded, decent man, esteemed in speech, blameless in conduct, orderly in your way of life, reaping a deep furrow of the mind from which good counsels spring?
"Conquered," says Pindar, "men are bound by lack of resource"—not simply and not all men, but those who see themselves conquered by their enemies through diligence, decency, magnanimity, kindness, and good deeds; these things, as Demosthenes says, turn back the tongue, stop up the mouth, choke it, and force it into silence. So then, distinguish yourself from base men, for it is in your power. If you wish to vex the man who hates you, do not call him effeminate, soft, licentious, or vulgar and servile—rather, be a man yourself, be sound-minded, speak the truth, and treat those you meet with kindness and justice. But if you are led on to abuse him, keep yourself as far as possible from the very faults you are abusing him for.
Look within your own soul, examine what is unsound there, lest some vice of your own whisper against you, as the tragic poet says, "physician of others, yourself full of sores." If you call him uneducated, intensify your own love of learning and diligence; if you call him cowardly, rouse instead your own courage and manliness; and if you call him licentious and undisciplined, erase from your soul any hidden trace of love of pleasure, if such remains. For nothing is more shameful, and nothing more painful, than an insult that recoils on the speaker—just as reflected light troubles weak eyes more, so also blame that rebounds upon the blamers themselves, from the very truth of the matter, is most painful. For just as the northeast wind gathers the clouds, so a base life draws abuse upon itself.
Whenever Plato encountered people behaving disgracefully, he used to say to himself, "Surely I am not like that?" And the man who, having abused another's life, immediately examines his own and reforms it, correcting and turning it in the opposite direction, will gain something useful from his abuse, which otherwise seems, and is, useless and empty. Now most people laugh when someone who is himself bald or hunchbacked mocks others for the same things; but it is altogether ridiculous to abuse or mock anything that can be turned back against oneself, as when Leon of Byzantium, mocked by a hunchback for weakness of eyesight, said, "You reproach me with a merely human affliction, while carrying your own retribution on your back."
So do not abuse another as an adulterer if you yourself are mad for boys, nor as a spendthrift if you yourself are stingy. "You are of the same stock as a husband-slaying woman," said Alcmaeon to Adrastus. What was his reply? He turned back on Alcmaeon not another's reproach but his very own: "But you are the one who killed with your own hand the mother who bore you." To Crassus, Domitius said, "Didn't you weep when your pet lamprey, which you kept in a fish-pond, died?" And the other replied, "And didn't you fail to weep when you buried three wives?" The man who is going to abuse another need not be clever, loud-voiced, and reckless, but rather one who is himself beyond reproach and blameless. For it seems that god enjoins nothing so much upon the man who is about to censure another as "know thyself," so that in saying what they wish they may not hear in return what they do not wish to hear. For such a man, as Sophocles says, "loves to pour out his tongue in vain, and unwillingly hears the very words he willingly spoke against another."
This, then, is one benefit and use that lies in abusing one's enemy; and there is another no less useful—namely, being abused and hearing ill of oneself from one's enemies. That is why Antisthenes rightly said that those who are to be saved need either genuine friends or ardent enemies—the former admonishing those who err, the latter turning them away by their abuse. But since friendship nowadays has become tongue-tied when it comes to frank speech, and its flattering side is talkative while its admonishing side is voiceless, we must be ready to hear the truth even from our enemies. For just as Telephus, lacking his own physician, submitted his wound to the enemy's spear, so those in need of good will's admonition must be ready to endure even the speech of a hostile enemy, if it exposes and chastises their vice—looking to the deed rather than to the intention of the man who speaks harshly.
Just as the man who intended to kill the Thessalian Prometheus struck his tumor with a sword and cut it in such a way that the man was saved and freed from the tumor when it burst, so too, often, abuse hurled in anger or enmity has cured an evil of the soul that was either unrecognized or neglected. But most people, when abused, do not consider whether what is said applies to them, but rather what fault applies to the one abusing them—and, like wrestlers, they do not wipe the dust off themselves, but instead sprinkle each other with it, so that they become smeared and stained by their collision with one another. When abused by an enemy, one ought to remove the fault that actually clings to oneself, more readily than one would remove a stain that has been shown to be on one's cloak; but even if someone says things that do not apply, still one should seek out the cause from which the slander arose, and be on guard and fearful lest, without noticing it, we are at fault in something close to or resembling what is said.
For instance, a certain arrangement of hair and a rather soft gait led people to accuse Lacydes, king of the Argives, of effeminacy, and led them to accuse Pompey—though he was as far as could be from softness and licentiousness—of the same, because he scratched his head with one finger. Crassus was accused of having relations with one of the Vestal virgins, because he wanted to buy from her a fine piece of land and for that reason often met and courted her privately. Postumia was accused, because she laughed too readily and spoke rather boldly in the company of men, so that she was actually brought to trial for unchastity; she was in fact found innocent of the charge, but the high priest Spurius Minucius, in acquitting her, warned her not to use language less dignified than her way of life required. Themistocles, though he did no wrong, incurred suspicion of treason from Pausanias because he made use of him as a friend and wrote to him and sent messages to him continually.
So whenever something untrue is said, one must not simply despise and disregard it on the ground that it is false, but rather examine what it is in one's words, actions, pursuits, or associations that has given the slander its semblance of truth, and take care to guard against and avoid that. For if other people, falling into circumstances they did not wish for, learn something useful from them—as Merope says, "Fortune, taking as her wage the dearest of what was mine, made me wise"—what is to prevent one from taking the enemy as an unpaid teacher and gaining benefit, learning something one had not noticed? For the enemy perceives much about his enemy that the friend, being blinded, does not; for, as Plato says, "love is blind concerning the beloved," whereas hatred comes together with prying curiosity and talkativeness.
Hiero was mocked by one of his enemies for the bad odor of his mouth. So he went home and said to his wife, "What is this? Did you never tell me this either?" And she, being modest and without guile, said, "I supposed that all men smelled like that." So it is that things perceptible to the senses, bodily things, things obvious to everyone, one can learn from enemies sooner than from friends and intimates. Without this, moreover, it is not possible to have mastery over the tongue—no small part of virtue—always obedient and compliant to reason, unless one works upon the worst of the passions, such as anger, through practice, exercise, and diligence. For "the word that unwillingly slips out" and "the word that escaped the barrier of the teeth," and the way some words fly out unbidden—especially in tempers that have had no training, as it were slipping and pouring out—come about through weakness in the face of anger, through an undisciplined judgment, and through a reckless way of life.
For, according to the divine Plato, of all things speech is the lightest, yet its penalty is the heaviest, following both from gods and from men. Silence, on the other hand, is everywhere free of blame—not only
...not only blameless everywhere but also, as Hippocrates says, thirst-quenching; and in the face of abuse it is dignified and Socratic — or rather Heraclean, seeing that Heracles too paid no more heed than to a fly to hateful words. Yet nothing is more dignified or finer than to keep quiet in the face of a reviling enemy, swimming past him as past a smooth, mocking rock; nor is there any greater discipline than this. For if you accustom yourself to bear an enemy's abuse in silence, you will very easily bear
a wife's anger when she speaks ill of you, and you will listen unruffled to the bitterest words of a friend or a brother; and if struck and pelted by father or mother you will show yourself undismayed and free of resentment. For Socrates put up with Xanthippe, who was hot-tempered and difficult, reasoning that he would then get along easily with everyone else, once he had trained himself to bear with her; but it is far better, having exercised oneself against the repulsive behavior, angers, and
taunts and abuse of enemies and strangers, to accustom one's temper to remain calm and not be vexed when reviled. Gentleness and forbearance, then, can be displayed in this way in one's enmities, while simplicity, magnanimity, and kindness are shown rather in one's friendships. For with a friend, doing him good is not so admirable a thing as failing to do so, when he is in need, is shameful; but with an enemy, even foregoing revenge when the opportunity
presents itself is a decent thing. As for the man who sympathizes with an enemy who has stumbled, who lends aid to one who asks it, and who shows some zeal and eagerness toward an enemy's children and household when they fall into need — whoever does not admire such goodwill or praise such kindness has a black heart forged of adamant or iron. When Caesar ordered that the honors of Pompey, which had been thrown down, be set up again, Cicero said, “By setting up
Pompey's statues, you have fixed your own in place.” Hence one should not withhold praise or honor from an enemy who has justly won a good reputation. For this brings greater praise to those who give it, and it also lends credibility when one criticizes him again, showing that one hates not the man but disapproves of the deed. But the finest and most useful result is this: the man who has accustomed himself
to praise his enemies and not to be stung or envious when they prosper is thereby placed at the furthest remove from envy toward friends who flourish and kinsmen who succeed. And indeed, what other discipline produces a greater benefit for our souls, or a better disposition, than the one that removes our proneness to jealousy and envy? For just as in war many things done from necessity would otherwise be base, yet, taken up by habit, acquire the force of law and cannot easily be shaken off even when they prove harmful, so too enmity, in bringing along
envy together with hatred, leaves behind jealousy, malicious delight in another's misfortune, and grudge-bearing. Besides this, cunning, deceit, and scheming — which are not thought base or unjust when directed against an enemy — once they take root, remain and are hard to shake off; then people go on using them against their own friends too, out of habit, if they have not guarded against using them against enemies. If, then, Pythagoras was right, when in the case of irrational animals he trained people to abstain from cruelty and greed,
turning away bird-catchers and, when he bought up hauls of fish, ordering that they be released, and forbidding the killing of any tame creature, then it is surely far more admirable, in disputes and rivalries with other people, being a noble, just, and truthful enemy, to punish and humble the base, ignoble, and unscrupulous passions, so that in one's dealings with friends they remain entirely quiet and one refrains
from wrongdoing. Scaurus was an enemy of Domitius, and his prosecutor. Now a slave of Domitius came to him before the trial, claiming to have information to reveal that was hidden from his master; but Scaurus would not let him speak, and instead seized the man and led him back to his master. When Cato was prosecuting Murena for bribery and gathering his proofs, those who by custom kept watch on his doings would follow him about.
So they would often ask him whether he intended that day to gather or prepare anything toward the prosecution; and if he said no, they trusted him and went away. Now this is the greatest proof of his reputation; but greater and finer still is this: that once we have accustomed ourselves to deal justly even with our enemies, we will never treat our intimates and friends unjustly or unscrupulously. And since every crested lark, according to Simonides,
must grow a crest of its own, and since every human nature carries within it rivalry, jealousy, and envy — the companion of empty-minded men, as Pindar says — one would be helped no small amount by purging these passions off onto one's enemies, diverting them, like channels, as far as possible from one's companions and kin. And it was this, it seems, that the statesman Onomademus grasped, when, in Chios, during
a civil conflict, finding himself in the winning faction, he urged his companions not to drive out all their political opponents, but to leave some behind, “so that,” he said, “we do not begin to quarrel with our friends, once we are entirely rid of our enemies.” So too in our own case, these passions, once spent upon our enemies, will trouble our friends the less. For “potter need not envy potter,” nor “singer, singer,”
as Hesiod says, nor need one envy a neighbor, a cousin, or a brother who is “hastening toward wealth” and meeting with good fortune. But if there is no other way to be rid of strife, envy, and rivalry, accustom yourself to feel the sting only when your enemies prosper, and provoke and whet your competitive spirit by sharpening it upon them. For just as skilled farmers make their roses and violets better
by planting garlic and onions alongside them — believing that all the pungent, foul-smelling matter in the soil is drawn off into those plants — so too an enemy who takes up and cultivates your ill nature and envy will render you more kindly and less pained toward friends who are prospering. For this reason, one's contests with enemies should be waged over reputation, office, or just gains, without being stung
merely because they have some advantage over us, but rather carefully observing all the sources of their advantage, and trying to surpass them through diligence, hard work, self-control, and attentiveness to oneself — just as Themistocles said that the trophy of Miltiades at Marathon would not let him sleep. For the man who supposes his enemy surpasses him in good fortune — whether in offices, advocacies, political leadership, or
standing with friends and leaders — and who, instead of taking action and striving to match him, sinks entirely into envy and despondency, lives with an idle and unproductive envy. But the man who is not blinded regarding the object of his hatred, but becomes instead a fair observer of his enemy's life, character, words, and deeds, will see that most of the things he envies arise from diligence, foresight, and honorable actions
on the part of those who possess them; and by striving toward these same ends he will train his own love of honor and love of what is fine, while cutting away idle indifference and laziness. And if enemies, by flattering, scheming, bribing, or hiring themselves out, seem to reap shameful and servile positions of power at courts or in political life, this will not trouble us but will rather delight us, as we set against it our own freedom and the purity of our lives, and
our freedom from insult. For “all the gold above the earth and beneath it is not worth virtue in exchange,” as Plato says; and one must always keep ready at hand the saying of Solon: “but we would not exchange our virtue for their wealth” — nor for the applause of theater crowds feasted beforehand, nor for honors and front-row seats granted by eunuchs, concubines, and satraps of kings; for nothing base can be either enviable or admirable
when it springs from something shameful. But since, as Plato says, love is blind where the beloved is concerned, and since our enemies give us a sharper perception when they behave disgracefully, we must let neither our pleasure at their errors lie idle, nor our pain at their successes, but must reason from both, so that by guarding against the one we may become better than they are, and by imitating the other we may not become worse.

======== Moralia: De Cohibenda Ira ========

SULLA. I think painters do well, Fundanus, when they set their works aside for a time before finishing them and then examine them again; for by withdrawing their sight from the work and renewing their judgment often, they make it fresher and more sensitive to the small discrepancies which continuity and familiarity conceal. Since, then, it is impossible for a man to come to himself again after an interval, having become detached and having separated the perception from its continuity—this in fact being the very thing that makes each of us a worse judge of himself than of others—the next best thing would be to observe one's friends after an interval, and to present oneself to them in the same way: not asking whether one has grown old quickly and whether one's body has become better or worse, but examining also one's character and disposition, to see whether time has added anything good to it or taken away anything base. I, at any rate, having arrived in Rome a year ago last year, and now in my fifth month of being with you, do not think it at all remarkable that, through native goodness, there should have been so much progress and growth from what already existed; but when I see that fierce and fiery temper toward anger become, to my eyes, so gentle and tractable to reason, it occurs to me to say to my own spirit, in the words of Homer, ‘Ah me, you have indeed grown much softer.’ And this softness is not idleness or slackness, but, like ground that has been well worked, it has acquired smoothness and an effective depth for action instead of that former impetuosity and sharpness. Hence it is clear that your passionate temper has not simply declined through some ebbing due to age, nor withered away of itself, but has been treated by certain wholesome arguments.
And yet—for I will tell you the truth—when our friend Eros reported these things to us, I was suspicious that he was testifying, out of goodwill, to qualities not really present but merely fitting to be present in men of honor and worth; although, as you know, he is in no way inclined to yield to what is merely pleasing rather than to what he judges true. But now he is released from the charge of false witness, and you, since our journey affords leisure, must go through for us, as it were, a treatment you have applied to yourself—by which you made your temper so tractable, simple, gentle to reason, and obedient.
FUNDANUS. Well then, my most eager Sulla, do you not consider that you yourself, out of goodwill and friendship toward us, may be overlooking something of our faults? For even Love himself, though he often does not keep the temper in its place, as in the Homeric prayer, but rather sharpens it through hatred of wrongdoing, it is likely that we should appear gentler to him—just as, in the transposition of musical scales, certain highest notes take the position of lowest notes relative to other highest notes.
SULLA. Neither of these is the case, Fundanus; but do as I ask, and grant us this favor.
FUNDANUS. Well then, among the fine sayings of Musonius that we remember, Sulla, one is that those who intend to be saved must live continually under treatment. For reason, I think, ought not to be carried off along with the disease once it has effected a cure, as with hellebore, but should remain in the soul, holding fast and guarding its judgments. For its power is not like that of drugs but like that of wholesome foods, producing a good state of health in those to whom it becomes habitual; whereas exhortations and admonitions directed at passions that are at their height and swollen accomplish their work slowly and with difficulty, and differ in no way from strong-smelling substances which rouse epileptics when they collapse but do not free them from the disease.
Nevertheless, other passions, even at the height of their intensity, do somehow yield and let in some helping word from outside into the soul; but anger does not, as Melanthius says, ‘do its terrible deeds by merely transplanting the mind,’ but rather by expelling it entirely and shutting it out—like men who burn down their own houses along with themselves—it fills the whole interior with confusion, smoke, and noise, so that nothing helpful can be seen or heard. Hence a ship deserted in a storm at sea will sooner take on a pilot from outside than a man tossed about by anger and rage will admit an argument not his own, unless he already has his own reasoning prepared beforehand. But just as those expecting a siege gather and lay in provisions, having given up hope of help from outside, so above all must one, in dealing with anger, fetch remedies from far off, out of philosophy, and store them up in the soul, so that when the moment of need arrives one will not easily be able to bring them in fresh; for the soul does not listen to what is outside because of the uproar, unless it has, as it were, a boatswain within—its own reason—ready to receive quickly and understand each of the orders given. And when it does listen, it despises what is said gently and calmly, but is provoked to greater harshness against those who oppose it directly. For anger is arrogant and self-willed and altogether hard to move by another; like a fortified tyranny, it ought to have within itself, as a kinsman and housemate, the power that will overthrow it.
Now the continuance of anger, and frequent giving way to offense, produces in the soul an evil habit which men call irascibility, ending in bitterness of temper, sourness, and ill humor, whenever the temper becomes sore and touchy over trifles and quick to find fault at the slightest occasion, like iron that is weak and thin and easily notched. But the judgment that resists anger immediately and holds it in check not only cures the present trouble but also makes the soul strong and resistant to suffering for the future. I myself, at any rate, on two or three occasions when I stood firm against anger, experienced what happened to the Thebans, who, having once repulsed the Spartans though they were thought invincible, were never afterward defeated by them in any battle; for they had gained the confidence that they could prevail by reasoning. And I observed that anger subsides not only when cold water is poured over it, as Aristotle recorded, but also when fear is brought to bear it is quenched, and, by Zeus, when sudden joy comes upon it, the temper of many, as Homer says, is ‘warmed’ and dissolved. So it appeared to me that the passion is not entirely without remedy for those who wish to be rid of it.
For it does not always have great and powerful beginnings, but a jest, a bit of play, someone's laughter, or a nod can set many people into a rage—just as Helen, addressing her niece as ‘maiden,’ provoked Electra, after so long a time, to say, ‘Late indeed do you come to your senses, you who then shamefully left the house.’ And Callisthenes, when the great cup was being passed around, provoked Alexander by saying, ‘I do not wish, after drinking from Alexander's cup, to need an Asclepius.’ Just as a flame kindled in hare's fur, wicks, and rubbish is easy to check, but if it once takes hold of solid and deep-set material, it quickly destroys and consumes, as Aeschylus says, ‘the lofty labor of builders brought to ruin’—so the man who attends to his temper at the beginning, and, from some small talk or vulgar buffoonery composed of rubbish, notices it smoking and beginning to catch fire, needs no great effort, but often by mere silence and neglect has put a stop to it. For he who supplies no fuel puts out the fire, and he who does not nourish anger at the outset, nor puff himself up, guards against it and destroys it.
I was not pleased, then—though he says many other useful and sound things—with Hieronymus, when he says that anger is not perceived while it is coming into being, but only once it has come to be and exists, because of its swiftness. For no other passion, when it is gathering and being stirred up, has its origin and growth so plainly visible; as Homer, indeed, teaches with such experience, making Achilles, when grieved, instantly and suddenly affected the moment the news falls upon him, in the words, ‘So he spoke, and a black cloud of grief covered him’; but growing angry with Agamemnon slowly, and being inflamed through many words. If someone had cut short those words at the beginning and had prevented them, the quarrel would not have grown to such size and magnitude.
Hence Socrates, whenever he perceived himself being moved rather harshly against one of his friends, would—as a sailor, before a storm, shortening sail as he steers round a headland at sea—slacken his voice, smile in his face, and give his glance a gentler look, guarding himself against falling and remaining unconquered by leaning to the opposite side and counteracting the passion. For there is, my friend, a first step, as it were, in the overthrow of a tyrant—the overthrow of anger—namely, not to obey or heed it when it commands us to shout loudly, glare fiercely, and beat ourselves, but to keep quiet and not to intensify the passion, as one would a disease, by thrashing about and crying out. For amorous actions, such as serenading, singing, and garlanding a door, have in them some relief that is not without charm or grace: ‘And coming, I did not shout out who or whose I was, but I kissed the doorpost. If this is a wrong, I am guilty of it.’
And the license granted to mourners to weep aloud and lament draws off much of their grief together with their tears; but anger is fanned rather by what those in its grip do and say. It is best, then, to remain still, or to flee and hide oneself, and to bring oneself to rest, as those who feel an epileptic seizure coming on withdraw from company, so that we may not fall—or rather, fall upon others; for we fall upon our friends most of all, and most often. For we do not love everyone, nor envy everyone, nor fear everyone, but nothing is untouched or unassailed by anger; rather we grow angry with enemies and friends alike, with children and parents, and, by Zeus, even with the gods, and with animals and lifeless implements, as Thamyris did, ‘shattering his gold-bound horn, shattering the harmony of his tuned lyre’; and as Pandarus cursed himself if he did not burn his bow, ‘having broken it with his own hands.’ Xerxes even inflicted brands and blows upon the sea, and sent letters to the mountain: ‘Divine and sky-reaching Athos, do not set in my path stones too great and hard to work; if you do, I will cut you down and cast you into the sea.’
For anger has much that is fearsome, but much also that is ridiculous; and for this reason it is both hated and despised more than any other passion. It is useful to consider both sides of it. I, for my part—whether rightly I do not know—made this the beginning of my own cure: just as the Spartans studied drunkenness among the helots to see what it was like, so I studied anger in others. And first, just as Hippocrates says that the most dangerous disease is the one in which the patient's face becomes most unlike itself, so, observing that people under anger are altered most of all and change their look, color, gait, and voice, I formed for myself, as it were, an image of the passion, and was quite displeased at the thought: ‘Am I really so terrifying, so distraught, when my friends, my wife, and my little daughters see me—not only looking wild and unfamiliar, but also uttering a harsh and grating voice?’—just as I had encountered other acquaintances who, under the influence of anger, could not preserve their character, their looks, the charm of their speech, or the persuasiveness and pleasantness of their company.
Gaius Gracchus, the orator, a man of harsh temper and given to overly passionate speaking, had a small pitch-pipe tuned for him, by which musicians gradually lead the voice up and down through the tones; and a servant of his, holding this, would stand behind him as he spoke and sound a mild and gentle tone, by which he would recall him from shouting and take away the harshness and passion from his voice—just as the herdsmen's waxen reed sounds a resonant, sleep-inducing strain, charming and calming the anger of the orator. As for me, if I had had some tuneful and elegant attendant, I would not have minded his holding up a mirror to me during my fits of anger, as some hold up mirrors to men after bathing, though to no useful purpose; for to see oneself in an unnatural and disturbed state is no small thing toward discrediting the passion.
Indeed, they say in jest that Athena, while playing the flute, was rebuked by the satyr and paid no attention: ‘This posture does not become you; put down the flutes, take up your weapons, and arrange your cheeks properly.’ But when she saw the reflection of her face in a river, she was disgusted and threw away the flutes; and yet her art possessed, as a consolation for the unsightliness, its own melodiousness. And Marsyas, it seems, confined the violence of his breath with a certain headband and mouth-bands, and adorned and concealed the distortion of his face, and fastened together with gleaming gold his shaggy cheeks, and his greedy mouth with straps tied behind. But anger, puffing out and distending the face unbecomingly, sends forth a voice even more ugly and unpleasant, stirring up strings of the mind that ought to remain still.
For they say that the sea is purified when, stirred up by the winds, it casts up seaweed and scum; but the words which anger, as it overturns the soul, casts up—unrestrained, bitter, and scurrilous—defile and fill with disgrace those who utter them first of all, as though they always had these things within them and were full of them, but were merely uncovered by anger. Hence, for the lightest of things, as Plato says—mere words—men pay the heaviest penalty, being thought hostile, foul-mouthed, and malicious.
Observing and watching these things, then, it has become my practice to lay down and constantly remind myself that, while it is good in a fever, it is even better in anger, to keep the tongue soft and smooth. For roughness in the speech of the feverish, if it is not natural to them, is a bad sign but not a cause; whereas the speech of the angry, once it has become rough and foul and has run into improper language, produces insult that is the maker of incurable enmity, and stands as accuser of a festering ill will. For undiluted wine reveals nothing so unrestrained and offensive as anger does; the former belongs to laughter and play, the latter is mixed with bile. And at a drinking party, the man who stays silent is burdensome and tiresome to his companions, but in anger nothing is more dignified than silence, as Sappho advises: ‘When rage is spreading in the breast, guard against a barking tongue.’
But attending to oneself when caught by anger allows one to reckon on not only these things, but also to understand the whole nature of the passion further—that it is not noble, nor manly, nor does it possess high-mindedness and greatness, though the majority think its turbulence a sign of effectiveness, its threats a sign of boldness, and its refusal to yield a sign of strength. Some even wrongly regard cruelty as a mark of great achievement, implacability as a mark of firmness, and moroseness as a mark of hatred for wrongdoing; for their deeds, their movements, and their postures betray great pettiness and weakness—not only in cases where men tear at little children, rage bitterly against women, and think they must punish dogs, horses, and mules, as Ctesiphon the pancratiast thought fit to kick back at his mule, but also in the murderous cruelties of tyrants, where meanness of spirit joins with bitterness
...of theirs, and the suffering visible mirrored back in the one who inflicts it, resembles the bites of snakes, when they become inflamed and intensely painful, as the snakes press their fierce venom hard into those who have provoked them. For just as swelling in the flesh is the after-effect of a severe wound, so in the softest souls the readiness to feel hurt produces a greater rage out of a greater weakness. That is why women are more prone to anger than men, the sick more than the healthy, the old more than those in their prime, and the unfortunate more than the prosperous. The miser is most irritable toward his steward, the glutton toward his cook, the jealous man toward his wife, the vain man when he hears himself spoken ill of. Worst of all, in Pindar's words, are "men in their cities who court excessive ambition or strife, a manifest pain." Thus it is from the part of the soul that is most pained and afflicted that anger rises up most strongly, through weakness — not resembling, as someone said, the sinews of the soul, but rather cuts and spasms, rising up more violently in its defensive impulses.
Now the base examples afford a spectacle that is not pleasant but only necessary to consider; but in making the finest things to hear and the finest things to see out of those who deal with anger gently and smoothly, I begin to despise those who say, "You have wronged a man — is this to be endured, from a man?" and "Trample him, trample on his neck, and grind him into the earth," and the other goading phrases by which some people wrongly relocate anger from the women's quarters into the men's quarters. For courage, which in other respects agrees with justice, seems to me to contend with it only over gentleness, as though gentleness belonged more properly to courage itself. For it has happened that worse men prevail over better ones, but to set up within the soul a trophy over anger — "a thing hard to fight against," as Heraclitus says, "for whatever it wants, it buys at the price of the soul" — belongs to a great and victorious strength, one whose judgments truly serve as sinews and tension against the passions.
That is why I always try to gather and read not only the sayings of philosophers — of whom those who have no sense say that they have no gall — but also, and even more, the sayings of kings and tyrants. Such as that of Antigonus toward the soldiers who were abusing him near his tent, thinking he could not hear: pushing his staff out from inside, he said, "Ouch! Won't you move a bit further off before you speak ill of us?" And when Arcadion the Achaean was forever speaking ill of Philip, and advising others to flee until they reached people who had never heard of Philip, and then he himself somehow turned up in Macedonia, Philip's friends thought he ought to be punished and not overlooked. But Philip met with him kindly, sent him gifts of hospitality, and later had someone find out what reports he was giving the Greeks about him. And when everyone testified that the man had become a wonderful admirer of his, Philip said, "Well then, I am a better physician than you." And at the Olympic games, when abuse was spoken about him and some said that the Greeks deserved to howl in misery for speaking ill of Philip after receiving good treatment from him, he said, "What then will they do, if they are treated badly?"
Fine too are the words of Pisistratus toward Thrasybulus, of Porsenna toward Mucius, and of Magas toward Philemon. For after being publicly mocked by him in a comedy in the theater — "A letter has come to you from the king, Magas. Wretched Magas, you don't even know your letters!" — Magas later captured Philemon when a storm had driven him ashore at Paraetonium, and ordered a soldier merely to touch his neck with a bared sword and then withdraw quietly; and, sending him knucklebones and a ball, as to a senseless little boy, he let him go. Ptolemy, mocking a grammarian for his ignorance, asked him who Peleus's father was; and the man replied, "If you will first tell me who Lagus's father was." The jest touched on the king's low birth, and everyone was indignant, feeling it was not fit to be tolerated; but Ptolemy said, "If it is not kingly to endure being mocked, then neither is it kingly to mock." Alexander, however, became harsher than his usual self in his dealings with Callisthenes and Cleitus. And when Porus was captured, he asked to be treated "like a king"; and when Alexander asked, "Is there nothing more you want?", he said, "In 'like a king' everything is included."
That is why they call the king of the gods "Meilichios," the gentle one, while the Athenians, I believe, call him "Maimaktes," the stormy one; but the punitive is Fury-like and demonic, not divine or Olympian. So just as someone said of Philip, after he razed Olynthus, "But he could not build up again so great a city," so one can say to anger: "You can overturn and destroy and cast down, but to raise up and save and spare and hold firm belongs to gentleness, forgiveness, and moderation of feeling — the qualities of Camillus, Metellus, Aristides, and Socrates; while to sink one's teeth in and bite is the way of ants and mice."
Nevertheless, looking also at anger's usefulness for defense, I find the way of acting through anger for the most part ineffective — spent in biting the lips, grinding the teeth, empty rushes forward, and abuse full of senseless threats, and then, like children in a race who, from not controlling themselves, fall down before the finish line they are ridiculously racing toward. Hence it was not badly said by the Rhodian to an attendant of the Roman general who was shouting and blustering: "I don't care what you say, but what that man passes over in silence." And so too Sophocles, having armed Neoptolemus and Eurypylus, says that, "without exchanging insults," they "burst into the circles of bronze armor." For some barbarians treat their iron with poison, but courage has no need of gall, since it is already tempered by reason; whereas the passionate and frenzied is easily shattered and unsound. That, at any rate, is why the Spartans strip their fighters of anger with flutes, and sacrifice to the Muses before battle, so that reason may hold steady; and having routed their enemies, they do not pursue, but call their fury back, as though it were a well-proportioned dagger, easy to sheathe again and manageable. Anger, on the other hand, has destroyed countless men before they could even take defensive action, as it did Cyrus and Pelopidas the Theban.
Agathocles bore it mildly when he was reviled by the men he was besieging; and when someone called out, "Potter, how will you pay your mercenaries?", he laughed and said, "When I take this city." And when some men mocked Antigonus from the city wall for his ugliness, he replied, "And yet I thought I was rather good-looking." But when he took the city, he sold the mockers into slavery, declaring publicly that he would settle the matter with their masters if they abused him again. I observe, too, that both hunters and orators fail greatly on account of anger. Aristotle records that when Satyrus was pleading a case, his friends stopped his ears with wax, so that he would not be thrown into confusion by anger when abused by his opponents. And does it not often happen to us ourselves that we fail even to punish a slave who has done wrong, because he runs away, having feared our threats and words?
So what nurses say to children, "Don't cry, and you shall have it," can usefully be said to anger too: "Don't hurry, don't shout, don't rush, and what you want will happen, and better." For indeed a father, seeing his child trying to cut or divide something with a knife, took the knife himself and did it; and, taking the punishment away from anger, he himself safely, harmlessly, and beneficially punished the one who deserved it — not himself, as the angry man often does instead of the offender. Since all the passions need habituation — training that tames and subdues, through practice, the irrational and unruly part — there is nothing better to exercise ourselves against, using our household slaves, than anger. For toward them we feel neither envy, nor fear, nor any rivalry; but constant fits of anger, producing many collisions and blunders because of the unchecked power we hold over them, carry us along as though on slippery ground, with nothing to resist or restrain us. For it is not possible to hold unaccountable power in the grip of passion without erring, unless one wraps that power around with much gentleness, and endures the many complaints of wife and friends who accuse one of weakness and laxity. It was precisely such reproaches that used to provoke me most against my own household slaves, on the grounds that they were being spoiled by going unpunished.
Late in the day, however, I came to see, first, that it is better to make them worse through forbearance than to twist myself out of shape with bitterness and anger for the sake of correcting others; and next, seeing that many, precisely by not being punished, are often ashamed to go on being bad, and take forgiveness rather than punishment as the starting point of change, and, by Zeus, seeing others serve their masters at a mere nod and in silence, and more eagerly than those who serve under blows and brandings, I became persuaded that reason is more fit to command than anger. For it is not, as the poet said, "where there is fear, there is also shame"; rather the opposite — it is in those who feel shame that a chastening fear arises. Constant and relentless beating produces not a change of heart about doing wrong, but rather a greater forethought about not being caught.
Third, I always kept in mind and thought to myself that the man who taught us to shoot with a bow did not forbid us to shoot, but only to miss; likewise, teaching how to punish at the right time, moderately, usefully, and fittingly will not stand in the way of punishing itself. So I try above all to remove anger from the process, not by depriving those being punished of their defense, but by hearing them out. For time creates for the passion both a delay and a pause that dissolves it, and the judgment that follows discovers both the fitting manner and the appropriate measure of punishment. Moreover, no pretext is left for the one paying the penalty to resist correction, if he is punished not out of anger but after being convicted; nor does the most shameful thing occur — that the slave should appear to be speaking more justly than his master.
So, just as Phocion, after the death of Alexander, would not let the Athenians rise up prematurely or believe the news too quickly, saying, "If he is dead today, men of Athens, he will still be dead tomorrow and the day after," so too, I think, the man rushing through anger toward punishment ought to say to himself, "If this man has done wrong today, he will still have done wrong tomorrow and the day after." There is nothing terrible in his paying the penalty a bit later; what is terrible is if, having suffered quickly, he should always appear not to have done wrong at all — which has, in fact, happened many times already. For which of us is so terrible as to whip and punish a slave because five or ten days ago he burned the meat, or knocked over the table, or was slow to answer? And yet these are just the things over which, when they have just happened and are still fresh, we grow disturbed and become bitter and implacable. For just as bodies seen through mist appear larger, so too things seen through anger appear greater than they are.
Therefore one should quickly call similar cases to mind, and, standing outside the passion without suspicion, turn back to it if, viewed with a clear and settled reason, it still appears blameworthy — and not, at that point, let the punishment go or drop it, as though one had simply lost one's appetite for food. For nothing is so much a cause of punishing while anger is present as the habit of not punishing once it has ceased, but instead letting it slacken, and thereby suffering the same fate as lazy rowers, who lie idle at anchor in a calm and then find themselves in danger when they must sail in wind. For we too, having condemned our own reason for feebleness and softness in punishing, rush recklessly to make use of anger, when it is present, as though it were a favorable wind. For a hungry man makes natural use of food, but a man who is neither hungry nor thirsty for punishment, and has no need of anger as a relish for chastising, applies reason to it out of necessity precisely when he is furthest from craving it.
For one should not, as Aristotle reports that in his day household slaves in Etruria were whipped to the accompaniment of a flute, so gorge oneself on punishment for pleasure, as though it were a delicacy craved, rejoicing while punishing and repenting afterward — of these, the one is bestial, the other womanish. Rather, one should exact justice apart from both pain and pleasure, at the time proper to reason, leaving no pretext for anger. Now this, perhaps, will not appear to be a cure for anger, but rather a means of deflecting and guarding against the errors that occur in anger. And yet a swollen spleen, too, is a symptom of fever, but when it subsides it relieves the fever, as Hieronymus says.
But when I examined the origin of anger itself, I saw that different people fall into it from different causes, though in nearly all of them it arises from a sense of being despised or neglected. For this reason one must help those who ask for pardon by removing the deed as far as possible from any appearance of contempt or insolence, attributing it instead to ignorance, necessity, passion, or misfortune — as Sophocles says: "But no, my lord, the mind, whatever its nature, does not remain steady in those who have fared badly; it is driven from its place." And Agamemnon, though attributing the seizure of Briseis to Ate, Delusion, is nevertheless willing "to make amends again, and give countless gifts of atonement." For indeed the very act of asking belongs to one who is not showing contempt, and the wrongdoer, by appearing humbled, has dispelled the impression of disdain.
But the angry man ought not to wait for such gestures; rather he should take to himself the saying of Diogenes — when told, "These men are laughing at you, Diogenes," he replied, "But I am not being laughed at" — and should not think himself despised, but rather despise the other instead, considering that he is erring through weakness, or fault, or rashness, or laziness, or lack of breeding, or old age, or youth. Toward household slaves and friends, this sort of thing must be given up entirely. For it is not as being incapable or ineffectual that they show us disrespect, but through our own fairness or goodwill: slaves take advantage of us as being kind masters, friends as being fond of them. But nowadays we grow harsh not only toward wife, slaves, and friends, as though being despised by them, but we also often clash in anger with innkeepers, sailors, and drunken muleteers, imagining that we are being treated with contempt, and we get exasperated even at barking dogs and colliding donkeys — like the man who wanted to strike the donkey-driver, and, when the driver cried out, "I am an Athenian!", said, "Well, you are not an Athenian," meaning the donkey, and struck it, raining down many blows.
Moreover, self-love, together with a fastidious temper, luxury, and softness, breeds in us, as it were, a swarm or a wasp's nest of anger — constant, frequent, and gathering little by little in the soul. Hence there is no greater resource for good temper and simplicity, leading to gentleness toward slaves, wife, and friends, than to be able to make do with what is at hand and not to need many superfluous things. The man, by contrast, who takes pleasure neither in roasted meats nor in boiled ones overdone, nor in dishes seasoned less or more or just right, so as to praise them; who would not drink if snow were not at hand, nor eat bread bought in the market, nor taste a relish served in plain or earthenware vessels, nor sleep on bedding unless it were puffed up and stirred as if it were the depths of the sea — such a man is ready to turn with rods and blows against the attendants around his table...
— hurrying them along with running and shouting and sweat, as though bringing poultices to an inflammation — living as a slave to a diet that is weak, fault-finding, and given to complaint, and, like a man worn down by a persistent cough from many small irritations, unknowingly producing in his spirited part a condition that is ulcerated and prone to running sores. One must therefore train the body, through simplicity of living, to become self-sufficient and easygoing; for those who need little do not fail to get what they need. And there is nothing terrible in beginning with one's food and dealing in silence with whatever is at hand, rather than growing peevish and difficult and serving up anger as the most joyless of dishes to oneself and one's friends. Nothing could be a more graceless accompaniment to a dinner than servants beaten and a wife railed at on account of an overdone dish, or smoke, or a lack of salt, or bread that was too cold.
When Arcesilaus was entertaining some foreign guests along with his friends, the dinner was set out, but there was no bread, because the slaves had neglected to buy any. Which of us would not have brought the walls down with shouting over this? But he only smiled and said, "What a fine thing it is for a wise man to be good company at a party!" And when Socrates had brought Euthydemus back with him from the wrestling school, Xanthippe stood over them in a rage, hurled abuse, and finally overturned the table; Euthydemus got up and went away deeply distressed. But Socrates said, "Didn't the very same thing happen at your house the other day, when a bird flew in and did just this — and we were not annoyed?" For one must receive one's friends with good humor, laughter, and kindliness, not knitting one's brows or striking fear and trembling into the household staff.
One should also accustom oneself to dealing easily with all one's belongings, and not favor this one over that — as some people, when many cups are at hand, pick out one little beaker (as they say Marius did, or a particular drinking-horn) and will not drink from any other. And they behave the same way toward their oil-flasks and strigils, being fond of one out of the whole set; then, whenever one of these gets broken or lost, they take it hard and punish someone for it. A person prone to anger, then, should keep away from rare and superfluous things — cups, for instance, and seal-rings and costly stones — for the loss of these upsets people more than the loss of things easily replaced and ordinary. This is why, when Nero had an octagonal pavilion built, a spectacle of extraordinary beauty and expense, Seneca said, "You have proved yourself a poor man: for if you lose this one, you will never own another like it." And indeed it did happen that the tent was lost when the ship carrying it went down; and Nero, remembering Seneca's words, bore it more moderately.
Easiness of temper toward circumstances also makes a man easy and gentle toward his household slaves; and if toward slaves, then clearly also toward friends and toward those he governs. We observe that newly bought slaves, when asking about their purchaser, inquire not whether he is superstitious or grudging, but whether he is quick-tempered — and in general, men cannot endure living under anger, women cannot endure the sound sense of husbands or the love of wives felt in anger, nor can friends endure one another's company under it. Thus neither marriage nor friendship is bearable together with anger, whereas even drunkenness, apart from anger, is a light thing: the god's wand is a sufficient chastiser of the drunken man, unless anger, joining in, turns the unmixed wine, instead of a thing of Bacchic revelry and dance, into something savage and maddening. Madness by itself Anticyra can cure, but once mixed with anger it produces tragedies and myths.
One must not give it room when jesting, for it turns friendliness into enmity; nor in discussion, for it turns love of argument into love of strife; nor when judging, for it adds insolence to one's authority; nor when teaching, for it produces discouragement and hatred of learning; nor in good fortune, for it increases envy; nor in misfortune, for it removes pity, whenever people become peevish and quarrel with those who are grieving with them — as Priam said, "Away, disgraces, objects of reproach! Have you no grieving of your own at home, that you come here to trouble me?" Good temper, on the other hand, helps in some matters, adorns others, and sweetens still others, and it overcomes, by its gentleness, both anger and every kind of ill humor — as with Euclides, when his brother said to him in a quarrel, "May I die if I do not have my revenge on you," and he replied, "And may I die if I do not persuade you" — and at once turned him around and changed his mind.
And Polemo, when a man obsessed with precious stones and infatuated with costly seal-rings railed at him, made no reply, but fixed his attention on one of the rings and examined it closely; the man, delighted, said, "No, not like that, Polemo — hold it up to the light, and it will look far better to you." And Aristippus, when he had grown angry with Aeschines and someone said, "Aristippus, where is your friendship now?" replied, "It is asleep, but I will wake it"; and going up to Aeschines he said, "Do I seem to you so utterly unfortunate and incurable as not to deserve a word of correction?" And Aeschines said, "It is no wonder, if, being naturally superior to me in everything else, you have also seen here what needed to be done before I did."
For not only can a woman calm a bristle-necked boar, but even a newborn child, scratching it with a young hand, can lay it low more easily than any wrestler. Yet we tame and gentle wild creatures, carrying wolf-cubs and lion-cubs about in our arms, while we drive away our own children, friends, and companions in anger; and we let our temper loose on our slaves and fellow citizens like some wild beast, giving it the fine-sounding name not of hatred of wrongdoing but — as, I think, we do with the other passions and diseases of the soul, calling one foresight, another generosity, another piety — so that we are able to rid ourselves of none of them. And yet, just as Zeno used to say that seed is a compound and blend of the soul's faculties drawn off from it, so anger seems to be a kind of seed-bed of all the passions together: it is drawn off from grief, from pleasure, and from insolence alike.
It shares with envy its delight in others' misfortune, and it is even worse than envy: for it strives not merely to avoid suffering itself but to inflict suffering by wronging another. Of desire, too, the most joyless element is rooted in it, if indeed desire is a longing to cause someone else pain. This is why, when we approach the houses of the dissolute, we hear a flute-girl playing at daybreak, and see, as someone put it, "the mud of wine and the tatters of garlands," and drunken attendants sprawled at the doors; but the hidden signs of harsh and ill-tempered men you will see in the faces of their household slaves, and in their brand-marks and shackles: always, in the house of an angry man, a lone lament of mourning has fallen, as stewards are whipped within and servant-girls tortured — so that, watching this, one comes to pity the pains that anger causes even more than those that come from desires and pleasures.
Nevertheless, for those who, out of genuine hatred of wrongdoing, often find themselves overtaken by anger, one must strip away its excess and its unmixed intensity, along with too strong a confidence in the people around them. For it is this above all that increases anger's causes — when a man supposed to be honest turns out to be worthless, or one thought to be a friend becomes involved in some quarrel or complaint. As for my own character, you know well enough how strong an inclination it has toward goodwill and trust in people; and so, like men walking on hollow ground, the more I lean my weight on love for people, the more I go wrong, and I am pained when I stumble. To draw off the excess and overeager passion from my love I could no longer manage; but I might perhaps make use of Plato's rein of caution as regards trusting too readily.
For indeed Plato says that he used to praise Helicon the mathematician in this way — as a creature naturally prone to change, as are all those raised in the city — rightly fearing that, being men and the offspring of men, they might somewhere reveal the weakness of their nature. And Sophocles, in saying that if you search out most things about mortals you will find them shameful, seems to me to trample on us too harshly and to cut us down unfairly. Still, this very tendency to harsh and fault-finding judgment makes people more prone to outbursts of anger; for what is sudden and unexpected is what throws us out of ourselves. One must, as Panaetius somewhere says, make use of Anaxagoras's example, and just as he, at the death of his son, said, "I knew that I had begotten a mortal," so one should say to oneself, at each provoking fault, "I knew that I did not buy a wise slave," "I knew that I did not acquire a friend free of faults," "I knew that I had married a woman who was a woman."
And if a person, further, continually adds to this Plato's saying, "Am I not perhaps such a person myself?" and turns his reasoning back from outward things to himself, and mixes caution in with his complaints, he will not make much use of hatred of wrongdoing against others when he sees that he himself stands in need of much forgiveness. As it is, each of us, when angry and inflicting punishment, brings out the sayings of Aristides and Cato — "Do not steal," "Do not lie," "Why are you so lazy?" — and, what is most shameful of all, we rebuke angry people while we ourselves are angry, and punish with wrath faults that were committed through wrath, not behaving like doctors, who flush out bitter bile with a bitter medicine, but rather intensifying and further disturbing the trouble. Whenever, then, I find myself in the midst of such reflections, I also try, at the same time, to strip away something of my meddlesomeness.
For scrutinizing everything with precision, ferreting things out, and dragging into the open every occupation of a slave, every act of a friend, every pastime of a son, and every whisper of a wife, brings many, constant, daily bouts of anger, of which the chief cause is a difficult and harsh disposition. God, as Euripides says, concerns himself with great matters, and leaves small things to chance; but I do not think one should entrust everything to chance, nor should a sensible man overlook things altogether — rather, he should trust and make use, in some matters, of his wife, in others of his slaves, in others of his friends, as a ruler makes use of certain stewards, accountants, and administrators, while he himself keeps control, through his own reasoning, over the most important and greatest matters. For just as fine print strains the eyes, so small matters, when we strain too hard over them, prick and disturb our anger more, since it is acquiring a bad habit that it then carries over to greater things.
Above all, then, I used to consider the saying of Empedocles great and divine — "to fast from wickedness" — and I also praised, as neither graceless nor unphilosophical, those vows made in prayers: to abstain for a year from sexual intercourse and from wine, honoring the god through self-restraint; or, again, to refrain from falsehood for a set period of time, paying close attention to how one might speak the truth both in jest and in all seriousness. I then compared my own vow to these, as being no less pleasing to the gods and sacred: first I resolved to pass a few days free from anger, as though free from wine and strong drink, offering, as it were, sober and honey-mixed libations; then, testing myself little by little over a month or two, I advanced in this way, over time, further and further in patient forbearance, keeping careful watch
and preserving myself, with fair speech, gracious and free of wrath, abstaining also from wicked words and improper deeds and from passion indulged for some small and graceless pleasure — a passion that brings great disturbances and the most shameful regret. From this, I think, with some help from god as well, experience made clear to me the truth of that judgment: that this gracious, gentle, and humane disposition is welcomed by none of those around us so warmly, and is as dear and untroubling, as it is to those who possess it themselves.

======== Moralia: De Communibus Notitiis Adversus Stoicos ========

LAMPRIAS. It is natural enough, Diadoumenus, that you should not much mind if people think that you philosophize contrary to the common conceptions, since you openly profess also to look down on the senses, from which almost all our conceptions have arisen, since it is their grasp of appearances that gives conceptions their foundation and security. But as for me, I have come to you full of much strange confusion, or so it seems to me, and if you know some argument
or incantation or some other means of consolation, you should lose no time in treating me — that is how thoroughly I have been shaken and unsettled by certain Stoic gentlemen, in other respects the best of men, and, I assure you, my intimates and friends, but who press their case against the Academy far too bitterly and with real hostility. For while they blamed the small things I said, and did so with a kind of grudging respect and gravity — I will not lie, they were not gentle about it —
they accused the older members with real anger, calling them sophists and destroyers of the doctrines of philosophy who walk the straight road [and "common notions"], overturners, and saying many things even more outlandish than this, believing that the Academics have set their whole purpose upon the common conceptions, as though bringing upon them a kind of confusion and redistribution. Then one of them said that it was not by chance but by the providence
of the gods, as he supposed, that Chrysippus came into being after Arcesilaus and before Carneades — of whom the one was the originator of the outrage and lawlessness against ordinary belief, while the other flourished as the ablest of the Academics: so Chrysippus, coming in between them, blocked up Carneades' formidable skill by his replies to Arcesilaus, leaving to sense-perception many defenses, as it were, for a siege, and removing altogether
the confusion regarding preconceptions and conceptions, setting each one right and placing it in its proper place — so that those who afterwards wished to dislodge these matters and force their way through would accomplish nothing, but would be refuted as wrongdoers and sophists. Scorched by such arguments, I need, first thing in the morning, some fire-extinguishing remedy, as it were, to take away this inflammation, this perplexity of the soul, Diadoumenus. Perhaps you have suffered something like many others have. But if the poets
persuade you, when they say that by the providence of the gods ancient Sipylus suffered its overthrow because they were punishing Tantalus, then believe our friends from the Stoa as well, that it was not by chance but by providence that nature produced Chrysippus too, since life needed someone to turn everything upside down and back again: for there has never been anyone by nature better suited to this than he, but, just as Cato used to say
that before that Caesar no one came to the conduct of public affairs sober and in his right mind for the confusion of the state, so it seems to me that this man, with the greatest care and cleverness, overturns and casts down ordinary belief — as even those who exalt him themselves testify in some places, whenever they dispute with him about the Liar paradox. For, my excellent friend, to say that a compound proposition made of contradictories cannot
be false, and then in turn to say that there are some arguments which, having true premises and sound inferences, nevertheless also have true conclusions that are the opposite of one another — what conception of demonstration, or what preconception of proof, does this not overturn? They say that the octopus gnaws away its own tentacles in the season of winter; but the dialectic of Chrysippus, by destroying and cutting away its own most authoritative parts and its very first principles,
has it left any of the other conceptions free from suspicion? For surely it is not possible for the things built upon a foundation to remain firm and stable when the first principles themselves do not remain fixed, but hold such great perplexities and confusions. But just as those who have mud or dust upon their body seem, to one who touches them and gets smeared in turn, not to be the one setting the roughness in motion but rather the one applying it —
so too some people blame the Academics and think they are the cause of the very perplexities of which they show them to be full; since who distorts the common conceptions more than these men do? But if you like, let us leave off accusing them and instead defend ourselves against what they charge us with. LAMPRIAS. I seem to myself, Diadoumenus, to have become today a many-sided and versatile fellow: for a moment ago I came forward humbled and troubled, in need of a defense,
but now I am changing over to the prosecution, and I want to enjoy the pleasure of counterattack, having caught sight of these men refuted on the very same point — namely, that it is they who philosophize contrary to the conceptions and the common preconceptions from which, they say, their school more than any other, as they suppose in the case of certain other things, alone agrees with nature. DIADOUMENUS. Should we, then, proceed first to the common and much-talked-of paradoxes,
which they themselves readily accept as paradoxical and call by that very name — that only they are kings, only they are rich and handsome, and citizens, and judges, and they alone? Or shall we pass these over, if you like, to the marketplace of stale and cold jokes, and instead make our examination of the argument among the matters treated as seriously and practically as possible? LAMPRIAS. I for my part
prefer it that way; for who is not already sated with the refutations that have been made against those other paradoxes? DIADOUMENUS. Then consider this very point first: whether it is in accordance with the common conceptions to agree with nature for those who hold that the things in accordance with nature are indifferent, and who think that neither health nor good condition of body nor beauty nor strength are to be chosen or beneficial or profitable or contributory to the completeness that is in accordance with
nature; nor, on the other hand, that the opposite things — mutilations, pains, disfigurements, diseases — are to be avoided or harmful; things from which, as they themselves say, nature estranges us in some cases and makes us akin in others — even though this itself is quite contrary to the common conception, that nature should make us akin to things that are not advantageous or good, and should estrange us from things that are not bad or harmful; and, what is more important,
that nature makes us akin to and estranged from these things to such a degree that when we fail to obtain the one and fall into the other, it is reasonable for us to remove ourselves from life and renounce our existence. And I think that this too is said contrary to the conception — that nature itself is indifferent, while agreeing with nature is the greatest good. Nor is it refined to follow, nor serious to obey, unless the law and the reason
one is following and obeying are themselves serious and refined — and this point is of lesser importance. But if, as Chrysippus writes in the first book of his work On Exhortation, living happily consists only in living in accordance with virtue, since none of the other things, he says, are anything to us nor contribute to this end, then nature is not merely not indifferent but senseless and deranged, making us akin
to things that are nothing to us; and we too are senseless if we think that happiness consists in agreeing with a nature that leads us toward things that contribute nothing to happiness. And yet what is more in accordance with the common conception than this: just as the things that are choiceworthy are related to what is beneficial, so the things in accordance with nature are related to living in accordance with nature? But they do not speak in this way; rather, positing that living in accordance with
nature is the end, they hold that the things in accordance with nature are indifferent. And no less contrary to the common conception than this is the claim that a sensible and prudent man does not regard equal goods equally, but rather counts some of them as of no account at all, while for the sake of others he would endure and suffer absolutely anything — even though these goods differ from one another in no way, whether in smallness or greatness, but they themselves say the same thing
of both, comparing it to an old woman shaking off death with self-control: for both alike achieve success equally. But because of some things, being splendid and great, men might even die for them, whereas to pride oneself on these other trifling matters is shameful and laughable. And indeed Chrysippus himself says, in his treatise On Zeus and in the third book On the Gods, that "it is chilling and absurd and alien
to praise such things among the consequences of virtue — that a man bravely endured the bite of a fly, and prudently refrained from an old woman near death." Do they not, then, philosophize contrary to the common conception, when they are ashamed to praise the very actions which they themselves admit are no less noble than others? For how can a thing be choiceworthy, or how can it be acceptable, which it is not fitting either to praise or to admire, but which they consider even those who praise or admire it to be absurd and chilling people? And you will find it seem
still more contrary to the common conception, I think, if the wise man, when it comes to the greatest goods, takes no thought either for their absence or for whether they are present to him, but is, in this matter too, just such as he is in the case of indifferent things and in his practical dealings and management of them. For surely all of us who reap the fruit of the bounteous earth think of a thing as choiceworthy, good, and beneficial when its presence brings some benefit and its absence brings
a kind of want and longing; but that for which no one would trouble himself except for play or relaxation, this we call indifferent. For by nothing else do we distinguish the industrious man from the idler who is often busy at his tasks, than by this: that the one labors at things unprofitable and indifferently, while the other labors for the sake of something advantageous and beneficial. But these men, on the contrary: for the wise and prudent man among them, having come to possess many acts of comprehension and memories of acts of comprehension,
considers that he has gained little for himself, and thinks that, having taken no further thought for the rest, he has neither less nor more, remembering that last year he obtained a comprehension of Dio sneezing or Theon playing ball. And yet every act of comprehension in the wise man, and every memory that holds what is secure and certain, is at once knowledge, and a good thing, and a very great one.
Is it, then, likewise true that when health fails, or a sense-organ is ailing, or property is being lost, the wise man is unconcerned and considers none of these things as touching himself — or does he, while sick, pay fees in money to doctors, and for the sake of money sail to Leucon, the ruler in the Bosporus, and travel abroad to Idanthyrsus the Scythian, as Chrysippus says, while as for his senses,
there are some of which, if he lost them, he would not even consent to go on living? How, then, do they not admit that they philosophize contrary to the conceptions, when they busy themselves and take such great pains over indifferent things, while remaining indifferent to great goods whether present or absent? But this too is contrary to the common conceptions: that a human being, when in the presence of the greatest goods, should not rejoice, having come to be free of the greatest evils — and yet this is exactly what
happens to their wise man. For having changed from the extreme of vice to the extreme of virtue, and having at once escaped the most wretched life and acquired the most blessed one, he has no perceptible sign of joy, nor was he elated or moved by so great a change, though he has been delivered from misery and every kind of depravity, and has arrived at a certain secure and stable completeness of goods. Further, it is contrary to the conception
that the greatest of goods should be unshakeable and firm in one's judgments, and yet that the man who is making progress to the highest degree should have no need of this, and should take no thought of it even when it is often present, and should not even stretch out a finger for the sake of this very security and firmness, which they consider a perfect and great good. And it is not only these things that these men say, but also, in addition to them, that "time does not
increase a good by its accumulation, but even if a man becomes prudent in the merest instant of an hour, he will be left behind in nothing as regards happiness by the man who has used virtue for his whole life and lived out his life blessedly in it." Having asserted this so vehemently, they in turn say that "virtue of short duration is of no benefit at all — for what good would it do if prudence should come upon a man who is about to be shipwrecked, or about to be hurled from a cliff, this very instant? Or what good would it do Lichas, as he is being flung by Heracles,
to change from vice to virtue?" These claims, then, are contrary not only to the common conceptions of those who philosophize, but also throw their own private doctrines into confusion, if they think that to acquire virtue for a brief time falls short in nothing from the height of happiness, and yet is at the same time worth nothing at all. And you would not wonder so much at this in their case as at the fact that, when virtue and happiness come to a person, often they think that
the one who has acquired it does not even perceive it, and is unaware of himself — that a moment before he was most wretched and most foolish, and now has become at once prudent and blessed. For it is not merely, they say, that a man possessing prudence fails to be aware that he is prudent, nor to recognize that he has escaped ignorance — as if this were merely a clever paradox — but they go so far, generally speaking, as to make the good itself something inert and dim, if its arrival produces no perception
of itself at all. For, according to them, nothing is by nature imperceptible; indeed Chrysippus expressly says, in his work On the End, that the good is perceptible by sense — or so he believes, and so he tries to prove. It remains, then, that it is by weakness and smallness that it escapes perception, whenever, though present, it goes unrecognized and remains hidden from those who possess it. Further, then, it is absurd that vision, which perceives things faintly white and moderately so,
should fail to detect things extremely white, and that touch, which grasps things gently and mildly warm, should be insensible to things intensely hot; but it is more absurd still if a man, in grasping what is commonly in accordance with nature — such as health and good condition of body — fails to recognize the presence of virtue, which they hold to be in accordance with nature most of all and to the highest degree. For how is it not contrary to the conception
to grasp the difference between health and disease, but not to grasp that between prudence and folly — but rather to suppose that the one who has been freed of disease is present, while remaining ignorant that the one who has acquired prudence has it present within him? And since they hold that men change from the height of moral progress into happiness and virtue, one of two things must necessarily follow: either that moral progress is not vice nor unhappiness, or that virtue does not differ greatly from vice, nor happiness from unhappiness, but
the difference between good things and bad is small and imperceptible — for otherwise men would not fail to notice themselves possessing the one instead of the other. So then, whenever they are willing to abandon none of these conflicting positions but wish to affirm and maintain them all at once — that those who are making progress are foolish and wicked, that those who have become prudent and good are unaware of themselves, and that there is a great difference between prudence and folly —
do they truly seem to you to secure their consistency admirably in their doctrines? And still more so in their actions, whenever, having declared all who are not wise to be equally wicked and unjust and faithless and foolish, they then in turn avoid and loathe some of them, while others they meet and do not even greet — yet to some of these same men they entrust money, hand over positions of authority, and give their daughters in marriage. For all this,
if they say it in jest, let them relax their frowning brows; but if they say it in earnest and as philosophers, it is contrary to the common conceptions to censure and revile all men equally, and yet treat some of them as moderate and others as utterly base — and to be utterly astounded at Chrysippus while laughing at Alexinus, though supposing that the two men are no more or less foolish than one another. "Yes," they say, "but
...just as a man who is a cubit's depth below the surface in the sea drowns no less than one who has sunk five hundred fathoms, so too those who are drawing near to virtue are no less in vice than those far from it; and just as the blind are blind even if they are about to regain their sight a little later, so those who are making progress remain foolish and wicked until they take hold of virtue." That, then, those making progress resemble neither the blind, but rather see less keenly, nor drowning men, but swimmers — and swimmers near a harbor at that — they themselves testify by their actions. For they would not employ advisers and generals and lawgivers as guides for the blind, nor would they emulate the deeds and actions and words and lives of certain men, if they saw everyone alike drowning in folly and wickedness. But leaving this aside,
marvel at these men, if not even from their own examples they can be taught to release those unnoticed sages, failing to understand or perceive that, having stopped drowning, they see the light and, having risen above vice, have caught their breath. Further, it is contrary to common conception that a man who has all good things present to him and lacks nothing for happiness and blessedness should be obliged to remove himself from life;
and still more, that a man for whom there is no good and never will be, but for whom all terrible and grievous and evil things are present and will remain present to the end, should not be obliged to renounce life — unless, by Zeus, some indifferent thing should accrue to him. These, then, are the rules laid down in the Stoa: they lead many of the wise out of life, on the ground that it is better for them, even while happy, to have ceased; and they detain many of the base, as though it were their duty to go on living though wretched. And yet the wise man is prosperous, blessed, entirely happy, secure, and free from danger, while the base and foolish man is, so to speak, so full of evils that there is no longer any room left to put more in; yet nevertheless they think that for these men remaining alive is fitting, and for those men — the wise — departure. "And reasonably so," says Chrysippus, "for life ought not to be measured by goods and evils, but
by what accords with nature and what is contrary to nature." Such is the way men preserve consistency and philosophize in line with the common conceptions! What are you saying? That a man deliberating about life and death need not consider "what evil and what good has been wrought in his halls," nor weigh, as on a scale, what tends toward happiness and unhappiness — the harmful against the beneficial — but must instead reason from things that neither
benefit nor harm, in calculating whether one ought to live or not? Is it not likely, on such premises and starting points, that a man will duly choose the life in which none of the things to be shunned is absent, and shun the life in which all the things to be chosen are present? And yet it is paradoxical, my friend, even to flee from life when one has fallen into no evil; but more paradoxical still, if someone, failing to obtain the
indifferent thing, gives up the good. And this is exactly what these men do, casting away happiness and virtue, which are present to them, in exchange for health and bodily wholeness, which they do not even possess. "There again Zeus, son of Cronus, took away Glaucus' wits, in that he was about to exchange golden armor for bronze, worth a hundred oxen for worth nine." And yet bronze weapons furnished no less use to men in battle than golden ones, whereas bodily comeliness and health provide, for the Stoics,
neither use nor benefit whatever toward happiness; and yet these men trade away health for wisdom. Indeed, they say that it would have been fitting for Heraclitus and Pherecydes, had they been able, to give up virtue and wisdom, so as to be rid of their lice and their dropsy; and that if Circe had poured out two potions, one turning wise men into fools and the other turning fools into wise donkeys,
Odysseus should not have drunk the potion of folly rather than change his outward form into that of a beast, so long as he kept his wisdom and, with wisdom, obviously, his happiness. And they say that Wisdom herself urges and exhorts this: "Let me go, and disdain me as I perish and am destroyed into the face of an ass." But surely, someone will say, this is the wisdom of an ass, this wisdom that gives such instructions,
if being wise and being happy is a good, while carrying about the face of an ass is a matter of indifference. They say there is a nation of Ethiopians among whom a dog is king, is addressed as king, and holds the privileges and honors of a king, while the men do what belongs to the leaders and rulers of cities. Is it not the same, then, among the Stoics — the name and outward form of the good belong
to virtue, and virtue alone they call choiceworthy, beneficial, and advantageous, and yet they act, philosophize, live, and die as though under orders from the indifferents? And yet no Ethiopian kills that dog of theirs; rather it sits in solemn state, receiving worship. But these men destroy and corrupt their own virtue, clinging instead to health and freedom from pain. It seems we are relieved
of saying anything more on this subject by the very capstone Chrysippus himself has set upon his own doctrines. For since in nature some things are good, some bad, and some in between, called indifferent, there is no human being who does not wish to have the good rather than the indifferent, and the indifferent rather than the bad. Why, we even make the gods
our witnesses of this, asking of them in our prayers, above all, the possession of goods, or, failing that, escape from evils — wishing to have the thing that is neither good nor bad not in place of the good, but in place of the bad. But he who reverses nature and overturns this order transfers the middle thing from its middle position to the last place, and the
last thing he raises back up and resettles in the middle position — like a tyrant giving the evils the seat of honor — legislating that one should pursue the good first, the bad second, and reckon last and worst the thing that is neither good nor bad: as if someone were to set the things of Hades after the things of heaven, and thrust the earth and the region around it down into Tartarus, far
away, where the deepest pit lies beneath the ground. So, having said in the third book On Nature that "it is profitable to live foolishly rather than not to live at all, even if one is never going to become wise," he adds, word for word: "such are the goods that belong to men that in a sense even the evils among the rest take precedence over living; yet it is not these that take precedence, but rather the reasoning by which one is to live
that is more incumbent on us, even if we are to be foolish." It is clear, then, that even if we are unjust, and lawless, and hateful to the gods, and wretched, none of this is absent from those who live foolishly. Is it, then, incumbent on us to be wretched rather than not wretched, to be harmed rather than not harmed, to act unjustly rather than not act unjustly, and to break the law rather than not break it? That is to say, is it incumbent on us to do the things that are not incumbent, and
to live in a manner contrary to duty? "Yes, for it is worse to be irrational and without perception than to be foolish" — well then, what has come over them, that they do not admit to be an evil that which is worse than an evil? Why do they declare only folly a thing to be avoided, if it is no less, but even more, incumbent to avoid the disposition that does not even admit of folly? But what
fault could one find with this, remembering what Chrysippus has written in the second book On Nature, declaring that vice has come into being not uselessly, in relation to the whole? It is worth taking up the doctrine in his own words, so that you may also learn just how the men who accuse Xenocrates and Speusippus for not regarding health as indifferent, nor wealth as unprofitable, themselves in what position they place vice,
and what arguments they set forth about it. "Vice, in relation to the other collateral phenomena, has its own rationale; for it too comes about in a certain way according to the reasoned order of nature, and, so to speak, does not arise uselessly with respect to the whole; for otherwise the good itself would not exist." Then there is no good among the gods, since there is no evil either; nor, when Zeus,
having consumed all matter into himself, becomes one and does away with all other distinctions, is there any good then either, since no evil at all is present. But while there is such a thing as the concord of a chorus with no one singing out of tune in it, and the health of a body with no part diseased, virtue does not come into being apart from vice; rather, just as for some medicinal powers snake venom and hyena's gall are necessary,
so too there is a peculiar fitness between Meletus's wickedness and Socrates's justice, and between Cleon's boorishness and Pericles's nobility of character. How, indeed, could Zeus have contrived to beget Heracles and Lycurgus, if he had not also begotten for us Sardanapalus and Phalaris? It is time to tell them that consumption too came into being for man in relation to good bodily condition, and gout in relation to swiftness of foot, and that
Achilles would not have had flowing hair, had Thersites not been bald. For how do those who prattle and drivel such nonsense differ from those who say that intemperance came into being, not uselessly, in relation to self-control, and injustice in relation to justice? So that we should pray the gods that there always be wickedness, and lies, and wheedling speech, and a thievish character — on the ground that, were these removed, virtue too would vanish outright and perish along with them.
Or would you like to hear the most delightful specimen of his cleverness and persuasiveness? "For just as comedies," he says, "contain ridiculous lines, which in themselves are poor but add a certain charm to the poem as a whole, so too you might find fault with vice taken by itself; but toward the whole it is not without use." In the first place, then, the claim that vice has come into being in accordance with the
providence of god — just as the poor line came into being in accordance with the poet's intention — surpasses every conceivable absurdity. For why, then, should the gods any longer be givers of goods rather than of evils? And how, further, is vice still hateful to the gods and abhorred by them? Or what shall we say against such blasphemies as "god plants the cause in mortals, whenever he wishes to destroy a house utterly," and "who then, of
the gods, brought these two together to fight in strife"? Moreover, the poor line adorns the comedy and contributes to its purpose, since comedy aims at what is ridiculous or pleasing to its audience; but Zeus, ancestral and supreme and guardian of law and, in Pindar's phrase, "best of craftsmen," is surely not fashioning the cosmos as some great, elaborate, many-parted drama, but rather a city common
to gods and men, in which they will share together, in agreement and blessedness, according to justice and virtue. What need, toward this most beautiful and most solemn end, did he have of robbers and murderers and parricides and tyrants? For vice has not come into being as a pleasant and clever episode for the divine, nor has injustice been rubbed into the fabric of things for the sake of wit and laughter and buffoonery, by beings in whom one cannot glimpse, even in a dream, the
celebrated harmony he speaks of. Further, the poor line is only a tiny fraction of the poem and occupies altogether a small space within the comedy; such lines neither proliferate nor destroy and spoil the charm of the parts that seem well composed. But vice has filled up the whole of human affairs, and the whole of life, from its entrance and beginning right to its very last line, is disgraceful, forever stumbling, and
in turmoil, with no part clean or blameless — and is, as they themselves would say, the most shameful and joyless of all dramas. Hence I would gladly ask them for what purpose vice has proved useful to the whole. Surely not in relation to the heavenly and divine, he will say. For it would be absurd if, had vice and greed and lying never come to exist among men, and had we never
driven off and plundered and slandered and murdered one another, the sun would not have kept to its ordered course, nor would the cosmos have had its seasons and the cycles of its times, nor would the earth, holding the middle position of the universe, have furnished the beginnings of winds and rains. It remains, then, that vice has come into being for our benefit, in relation to us and our affairs — and this, perhaps, is what these men mean.
Are we, then, healthier for being bad? Or are we better supplied with necessities? Has vice proved useful for our beauty, or for our strength? They say not. And if virtue is "only a name and a night-visioned semblance" belonging to sophists who work in the dark, and does not, like vice, lie open to all as a waking reality plain to everyone, then there will be no share for us in anything good, least of all in virtue, O
gods, for the sake of which we have come into being! Is it not, then, monstrous, that for the farmer and the helmsman and the charioteer the things that are useful are appropriate to, and cooperate toward, their proper end, while that which came into being by god's design for the sake of virtue has destroyed virtue and corrupted it? But perhaps it is already time to turn to another subject and let this one go.

Lamprias: By no means, my friend — not for my sake, at least, for I am eager
to learn in just what way these men bring evils in before goods, and vice before virtue.

Diadoumenos: Certainly, and it is a question worth asking, my friend, for their stammering on this point is considerable. In the end they say that practical wisdom, being the knowledge of goods and evils, would, if the evils were removed, be done away with entirely as well; and just as, if true things exist, it is impossible that some false things should not also exist,
in a similar way, they think it fitting that, since goods exist, evils too must exist.

Lamprias: Well, that point is not badly made; but the other matter, I think, does not escape me either. For I see a difference: what is not true is at once false, but what is not good is not at once evil. Hence between the true and the false there is nothing intermediate, but between the good and the evil there is the indifferent. And there is no
necessity that these coexist with those; it would have sufficed for nature to have the good without needing the evil, and instead to have that which is neither good nor evil. But as to the earlier argument, if anything is said on your side, it should be heard.

Diadoumenos: Well, much is said, but for now we must make use of what is essential. In the first place, then, it is foolish to suppose that the coming into being of evils and goods took place for the sake of practical wisdom.
For when goods and evils exist, practical wisdom supervenes upon them, just as medicine supervenes where sick and healthy conditions already underlie it. The good and the evil do not come into existence so that practical wisdom might arise; rather, the capacity by which we judge the good and the evil, once these exist and are established, was named "practical wisdom" — just as sight is the perception of white and black things, which did not come into being so that we might have sight, but rather sight came into being because we needed to judge such things
...having need of sight. Second, whenever these people set the universe ablaze, no evil whatsoever is left, and the whole is at that time wise and prudent; there is, then, wisdom, though no evil exists — so it is not necessary for evil to exist if wisdom is present. And if it is indeed altogether necessary that wisdom be a knowledge of both goods and evils, what is so terrible if, once evils have been removed, there will be no wisdom, but we shall have another virtue in its place — one that is a knowledge not of goods and evils but of goods alone? It is just as if black were entirely destroyed among the colors, and someone then insisted that sight too had been destroyed, on the ground that there could be no perception of white and black things — what is to stop us from saying to him: there is nothing terrible in this, if we no longer have the sort of sight you speak of, but another perception and faculty is present to us in its place, by which we apprehend white and non-white colors?
For my own part, I do not think that taste would perish once bitter things had failed, nor touch once pain had been removed, nor wisdom once evil were no longer present; rather, those senses would remain, apprehending sweet and pleasant things and things not of that kind, and this wisdom would remain a knowledge of goods and non-goods. But those who do not think so may keep the name and leave the reality to us. Apart from this, what was to prevent there being a conception of evil while there was actual existence only of the good? Just as, I think, the gods too have the presence of health but only a conception of fever and pleurisy. Since we ourselves, though evils are present to all in abundance and no good is present, as these men say, have not been deprived of the very act of conceiving of the good, of happiness.
And it is astonishing, too, if — while virtue is not present — there are those who teach what sort of thing it is and produce a grasp of it, yet, vice not having come into being, it would not have been possible to acquire a conception of it. See what sort of things those who philosophize by way of common conceptions persuade us of: that we grasp wisdom by means of folly, while wisdom apart from folly is by nature able to grasp neither itself nor folly. But if indeed nature absolutely needed the generation of evil, surely one example of vice would have sufficed, or a second; or if you like, ten bad men, or a thousand, or ten thousand needed to come to be — and not such a mass of vice that its multitude is not sand or dust,
"or the plumage of the many-voiced birds, so great a number could you pour out" — while of virtue there is not even a dream of an example. The men in charge of the public messes at Sparta bring in two or three helots deliberately gorged with unmixed wine and made drunk, and display them publicly to the young, to show what drunkenness is like, so that they may guard against it and be sober; but in life the greater part of these have become examples of vice — for not a single man is sober with regard to virtue, but we all wander about, behaving disgracefully and living in misery. So this argument gets us drunk and fills us with such confusion and derangement that we come to resemble in nothing those dogs of which Aesop speaks, which, when some hides were floating by, longed for them and rushed to drink up the sea, but burst before they could seize the hides. For in just this way the argument, while we hope through it to attain happiness
and to arrive at virtue, has corrupted and destroyed us before we could reach it, having first gorged us with much unmixed and bitter vice — if indeed, as these men say, not even for those who make progress to the highest point is there any lightening or relief or breathing-space from folly and misery. So the man who says that vice has not come into being uselessly — see again what sort of thing, what sort of possession, he shows it to be for those who have it, writing in his work On Right Actions that "the base man needs nothing, has need of nothing; nothing is useful to him, nothing his own, nothing fitting."
How, then, is vice of any use, when along with it not even health is useful, nor abundance of wealth, nor moral progress? "But one does not need those things," they say — "the preferred and acceptable things, and, by Zeus, the useful ones, and those in accordance with nature, as they themselves call them; for none of these does one have need, unless one becomes wise. So the base man does not even have need of becoming wise. Nor do men thirst or hunger before becoming wise: so thirsty men have no need of water, nor hungry men of bread." "You are like gentle strangers, in want only of shelter and fire" — did this man have no need of lodging? Nor did the man who said,
"Give a cloak to Hipponax, for I am terribly cold," have need of a cloak? But do you wish to say something paradoxical and extraordinary and peculiar to yourselves? Say that the wise man has need of nothing and lacks nothing — that man is blessed, that man is free of want, that man is self-sufficient, happy, perfect. But as things now stand, what is this dizzying confusion, that the man who lacks nothing should need the goods he already has, while the base man, lacking many things, should need none of them? For this is what Chrysippus says: that "the base do not need but do lack," shuffling the common conceptions this way and that like pieces on a board. For all men consider needing to come before lacking, holding that the man who is in want of things not ready to hand nor easily procured is the one who lacks. No one, at any rate, is deficient in horns or wings, because he has no need of these; but
we say men are deficient in weapons and money and clothing, when, being in need of them, they fail to obtain or do not have them. But these men are so eager always to appear to be saying something contrary to the common conceptions, that they often depart even from their own positions out of a desire for novelty of speech, as here. Consider a little further back, taking yourself up to it. One of the things said contrary to the common conceptions is that "no base man is benefited" — 
and yet many, while being educated, make progress; and slaves are set free; and the besieged are saved; and the sick are cured by being purged and led by the hand and treated. "But they are not benefited in obtaining these things, nor do they experience anything, nor do they have benefactors, nor do they neglect their benefactors" — so then the base are not ungrateful either, nor indeed are the sensible; ingratitude, then, does not exist. For some do not defraud people of gratitude, since they receive it; others
are simply not naturally disposed to receive gratitude. See now what they say in reply to this: that "gratitude extends to intermediate things, and while benefiting and being benefited belong to the wise, even the base obtain gratitude." Then do those who have a share in gratitude have no share in benefit? And where gratitude extends, is nothing there useful or fitting? What else makes a service a favor, except that the one who provides it proves useful in some respect to the one in need?
But let us leave these matters aside. What is this highly prized "benefit" which they guard as something great and exclusive to the wise, not even leaving its name to those who are not wise? If one wise man anywhere in the world extends his finger sensibly, all the wise men throughout the inhabited world are benefited. This is the
work of "benefit" among them; to this the virtues of the wise, in their common benefits, come to an end. Aristotle talked nonsense, Xenocrates talked nonsense, in declaring that men are benefited by the gods, benefited by their parents, benefited by their teachers — being ignorant of that marvelous benefit whereby the wise are benefited by one another's motions in accordance with virtue, even if they are not together and do not happen to know of one another. And yet all men
suppose that selections and observances and management of affairs are useful and beneficial precisely when they are useful and beneficial, and hold them to be so on that basis; and a moneyed man buys keys and guards storehouses, opening with his hand the most delightful chamber of wealth — but to select things that are useful for nothing, and to guard them carefully and laboriously, is not dignified or admirable but actually ridiculous. So if Odysseus,
having learned that knot from Circe, had used it to bind up not the gifts of Alcinous — tripods and cauldrons and garments and gold — but instead some rubbish and stones, and had regarded the trouble of gathering, acquiring, and guarding such things as a task productive of happiness and blessedness, who would have envied this senseless foresight and vain-glorious diligence? And yet
this is precisely what is noble and dignified and blessed in the Stoic creed — nothing else but the selection and safekeeping of useless and indifferent things; for such are the things in accordance with nature, and the external things still more so — seeing that they compare the greatest wealth to fringed garments and gold chamber-pots and, by Zeus, oil-flasks, whenever it happens to suit them. Then, like men who, having seemed to insult and abuse arrogantly the shrines of some gods or spirits, repent at once and grovel and sit humbly, praising and magnifying the divine,
so these men, falling by a kind of retribution into the consequence of this great boasting and empty talk, find themselves once more caught up in these very "indifferent" things that mean nothing to them, crying loudly that there is one single good and noble and dignified thing — the selection of these and the management concerning them — and
that for those who fail to obtain them it is not worth living, but they should cut their own throats or starve themselves, having bidden virtue a long farewell. So they themselves regard Theognis as utterly ignoble and petty for saying that one fleeing poverty should throw oneself into the monster-filled sea, and down from sheer cliffs, Cyrnus — thus showing cowardice before poverty, which is supposedly "indifferent"; and yet they themselves, in plain prose, urge and
say the very same things: that one fleeing a great disease and severe, unrelenting pain should, if no sword or hemlock is at hand, throw oneself into the sea and hurl oneself down from cliffs — though neither of these things is harmful or bad or disadvantageous, nor does it make those who fall into it unhappy. "Where then," one of them asks, "am I to begin? And what starting-point and material for virtue am I to take, if I abandon nature and
what accords with nature?" But where, my good sir, do Aristotle and Theophrastus begin? What starting-points do Xenocrates and Polemo take? Did not Zeno himself follow these men, who laid down as the elements of happiness nature and what accords with nature? But they remained faithful to these as things choiceworthy and good and beneficial, and, having added virtue acting upon them and dealing fittingly with each, they thought that out of these
they completed and brought to fulfillment a perfect and whole life, rendering an agreement truly suited and harmonious with nature. For they were not troubled, like men who leap up from the earth and are borne back down onto it again, calling the same things at once acceptable but not choiceworthy, one's own but not good, unbeneficial yet useful, and nothing to us yet the starting-points of our proper duties —
nor did they, once naming things thus, contradict themselves: rather, such as their reasoning was, such too was the life of those men, their deeds furnishing things consonant and in tune with their words. But the choice of these men here is like the woman in Archilochus, who carried water in one guile-scheming hand and fire in the other: by their deeds and actions they cling to nature as choiceworthy and good, but by their names and words they reject and abuse the very things in accordance with nature as indifferent and useless and irrelevant to happiness.
Since, moreover, all men universally conceive of the good, taken as a whole, as something to rejoice in, to be prayed for, fortunate, of the greatest worth, self-sufficient, free of want — see, setting this alongside what these men call good, whether it makes one rejoice to extend one's finger sensibly. Well then?
Is torture, sensibly endured, something to be prayed for? Does the man who hurls himself off a cliff for good reason do so fortunately? Does that have the greatest worth which reason often chooses in preference to giving up what is not good? And is that complete and self-sufficient, in the presence of which, should they fail to obtain the indifferent things, men neither endure nor wish to go on living? But there has arisen another doctrine, by which ordinary usage has been still further violated: one which
steals away and tears out, like children, the genuine conceptions, and thrusts in their place other, bastard ones, monstrous and strange, compelling us to rear and cherish these instead of the true ones — and this in matters concerning goods and evils, things to be chosen and things to be avoided, what is one's own and what is alien, matters which ought to have a clarity even more evident than that of hot and cold, white and black, since
the latter are impressions coming from outside, incidental to the senses, whereas the former have their origin innately, growing out of the goods within us. But these men, as though hurling themselves, together with dialectic, into the "Liar" or the "Master Argument," have plunged into the subject of happiness and resolved not a single ambiguity in it, but have created countless new ones. And indeed that of two goods, one being an end and the other a means to the end,
the end is greater and more perfect, is unknown to no one. Chrysippus too recognizes the distinction, as is clear in the third book On Goods; for he disagrees with those who hold knowledge to be an end, and lays it down, in his work On Justice, that if one supposes pleasure to be the end, he does not think justice can be preserved;
but if it is not an end but simply a good, he thinks it can. I do not suppose you need me now to recite the actual wording, for the third book On Justice can be obtained from anywhere. So whenever, my friend, they again say that no good is greater than any other good, nor lesser, but that what is not an end is equal to the end, they are found to be at odds not only with the common conceptions but
with their own arguments as well. And again, if of two evils, one is such that we become worse when it is present, while the other harms without making us worse, it is contrary to the common conception not to call that a greater evil under which we become worse when it is present, than that which harms without making us worse — nor to call the harm that renders us worse a lesser harm.
Yet Chrysippus himself admits that there are certain fears and griefs and deceptions which harm us but do not make us worse. Consult the first book of his treatise Against Plato, On Justice; for other reasons too it is worth examining the man's resourceful hair-splitting there, which spares nothing at all, of matters and doctrines alike, whether one's own or another's. It is contrary to the common conception
that two ends and goals should be set before life, and that not everything we do should have its reference to some one thing; and it is even more contrary to the common conception that one thing should be the end, while each of our actions is referred to something else. Of these two alternatives they are compelled to accept one or the other. For if the primary things in accordance with nature are not themselves good, then...
...and the reasonable selection and acquisition of them, and the doing of everything in one's power for the sake of obtaining the primary things according to nature — to that end all actions must be referred: the obtaining of the primary things according to nature. For if they suppose that those who neither aim at nor desire the attainment of those things nonetheless have the end, but that what must be referred to those things is rather the selection of them and not the things themselves — since the end, they say, is to select and take those things prudently, while the things themselves, and the attaining of them, is not the end, but underlies it like a kind of matter possessing selective value (for this, I think, is what they mean, both in the term they use and in what they write, to mark the distinction).
Lamprias: You have recalled both what they say and how they say it, like a man.

Diadoumenos: Now observe that they suffer the very thing that happens to those who desire to jump over their own shadow: they do not leave the absurdity behind but carry it along with their argument, removing it ever further from our conceptions. For just as, if someone said of an archer that he does not do everything in his power for the sake of hitting the mark, but rather for the sake of doing everything in his power, this would seem to be uttering riddles and monstrosities,
so too these wretched triflers, in their insistence, would seem to be concluding that the end is not the attaining of things according to nature by aiming at them, but rather the taking, the selecting — as though the desire and pursuit of health did not, for each person, terminate in being healthy, but on the contrary being healthy were itself referred to the desire and pursuit of it — so that, by Zeus, they make their walks, their exclamations, their incisions, and their carefully-reasoned medications the ends of health, and not health the end of these. In doing so they talk as absurdly as the man who said, "Let us dine, so that we may sacrifice, so that we may bathe."
Except that such a man merely alters and disturbs some customary and established order, whereas what these men say involves the complete overturning and confusion of the facts: "We do not take a timely walk for the sake of digesting our food, but digest our food for the sake of taking a timely walk" — as if nature had made health for the sake of hellebore, and not hellebore for the sake of health! What else is left to them, in their excess of paradox-mongering, but to babble such nonsense? How does this differ from saying that health came to be for the sake of medicines, and not the medicines for the sake of health — the very move made by one who holds the selection concerning medicines, their composition and use, to be more choiceworthy than health itself, considering health not choiceworthy at all, but placing the end in the business concerned with those medicines, and declaring the end to be the end of the striving, not the striving's end to be the attainment?
"For indeed," they will say, "to the striving belongs the quality of being reasonable and prudent." Quite so, we shall answer — provided it regards as its end the attainment and acquisition of what it pursues; but if not, its reasonableness is taken away from it, since it does everything for the sake of attaining something whose attainment is neither solemn nor blessed. Since we have arrived at this point in the argument, what would you say is more contrary to our common conception than this: that, without having grasped or possessed any conception of the good, one nevertheless desires and pursues the good? For you see that Chrysippus too drives Ariston all the more into this very difficulty, arguing that the facts do not allow us to conceive of an indifference toward what is neither good nor bad unless the good and the bad have first been conceived; for in that case the indifference would appear to presuppose itself — since it is impossible to grasp a notion of it without the good having first been conceived, and yet nothing else but the indifference itself is, on their view, the good.
Come now, consider also this: the Stoa, in denying this thing called indifference — and calling it instead "agreement" — see how, and from where, it has managed to have itself conceived as good. For if it is impossible to conceive of indifference toward what is not good apart from the good, still less does prudence regarding goods yield any conception of itself to those who have not first conceived the good. But just as no notion arises of an art concerned with healthful and harmful things for those to whom no prior notion of those very things has arisen, so too it is impossible to form a conception of the science of goods and evils without having first conceived goods and evils themselves.

Lamprias: What, then, is the good?

Diadoumenos: Nothing but prudence.

Lamprias: And what is prudence?

Diadoumenos: Nothing but the knowledge of goods.

Lamprias: Then their argument has arrived at quite a "Zeus's Corinth" indeed.
As for the turning of the pestle, let it pass, lest you think I am mocking — and yet their argument has truly been seized by a condition much like that image. For it appears that, in order to conceive the good itself, one must first conceive prudence, while prudence in turn is sought within the conception of the good — so that, being forced always to pursue the one before grasping the other, they fall short of both, since what must be conceived prior to each requires the other, which cannot be conceived apart from it.

Diadoumenos: And there is another way, too, in which one might show that their reasoning is not merely a distortion but a complete inversion — a total diversion leading to the understanding of nothing whatsoever. They posit that the substance of the good is the reasonable selection of things according to nature; but a selection is not reasonable unless it is made with reference to some end, as has already been said. What, then, is this end? Nothing else, they say, than reasoning well in the selection of things according to nature.
So, in the first place, the conception of the good has slipped away and vanished entirely: for reasoning well in one's selections is presumably a byproduct arising from the disposition of good reasoning; and since we are forced to conceive this disposition by reference to the end, while the end cannot be conceived apart from this disposition, we fall short of conceiving either of them. Then — and this is more serious — by the most just reckoning, the reasonable selection ought to be a selection of things good, beneficial, and cooperative toward the end: for how can it be reasonable to select things that are neither advantageous, nor valuable, nor choiceworthy at all? But let it be, as they themselves say, a reasonable selection of things possessing value with a view to happiness — observe, then, to what a splendid and solemn conclusion their argument comes.
For the end, it seems, on their view, is to reason well in the selection of things possessing value with a view to reasoning well.

Lamprias: But to one who merely hears the words put this way, my friend, what is being said appears terribly strange; I still need to learn how this comes about.

Diadoumenos: Then you must pay closer attention, for grasping this riddle is no task for just anyone. Listen, then, and answer. Is it not their view that the end is to reason well in the selections of things according to nature?

Lamprias: So they say.

Diadoumenos: And do they select the things according to nature as goods, or as possessing certain values or advantages tending toward the end, or toward something else that exists?

Lamprias: I do not think so — rather, toward the end.
Diadoumenos: Now then, having uncovered it, see what follows for them: that the end is to reason well in the selection of things possessing value with a view to reasoning well. For these men neither have nor conceive any other substance of the good and of happiness than this highly prized "good reasoning" concerning the selection of things possessing value. But there are those who think this criticism applies to Antipater, and not to the school's fundamental position: for Antipater, hard pressed by Carneades, sank into these subtle evasions.
As for their philosophizing about love within the Stoa, contrary to the common conceptions, the absurdity is shared by all of them alike. "The young," they say, "are ugly so long as they are base and foolish, but beautiful once they become wise; yet none of those who are beautiful is either loved or worthy of love." And this is not yet the outrageous part: they also say that "those who have fallen in love with the ugly cease to love them once they become beautiful" — and who recognizes a love of this sort, one that arises and persists together with a vice of the soul when the body's condition is bad, yet is quenched and withers away just when prudence, justice, and temperance come to be present? Such men, I think, differ in no way from gnats, who delight in filth and vinegar, yet fly off and flee from wholesome and good wine.
And as for the "radiance of beauty" which they speak of and name as what draws love to itself, in the first place it lacks plausibility: for there could be no radiance of beauty in what is most ugly and most base, if indeed, as they say, vice of character infects and pollutes the outward form. Then, too, it is entirely contrary to common conception that the ugly should be worthy of love because he is going to have beauty someday and it is expected of him — yet once he has acquired it, and has become beautiful and good, he is loved by no one.

Lamprias: For love, they say, is a kind of hunt for an imperfect but naturally gifted youth, aiming at virtue.

Diadoumenos: Then, my excellent friend, are we doing anything now but refuting their fundamental position, since it distorts and does violence to our common conceptions with arguments that are neither plausible nor expressed in familiar terms?
For who was there to prevent them from calling the wise man's zeal for the young — if no passion attends it — a "hunt," or a "love of boys"? But "love" ought to be the name for that which all human beings alike conceive and name: such as, "all men prayed to lie beside her," and, "never yet has such desire for goddess or woman so overwhelmed and mastered the heart within my breast."
By casting the ethical branch of philosophy into such matters — tortuous and unsound through and through — they trivialize and tear apart everything around them, as though they alone were setting nature and custom aright in the way one must, and establishing reason correctly: reason, which at once turns us away from and draws us toward, in our desires, pursuits, and impulses, what is proper to each of us. But their habitual practice of dialectic, having become a mere sieve, has reaped from it nothing wholesome or sound, but, like a diseased sense of hearing, has been filled with empty noises, with deafness and obscurity — a matter about which, if you wish, we shall converse again another time, taking a fresh starting point. For now, let us run quickly through their physical doctrine, in its most authoritative and fundamental points, which disturbs the common preconceptions no less than their doctrine of ends does.
In general it is absurd, and contrary to common conception, that something should both be and not be — that it should exist, and yet not exist; but most absurd of all is what they say concerning the universe. For having set an infinite void outside the world, they say that the universe is neither body nor incorporeal. And it follows from this that the universe is not a being at all: for they call only bodies existent, since to exist is to act and be acted upon, while the universe is not a being — so that the universe will neither act nor be acted upon in any way.
Nor, further, will it be in any place: for what occupies a place is presumably a body, and the universe is not a body, so that the universe is nowhere. And yet that which happens to occupy the same place is precisely what is "at rest"; so the universe does not remain at rest either, since it occupies no place. But neither does it move — first, because what moves needs a place and an underlying space; and further, because what moves is by nature either self-moved or acted upon by something else. Now what is moved by itself has certain inclinations of its own, tendencies according to weight or lightness; and lightness and weight are, in every case, either conditions, or powers, or differentiae of body — but the universe is not a body.
So the universe must be neither heavy nor light, nor possess within itself any source of motion. But surely it will not be moved by something else either, for there is nothing else besides the universe. So they are forced to say precisely what they do say: that the universe is neither at rest nor in motion. And in general, since to call the universe a body is, on their own view, improper — while heaven and earth, animals and plants, men and stones, are bodies — the not-being will have bodies as its parts, the parts of what does not exist will themselves be existent things, and the not-heavy will make use of heavy and light parts while itself being not-light: things which not even dreams could conceive, let alone hold consistent with the common conceptions.
And yet nothing is so self-evident, and so bound up with the common conceptions, as this: that whatever is not ensouled is soulless, and again, whatever is not soulless is ensouled; and this self-evident truth, too, they overturn, when they agree that the universe is neither ensouled nor soulless. Apart from these points, no one conceives of the universe as incomplete, seeing that no part of it is missing; yet these men say the universe is not complete either — for the complete is something definite, while the universe, owing to its infinity, is indefinite. Is there then, on their view, something that is neither incomplete nor complete? But surely the universe is not a part either, for nothing is greater than it — nor is it a whole, as they themselves say: for "whole" is predicated of what is ordered, while the universe, owing to its infinity, is both indefinite and disordered.
A cause, then, it is not: not of the universe is there anything else, since there is nothing besides the universe, nor is the universe the cause of anything else — nor even of itself, for it is not by nature capable of acting, and it is by acting that a cause is recognized. Come, then: suppose all human beings were asked what they conceive by "nothing," and what notion they form of it — would they not say that it is that which has no cause and is the cause of nothing; that is neither whole nor part; neither complete nor incomplete; neither ensouled nor soulless; neither moving nor at rest anywhere; that neither exists, nor is body, nor incorporeal? This, and nothing else, is what "nothing" is.
So then, whenever the rest of mankind predicate all these things of nothing, these men alone predicate them of the universe — and thus they appear, it seems, to be making the universe identical with nothing. There is no further need, then, to speak of time, of predicate, of proposition, of the conditional, of the conjunctive statement — things which they, more than any other philosophers, make the greatest use of, and yet say do not exist as beings. And yet is it not true that what is real need not exist or subsist at all, but can be apprehended and be a trustworthy object of cognition to one who has no share whatever in the substance of being? How, then, has this not surpassed every kind of absurdity?
But — lest these points seem to belong more to the domain of logic — let us take hold of the more properly physical difficulties. Since, then, "Zeus is the beginning, Zeus the middle, and from Zeus all things have been made," as they themselves say, then above all it was necessary that our conceptions concerning the gods, if any confusion or wandering has crept into them,
...healing them and directing them toward the best; but if not, then that each people be simply left, as it stands, under the sway of its own law and custom regarding the divine. For these beliefs are not of today or yesterday, but have always existed, and no one knows from what source they first appeared. But those who, as though beginning from the very hearth, set about disturbing what is established and the ancestral belief about the gods have left, one may fairly say, no sound and unimpaired conception whatsoever.
For what other man is there, or has there ever been, who does not think the divine to be indestructible and eternal? Or what, among the common preconceptions about the gods, has been more universally proclaimed than sayings such as: "the blessed gods take their delight all their days," and "of the immortal gods and of men who walk the earth..." and "for those gods are free from sickness and old age and untouched by toil, having escaped the deep-roaring stream of Acheron"? One might perhaps find barbarian and savage peoples who have no conception of god at all, but no human being has ever existed who, while conceiving of a god, conceived him as neither indestructible nor eternal. At any rate those called atheists — the Theodoruses, the Diagorases, the Hippos — did not dare say that the divine is perishable; rather, they simply did not believe that anything indestructible exists, without thereby abandoning the notion of the indestructible as such while withholding the preconception of god.
But Chrysippus and Cleanthes, having filled — one might almost say — heaven, earth, air, and sea with gods by their reasoning, have left not one of all these as indestructible or eternal, except Zeus alone, into whom they make all the others dissolve away; so that even he has no advantage over them in the matter of destroying rather than being destroyed. For it is a form of weakness both when a thing is destroyed by changing into something else, and when a thing is preserved only by feeding on other things as they are destroyed into it. And these are not conclusions we draw, as with many other absurdities of theirs, merely from their premises by following out their doctrines — no, they themselves, shouting it aloud in their own treatises on the Gods, on Providence, on Fate, and on Nature, say explicitly that all the other gods have come into being and will be destroyed by fire, being, according to them, fusible like figures of wax or tin.
It is therefore contrary to the common conception — on a par with saying that a man is immortal — to say that a god is mortal; or rather, I do not see what difference there will be left between god and man, if god too is a rational and destructible living being. Or if, in turn, they set up this clever and elegant distinction — that man is mortal, but god is not mortal, only destructible — look what follows for them: either they will have to say that god is at once immortal and destructible, or that he is neither mortal nor immortal. And there is no way, even for people deliberately inventing paradoxes, to surpass this absurdity — I mean other people; since for these men nothing among the most absurd things has been left unsaid or untried.
Further, Cleanthes, straining to defend the conflagration, says that the moon and the rest of the stars make the sun assimilate everything to itself and change it into itself. But if the stars, being gods, cooperate toward their own destruction — cooperating with the sun, contributing something to the general conflagration — it would be a great absurdity for us to pray to them for our safety and to regard them as saviors of men, when it is in accordance with their own nature to hasten toward their own destruction and annihilation.
And indeed, they themselves leave nothing undone in their attacks on Epicurus, crying "alas, alas! woe, woe!" as though he were confounding the preconception of the gods by doing away with providence: "for it is preconceived and understood," they say, "that god is not only immortal and blessed, but also benevolent toward mankind, solicitous, and beneficial" — which is true. But if those who do not abandon providence are, on their view, doing away with the preconception about god, what are we to say of those who claim that the gods exercise providence over us but do not benefit us, and are not "givers of good things" but of things indifferent — not giving virtue, but giving wealth, and health, and the begetting of children, and such things, none of which is beneficial or profitable or choiceworthy or advantageous?
Is it not rather that the Epicureans do not abolish the conceptions about the gods, while these men both insult and mock them — calling one a god "Giver of Fruits," another "Giver of Birth," another "Healer," another "Giver of Oracles," when health, and birth, and abundance of fruit are, on their own view, not good things at all, but things indifferent and unprofitable to those who receive them?
The third element, then, of the conception of the gods is that the gods differ from men in nothing so much as in happiness and virtue. But according to Chrysippus not even this is left to them: "for Zeus does not surpass Dion in virtue, and Zeus and Dion, both being wise, are benefited equally by one another whenever the one happens to be in motion while the other..." — for this, they say, is precisely what constitutes the good that passes from gods to men and from men to gods: the motion of a wise man, and nothing else. And they say that a man who falls short of virtue in nothing lacks nothing of happiness either, but that even the unfortunate man is equally blessed with Zeus the Savior — even one who, on account of diseases and bodily mutilations, takes himself out of life by his own hand, provided only that he is wise.
But such a man exists nowhere on earth, nor has he ever existed; while countless myriads of men live in the depths of misery under the very government and rule of Zeus, which is said to administer all things in the best possible way. And yet what could be more contrary to the common conception than that, while Zeus administers in the best possible way, we should fare in the worst possible way? At any rate, if — what it is not even permitted to say — he should wish to be neither Savior, nor Gentle, nor Averter-of-Evil, but the very opposite of these fine titles, there would be nothing left to add to the sum of existing evils, either in number or in magnitude, according to what these men themselves say — since all men already live in the extreme of wretchedness and misery, and evil admits of no further increase, nor unhappiness of any further excess. And yet this is not the most terrible part of it.
Rather, whereas Menander, speaking in the manner of the stage, said, "the greatest source of evils among men is that they chafe at having too much good," and this, they say, is contrary to the common conception — they themselves make god, who is good, the very source of evils. "For matter itself did not furnish evil out of itself," they say, "since it is without quality, and has received all the differentiations it possesses from that which moves and shapes it."
But it is Reason, indwelling in matter, that moves and shapes it, matter itself being by nature incapable of moving or shaping itself. It follows, then, of necessity, that evil, if it comes from nothing, comes from what does not exist; but if it comes through the moving principle, it must exist as having come to be from god. And indeed, if they suppose that Zeus does not have mastery over his own parts, nor employs each of them according to his own reason...
...that too is contrary to the common conception, and amounts to imagining a living creature many of whose parts escape its will, exercising their own private activities and actions, to which the whole gives no impulse and does not initiate the motion. For nothing possessed of soul is so badly put together that, against its will, its feet move forward, or its tongue speaks, or its horn butts, or its teeth bite — and most of these things god would necessarily have to suffer, if the wicked, being parts of him, lie, and act unscrupulously, and break into houses, and murder one another, against his will.
But if, as Chrysippus says, it is not possible for even the smallest of his parts to be disposed otherwise than according to the will of Zeus, but every ensouled thing is by nature so constituted and so moved as he leads it, and he turns it, and he restrains it, and he arranges it — then this doctrine of his own is even more outrageous. For it would be countless times more reasonable that his parts, forced by some weakness and incapacity on the part of Zeus, should do many things contrary to his nature and will, than that there should be neither lack of self-control nor wrongdoing at all, of which Zeus is not the cause.
But indeed, that the universe is a city, and the stars its citizens — and if this is so, then obviously also tribesmen, and magistrates, and the sun a councillor, and the evening star a president or a market-overseer — I do not know whether those who refute such notions do not thereby show themselves more absurd than the very people who propound and assert them.
But among the more "physical" of their doctrines, is it not contrary to the common conception that a seed should be greater and more than what is generated from it? At any rate, we observe that nature, in every kind of animal and plant, both tame and wild, takes as the starting-points for the generation of the greatest things, things that are small, meager, and scarcely visible. For not only does an ear of wheat come from a grain of wheat, or a vine from a single grape-seed, but from the stone of some acorn that a bird has let slip, kindling and fanning its growth, as it were, from some tiny spark, there springs up a shoot of bramble, or oak, or palm, or pine, that grows to an enormous height.
And they say: "the term 'seed' [sperma] is named from the 'sowing' [speirein] of a small mass out of a larger one, while 'nature' [physis] is a kind of inflation [emphysēsis] and diffusion of the rational principles, or numbers, that are being opened up and released by it." But again, in the case of the universe, the fire which they call its seed — after the conflagration — changed the world into seed, from a smaller body and mass, though possessing a great nature and taking in addition, for its growth, an immense region of the void spreading out around it; while, when it is generated once more, its magnitude withdraws and shrinks together again, as matter contracts and gathers itself back into itself in the process of generation.
One can hear them, and meet with many of their writings, disputing against the Academics and crying out that "they confound everything by their doctrine of the 'indistinguishables,' forcing upon two distinct substances a single qualified thing." And yet there is no human being who does not think this way already, and who, on the contrary, would not consider it astonishing and paradoxical if it turned out that, in the whole of time, no dove has ever been indistinguishable from another dove, nor bee from bee, nor grain of wheat from grain of wheat, or, as the saying goes, fig from fig. It is, rather, the things these men themselves say and imagine that are truly contrary to the common conception —
namely, "that upon a single substance two individually qualified things should come to be, and that the same substance, while possessing one particular quality of its own, should, when another quality supervenes upon it, receive that quality too and preserve both alike." For if two, then there will also be three, and four, and five, and as many as one could not even number, subsisting about a single substance — I mean not distributed among different parts, but all of them alike pervading the whole, infinite in number. At any rate Chrysippus says:
"Zeus is like a man, and the universe is like Zeus, while Providence is like the soul; so that, when the conflagration occurs, Zeus, being the only one of the gods who is indestructible, withdraws into Providence, and then, the two having become one, they continue together thereafter within the single substance of the aether." Having, then, now dismissed the gods — and having prayed that they grant us common sense and a common mind — let us see how matters stand for them regarding the elements.
It is contrary to the common conception that body should be the place of another body, and that body should pass through body, with neither containing any void, but the full entering into the full, and receiving what is mixed into it, though it has no interval and no room within itself, owing to its own continuity. But these men do not merely press one thing into another, or two, or three, or ten; rather, once the world has been divided up into all its parts, they throw all of them together into any one thing that happens along, and, while claiming that the smallest perceptible particle will run short when the largest thing enters into it, they play the reckless young hothead — turning their own refutation into a dogma, as in many other cases, since they are forever adopting hypotheses that fight against the common conceptions.
For instance, by this very argument, those who mix whole bodies with whole bodies must accept many monstrous and bizarre consequences. Among these is the claim that "three is four": for other people cite this as an extreme example of the unthinkable, but for these men it actually follows — that when one ladleful of wine is mixed with two ladlefuls of water, if it is not to fall short but to become equal to them, then, by spreading itself throughout and thoroughly commingling, the one that is one becomes two, through the equalizing of the mixture with the two —
for to remain one, and yet to extend over two, and to make itself equal to the double, is absurd. Further, in order that it may, through the mixture, reach as far as the two, it must take on a twofold measure in the diffusion; and this same measure is at once the measure both of three and of four: of three, because to the two, one has been mixed in; of four, because, having been mixed with the two, it has come to possess a quantity equal to that with which it is mixed.
This, then, is the fine result that comes about for them when they throw bodies into bodies — and the very notion of "containing" becomes unthinkable as well. For it is necessary, when things pass into one another through mixing, that it not be the case that the one contains while the other is contained, and that the one receives while the other is received within it — for in that case there would be no blending at all, but only contact and mere touching of surfaces, with the one slipping in beneath and the other containing it from outside, while all the other parts remain unmixed and pure, kept apart from one another.
But it is necessary, if the commingling occurs as they claim, that the things mixed together become, in and among one another, one and the same thing at once — by being contained through being within, and by containing through receiving the other — and yet it is impossible for either of them, again, to be so; and yet both must occur, since the mixture forces its way through both alike, leaving no part of either unfilled, but rather filling everything completely with everything.
At this point, no doubt, comes in — trampling with laughter on their absurdities — the famous "leg" bandied about in the lecture-halls of Arcesilaus. For if blendings occur throughout entire wholes, what prevents — once a leg has been cut off, and has rotted, and been thrown into the sea, and dissolved — not merely the fleet of Antigonus from sailing straight through it, as Arcesilaus used to say, but the twelve hundred ships of Xerxes, together with the three hundred Greek triremes, from fighting a sea-battle all within that leg?
For surely, as it proceeds, the mixture will not run short, nor will it stop or come to a limit while the lesser is contained within the greater; nor will its final extent, wherever it stops, having made contact, fail to pervade the whole — rather, it will refuse to mix any further. But if it is indeed to be mixed throughout the whole, then, by Zeus, the leg will hardly provide the Greeks a place to fight their sea-battle — no, this would require putrefaction and transformation first.
A single ladleful, or even a single drop, falling straight from that spot into the Aegean Sea or the Cretan Sea, will reach all the way to the Ocean and the Atlantic Sea, touching it not merely on the surface, but spreading everywhere through its depth, in breadth and length together. And these very consequences Chrysippus himself accepts, right at the start of the first book of his Physical Questions: "nothing..."
...saying that it lacks nothing—a single drop of wine mixes with the sea." And, so that we should not marvel even at this, he says that "the drop extends its blending through the entire cosmos." I do not know what could be found more absurd than this. Moreover, it is contrary to our common conception that there is, among bodies in nature, neither an extreme, nor a first, nor a last part—nothing at which the magnitude of a body comes to an end,
but that always something appears beyond whatever has been taken, so that the subject casts itself into the infinite and indeterminate. For it will not be possible to conceive one magnitude as greater or less than another, if progression to infinity by parts happens to both alike; rather, the very nature of inequality is abolished. For when unequal things are conceived, the one falls short in its outermost parts while the other exceeds and surpasses it; but if there is no inequality,
it follows that there is neither unevenness nor roughness in a body—for unevenness is the inequality of a single surface relative to itself, and roughness is unevenness combined with hardness. Yet those who carry bodies through to a final part leave out none of this, while those who extend everything to infinity by a multitude of parts abolish it all. And yet how is it not evident that a man is composed of more parts than a man's finger, and again
that the cosmos is composed of more parts than a man? These things everyone understands and thinks—unless they become Stoics; but once they become Stoics they say and hold the opposite, namely that a man is not composed of more parts than a finger, nor the cosmos of more parts than a man, since the division of bodies proceeds to infinity, and among infinities none is greater or less,
nor does any quantity exceed another at all—or else the parts of what remains will stop being divided and yielding any quantity out of themselves. How, then, do they ward off these difficulties? Most resourcefully and boldly indeed. For Chrysippus says: "When we are asked whether we have parts, and how many, and out of what and how many parts each of those is composed, we shall employ a distinction, positing the general answer, that
we are composed of head and chest and legs"—for this was the whole of what was being asked and raised as a puzzle—"but if they press the questioning on to the ultimate parts," he says, "none of these things is to be assumed; rather one must say that we are composed neither out of certain parts, nor out of any number whatsoever, nor out of infinite parts, nor out of finite parts." And I think it worth using his very own words,
so that you may see the manner in which he kept guarding the common conceptions, bidding us to conceive of each of bodies as composed neither out of certain parts, nor out of any number of parts, nor out of infinite parts, nor out of finite parts. For if, just as the indifferent is a mean between good and bad, so too there is something intermediate between the finite and the infinite, he ought to have said what this is and so resolved the difficulty; but if, as
the unequal is at once the not-equal, and the imperishable the not-perishable, so we are to conceive the infinite as the not-finite, then this is, I think, similar to saying that a body is neither out of finite nor out of infinite parts, and that an argument is neither out of true premises nor out of false ones nor out of— . And on top of this, indulging in a bit of youthful bravado, he says: "since a pyramid is composed of triangles, the sides that incline together at
the point of contact are unequal, yet not exceeding one another in that they are greater"—this is how he kept guard over the common conceptions! For if there is something greater that does not exceed, there will be something smaller that does not fall short; so that the unequal neither exceeds nor falls short—that is, the unequal is equal, and the greater is not greater, nor the smaller smaller. Further, then, observe in what manner he met
Democritus, who raised a natural and apt puzzle: if a cone is cut by a plane parallel to the base, what should we think about the surfaces of the sections—are they equal or unequal? For if unequal, they will make the cone uneven, taking on many step-like notches and roughnesses; but if equal, the sections will be equal, and the cone will appear to have the property of a cylinder, being composed of equal
and not unequal circles—which is most absurd. At this point, declaring Democritus ignorant, he says: "the surfaces are neither equal nor unequal, but the bodies are unequal because their surfaces are neither equal nor unequal." To legislate that, the surfaces being neither equal nor unequal, it follows that the bodies are unequal, is to grant oneself a marvelous license to write whatever
comes to mind. For, on the contrary, reason together with plain evidence allows us to conceive that of unequal bodies the surfaces are unequal, and that the surface of the greater is greater—since, unless the excess is to be deprived of surface, the greater must have it. For if the surfaces of the greater bodies do not exceed those of the lesser but instead fall short of them, there will be a part of a body having a limit
that itself has no limit and is unbounded. For if he says that, since the notches he suspects around the cone are being forced upon us in this way, it is the inequality of the bodies—not that of the surfaces—that produces them, that is absurd: to remove the surfaces from consideration and yet leave the unevenness that was being contested still present within the bodies. But even if we stay with his hypothesis, what is more contrary to the common conception than to fabricate such things?
For if we shall posit that one surface is neither equal nor unequal to another surface, then we shall also have to say that one magnitude is neither equal nor unequal to another magnitude, and one number neither equal nor unequal to another number, being some mean between the equal and the unequal that is neither of the two—something they cannot state nor even conceive. Further, if surfaces exist that are neither equal nor unequal, what prevents circles too from being conceived as neither equal
nor unequal? For the very surfaces of the conic sections are of course circles; and if circles, then the diameters of circles too must be posited as neither equal nor unequal; and if this, then angles and triangles and parallelograms and parallelepipeds and solids as well. And indeed, if there are lengths that are neither equal nor unequal to one another, then there will also be weight and impact and bodies of that kind. Then how
do they dare to censure those who introduce voids and certain partless entities that fight against the possibility of either moving or remaining at rest, while they themselves call such assertions false: "if certain things are not equal to one another, those things are unequal to one another," and "these things, while not equal to one another, are not unequal to one another either"? Since he says there is something greater that does not exceed,
it is worth asking whether such things will coincide with one another. For if they will coincide, how is the one greater than the other? And if they will not coincide, how is it not necessary that the one exceed and the other fall short? And yet, for it to have neither—neither to fail to coincide because it is greater, nor to coincide because it is not greater—is impossible for one of the two to hold. For necessity compels those who do not safeguard the common conceptions into just such difficulties as these.
Furthermore, it is contrary to the common conception that nothing touches anything at all; and no less contrary to it is this: that bodies touch one another yet touch nothing. But this latter is what those who leave no least parts of a body are compelled to accept, since they always take some further point beyond what seemed to be the point of contact, and never stop advancing beyond it. Indeed, the very argument that they themselves most often bring against those who champion
partless entities is this: "that there is neither contact of wholes with wholes nor of parts with parts"—for the former produces not contact but blending, and the latter is not possible, since partless things have no parts." How, then, do they not fall into the very same difficulty themselves, since they leave no part that is last or first? Because, by Zeus, they say, "bodies touch at a limit—not as wholes touching wholes, nor as
parts touching parts; and the limit is not itself a body." So then body will touch body by means of something incorporeal; and again it will not touch it, since something incorporeal lies between. But if it does touch, then the body will both act upon and be acted upon by the incorporeal; for it is the nature of bodies to act and be acted upon by one another, and to touch, through mutual contact. And if a body has contact with something incorporeal, it will also have union with it,
and blending, and organic growth. Further, in cases of union and blending, either the limits of the bodies must remain, or they must not remain but be destroyed. Either alternative is contrary to the common conception: for they themselves do not allow that incorporeal things come to be or perish; yet a blending and union of bodies that each retain their own limits could not occur—for the limit defines and fixes
the nature of the body; whereas blendings, unless they are juxtapositions of part alongside part but rather cases where the things mixed pour together whole with whole (as these men say), require us to grant that the limits perish in the mixtures and then come to be again when the bodies separate—and no one could easily conceive of that. But indeed, precisely where bodies touch one another, at that very point they also press and squeeze
and crush one another; and it is not possible for incorporeal things to undergo or produce such effects—indeed it is not even conceivable. Yet this is what they force us to think. For if a sphere touches a plane at a point, clearly it also drags along the point across the plane as it moves; and if it has been smeared with red ochre on its surface, it will leave a red-ochre line upon the plane; and if it has been heated red-hot, it will heat the plane red-hot too. But that a body
should be colored by something incorporeal, or heated by something incorporeal, is contrary to the common conception. And if we imagine an earthenware or crystal sphere borne from a height onto a stone pavement, it would be unreasonable for it not to be shattered, given the impact against a resisting surface; and it is still more absurd that it should be shattered at a limit and point that is incorporeal when it strikes. So that in every way their preconceptions concerning incorporeal things and bodies are thrown into confusion—or rather
utterly destroyed—as they set forth many impossibilities. It is contrary to the common conception to say that there is a time that is future and a time that is past, but that there is no present time; rather, that the recent and the just-now have subsistence, while the now is nothing at all. And yet this is exactly what happens to the Stoics, who leave no least time and yet do not want the now to be partless; instead, whatever one takes and thinks of as present,
they claim that part of it is future and part past, so that nothing at all remains as present, and no portion of time is left over as "now"; rather, of the time said to be present, part is distributed to the future and part to the past. One of two things follows, then: either, by positing "there was time" and "there will be time," they abolish "there is
time"; or else there is a present time, part of which has already begun and part of which will begin, and one must say that of what exists, part is future and part past, and of the now, part is earlier and part later—so that what is now is what is not yet now and what is no longer now, since the past is no longer now, and the future is not yet
now. And necessarily, dividing things this way, they must say that of today part is yesterday and part tomorrow, and of this year part is last year and part next year, and of "at the same time" part is earlier and part later. For they muddle these no less, doing the very same thing with "not yet" and "already" and "no longer" and "now" and
"not now"—whereas all other people posit and conceive and believe that "just now" and "in a little while" are different portions from the now, placing the one after the now and the other before it. Of these, Archedemus, saying that the "now" is a certain starting point and joining-place of the past and the coming time, has, it seems,
without realizing it, abolished time altogether. For if the now is not time but a limit of time, and every portion of time is of the same kind as the now, then the whole of time turns out to have no parts at all, but is resolved entirely into limits and joining-points and impulses. Chrysippus, wishing to be clever about the division, in his work On the Void
and in certain others says that the past and future portions of time do not exist but merely subsist, and that only the present exists; yet in the third and fourth and fifth books On Parts he holds that "of the present time, part is future and part past." So it turns out that he divides what exists, in his own account, into things that do not exist—
or rather, that he leaves nothing at all of time as existing, if the present has no part that is not either future or past. Their conception of time, then, is like grasping at water: the more tightly it is squeezed, the more it runs through and slips away. And their account of actions and motions carries the same utter confusion of plain evidence, for it is necessary, if of the now
part is divided off into the past and part into the future, and of what is in motion at the now part has already moved and part is going to move, that the limit and starting point of motion be abolished, and that of no deed has anything ever been first, nor will anything be last, since deeds are distributed along with time. For just as they say that of the present time part is already past and part is going to be,
so too of what is being done, part has already been done and part will be done. When, then, did eating breakfast, or writing, or walking begin, and when will it end, if everyone who breakfasts has breakfasted and will breakfast, and everyone who walks has walked and will walk? But the most terrible of terrible things, they say, is that if for the one who is alive, having-lived and being-going-to-live both apply, then living has
neither had a beginning nor will have an end; rather each of us, it seems, has come to be without having begun to live, and will die without having ceased. For if there is no last part, but always some part of what is present for the living passes over into the future, then the statement "Socrates will live" never becomes false; rather, for as long as "Socrates is living" is true, for just as long "Socrates has died" is false,
so that, if "Socrates will live" is true in infinitely many parts of time, in no part of time will "Socrates has died" be true. And yet what limit could there be to a deed? Where could that which is being done ever come to an end, if, as many times as "it is being done" is true, just so many times "it will be done" is also true? For the one speaking of Plato as writing and conversing will be lying,
...that Plato will at some time stop conversing, if it is never false to say ‘he will converse’ of one who is conversing, and ‘he will write’ of one who is writing. Furthermore, there is no part of what is coming-to-be that is not either already come-to-be or about-to-come-to-be — that is, either past or future; but there is no perception of what has come to be, of what is past, or of what is future; therefore there is, absolutely, perception of nothing. For we neither see nor hear the past or the future, nor do we get any other perception of things that have happened or are going to happen; so nothing is perceptible, even if something is present, if of the present one part is always still future and another already past, one part already come to be and another still going to come to be.
And yet these same men say that Epicurus does outrageous things and does violence to our common notions, in making bodies move at equal speed and allowing nothing to be swifter than anything else. But far more outrageous than this, and far more removed from our common notions, is the claim that nothing can ever be overtaken by anything else — not even if, as the saying goes, ‘the swift horse of Adrastus should pursue the tortoise from behind.’ Yet this must follow, if things move according to a before and an after, while the distances they traverse are divisible to infinity, as these men maintain. For if the tortoise had only a hundred-foot head start on the horse, those who cut this distance to infinity, while making both move according to a before and an after, will never bring the fastest thing up to the slowest, since the slower always keeps some interval ahead, an interval divisible into infinite intervals.
And how is it not contrary to common notion that water poured out of a bowl or cup should never be entirely poured out — or how does this not follow from what these men say? For no one could conceive of a motion proceeding, according to a before, through things divisible to infinity, as ever completing the whole; rather, since it always leaves some divisible remainder, it will render every pouring-out, every trickling and flowing of liquid, every movement of a solid, and every fall of a released weight, incomplete. I pass over many of their absurdities, touching only on those that run contrary to common notion.
Now the argument concerning growth is an old one; it was posed, as Chrysippus says, by Epicharmus. But when the members of the Academy held that the puzzle was not at all easy or ready-to-hand, these men loudly denounced them on many counts, as though they were doing away with our preconceptions and holding views contrary to our common notions — indeed, as even perverting our very perception. For the argument is a simple one, and these men themselves grant its premises: that all particular substances flow and are in motion, releasing some things from themselves and receiving others that come upon them from elsewhere; and that the things to which additions and subtractions accrue in number or in quantity do not remain the same, but become different through the aforesaid accretions, since their substance undergoes alteration.
And that these changes are called ‘growth’ and ‘decline’ not rightly but by the prevailing force of custom, whereas it would be more fitting to call them ‘comings-to-be’ and ‘perishings,’ because they carry what exists out of its established state into something else; whereas ‘growing’ and ‘diminishing’ are properly affections of a body that underlies and persists.
Now, when these things are said and laid down in this way, what do these self-appointed champions of clarity and canons of common notion go on to demand? That each of us is twin, of double nature, and two-fold — not as the poets made the sons of Molione, joined in some parts and separate in others, but two bodies having the same color, the same shape, the same weight and place, never before seen by any human being; yet these men alone have discerned this compounding, doubling, and ambiguity — that each of us is really two underlying substrata, the one substance and the other quality. The one is ever flowing and in motion, neither growing nor diminishing, nor remaining in any way as it is; the other remains, and grows, and diminishes, and undergoes in every respect the opposite of the first — yet grown together, fitted together, and fused with it, so that it nowhere allows perception to grasp the difference.
And yet the famous Lynceus is said to have seen through rock and through oak; and someone sitting on a watchtower in Sicily could see the Carthaginians’ ships sailing out of harbor, a day and a night’s sail away; and Callicrates and Myrmecides, they say, fashioned chariots covered by the wings of a fly and engraved verses of Homer, in letters, upon a sesame seed — yet this otherness and difference within us no one has ever discerned or distinguished; nor have we ourselves perceived that we have become double, flowing in one part, while in the other remaining the same from birth until death.
I am putting the argument more simply than it stands, since they actually make four substrata for each thing — or rather, four for each one of us; but even the two are enough to show the absurdity, if indeed, when we hear Pentheus in the tragedy saying that he ‘sees two suns, and Thebes doubled,’ we say that he is not seeing but hallucinating, deranged and disturbed in his reasoning — while we do not dismiss these men, who set down not one city but all men, all animals, all trees, all implements, tools, and garments as double and of double nature, as forcing us to be deranged rather than to understand?
Here, then, perhaps they should be forgiven for inventing different natures of underlying things, since no other device seems available to men eager to preserve and safeguard the phenomenon of growth. But in the case of the soul, what has come over them, or what other assumptions are they dressing up, that they manufacture differences and forms of bodies well-nigh infinite in number, one could not say; except that, banishing our common and familiar notions — or rather doing away with and destroying them altogether — they bring in others, strange and alien.
For it is thoroughly absurd, having made the virtues and vices — and besides these all the arts and all the memories, and further the impressions, passions, impulses, and assents — into bodies, then to say that they occupy no place and that there is no room to hold them, but to leave a single point-sized passage in the heart, where they confine the ruling faculty of the soul, occupied by so many bodies that their sheer multitude escapes even those who claim to be quite capable of marking off and distinguishing one from another.
And to make these not merely bodies, but rational living creatures, and a swarm of so many creatures neither friendly nor tame, but a hostile mob arrayed against the vices and possessed of a warlike mind — to declare that each of us is a park, or a pen, or a wooden horse — what could one even think to call these fabrications of theirs? It is a kind of extreme contempt and lawlessness toward what is self-evident and toward ordinary usage.
And they say not only that the virtues and vices are living creatures, nor only that the passions — anger, envy, grief, malicious joy — are, nor only that graspings, impressions, and states of ignorance are, nor that the arts — cobblery, bronze-working — are living creatures; but beyond all this they even make the very activities into bodies and living creatures: walking a living creature, dancing, putting on shoes, addressing someone, abusing someone. And it follows from this that laughter too is a living creature, and weeping; and if these, then also coughing, sneezing, groaning, spitting altogether, and nose-blowing, and the rest — for these consequences are obvious.
And let them not be annoyed at being led to these conclusions by an argument proceeding step by step, remembering that Chrysippus himself, in the first book of his Physical Questions, argues in just this fashion: ‘It is not the case that night is a body while evening and dawn and midnight are not bodies; nor that day is a body while the new moon is not also a body, and the tenth, and the fifteenth, and the thirtieth of the month; the month too is a body, and summer, and autumn, and the year.’
But while these claims do violence to our common preconceptions, the following do violence even to their own private ones: they generate the hottest thing by cooling, and the finest-grained thing by condensation. For the soul, presumably, is the hottest and finest-grained of things; yet they produce it by the cooling and condensation of the body — as though by a kind of tempering — the breath changing from vegetative into psychic. They also say that the sun has come to be ensouled, moisture changing into intelligent fire. It is high time, then, that the sun too should be thought to be generated by cooling! Xenophanes, indeed, when someone told him he had seen eels living in hot water, said, ‘Well then, we shall boil them in cold water.’ The same consequence would follow for them: if they generate the hottest things by cooling and the lightest things by condensation, then, in turn, they should generate cold things by heat, dense things by dispersal, and heavy things by separation — thereby preserving a kind of consistency in their inconsistency.
And do they not also posit the very substance and origin of the ‘notion’ itself contrary to our common notions? For a notion is a kind of impression, and an impression is an imprinting upon the soul; but the soul’s nature is exhalation, which is difficult to imprint at all, owing to its rarity, and which, even if it does receive an imprint, is incapable of retaining it — for its nourishment and its very generation, being from moist matter, involve a continuous inflow and expenditure; and its intermixture with the air through breathing constantly produces a fresh exhalation, one that is displaced and altered by the channel that pours in from outside and again flows out. For one could more readily conceive of a flowing stream of water preserving shapes, imprints, and forms than of a breath moving amid vapors and moist exhalations, continually being mixed from outside with another breath that is, as it were, inert and alien to it.
Yet so thoroughly do they misconstrue their own doctrine that they define notions as certain stored-up conceptions, memories as fixed and retained imprints, and knowledge as something altogether solidified, possessing what is unchanging and secure — and then they go on to posit as the base and seat of these things a substance that is slippery, scattering, ever in motion, and flowing.
As for the notion of an element and a first principle, it is, one might say, innate and common to all human beings, that it should be simple, unmixed, and uncompounded; for what is compounded is not an element or a first principle, but rather the things out of which it is compounded are. And yet these men, in making god, who is a first principle, an intelligent body and an intellect within matter, declare him to be not pure, not simple, not uncompounded, but composed of one thing by means of another; whereas matter, in itself irrational and without quality, possesses simplicity and the character of a first principle. But god, if indeed he is not incorporeal or immaterial, has thereby partaken of matter as a first principle. For if matter and reason are one and the same, they were wrong to represent matter as irrational; but if they are distinct, then god would be a steward of both, and not a simple but a composite thing, having added to his intelligent nature the corporeal element derived from matter.
As for the four bodies — earth, water, air, and fire — which they call the primary elements, I do not know how they make some of them simple and pure and others composite and mixed. For they say that earth and water are, forever, unable to hold either themselves or other things together, but preserve their unity only by a share in pneumatic and fiery power; whereas air and fire, thanks to their inherent tension, are capable of extending both themselves and other things, and, being blended into those other two, supply them with tension, stability, and substantiality.
How, then, is earth or water still an element, if it is neither simple, nor primary, nor sufficient to itself, but forever in need, from outside, of that which holds it together in existence and preserves it? For they have not even left us any conception of their substance; rather, the account, put this way, of some ‘earth in itself’ involves great confusion and obscurity. Then again, how can earth, being earth in itself, need air to constitute and hold it together? But in fact there is no such thing as earth in itself, nor water; rather, air, by gathering matter together and condensing it in one way, made earth, and by dissolving and softening it again in another way, made water. Neither of these, then, is an element, since something else has furnished both of them with their substance and their coming-to-be.
Further, they say that substance and matter underlie the qualities — this being, more or less, how they render the definition — and yet, in turn, they make the qualities themselves substances and bodies. This involves great confusion. For if the qualities have their own proper substance, in virtue of which they are called, and are, bodies, then they have no need of another substance, since they possess their own. But if what underlies them is only this common thing which they call substance and matter, then clearly they merely partake of body — for they are not themselves bodies; and what underlies and receives must necessarily differ from the things it receives and from that in which it underlies.
But they see only half of the picture: they call matter ‘without quality,’ yet they are no longer willing to call the qualities ‘without matter.’ And yet how is it possible to make a body without quality, when they do not conceive of quality without body? For the very argument that binds body to every quality allows the mind to grasp no body except together with some quality. So then, whoever fights against the incorporeality of quality seems bound also to fight against the qualitylessness of matter, or else, by separating the one from the other, to divide both from each other.
And the argument some of them put forward — that they call substance ‘without quality’ not because it is deprived of every quality but because it possesses all qualities — is especially contrary to common notion. For no one conceives of ‘without quality’ as meaning that which possesses no share of quality, nor of ‘unaffected’ as meaning that which is by nature always undergoing every affection, nor of ‘unmoved’ as meaning that which is movable in every way. And this problem remains unresolved, even if matter is always conceived together with quality: that it is still conceived as something other than, and different from, quality.

======== Moralia: De Cupiditate Divitiarum ========

Hippomachus the trainer, when some people were praising a tall man with long arms as a natural boxer, said, "Yes -- if the crown had to be taken down from where it hangs." The same might be said to those who are utterly amazed at, and count blessed, fine estates and great houses and heaps of silver: "Yes -- if happiness were for sale and had to be bought." And yet one might say that many people would rather grow rich and, even while miserable, become blessed by paying money for it, than face the fact that freedom from grief, greatness of soul, steadiness, courage, and self-sufficiency are not for sale at any price. Wealth does not carry with it contempt for wealth, nor does the possession of superfluous things carry with it freedom from needing superfluous things. From which of the other evils, then, does wealth free us, if it does not even free us from the love of wealth itself? Drink has quenched the desire for drink, and food has cured the craving for food -- and the man who says, "Give Hipponax a cloak, for I am very cold," grows impatient and pushes it away when more cloaks than he needs are brought to him. But no amount of silver or gold quenches the love of money, nor does greed cease from acquiring more the more it acquires. One might say to wealth, as to a quack doctor, "Your medicine makes the disease worse." People in need of bread, of a house, of modest shelter, and of ordinary food, wealth takes hold of and fills instead with desires for gold and silver and ivory and emeralds and dogs and horses, shifting their craving away from necessities and toward things difficult, rare, hard to obtain, and useless.
For no one is poor who has enough; and no man has ever borrowed money in order to buy barley-meal or cheese or bread or olives. But one man's expensive house has made him a debtor; another has been ruined by the vineyard bordering his own land; grain-stores have ruined one man, vineyards another; Gallic mules have driven one man, and yoked horses -- "rattling their empty chariots" -- have driven another headlong into the pit of contracts, interest, and mortgages. Then, just as people who keep drinking after their thirst is quenched, or eating after their hunger is satisfied, vomit back up even what they took while genuinely thirsty or hungry, so those who crave useless and superfluous things end up unable even to hold on to what is necessary.
Such, then, are these people. But one might marvel even more, recalling Aristippus, at those who lose nothing, who have much, and yet who always need more. Aristippus used to say that a man who eats much and drinks much and is never satisfied goes to the doctors and asks what his condition is, what is wrong with him, and how he might be rid of it; but if a man who has five couches seeks ten, and having ten tables buys as many more again, and though he has many estates and much silver is never filled but strains after other things, lies sleepless, and remains unsatisfied in everything -- such a man does not think he needs anyone to treat him and show him the cause of his condition.
And yet, of two thirsty men, one might expect that the man who has not yet drunk will be rid of his thirst once he drinks; but the man who drinks continually and does not stop, we think, needs not filling but purging -- and we tell him to vomit, on the ground that he is troubled not by lack but by some sharpness or heat unnaturally present in him. So too, of those who go about acquiring wealth, the one in need and without resources will perhaps stop once he has acquired a hearth of his own, or found a treasure, or, with a friend's help, paid off his debt and been rid of his creditor. But the man who has more than enough and still reaches for more is not cured by gold or silver, nor by horses and sheep and cattle -- he needs to be purged and cleansed. For his condition is not poverty but insatiability and love of wealth, arising from a base and irrational judgment; and unless someone roots this out of the soul like a broad tapeworm, such men will never stop needing superfluous things -- that is, desiring things they do not need.
When a doctor comes in to a man who lies stretched on his bed, groaning and refusing to take food, and examines him and questions him and finds he has no fever, he says, "This is a sickness of the soul," and leaves. So too, when we see a man wasting away over money-making, groaning over his expenses, sparing himself no shameful or painful act that contributes to profit, while he has houses and land and herds and slaves along with their clothes -- what shall we say the man's condition is, if not poverty of the soul? For a material poverty, as Menander says, a single friend could relieve by his kindness; but that poverty of the soul not all men together, whether living or dead, could ever fill. Hence Solon's words, well aimed at such men: "of wealth no limit lies revealed to men." For to those who have sense, the wealth of nature is bounded, and the limit of need is present, marked out as if by a compass-point and a fixed radius. But this too is peculiar to the love of money: it is a desire that fights against its own fulfillment. The other desires cooperate with their own satisfaction -- no one, at any rate, abstains from the use of food because of love of food, nor from wine because of love of wine, in the way that men abstain from the use of money because of love of money.
And yet how is it not a kind of madness, or a pitiable condition, if a man does not use a cloak because he feels cold, nor bread because he is hungry, nor wealth because he loves wealth? But this is exactly the trouble of Thrasonides: "She is within, in my own house; I am free to have her, and I want to -- as madly in love as any man could be -- yet I do not." So too the miser: locking everything up and sealing it, counting it out to money-lenders and agents, gathering and pursuing still more, he wrangles with his household servants, with his farm laborers, with his debtors. "Apollo, have you ever seen a man more wretched, or a lover more ill-fated?"
Sophocles, when asked whether he could still have relations with a woman, said, "Hush, man -- I have become a free man, having escaped a raging and savage master because of my old age." For it is a pleasant thing when desires fade away together with the pleasures that once accompanied them -- desires which, as Alcaeus says, neither man nor woman can ever escape. But this is not the case with the love of wealth: like a heavy and bitter mistress, it compels one to acquire but forbids one to use, arousing the desire while taking away the pleasure.
Stratonicus used to mock the Rhodians for their extravagance, saying that they built as though they were immortal but bought provisions as though they had little time left to live. The miserly, by contrast, acquire as if they meant to spend lavishly, but use their possessions as if they were paupers, and while they endure the labor of acquisition, they never enjoy the pleasure of it. So when Demades came upon Phocion once at breakfast and saw his table plain and austere, he said, "I am amazed at you, Phocion, that being able to dine so well you engage in politics as you do" -- for Demades himself played the demagogue for the sake of his belly, and considering Athens too small a resource for his extravagance, he drew supplies from Macedonia. And it was for this reason that Antipater, seeing him grown old, said: "Like a sacrificial victim already used up, nothing is left of him but tongue and belly."
But you, wretched man, who would not marvel at you, if, though able to live so meanly, so inhumanly, so ungenerously, so harshly toward your friends and so ungenerously toward your fellow citizens, you still toil, lie sleepless, take on contract work, chase inheritances, and grovel before others -- when you have so great a resource for freedom from trouble as your own stinginess? They say a certain Byzantine, having caught an adulterer with his own ugly wife, said, "Poor fellow, what compulsion drove you? A rotten market-stall, and free of charge, too."
Come now, you stir things up and set them ablaze, wretch -- kings need to raise money, and so do the stewards of kings, and those in the cities who wish to be foremost and to rule. For them there is a necessity, on account of ambition, ostentation, and empty glory, to give feasts, to gratify their bodyguards, to send gifts, to maintain armies, to buy gladiators. But you throw so many matters into confusion, disturb yourself, and whirl yourself about, living the life of a snail because of your pettiness, and you endure every hardship without any benefit -- like the bathman's donkey, forever hauling wood and kindling, always covered in soot and ash, yet never getting a share of the bath, nor of warmth, nor of cleanliness.
And this I say concerning that asinine, ant-like love of wealth. But there is another kind, the beast-like kind, which practices false accusation, chases inheritances, cheats others, meddles in everyone's business, worries and counts up how many of its friends are still alive -- and then, when it has acquired all this from every quarter, enjoys none of it. Just as we shun and are more disgusted by vipers, blister-beetles, and venomous spiders than by bears and lions, because they kill and destroy people without gaining any use from those they destroy, so we ought to be more disgusted by those made wicked through stinginess and ungenerosity than by those ruined through extravagance -- for they take from others what they themselves are neither able nor by nature fit to use.
That is why the extravagant, once they find themselves amid abundance and have resources at their disposal, take a truce, as Demosthenes said of those who thought Demades had given up his wickedness: "You see him full now, just like lions." But for those whose public life aims at nothing pleasant or useful, there is no cessation of greed, nor any respite, since they are forever empty and forever in need of everything.
But surely, someone will say, they are guarding and hoarding it for their children and heirs. How so? They share nothing with them while they live; rather, just as the mice that live in the mines and eat gold-ore cannot be shared in by anyone until they are dead and cut open, so too here. And why, in fact, do these men want to leave much money and a great estate to their children and heirs? Evidently so that these in turn may guard it for others, and those others again for their own children -- just like earthenware pipes, which take nothing in for themselves, but each one simply passes along what it receives to the next, until some outsider, an informer or a tyrant, breaks through and shatters the one who guards it, diverting and channeling the wealth elsewhere; or, as people say, until one man, the wickedest of the family, arises and devours the whole of it. For it is not only the children of slaves who turn out undisciplined company, but, as Diogenes mocked it, also the children of misers: "It is better," he said, "to be a Megarian's ram than his son." For even those whom they seem to be educating, they ruin and warp further, implanting in them their own love of money and their own stinginess, building it into their heirs like a fortress guarding the inheritance.
For this is what they urge and teach: "Make a profit and be sparing, and reckon yourself worth exactly as much as you have." This is not education but a cinching and stitching shut, as one does a purse, so that it may hold and guard whatever is put into it. And yet a purse, once silver is put into it, becomes grimy and foul-smelling; but the children of misers, even before they inherit the wealth, are already infected with the love of wealth by their own fathers. And indeed they pay their fathers wages worthy of such teaching -- not loving them because they will receive much, but hating them because they have not yet received it. For having learned to admire nothing but wealth, and to live for nothing else but the possession of much, they treat their fathers' lives as an obstacle to their own, and think that whatever time is added to their fathers' lives is being taken away from their own.
That is why, while their fathers are still living, they steal some furtive pleasure however they can, and enjoy it as though it belonged to someone else, sharing it with friends, spending it on their desires while still, so to speak, listening and still learning. But when their fathers die and they take possession of the keys and the seals, a different shape of life comes over them, and a joyless face -- stern, unapproachable: no more revelry, no ball-games, no wrestling, no Academy, no Lyceum, but the cross-examination of household slaves, the checking of account-books, calculations with stewards or debtors, endless business, and anxious care that robs them even of their breakfast and drives them to the bathhouse at night. The exercise-grounds where they were raised, and the waters of Dirce, are left behind; and if someone says, "Will you not go hear the philosopher?" he answers, "How can I? I have no leisure -- my father is dead."
Poor wretch, what has been left to you of the sort that has been taken from you -- your leisure and your freedom? Or rather, it is not your father but wealth itself that has poured over you and taken hold of you -- as in Hesiod, the woman "withers you without fire and lays you in premature old age," bringing upon your soul, as though they were untimely wrinkles or gray hairs, the cares born of love of money and of endless business, under which everything noble, everything ambitious, everything humane in you withers away.
What then? someone will say -- do you not see that some people actually use their money lavishly? But have you not heard, we shall answer, Aristotle saying that some do not use it while others misuse it, exactly as if it did not belong to them at all? The former get no benefit or adornment from what is their own; the latter are actually harmed and disgraced by it. Come, then, let us examine the first case. What sort of use is this, for the sake of which wealth is so admired? Is it the use of what suffices, or of what is superfluous? If it is the use of what suffices, then the rich have nothing more than those who possess a moderate amount. But "wealth is blind, and unwealthy," as Theophrastus says, and truly not to be envied, if Callias, the richest of the Athenians, and Ismenias, the wealthiest of the Thebans, used their riches no differently than Socrates and Epaminondas did.
For just as Agathon sent the flute-girl away from the symposium to the women, thinking the conversation of those present would be enough, so you might send away purple bedspreads and costly tables and all superfluous things, on seeing the rich using the very same things the poor use: "You would not quickly set your rudder up above the smoke, and the labors of oxen and toiling mules would perish." Instead you would banish, in a fine and sober expulsion of foreigners, the goldsmiths and engravers and perfumers and cooks -- all the useless things. But if what suffices is common to both the non-rich and the rich, while wealth prides itself on its excess, then do you really admire Scopas the Thessalian, who, when asked for something in his house that was, so he said, superfluous and useless to him, replied, "But it is precisely by these superfluous things that we are happy and blessed, not by those necessary ones"? See that you are not praising a procession or a festival more than a way of life.
The ancestral festival of the Dionysia was once celebrated in the old days simply and cheerfully, in the manner of the common people: a jar of wine and a vine-branch, then someone led a goat, another followed carrying a basket of dried figs, and on top of it all the phallus. But now all this has been overlooked and has vanished, as gold vessels are carried about, and costly robes, and teams of animals driven along, and masks. So the necessary and useful parts of wealth have been buried under useless and superfluous things. And most of us suffer the fate of Telemachus: for he too, out of inexperience -- or rather out of poor taste -- on seeing Nestor's house furnished with couches
tables, cloaks, coverlets, sweet wine—he did not call the man blessed who had a good supply of necessary or even useful things. But when at Menelaus's house he beheld ivory and gold and amber, he was amazed and said, "Such, surely, is the hall of Olympian Zeus within—how many things, how countless! Awe holds me as I look." Socrates, however, or Diogenes, would have said, "How many wretched things, how useless and vain! Laughter holds me as I look. What are you saying, you fool, who ought to have taken away your wife's purple and her jewelry, so that she might stop indulging herself and craving foreign luxuries, yet instead you deck out your house again like a theater or a stage for those who enter it? Such is the happiness that wealth affords—one that needs spectators and witnesses, before all of whom it must be paraded, or else it is nothing."
But this is not at all like moderation, like philosophy, like knowing what one ought to know about the gods. Even if it escapes the notice of all mankind, it has its own private radiance and a great light within the soul, and it creates a joy that dwells together with the soul itself as it lays hold of the good—whether anyone knows it or it goes unnoticed by both gods and all mankind alike. Such is virtue, such is truth, and such is the beauty of the mathematical sciences, geometry and astronomy, compared to which all these trappings and necklaces of wealth, and its girlish spectacles, deserve to be set aside.
For is not wealth truly blind and lightless, when no one is watching or looking on? For the rich man, when he dines alone with his wife or with his intimates, gives no trouble either to his golden tables or to his golden cups, but makes use of whatever comes to hand, and his wife is present without gold, without purple, plain and simple. But whenever a dinner party—that is, a procession and a theatrical show—is got up, and a rich man's drama is staged, then "out of the ships he brought forth cauldrons and tripods"; they cling to their lamps and bustle about the cups, they change the wine-pourers, they change everyone's clothes, they set everything in motion—gold, silver, jeweled ware—simply proclaiming their wealth to all. But moderation, even when a man dines alone, is needed just as much, and so is justice.

======== Moralia: De Curiositate ========

A house that is stifling, or dark, or cold in winter, or unhealthy, is perhaps best simply abandoned. But if one is fond of the place out of long habit, it is possible, by moving the lamp-stands, changing the position of the staircase, opening some doors and closing others, to make it brighter, better ventilated, and healthier. And some people, by making such changes, have benefited whole cities, just as my own homeland, which was inclined toward the west wind and received the sun as it bore down in the afternoon from Parnassus toward the east, is said to have been turned by Chaeron. And the natural philosopher Empedocles, by blocking up a certain mountain cleft that let a heavy and unhealthy south wind blow down over the plains, was thought to have shut a plague out of the country. Since, then, there are certain diseased and harmful passions that bring winter and darkness upon the soul, the best course is to drive these out and raze them
to the ground, giving ourselves clear sky and light and a pure breeze; but if that cannot be done, then at least to change and rearrange them somehow, turning them around or redirecting them. Take curiosity itself, to begin with: it is a kind of eager desire to learn about other people's misfortunes, a disease that seems free neither of envy nor of malice. Why, most spiteful of men, do you look so sharply at another's trouble while overlooking your own? Redirect your curiosity -- turn it from what lies outside back within, if
you enjoy occupying yourself with the study of misfortunes; you have plenty of material to work with at home: "as much water as flows past Halizon, or leaves grow round an oak," so great a multitude of faults will you find in your own life, and of passions in your soul, and of oversights in your duties. For just as Xenophon says that good household managers have a special place for the vessels used in sacrifice, a special spot for those used at dinner, and keep the farming tools elsewhere,
and the implements of war separate -- so too in your case, some evils lie stored up from envy, others from jealousy, others from cowardice, others from pettiness. Go over these, review these; block up the windows that look onto your neighbors' houses and stop up the pathways of your curiosity, and open others instead, leading into your own men's quarters, into the women's quarters, into the living areas of your household
servants. There this inquisitiveness and meddling spirit will find occupations that are not useless or malicious but useful and salutary, as each person asks himself: where did I go wrong? What have I done? What duty of mine has been left unfulfilled? But as it is, just as they say the Lamia in the fable sleeps blind at home, keeping her eyes stored away in a jar, and only puts them in and sees when she goes out --
so each of us fixes meddlesomeness, like an eye, outward upon others through our malice, while through ignorance we constantly stumble over our own faults and failings, since we provide no sight, no light, to see them by. That is why the busybody is actually more useful to his enemies: he examines and exposes and points out to them what they must guard against and correct,
while he overlooks most of what is at home because of his excitement over what lies outside. Odysseus, for his part, would not consent to speak even with his own mother until he had first learned from the seer why he had come to Hades; and once he had learned that, he turned to her, and questioned the other women too -- who was Tyro, and who was fair Chloris, and why
Epicaste "fastened a steep noose from the lofty roof-beam." We, on the other hand, put our own affairs in a state of great carelessness and ignorance, and while neglecting them we trace other people's family trees -- that our neighbor's grandfather was a Syrian, and his grandmother a Thracian; that so-and-so owes three talents and has not paid the interest. We also inquire into such things as where so-and-so's
wife came back from, and what so-and-so and so-and-so were whispering to each other in the corner. Socrates, by contrast, went about puzzling over what teaching Pythagoras used to persuade people; and Aristippus, meeting Ischomachus at Olympia, asked what it was in Socrates's conversation that so affected the Athenians; and having received a few small seeds and samples of his words, he was so moved that his body wasted away and he became
utterly pale and thin, until at last he sailed to Athens, thirsty and burning, and drank from the spring itself, and came to know the man and his words and his philosophy, whose end was to recognize one's own faults and be rid of them. But some people cannot bear to look upon their own life as the most joyless of spectacles, nor to bend the light of reason back upon themselves and turn it around;
instead, the soul, full of every kind of evil and shuddering and fearful of what is within, leaps out the door and wanders about among the affairs of others, feeding and fattening its own malice. For just as a hen, though plenty of food is set beside it in the house, often burrows into a corner and scratches about there, "where somewhere in the dung a single barleycorn may show," so busybodies pass over discussions and accounts that lie open before them,
and things that no one forbids anyone to ask about and is not annoyed at being asked, and instead pick out the hidden, unseen troubles of every household. And yet there is a certain charm in what the Egyptian said to the man who asked him what he was carrying covered up: "It is covered up for that very reason." And you too -- why do you pry into what is being kept hidden? If it were not something bad, it would not be hidden. And yet it is not considered proper to enter another man's house without
first knocking on the door -- nowadays there are doorkeepers, but in the old days the knocker rapping against the door gave notice, so that the intruder would not catch the mistress of the house exposed, or the unmarried daughter, or a servant being punished, or the maids screaming. But the busybody slips in precisely upon such moments, and even in a well-ordered and respectable household he would not gladly become a spectator even if invited; whereas the very things
for which a key and bolt and outer door exist, these he uncovers and carries out into the open for others to see. And yet, as Ariston says, "of all the winds we find most disagreeable those that blow open our cloaks"; but the busybody strips bare not merely the garments and tunics of his neighbors but their very walls, throws open their doors, and, like a breeze, slips "through a tender-skinned maiden's" chamber
and steals through, prying into and informing on Bacchic revels and dances and all-night festivals. And just as with the comic Cleon, whose hands were said to be in Aetolia while his mind was in Clopidae, so the busybody's mind is at once in the houses of the rich, in the little rooms of the poor, in the courts of kings, in the bedchambers of newlyweds -- he seeks out everything, the affairs of foreigners, the affairs of rulers; and it is not without danger that he seeks these things.
Rather, just as if someone, out of curiosity to know the taste of aconite, should sample it, he will destroy the very sense that was about to perceive it before it can perceive anything -- so those who search out the troubles of their betters use themselves up before they gain the knowledge. Indeed, those who overlook the sun's freely given light, poured out abundantly on everyone, and instead recklessly stare down at the disc itself and force their way in, straining to split the light apart, go blind for their daring.
That is why the comic poet Philippides answered well when King Lysimachus once said to him, "Which of my possessions shall I share with you?" "Only, O king," he said, "not your secrets." For the most pleasant and beautiful things about kings lie out in the open -- their banquets, their riches, their public festivals, their acts of favor; but if there is some secret matter, do not approach it, do not stir it up. A king's joy at his good fortune is not hidden, nor is
his laughter at play, nor the display of his kindness and favor; what is frightening is what is kept hidden -- sullen, unsmiling, hard to approach: a treasury of some festering anger, or a scheme for some heavy-hearted vengeance, or a wife's jealousy, or some suspicion toward a son, or distrust toward a friend. Flee this dark and gathering cloud: it will not escape your notice thundering and flashing, once what is now hidden bursts forth. What, then, is
the escape? A turning away, as has been said, and a diversion of one's curiosity, best of all by directing the soul toward better and more pleasant things. Busy yourself with the things in heaven, the things on earth, the things in the air, the things in the sea. Whether by nature you are a lover of small sights or great, if it is great things, busy yourself with where the sun goes down and whence it rises again; inquire into the changes in the moon, as if in a human being,
where it has spent so much of its light, and from where it acquires it again, how it first comes from invisibility, growing new faces and filling out, and then, just when it appears at its fairest, again drains away and comes to nothing. These too are secrets of nature, yet nature is not annoyed at those who examine them. But have you given up on the great things? Busy yourself with the smaller ones: how it is that some plants are always in leaf and
green and take pride at every season in displaying their own wealth, while others are at one time like these, and at another, like a man who has managed his affairs badly and squandered his whole fortune at once, are left bare and impoverished; and why some yield elongated fruits, others angular ones, others round and rounded ones. Perhaps, though, you will not trouble yourself over these things, because there is no evil in them for you to find.
But if this meddlesome instinct must, like some creeping thing feeding among deadly plants, always graze and linger among base things, then let us lead it instead to history and set before it an abundance and excess of evils: for there are to be found the downfalls of men and the trampling underfoot of lives; the corruption of women, the plots of servants, the slanders of friends, the preparation of poisons, envies, jealousies, the shipwrecks of households, the falls of rulers. Glut yourself on these and take your pleasure, troubling
no one among your companions and grieving no one. But it seems that meddlesome curiosity does not delight in stale misfortunes but in warm, fresh ones, and it enjoys watching new tragedies gladly, while it has little enthusiasm for keeping company with comic and more cheerful matters. That is why, when someone is describing a wedding, or a sacrifice, or a procession, the busybody is a careless and lazy listener, and claims to have already heard most of it, and urges
the narrator to cut it short and move on; but if someone sitting nearby tells of the seduction of a maiden, or a woman's adultery, or preparations for a lawsuit, or a quarrel between brothers, he neither dozes nor is he otherwise occupied, but "seeks out other words as well, and casts them to his ears." And the line "alas, how much more the misfortune of the fortunate is carried to mortal ears" is truly spoken of busybodies. For just
as cupping-glasses draw out the worst matter from the flesh, so the ears of busybodies draw in the basest reports; or rather, just as cities have certain grim, ill-omened gates through which they lead out those condemned to death and cast out refuse and purifications, and through which nothing sacred or holy ever enters or leaves, so too the
ears of busybodies admit nothing decent or fine, but murderous tales pass through and wear a groove there, carrying with them stories fit only for expiation and defilement: "always in my halls has fallen the wailing of mourners, and no song." This is the Muse of busybodies, their one melody, the sweetest thing they can hear. For meddlesome curiosity is a passion for learning about hidden and secret things, and no one who possesses something good keeps it hidden -- indeed
people even pretend to possess good things they do not have. So the busybody, reaching after the discovery of evils, is gripped by a kindred passion, malicious delight -- the brother of envy and spite. For envy is pain at another's good fortune, while malicious delight is pleasure at another's misfortune; both arise from a savage and bestial passion, malice. And the uncovering of one's troubles is so painful to everyone that many
would rather die than reveal certain private ailments to physicians. Consider: if Herophilus, or Erasistratus, or even Asclepius himself, when he was still a man, carrying his drugs and instruments, were to go from house to house asking whether anyone had a fistula near the anus, or a woman a cancer in the womb -- even though the meddling of that art is beneficial -- everyone,
I think, would drive such a man away, because, without waiting to be needed, he comes uninvited to examine other people's ailments. But busybodies seek out these very things, and worse, not in order to treat them but merely to expose them; and for this they are justly hated. Indeed, we resent and are annoyed at tax collectors not when they inspect goods that are openly brought in, but when they go rummaging for hidden items among other people's
baggage and cargo -- even though the law grants them the right to do this, and they suffer loss if they fail to do it. But busybodies destroy and squander their own affairs by occupying themselves with those of others, and they rarely go out to their farms, unable to bear the quiet and silence of solitude; and if they do happen to visit after a long while, they look at their neighbors' vines rather than their own,
and ask how many of the neighbor's oxen have died, or how much of his wine has turned to vinegar; and having quickly had their fill of such news, they hurry off again. The true farmer does not even gladly receive news that comes to him unbidden from the city, saying, "Well then, while I am digging he will tell me the reasons for the divorce -- this is what the wretch, in his meddling, is now going about asking." But busybodies, fleeing the countryside as something
stale and cold and lacking drama, push their way into the marketplace and the harbors: "Anything new?" "Weren't you in the market this morning?" "Well then? Do you suppose the city has been made over in the space of three hours?" And yet, if someone does have some such news to tell, they get down from their horse, greet him warmly, kiss him, and stand there
listening. But if someone they meet says there is nothing new, they respond as though offended, "What do you mean? Weren't you in the marketplace? Didn't you pass by the general's headquarters? Haven't you met the men who have arrived from Italy?" That is why the magistrates of the Locrians did well when, on a man returning from abroad asking, "Is there anything new?", they fined him. For just as cooks pray for a good crop of livestock, and
fishermen for a good catch of fish, so busybodies pray for a crop of misfortunes and a multitude of troubles and novelties and changes, so that they may always have something to hunt and pick over. The lawgiver of Thurii also did well: he forbade the comic mockery of citizens except for adulterers and busybodies. For adultery seems to be a kind of meddlesomeness directed at another's pleasure, a search and investigation into what is guarded and
hidden from most people; and meddlesomeness itself is a kind of dissolution and corruption and stripping bare of secrets. Now it happens that excessive talkativeness follows from excessive learning: that is why Pythagoras prescribed for the young a five-year silence, which he called "holding one's tongue." And it necessarily follows that meddlesomeness is accompanied by slander; for people gladly repeat what they gladly hear, and what they eagerly gather from others they pass on to still others with delight
and repeat it to others with delight. This is why, along with their other troubles, their disease also stands in the way of their own desire; for everyone is on guard against them and hides things from them, and people are unwilling either to do anything while a busybody is watching or to say anything while he is listening. Instead they postpone their deliberations and put off examining matters until such a person is out of the way; and if a busybody appears while some secret talk or serious business is being transacted, they snatch it out of the way and hide it, just as they would snatch a dainty from a passing weasel. The result is that things which are open and speakable to everyone else become, for busybodies alone, unspeakable and unseen.
This is why the busybody is deprived of everyone's trust: we entrust letters, documents, and seals to servants and even to strangers sooner than to friends and relatives who are busybodies. That famous Bellerophon did not even open the letter he carried against himself, but held back from the king's letter just as he held back from the king's wife, out of the same self-restraint. For meddling is a form of intemperance, just as adultery is, and along with the intemperance there is also a terrible folly and senselessness in it: to pass by so many women who are common and available to the public, and to force one's way toward the woman who is kept locked up and expensive — even if, as often happens, she turns out to be plain as well — is the height of madness and derangement.
Busybodies do the very same thing: passing by many fine sights and things worth hearing, and schools and lecture-halls, they pry open other people's little letters and press their ears to their neighbors' walls, and whisper together with household slaves and serving-girls — often not even without danger, but always without honor. For this reason it is especially useful, as a deterrent, for busybodies to recall what they have already learned in this way.
For if, just as Simonides used to say that whenever he opened his money-chests after a time he always found the one full of fees but the one for favors always empty, so too if a person opens the storehouse of his meddling after a time and inspects it, finding it full of much that is useless, vain, and joyless, the whole business might well strike him as unpleasant, appearing altogether disagreeable and full of nonsense.
Consider this: if someone went through the writings of the ancients picking out the worst passages in them, and had a book compiled — say, of headless lines of Homer, solecisms from the tragedians, and the things Archilochus said improperly and licentiously about women, making a spectacle of himself — would he not deserve the tragic curse: "May you perish, you who pick out the misfortunes of mortals"?
And even without the curse, such a man's treasury of other people's faults is unseemly and useless, like the city which Philip founded out of the worst and most disreputable people and named Wickedtown. So too the busybodies, gathering and collecting not lines of poetry or verses but the failures, mistakes, and solecisms of people's lives, carry about with them, as their own memory-store, the most tasteless and joyless archive of evils there is.
Just as in Rome some people, paying no regard whatsoever to paintings and statues, or, by Zeus, to the beauty of slaves and women for sale, hang about the market of monstrosities, examining the limbless, the crab-armed, the three-eyed, and the ostrich-headed, seeking out any freakish or misshapen creature that has come into being — yet if one kept exposing them continually to such sights, the thing would soon produce in them satiety and nausea — so too those who go prying into other people's disgraces in life, the shames of families, certain domestic disorders and faults in other households, should remind themselves of the first examples, that they brought no pleasure or benefit at all.
The greatest help, however, toward turning aside this affliction is habituation, if we begin far in advance and train and teach ourselves toward this self-control. For indeed the growth of the disease comes about through habit, as it advances little by little; and how this happens we shall learn as we discuss the training together.
Let us begin, then, from the smallest and most trivial things. What difficulty is there, on the roads, in not reading the inscriptions on tombs, or what hardship is there, on our walks, in letting our eyes run past the graffiti on the walls, telling ourselves that nothing useful or pleasant has been written there — just "So-and-so remembered so-and-so for a good deed," or "This man is the best of friends," and much other nonsense of that kind? These things, when read, seem to do no harm, but they secretly do harm by implanting in us the practice of seeking out what does not concern us.
And just as hunters do not allow their hound-puppies to turn aside and chase every scent, but pull them back and check them with the leash, keeping their sense of smell clean and undiluted for its proper work, so that it may fasten more vigorously upon the tracks when it searches out with its nostrils the footprints of the wild creatures' limbs — so we must strip away and pull back the busybody's excursions and wanderings toward every sight and every sound,
keeping them and turning them instead toward useful things. For just as eagles and lions, when walking, draw their claws inward so as not to wear down their edge and sharpness, so we should reckon that meddlesomeness is a kind of edge or temper belonging to the love of learning, and not use it up on useless things nor blunt it.
Second, then, let us accustom ourselves, when passing another person's door, not to look inside nor to seize with our eyes, as if with a hand, at the things within through prying curiosity, but let us keep ready at hand the saying of Xenocrates, who said there was no difference between setting one's feet or one's eyes inside another man's house: for it is neither just nor honorable, nor even, for that matter, a pleasant sight. "Ugly indeed are the things within to see, stranger": for most such things in houses are little furnishings lying about and serving-girls sitting idle, nothing serious or delightful.
This sidelong glance and oblique glance, which twists the soul along with it, is shameful, and the habit is corrupt. When Diogenes saw the Olympic victor Dioxippus riding in on his chariot, and a man who could not tear his eyes away from a beautiful woman watching the procession, but kept peeking and turning around, he said, "Look, the athlete is being pinned by the neck by a mere slip of a girl."
You would see busybodies likewise pinned by the neck and dragged around by every sight alike, whenever habit and practice have made it so that their gaze is scattered in every direction. What is needed, I think, is that our perception should not roam abroad unrestrained like an unruly maidservant, but rather, sent out by the soul, should meet quickly with its object, report back, and then again be composed and stay within, obedient to reason and attentive to it.
As it is, what happens is what Sophocles describes: "then the mouthless colts of an Aenian man carry him off" — just as we were saying, perceptions that have not received proper training or discipline run out ahead and are swept along, often casting the mind down into things it ought not. Hence that story is false, that Democritus deliberately extinguished his eyesight by fixing his gaze on a heated mirror and receiving its reflection,
so that his sight might not so often call his mind outward and cause disturbance, but might let it stay at home within and occupy itself with intelligible things, like windows onto the street that have been sealed shut. This, however, is truer than anything: that those who make the most use of their minds set their senses in motion the least. This is also why they founded their sanctuaries of the Muses very far from cities, and called night "the kindly one," considering quiet and freedom from distraction of great importance
for the discovery and consideration of the things they were investigating. Nor, indeed, is it difficult or hard, when people are reviling one another and speaking ill of each other in the marketplace, not to go up to them; or, when a crowd has gathered around some incident, to remain seated where you are; and if you cannot restrain yourself, to get up and leave. For by mixing yourself in with people who are meddling in something, you will gain no benefit at all, but you will profit greatly
by forcibly turning your meddlesomeness away and checking it, accustoming it to obey reason. From this point, intensifying the training further, it is right also to pass by a theater when it is enjoying a successful performance, and to turn away friends who invite you to watch some dancer or comic actor, and not to turn around when a shout goes up in the stadium or at the horse-races. For just as Socrates used to advise guarding against those foods which persuade one to eat without being hungry,
and those drinks which persuade one to drink without being thirsty, so too we must guard against and avoid those sights and sounds which overpower and draw in people who have no need of them. Cyrus did not wish to see Panthea; and when Araspas told him that the woman's beauty was worth seeing, he said, "That is exactly why I must keep away from her all the more; for if,
persuaded by you, I were to go to her, she might in turn persuade me to go again, even when I had no time, to gaze at her and sit beside her, letting go of many things worthy of my attention." Likewise Alexander did not come into the presence of Darius's wife, who was said to be the most beautiful of women; instead, though he visited her mother, who was elderly, he did not bring himself to see the young and beautiful daughter. But we,
leaning our heads into women's litters and hanging out of windows, think we are doing nothing wrong, even as we make our meddlesomeness slippery and prone to flow into everything. There is, then, also a kind of training toward justice: to forgo, on occasion, some rightful gain, so that you may accustom yourself to be far removed from unjust ones; and likewise toward self-control: to abstain, on occasion, from one's own wife, so that you may never be stirred by another man's.
Applying this same habit to meddlesomeness, try also, at times, to overhear some of your own household affairs without paying attention, and to overlook them; and if someone wants to report to you something concerning your own house, put it off; and reject reports that seem to have been made about you. Indeed, it was meddlesome curiosity that wrapped Oedipus in the greatest evils: for in seeking to learn about himself, on the ground that he was not a Corinthian but a foreigner, he met Laius,
and having killed him, and having taken his mother as wife along with the kingship, and thinking himself blessed, he went seeking himself once again. And though his wife tried to stop him, he pressed the old man who knew the truth all the harder, bringing every kind of compulsion to bear. Finally, when the matter was already carrying him around toward his suspicion, and the old man cried out, "Alas, I am right at the terrible thing I must tell," still, inflamed by his passion
and writhing, he answered, "And I at hearing it; but still it must be heard." So bittersweet and uncontrollable is the itch of meddlesomeness, like a sore that draws its own blood when scratched. But the man who is free of this disease, and gentle by nature, upon learning of some disagreeable thing he had not known, might well say, "O lady Forgetfulness of ills, how wise you are!" For this reason we must accustom ourselves in these matters too: when a letter is delivered,
not to untie it quickly or in haste, the way most people do, gnawing through the cords with their teeth if their hands are too slow; when a messenger arrives from somewhere, not to run up to him or jump to our feet; when a friend says, "I have some news to tell you," to answer, "Rather, if you have anything useful or beneficial." Once, when I was lecturing in Rome, the famous Rusticus, whom Domitian later put to death out of envy of his reputation, was listening,
and a soldier came through the middle of the room and handed him a letter from Caesar. When silence fell and I paused so that he might read the letter, he refused, and did not open it until I had finished my discourse and the audience had dispersed — at which everyone marveled at the man's gravity.
But when someone, by feeding his meddlesomeness on things that are permitted, makes it strong and violent, he is no longer easily able to master it when it is carried by habit toward forbidden things; instead, such people pry open the letters of friends, insert themselves into private councils, become spectators of sacred rites which it is not lawful to see, tread on forbidden ground, and search out the affairs and words of kings.
It is worth knowing that the class of people called "ears" and informers is the most oppressive of all. The younger Darius was the first to keep listeners-in, because he distrusted himself and suspected and feared everyone; and the Dionysii mixed informers in among the Syracusans, whence, when the political change came, the Syracusans seized these men first of all and beat them to death with clubs.
For indeed the class of sycophants belongs to the same tribe and hearth as the busybodies. But sycophants only investigate whether someone has planned or committed some wrong, whereas busybodies also bring into the open even the unwilled misfortunes of their neighbors, exposing them.
It is said, too, that the word "alitērios" (accursed one) was first applied out of meddlesome curiosity: for when, as it seems, a severe famine had struck the Athenians, and those who had grain did not bring it out into the open but ground it secretly at night in their houses, people went around listening for the sound of the mills, and thereafter such people were called "alitērioi" (grinders). Likewise the name "sycophant" is said to have come about in a similar way:
when it was forbidden to export figs, those who informed on and exposed the people smuggling them out were called "sycophants" (fig-showers). And it is not useless to keep this in mind as well: that busybodies should be ashamed of their kinship and affinity, in their pursuit, with the most hated and most despised of men.

======== Moralia: De Defectu Oraculorum ========

Some say, Terentius Priscus, that two eagles—or, as others tell it, two swans—flying from the outer limits of the earth toward the center, met each other at Pytho, at the place called the navel of the earth; and that later Epimenides of Phaestus, testing the myth before the god and receiving an obscure and ambiguous oracle, reported it thus: "For there was no navel of the earth, nor of the sea; and if there is one, it is manifest to the gods but invisible to mortals." The god, then, fittingly punished that man for trying to test, by touch, as it were, an old myth like a painted image.
Shortly before the Pythian games held under Callistratus, two holy men happened to come together at Delphi from opposite ends of the inhabited world: Demetrius the grammarian, on his way home from Britain to Tarsus, and Cleombrotus of Lacedaemon, who had wandered widely in Egypt and around the Trogodyte country, and had sailed far up the Red Sea—not for trade, but as a man fond of seeing and learning things. He had a sufficient fortune, and did not think it worth much to have more than sufficient, so he devoted his leisure to such pursuits, and was gathering material for a work he called theology, as though it were the raw material of philosophy brought to its completion.
Having recently been to the shrine of Ammon, he showed that he was not greatly impressed by most things there, but he related, as worthy of serious attention, an account told by the priests concerning the inextinguishable lamp: that it consumed less oil each year, and that the priests took this as proof of an irregularity in the length of years, each successive year being shorter in time than the one before—for it stood to reason that in a shorter time the amount consumed would be less. Those present were amazed, and Demetrius said it was ridiculous to hunt after such great conclusions from such small facts—not, in Alcaeus's phrase, judging "the lion from its claw," but from a wick and a lamp overturning virtually the whole heavens and utterly destroying the science of mathematics.
Cleombrotus replied, "None of this will trouble the men in question; they will not yield in precision to the mathematicians. Indeed, it is more likely that time would elude the mathematicians in movements and cycles so vastly extended than that these priests, who continually attend to the measure of the oil because of the strangeness of the phenomenon, would be deceived by paying such close attention to it. To deny, Demetrius, that small signs can indicate great things is an obstacle to many arts. For this would mean depriving many proofs, and many predictions, of their validity. And yet you yourselves demonstrate no small thing when, having come across Homer naming a razor, you conclude that heroes shaved their bodies with a razor; or that they lent money at interest, because he says somewhere that a debt was owed, "not new nor small," taking "owed" to indicate "increased." Again, when he calls the night "swift," you eagerly seize upon the word and claim this very thing shows that he understood the earth's shadow to be conical, being cast by a spherical body.
As for medicine, does it not foretell a plague-ridden summer by an abundance of spiders' webs, and by fig leaves in spring when they become like a crow's foot? Who among those who insist that small signs cannot indicate great things will allow this? And who will tolerate the sun's magnitude being measured against a jug and a pint of water, or that the little wedge here, which forms an acute angle inclined to the plane, is said to be the measure of the elevation—that is, how far the ever-visible pole is raised above the horizon? For these were the things one could hear from the prophets there. So we should say something different to them, if we wish to keep the customary order fixed for the sun according to ancestral tradition."
At this point Ammonius the philosopher, who was present, exclaimed, "One should say this not only of the sun, but of the whole heaven. For its passage from solstice to solstice must necessarily contract, and not remain as great a portion of the horizon as the mathematicians say, but grow smaller, since the northern points are always drawing closer together with the southern; and our summer becomes shorter and the climate colder, as the sun bends inward and touches larger parallel circles at the tropical points. Moreover, the sundials at Syene no longer appear shadowless around the summer solstice, and many of the fixed stars have sunk below the horizon, while some now touch and merge with one another, the space between them having disappeared. And if, on the other hand, they should claim that, all else being equal, the sun alone is irregular in its movements, they will not be able to state a single cause for its acceleration out of so many phenomena, and they will throw the majority of observed facts into confusion—and this holds especially with respect to the moon, so that there is no need for measures of oil to establish the discrepancy. For the eclipses will prove it, both when the sun encroaches on the moon more often, and when the moon encroaches on the earth's shadow; the rest is clear, and there is no need to unwind further the pretentiousness of this argument."
"But indeed," said Cleombrotus, "I myself saw the measurement: for they showed many instances, and the yearly measure fell short of the oldest ones by no small amount." Ammonius took this up again and said, "Then has it escaped the notice of other people, among whom undying fires are tended and preserved for a span of years that is, so to speak, unlimited? But even if one were to suppose that what is said is true, is it not better to attribute the cause to certain coldnesses and dampnesses of the air, under whose influence the fire, being weakened, presumably cannot master much fuel nor need much nourishment—or, conversely, to dryness and heat? For I have already heard some people say, concerning fire, that in winter it burns better, being drawn together and condensed by the cold through its own strength, but in droughts it grows weak and becomes loose and slack, and even if it burns in sunlight it works worse, taking hold of its fuel feebly and consuming it more slowly. And one might especially trace the cause back to the oil itself: for it is not unreasonable that it was once unnourishing and watery, being produced from a young plant, but later, as it ripened in mature trees and was composed from an equal quantity, it became stronger and more nourishing. This is a better explanation, if we must salvage the story told by the priests of Ammon, even though the hypothesis is strange and out of the ordinary."
When Ammonius had finished, I said, "Rather, Cleombrotus, tell us about the oracle; for great was the ancient reputation of the divinity there, but now it seems to be fading." Cleombrotus fell silent and looked down, and Demetrius said, "There is no need to inquire about matters there and puzzle over the dimming of the oracles here, when we see the eclipse of virtually all of them except one or two. Rather we should consider the reason why they have grown so weak. For why should I mention the rest, when Boeotia, which in former times was rich in oracular voices because of its shrines, has now utterly failed, like dried-up streams, and a great drought of divination has overtaken the land? Nowhere else now, except around Lebadeia, does Boeotia offer those in need a source of prophecy to draw upon; of the rest, some have fallen into silence, others into complete desolation.
"And yet, at the time of the Persian Wars it was no less renowned than the oracle of Amphiaraus, and Mys, it seems, tested both. The prophet of the oracle of Ptous, using the Aeolic tongue, delivered the oracle in the language of the barbarians, before he had ever done so previously, so that none of the sacred officials present understood him—showing that it is not possible, nor granted, for the barbarians to receive any share of divine inspiration by taking on a Greek voice to serve what is commanded. And the slave sent to the oracle of Amphiaraus dreamed that a servant of the god appeared to him, and first tried to drive him away by voice, since the god would not admit him, then pushed him back with his hands; and when he persisted, the servant took up a large stone and struck him on the head. This was, as it were, an answering sign of what was to come: for Mardonius was defeated—he who led the Greeks not as king but as steward and servant of the king—and he fell, struck by a stone, just as the Lydian dreamed he had been struck.
"At that time the oracle at Tegyra was also at its height, where they say the god himself was born, and where two streams flow nearby, one called Phoenix and the other Elaea, as some still say to this day. In the Persian Wars, when Echecrates was prophesying, the god foretold victory and mastery in war for the Greeks; and in the Peloponnesian War, they say, when the Delians were driven from their island, an oracle came from Delphi instructing them to find the place where Apollo was born and to perform certain sacrifices there. When they wondered and were at a loss, since they did not think the god had been born among them but elsewhere, the Pythia gave a further response, that a crow would show them the place. So as they were leaving, they came to Chaeronea, and there they heard the innkeeper speaking to some strangers on their way to Tegyra about the oracle. And when the strangers, as they were departing, greeted and addressed the woman by her name—which happened to be Corone, meaning "Crow"—they understood the oracle, and after sacrificing at Tegyra they obtained the return home they sought within a short time.
"There have been more recent manifestations at these oracles as well, but now they have failed, so that it is worth inquiring of Apollo the Pythian himself the cause of the change." By now, as we were walking from the temple, we had come to the doors of the clubhouse of the Cnidians. Going inside, we saw the friends to whom we were going seated and waiting for us; the rest of the place was quiet because of the hour, people being anointed or watching the athletes. Demetrius, smiling, said, ""Shall I speak falsehood, or the truth?"" You seem to me to have no worthy problem in hand: for I see you sitting very much at ease, your faces relaxed."
Heracleon of Megara took this up and said, "We are not investigating whether the verb ballō loses its lambda in the future tense, nor from what simple words the comparative, the worse, the better, the worst, and the best are formed. These questions, and others like them, perhaps do knit the brow and set the face; but as for the rest, one may keep one's eyebrows in their proper place and still philosophize and inquire, without looking fierce or being harsh toward those present." "Then receive us," said Demetrius, "and our discussion along with us—one that has fallen to us as fitting for this place, and, because of the god, a concern belonging to everyone. See that you do not knit your brows in the attempt."
So we mingled together and sat down among them, and Demetrius put the topic forward for discussion. At once Didymus the Cynic, surnamed Planetiades, leapt up, and striking the ground two or three times with his staff, cried out, "Alas, alas, what a hard matter to judge and requiring much inquiry you have brought us! For it is a marvel, if with so much wickedness poured out upon it, not only, as Hesiod foretold, have Shame and Retribution abandoned human life, but even the providence of the gods has packed up and departed from the oracles everywhere. On the contrary, I put forward for you to consider this problem instead: why is it that Heracles, or some other god, has not by now snatched away the tripod, filled as it is with shameful and godless questions, which people put to the god—some testing him as though he were a sophist, others inquiring about treasures, inheritances, or unlawful marriages—so that Pythagoras stands utterly refuted for saying that men become their best selves when they approach the gods; for in this way, what would properly be denied and hidden as diseases and afflictions of the soul in the presence of an older man, these things people bring naked and exposed before the god."
While he still wished to speak, Heracleon took hold of his cloak, and I, being about as close a friend to him as anyone, said, "Stop, dear Planetiades, provoking the god: for he is even-tempered and gentle, and has been judged by mortals to be the most gracious of all, as Pindar says. And whether he is the sun, or lord of the sun and father of it and beyond all that is visible, it is not likely that he would deem the men of today unworthy of his voice, he who is the cause of their birth, nourishment, existence, and thought—nor that Providence, like a kind and good mother who does everything for us and watches over us, would alone bear a grudge in the matter of divination, and take this away after having given it from the beginning—as if there were not, back then too, when oracles were established in many places throughout the inhabited world, just as many, or more, wicked men among a greater number of people. Come now, sit back down, and having made a Pythian truce with the vice which you are always accustomed to chastise in your speeches, seek along with us some other cause for this so-called eclipse of the oracles. And keep the god gracious and free from wrath."
By saying this I accomplished only this much: that Planetiades left through the doors in silence. When there had been quiet for a little while, Ammonius addressed me and said, "See what we are doing, Lamprias, and pay close attention to the argument, so that we do not make the god blameless of nothing. For whoever supposes that the cessation of oracles has come about through some other cause and not by the will of the god gives grounds for suspecting that they neither come to be nor exist because of the god at all, but are thought to occur in some other way. For there is no other power greater or stronger, such that it could destroy and abolish divination, which is the work of a god.
"Now Planetiades' argument does not please me, both for other reasons and for the inconsistency it creates concerning the god—turning away from and disdaining wickedness on the one hand, but on the other admitting it again, like some king or tyrant who bars the wicked at one door but receives and does business with them through another. But as for the argument that a work fitting for gods above all should be moderate, sufficient, in no way excessive, but in every way self-sufficient—if one were to begin from this premise, saying that of the general scarcity of population which the earlier factional strife and wars produced throughout virtually the whole inhabited world, Greece has had the greatest share, and could now scarcely furnish three thousand hoplites in total, as many as the single city of Megara once sent out to Plataea (so that it was nothing other than exposing the desolation of Greece for the god to have left so many oracles standing), I would grant him precisely this piece of ingenious argument. For what good would it do, if there were still an oracle at Tegyra as there once was, or at Ptous, where nowadays in broad daylight one might encounter a man pasturing his flock? For indeed this too, which is the oldest oracle there, 'in time...'
in time and famous in reputation—was for a long time deserted and unapproachable because of a fierce beast, a serpent, so the story goes: but people who say this get the causation backwards. It was not the desertion of the place that produced the beast; rather it was the desolation that drew the beast there, more than the beast that caused the desolation. But once the god had resolved that Greece should be strengthened with cities and this region grow populous with people, they used two prophetesses serving in rotation, with a third also appointed as reserve. Now, however, there is a single prophetess, and we do not blame the god for it, since she alone suffices for those who need her. So the god should not be blamed either: the prophetic power that exists and continues in operation is adequate for everyone, and sends away all who come to it having gotten what they need. Just as Agamemnon employed nine heralds and could scarcely control the assembly because of its size, whereas within a few days you will see in the theater a single voice reaching everyone—so too, in those days, the prophetic art used more voices for a greater number of people; whereas now, on the contrary, one would have had to be surprised at the god if he had allowed prophecy to go to waste, uselessly flowing away like water, or, like the rocks echoing back the voices of shepherds and flocks in a wilderness.”
When Ammonius had said this and I remained silent, Cleombrotus turned to me and said, “Have you now granted this—that these oracles both come into being and also perish, and that the god is thereby done away with?” “Not I,” I said. “For I do not say that any oracle or shrine perishes by the agency of the god; but just as he, while doing and providing many other things for us, allows nature—or rather matter, since it is a privation—often to escape and to dissolve what has come into being under the influence of the better cause, so too, I think, there are other eclipses and destructions of prophetic powers, since the god gives men many good things but nothing immortal; so that even the things of the gods die, though the gods themselves do not, as Sophocles says. Their essence and power, they say, must be sought in nature and in matter,
since it is proper that the god's rule be preserved. For it is silly and altogether childish to suppose that the god himself, like the ventriloquists once called Eurycles and now called Pythons, enters into the bodies of the prophets and speaks through them, using their mouths and voices as instruments. Whoever mixes the god into human needs in this way does not spare his dignity, nor does he preserve for him the majesty and greatness of his excellence.” And Cleombrotus said, “You are right; but it is difficult to grasp and define how far, and up to what point, providence should be used—some making the god responsible for nothing at all, others making him virtually the cause of everything, and both miss the mean and the fitting. Those are right, then, who say that Plato,
by discovering the substrate element underlying qualities as they come into being—what people now call matter and nature—freed philosophers from many great difficulties. But it seems to me that those who established the race of daemons midway between gods and men, and discovered a kind of bond that draws our community together and connects it, resolved more numerous and greater difficulties still—whether this doctrine belongs to the magi around Zoroaster, or is Thracian and derives from Orpheus, or Egyptian, or Phrygian, as we may conjecture from observing how much that is mortal and mournful is mixed into the rites and sacred acts performed in the initiations on both sides. Among the Greeks, Homer still appears to use both names indifferently, sometimes calling the gods daemons as well; but Hesiod was the first to set out clearly and distinctly four
kinds of rational beings: gods, then daemons, then heroes, and last of all, men; from which he seems to derive the transformation, with the golden race being separated off into many good daemons, and the race of demigods into heroes. Others hold that transformation occurs likewise in bodies and in souls: for just as water is seen to be generated from earth, air from water, and fire from air, as their substance is carried upward, so from men the better souls make their transformation into heroes, and from heroes into daemons. And from daemons a few, over a long time, purified through virtue, come to share fully in divinity; but with some it happens that they do not master themselves, but, giving way and putting on mortal bodies again, they hold a dim and faint life, like
a kind of exhalation.” “Hesiod, moreover, thinks that the deaths of daemons occur after certain cycles of time; for he speaks, in the person of the Naiad, hinting also at the length of time: 'Nine generations of men in their prime does the cawing crow live; the stag lives four crows' lives; the raven grows old through three stags' lives; while the phoenix lives nine ravens' lives; and we, the fair-tressed nymphs, daughters of Zeus who bears the aegis, live ten phoenixes' lives.' Those who do not understand the 'generation' correctly draw this span of time out to a great multitude of number. For the number works out so that the whole life of the daemons comes to nine thousand seven hundred and twenty years. This is less than most of the mathematicians reckon, though Pindar states no more, when he says that the nymphs live to a span
'reaching the term of an age equal to a tree's'—which is also why they call themselves Hamadryads.” While he was still speaking, Demetrius broke in and said, “How do you mean, Cleombrotus, that a 'generation' of a man is said to be a year? For the length of a human life is not what is meant by either 'in their prime' or 'growing old,' as some read it. But those who read 'in their prime' make the generation thirty years, following Heraclitus, the time in which the one who has begotten furnishes
one begotten from himself capable of begetting in turn. Others, however, who write 'growing old' rather than 'in their prime,' assign a hundred and eight years to the generation: for they say fifty-four years is the boundary of the midpoint of human life, being composed of the starting unit and the first two plane numbers, two square numbers, and two cube numbers, which Plato also took as numbers in his account of the generation of the soul. And the
whole account seems to have been put by Hesiod as a riddle pointing toward the conflagration, at the time when it is likely that the Nymphs, who inhabit the beautiful groves and the springs of rivers and the grassy meadows, will perish together with the moisture.” And Cleombrotus said, “I have heard this from many, and I see the Stoic conflagration creeping, as it were, over the verses of Heraclitus and Orpheus, and likewise taking hold of Hesiod's as well, and setting them ablaze too; but
I cannot accept the destruction of the cosmos being spoken of, nor the impossibilities and the things one is reminded of by those words, especially the ones about the crow and the stag being applied to such excessive lengths. A year does not, in itself, encompass both a beginning and an end together of 'all that the seasons bring and earth brings forth,' nor is a generation of men named without reason. And you yourselves surely agree that
Hesiod means by 'generation' a human lifetime, do you not?” Demetrius agreed. “But this too is clear,” said Cleombrotus, “that often the measure and the things measured are called by the same names—a cotyle, a choinix, an amphora, a medimnus. Just as, then, we call the unit, being the smallest measure of the whole number series, both a measure and the beginning-number, so too
he named the year, by which we first measure a man's life, 'generation,' using the same name as the thing measured. And indeed, the numbers those others construct have none of the notable and brilliant properties recognized in mathematics as such; whereas the number nine thousand seven hundred and twenty arises by composition from four fours taken successively from the unit and multiplied by four—for it comes to forty either way—and these,
multiplied five times as a triangular number, yield the number in question. But there is no need for us to quarrel with Demetrius over these matters. For whether the time in which a daemon's soul or a hero's life passes into a change be longer or shorter, ordered or disordered, none the less it will be shown, on the point he wishes to make, with the support of wise and ancient witnesses, that there are certain natures, as it were in the borderland between gods and
men, admitting of mortal experiences and necessary changes—beings whom it is right, following our fathers' custom, to consider and address as daemons and to revere.” “As an illustration for this account, Xenocrates, Plato's companion, used the case of triangles, likening the equilateral to the divine, the scalene to the mortal, and the isosceles to the daemonic; for the equal-sided is equal in every way, the scalene unequal in every way,
while the isosceles is equal in one respect and unequal in another—just as the nature of daemons possesses both the passibility of the mortal and the power of the god. Nature has set forth perceptible images and visible likenesses of this: of the gods, the sun and the stars; of mortals, meteors and comets and shooting flashes, as Euripides likened them when he said, 'and he, but now in the flush of flesh, like a fallen star, was quenched,
breathing out his spirit into the upper air.' And truly the moon is a mixed body and a genuine likeness of the daemonic kind, in that it harmonizes with the revolution proper to that class, undergoing visible wanings and waxings and changes—so that some have called it an earthy star, others an Olympian earth, and others still have assigned it as the portion of Hecate, both chthonic and celestial together. Just as, if one were to remove the air and draw away
what lies between earth and moon, one would, by creating an empty and disconnected region in the middle, dissolve the unity and community of the whole—so too those who do not leave room for the race of daemons make the affairs of gods and men unmixed and incommunicable with one another, doing away with the interpretive and ministering nature, as Plato called it, or else they force us to confound and disturb everything together
by bringing the god down into human passions and affairs and dragging him into our needs—just as the Thessalian women are said to drag down the moon. Now that reputation for wickedness among women found credence in the case of Aglaonice, daughter of Hegetor, an astronomer, as they say, who, at every eclipse of the moon, always pretended to be bewitching it and drawing it down. As for us, let us neither hear it said that any forms of divination are wholly without divine inspiration, or that rites
and orgiastic ceremonies are neglected by the gods, nor, on the other hand, let us suppose that the god himself busies himself among these things, being present and personally managing them; but assigning them, as is just, to ministers of the gods—as it were, servants and secretaries—let us hold that daemons are overseers of sacred rites and celebrants of divine mysteries, while others go about as avengers of arrogant and great acts of injustice. Those whom Hesiod, in a very solemn way, calls 'holy'
and 'givers of wealth,' and says they hold 'this privilege that belongs to kings,' since to do good is a kingly thing. For just as among men, so also among daemons there are differences of virtue, and of the passionate and irrational element: in some it remains a weak and dim residue, like a leftover, while in others it is present in great and hardly-quenchable measure—traces and tokens of which are preserved and kept scattered about in many places by sacrifices and rites and mythologies.” “Concerning
the mystic rites, then, in which one can obtain the greatest illuminations and glimpses of the truth about daemons, 'let my lips be sealed,' as Herodotus says; but as for festivals and sacrifices—like ill-omened and gloomy days, in which there are eatings of raw flesh and tearings-apart, fastings and beatings of breasts, and in many places again shameful language spoken near the sacred rites, and 'frenzies and shrieks with tossing of the neck in wild confusion'—these, I would say, are performed not for the sake of any of the gods, but as propitiations and appeasements meant to turn away evil daemons.
And it is not plausible that the human sacrifices once performed were demanded or accepted by the gods; nor would kings and generals have submitted to them in vain, giving up and consecrating and slaying their own children, unless they were thereby averting the wrath and heavy displeasure of harsh and intractable beings—avenging spirits, and, in some cases, appeasing frenzied and tyrannical
lusts on the part of beings who were neither able nor willing to have intercourse with bodies, or through bodies. But just as Heracles besieged Oechalia for the sake of a girl, so strong and violent daemons, demanding in return a human soul still bound up in a body, bring plagues upon cities and barrenness upon the land, and stir up wars and civil strife, until they obtain and gain what they desire. Some, on the other hand, have had the opposite experience—as I learned during a long stay in Crete,
where I came to know of a strange festival being celebrated, in which they display a headless image of a man and say that this was Molus, the father of Meriones, who, having forced himself upon a nymph, was found to be headless.” “And indeed, as for all the things told and sung of in myths and hymns—abductions, wanderings, concealments and flights and periods of servitude on the part of gods—these are not sufferings and misfortunes of gods, remembered because of their virtue and power, but of daemons, and neither what
Aeschylus said of Apollo, 'pure god, exiled from heaven,' nor what Sophocles' Admetus says, 'my own cock led him to the mill,' are true of a god. Those who go most astray from the truth are the theologians of Delphi, who believe that here, once, there occurred a battle between the god and a serpent over the oracle, and who
allow poets and prose writers, competing in theaters, to say these things—as though deliberately bearing false witness against the very rites they themselves perform, the most sacred of all. When Philip expressed astonishment at this (for the writer was present) and asked what divine matters he thought the competitors were bearing false witness against, he said, 'Against these here, concerning the oracle, matters with which the city, having just now consecrated all the Greeks outside the Gates in her sacred rites, has driven her procession as far as Tempe. For
the hut that is set up here beside the threshing-floor every nine years is not a den or lair belonging to the serpent, but a representation of a tyrant's or king's dwelling; and the approach made upon it in silence, by way of what is called the Dolonia, in which they lead the boy who still has both parents living—not idly—with torches lit, and, after setting fire to the hut and overturning the table, flee without looking back through
the doors of the sanctuary; and finally, the boy's wanderings and servitude, and the purifications that take place around Tempe, give rise to a suspicion of some great pollution and daring deed. For it is altogether ridiculous, my friend, that Apollo, after killing the beast, should flee to the ends of Greece in need of purification, and there pour libations of some sort and do the things that men do
when they are propitiating and appeasing the resentment of daemons whom they call avenging and blood-guilty spirits, as if visiting upon someone the memory of certain unforgettable and ancient pollutions. As for the account I have heard concerning this flight and this removal, it is exceedingly strange and paradoxical; but if it has any share of truth in it, let us not suppose that what was done at the oracle in those times was a small or ordinary matter."
But so that I not seem to be doing what Empedocles did, attaching one set of summits to another and telling no single connected tale, allow me to put upon my earlier remarks the conclusion that befits them, since we have now arrived at it: let it be ventured, after so many others, that we too may say that when the spirits appointed over oracles and divinations fail entirely, such powers fail along with them, and when the spirits have fled or removed elsewhere they lose their force; then, when those same spirits are present again after a long interval, the oracles speak once more, like instruments, when those who use them stand by and are present."
When Cleombrotus had gone through all this, Heracleon said, "None of the uninitiated and profane, and none holding beliefs about the gods that clash with ours, is present here; but let us ourselves be on our guard, Philip, lest without noticing it we grant our argument premises that are strange and extravagant." "Well said," replied Philip, "but what exactly is it in Cleombrotus's claims that troubles you most?" And Heracleon said, "That gods themselves — beings for whom it is fitting to be free from earthly concerns — should be set in charge of the oracles, rather than spirits who are servants of the gods, does not seem to me an unreasonable claim; but to take, virtually by the handful, from the verses of Empedocles the sins and follies and god-driven wanderings that he ascribes to spirits, and in the end to suppose that they even die as men do, I regard as rather too bold and altogether too barbarous a notion." Cleombrotus then asked Philip who this young man was and where he came from; and on learning his name and city, he said, "We ourselves have not gone unnoticed either, Heracleon, in holding strange views; but it is not possible, in dealing with great matters, to advance to a plausible opinion without employing great starting-points. You, however, without realizing it, are taking back with one hand what you grant with the other: you agree that spirits exist, but by refusing to allow that they can be base or mortal you no longer keep them as spirits at all — for in what do they then differ from the gods, if they possess indestructibility in their being and freedom from passion and from wrongdoing in their character?"
To this Heracleon made no reply, being lost in some thought of his own, and Cleombrotus went on: "But it was not Empedocles alone, Heracleon, who allowed for base spirits — Plato did too, and Xenocrates, and Chrysippus; and Democritus as well, in praying to meet with 'well-omened images,' plainly recognized that there exist other images, ill-tempered and vicious, possessing certain purposes and impulses of their own. As for the death of such beings, I have heard an account from a man neither foolish nor a charlatan. Aemilianus the orator — whose father Epitherses some of you have also heard, my own fellow-citizen and a teacher of grammar — used to tell how once, sailing to Italy, he boarded a ship carrying merchandise and a good many passengers. Toward evening, near the Echinades islands, the wind died down, and the ship, drifting, came close to Paxi; most of the passengers were awake, and many were still drinking after their meal, when suddenly a voice was heard from the island of Paxi, someone calling loudly for Thamus, so that they were astonished. This Thamus was an Egyptian pilot, not even known by name to many on board. Twice he was called and kept silent, but the third time he answered the one calling; and that voice, raising itself still louder, said, 'When you come opposite Palodes, announce that the great Pan is dead.'
On hearing this, Epitherses said, all were astounded, and debated among themselves whether it would be better to carry out the order or rather not to meddle but let it be; and Thamus resolved that if there were wind he would sail past in silence, but if there were a calm and stillness about the place he would proclaim what he had heard. So when they came opposite Palodes, with neither wind nor wave, Thamus, looking from the stern toward the land, said, just as he had heard it, that 'the great Pan is dead.' He had scarcely finished speaking when a great cry went up, not of one voice but of many, mingled with astonishment. And since many people were present, the story quickly spread throughout Rome, and Thamus was sent for by Tiberius Caesar. Tiberius came to believe the account so firmly that he made inquiry and investigation about Pan; and the scholars around him, of whom there were many, conjectured that this was the Pan born of Hermes and Penelope." Philip, then, had this account, and could also call as witnesses some of those present who had heard it from the aged Aemilianus himself.
Demetrius said that among the islands lying off Britain there are many lying scattered and deserted, some of which are named after spirits and heroes; and that he himself, sailing for the sake of inquiry and observation, at the king's bidding, to the nearest of the deserted islands, found it having not many inhabitants, but these all held sacred and inviolable by the Britons. Soon after his arrival there occurred a great disturbance in the atmosphere, with many portents from the sky, winds bursting forth, and thunderbolts falling; and when this had subsided, the islanders said that some one of the mightier beings had passed away. "For just as a lamp," he said, "causes no distress while it is burning, but its going out is grievous to many, so the great souls, in their kindlings, bring benefit and cause no pain, but their extinguishings and destructions often, as now, breed storms and squalls, and often infect the air with pestilential afflictions." There, moreover, he said, there is one island in which Cronus is confined, kept guarded in sleep by Briareus — for sleep has been contrived as a bond for him — and around him are many spirits as his attendants and servants.
Taking this up, Cleombrotus said, "I too could tell such tales, but it suffices for our present purpose that there is nothing to contradict or prevent things being so. And yet we know that the Stoics hold not only the view I have expressed about spirits, but also that, of the many gods there are, they make use of one that is eternal and indestructible, while regarding all the others as having come into being and being destined to perish. As for the mockery and laughter of the Epicureans, we need not fear it at all, since they dare to use it even against providence itself, calling it a mere myth. We, for our part, say that it is a myth to suppose that, among so many worlds, not one is governed by a divine reasoning power, but that all have come to be and hold together purely by chance. And if one must laugh in philosophy, it is rather the mute, blind, and soulless images that deserve laughter — the ones that certain people herd through boundless cycles of years, appearing and wandering everywhere, some given off from the still-living, others long since burnt or rotted away — dragging in idle chatter and shadows to explain natural phenomena; and yet if someone says that spirits exist, not merely by nature but by reason too, and that they preserve and endure for a long time, these same people grow indignant."
When this had been said, Ammonius remarked, "Theophrastus seems to me to have declared the matter rightly. For what prevents us from accepting a solemn and most philosophical account? Indeed, a doctrine, when rejected, destroys many things that are possible but cannot be proven, and when accepted, it drags along with it many things impossible and non-existent. As for the one point I have heard the Epicureans make against those spirits introduced by Empedocles — that it is not possible for beings who are base and prone to error to be blessed and long-lived, since wickedness is bound up with great blindness and liability to destruction — this is a foolish argument. For by this reasoning Epicurus himself would prove inferior to Gorgias the sophist, and Metrodorus to Alexis the comic poet — since the latter lived twice as long as Metrodorus, and Gorgias more than a third longer than Epicurus. But we use the words 'strong' and 'weak' of virtue and vice in another sense, not with reference to the persistence or dissolution of the body — since among animals too, many that are sluggish and dull of soul, and many that are unruly and undisciplined, live longer than the intelligent and clever ones.
Hence it is not right to base the eternity of God on his mere immunity and defense against destructive forces. Rather, freedom from passion and indestructibility ought to belong to the very nature of the blessed being, requiring no effort to maintain it. But perhaps it seems ungracious to argue against those not present. Let Cleombrotus, then, take up again the account he was giving us a moment ago about the departure and flight of the spirits, and finish it — that is only just." And Cleombrotus said, "I should be surprised if it does not appear far stranger than what has already been said. And yet it does seem to touch on natural philosophy, and Plato gave the starting-point for it, not stating it outright but casting, through an obscure opinion, an enigmatic and cautiously guarded suggestion; nevertheless a great outcry against him too has arisen from other philosophers. But since a bowl of myths and reasoned accounts mingled together stands set before us in our midst — and where might one find more sympathetic hearers before whom to test these tales, as one tests foreign coin? — I do not hesitate to indulge you with the narrative of a barbarian man, whom, after much wandering and after paying great fees for the information, I finally managed to track down, a man who, near the Red Sea, met with human beings once each year, but for the rest of his time consorted, as he claimed, with wandering nymphs and spirits.
I had the good fortune to obtain conversation and friendship with him. He was the handsomest of all men I have ever seen, and remained free of every illness throughout, eating only once each month a certain bitter, medicinal fruit of an herb; he had trained himself to speak many languages, but with me he spoke mostly in Doric, not far removed in its rhythms from song. Whenever he spoke, a fragrance filled the place, his mouth breathing out the sweetest scent. His learning and knowledge in general were with him at all times, but for prophecy he was inspired only on one day of each year, and would deliver his oracles as he went down to the sea; and rulers and royal secretaries would also come to visit him, and then depart. He, then, traced the art of prophecy back to spirits; and he had a great deal to say about Delphi, and was not unacquainted with anything said or performed there in the sacred rites concerning Dionysus, but declared that these too were great sufferings of spirits, including the events concerning Python.
As for the one who killed the serpent, his exile, he said, lasted neither nine years nor did it take him to Tempe, but rather, cast out, he went to another world; and later, after nine cycles of great years had passed, having become pure and having truly returned as Phoebus, he took over the oracle, which until then had been guarded by Themis. And so it was, he said, with the battles of the Titans and of Typhon as well: there had been wars of spirits against spirits, and then the flight of the defeated, or punishments inflicted by a god upon those who had done wrong — such as Typhon is said to have done wrong against Osiris, and Cronus against Uranus — whose honors have grown dim, or have vanished altogether, now that they have removed to another world. For I hear that the Solymi too, neighbors of the Lycians, honor Cronus above all others; but that after he killed their rulers, Arsalus and Dryus and Trosobius, he fled and moved off to some place or other (for they are unable to say where), and that he himself thereafter fell into neglect, while those around Arsalus came to be called harsh gods, and the Lycians, both publicly and privately, direct their curses against them. Many similar examples can be drawn from what is told about the gods.
"And if," said the stranger, "we call certain spirits by the customary names of the gods, that need not surprise us. For each spirit likes to be called after the particular god to whom it is assigned, and from whom it has received its power and honor. Even among us, one man is called 'of Zeus,' another 'Athenian,' another 'Apollonian' or 'Dionysian' or 'Hermaean'; and while some of us are named rightly, by chance, most acquire epithets from the gods that do not properly belong to them, having been misapplied." When Cleombrotus fell silent, this account seemed marvelous to all present. But when Heracleon asked in what way this had anything to do with Plato, and how Plato had furnished the starting-point for this account, Cleombrotus said, "You remember rightly that Plato from the outset rejected an infinite number of worlds, but was in doubt about a fixed plurality, and while conceding the plausibility, up to the number five, of those who posit a single world corresponding to each of the elements, he himself held firmly to the position of a single world. And this seems to be peculiar to Plato, since the others were greatly afraid of plurality, on the ground that those who do not confine matter within a single unity, but at once step outside it, fall prey to a boundless and intractable infinity."
"But did the stranger," I asked, "define the number of worlds — or, when you were in his company, did you not press him on this?" "I could hardly fail," said Cleombrotus, "if nothing else, to be an eager and attentive listener on these matters, since he offered himself so graciously and so willingly. He said there were neither infinite worlds, nor one, nor five, but a hundred and eighty-three, arranged in the shape of a triangle, each side of the triangle having sixty worlds; of the three that remained, each was stationed at one of the corners, and the worlds next to one another touch, moving gently round as if in a dance. The plane within the triangle is the common hearth of them all, and is called the Plain of Truth, in which the accounts and forms and patterns of all things that have come to be and all that will come to be lie unmoved; and around these, time, as it were an outflow of eternity, is carried along toward the worlds. A sight and vision of these things is granted to human souls only once in ten thousand years, provided they have lived well; and the best of the initiations performed here are but a dream of that vision and that initiation there; and philosophical discourses have as their purpose to recall those beautiful things yonder, or else they are carried on in vain. These things," he said, "I heard him relating as myth, exactly as in an initiation and a mystery-rite, without bringing forward any proof or evidence for what he said."
And I, turning to Demetrius, said, "How does that verse about the suitors go, the one about their marveling at Odysseus as he handled the bow?" And when Demetrius had recalled it for me, I said, "This too occurs to me to say about the stranger: 'surely he was some connoisseur and thief of doctrines and discourses of every kind, and much-traveled' in written learning, and no barbarian but a Greek by birth, brimful of much Greek culture." What refutes him is the very number of the worlds, which is not Egyptian nor Indian but Dorian, from Sicily, belonging to a man of Himera named Petron. I have not myself read any little book of his, nor do I know that one survives, but Hippys of Rhegium, whom Phanias of Eresus mentions, records that this was Petron's own opinion and account — that there are a hundred and eighty-three worlds, touching one another 'according to element'; but what exactly this touching 'according to element' means, he does not further clarify, nor does he attach any other plausible explanation." Taking this up, Demetrius said, "What plausibility could there be in such matters, when even Plato, though he said nothing that was reasonable or likely, nevertheless cast down the..."
And Heracleon said, "But surely we hear from you grammarians, who trace back to Homer the opinion that he distributed the universe into five worlds — heaven, water, air, earth, and Olympus. Of these he leaves two in common: earth belongs to the whole realm below, Olympus to the whole realm above; and the three in between are assigned to the three gods. In the same way Plato too, it seems, distributing the finest and primary forms and shapes of bodies among the differences of the whole, calls them five worlds: that of earth, that of water, that of air, that of fire; and last, the one that encompasses these, that of the dodecahedron — the most fluid and versatile figure — which he assigned as the shape most fitting and suited to the soul's revolutions and motions."
And Demetrius said, "Why do we bring in Homer at present? We have had enough of myths. Plato is far from calling the five differentiations of the world 'five worlds'; indeed, where he argues against those who posit infinite worlds, he says that in his own view this world is one, only-begotten, and beloved of god, having come to be whole, complete, and self-sufficient out of the entirety of corporeal being. Hence one might well wonder that, having stated the truth himself, he furnished others with the starting point for an implausible and unreasoned opinion. For not keeping to a single world had at least some basis in the infinity of the universe as a whole; but to fix the number definitely at just so many, neither more nor fewer than five, is utterly irrational and detached from all plausibility — unless you have something to say," he said, looking at me.
And I said, "It does seem so — that having already let go the discussion about oracles as finished, we should take up another topic just as large." "Not letting go of that one," said Demetrius, "but not passing by this one either, since it lays claim to our attention. We will not linger over it, but only touch on it enough to examine its plausibility, and then return to our original subject."
"Well then, first," I said, "the things that prevent one from positing infinite worlds do not prevent one from making more than one. For it is quite possible for there to be both divination and providence in a plurality of worlds, and for only the smallest role to fall to chance, while the largest and most numerous events take on order with respect to coming-into-being and change — none of which infinity is by nature able to admit. Moreover, it follows more readily from reason that god should not be only-begotten, nor be without company, and that the world should not be solitary. For being perfectly good, he lacks no virtue, least of all those concerned with justice and friendship; for these are the finest and most fitting for gods. And it is not the nature of god to possess anything in vain or useless. There are, then, outside it other gods and worlds, toward whom he exercises the social virtues; for there is no exercise of justice or grace or kindness toward oneself or one's own part, but only toward others.
"So it is not likely that this world drifts about in infinite void without a friend, without a neighbor, without any mingling with others; since we observe that nature, too, encloses each individual generation within kinds, as though within vessels or seed-pods. For nothing among existing things belongs to a number of which there exists no common account, nor does anything attain such a designation unless it is qualified, either generically or specifically. Now the world is not said to be qualified generically; it is, then, qualified specifically, having become such through its difference from other things akin and of the same kind. For if nature has produced neither one man, nor one horse, nor one star, nor one god, nor one daimon, what prevents nature from having not one world either, but rather more than one? For the one who says that the world has one earth and one sea overlooks something obvious about things composed of like parts: we divide earth into parts bearing the same name, and sea likewise; but a part of the world is no longer a world, since it is composed of different natures."
Moreover, that which some fear most, and for the sake of which they use up all matter on this one world, leaving nothing outside to disturb this world's composition with collisions or blows, they feared wrongly. For if there are several worlds, and each has been separately allotted a substance and matter having a fixed measure and limit, nothing disorderly or unarranged will be left over, like some residue falling upon it from outside. For the rational principle governing each world, holding sway over the matter apportioned to it, will allow nothing to stray or wander out and fall in from another world, nor into itself from another, since its multitude has a nature neither undefined nor infinite, nor its motion irrational and disorderly. But if some effluence does travel from some worlds to others, it is akin and gentle, mingling mildly with all, like the rays and blendings of the stars; and the worlds themselves take delight in beholding one another benevolently, granting to the many good gods present in each one occasions for intermingling and friendly association.
None of this is impossible, mythical, or irrational — unless, by Zeus, someone suspects that Aristotle's arguments carry physical force here. For since each of the bodies has its own proper place, as he says, earth must necessarily move from every direction toward the center, and water settle upon it because of its weight, settling beneath the lighter elements. If, then, there are several worlds, it will follow that earth will in many places lie above fire and air, and in many places below them; and air and water likewise will in some places be in their natural regions, in others in regions contrary to nature. Since these things are impossible, as he supposes, there cannot be either two worlds or more, but only this one, composed of the whole of substance, situated in accordance with nature, as befits the differences among the bodies.
"But this too has been stated plausibly rather than truly. Consider it this way," I said, "my dear Demetrius. When he says that some bodies move toward the center and downward, others away from the center and upward, and others around the center and in a circle — with reference to what does he take 'the center'? Surely not with reference to the void; for on his view there is no void. And for those who do admit it, the void has no center, just as it has no first point or last point; for these are limits, while the void is infinite and unlimited. And even if one forced oneself, by sheer violence of argument, to conceive of some center of an infinite void, what would be the difference in the motions of bodies produced with respect to it? For neither is there any power belonging to bodies in the void, nor do bodies have choice and impulse, longing for the center and straining toward it from every direction. Rather it is equally impossible to conceive, with respect to soulless bodies and an incorporeal, undifferentiated region, either a motion originating from the bodies themselves or an attraction exerted by that region upon them.
"It remains, then, that 'the center' is spoken of not spatially but corporeally. For since this world of ours possesses a single unity and arrangement composed of several dissimilar bodies, the differences among them necessarily produce differing motions for different things relative to one another; and this is clear from the fact that, as each substance is transformed, it changes its region along with it. For separations lift matter up away from the center and distribute it in a circle, while combinations and condensations press it down toward the center and drive it together."
On these matters it is not necessary here to use many more words. For whatever cause one supposes to be the creative agent of these affections and changes, this same cause will hold each of the several worlds together within itself. For each world has its own earth and sea; for each also has its own center of its own, and its own affections of bodies, changes, nature, and power, which preserves and keeps each thing in its proper region. For that which lies outside — whether it is nothing, or an infinite void — provides no center, as has been said; but since there are several worlds, each has its own particular center, so that the motion is particular too: for some bodies toward it, for others away from it, and for others around it, just as the Peripatetics themselves distinguish.
But whoever insists that, though there are many centers, heavy bodies must be pushed from everywhere toward one alone, differs in no way from someone who, since there are many people, insists that blood must flow together from everywhere into a single vein, and that everyone's brains must be contained within a single membrane, thinking it monstrous if, among natural bodies, all solid matter does not occupy one region and all rarefied matter another single region. For such a person would be as absurd, being indignant that wholes make use of their own parts, each part having its natural position and order within it. That would indeed be absurd — if someone said that a world was one that had the moon in it the way a man might carry his brain in his heels and his heart in his temples. But making several worlds separate from one another, and together with the wholes bounding off and distributing their parts as well, is not absurd; for in each world the earth, sea, and heaven will be positioned according to nature as is fitting, and each of the worlds has its 'above,' 'below,' 'around,' and 'center' not with reference to another world, nor outside itself, but within itself and with reference to itself.
"For as to the stone that some suppose to lie outside the world, it does not readily admit of a conception either of remaining at rest or of moving. For how could it, having weight, either remain still or move toward our world like the rest of heavy bodies, being neither a part of it nor incorporated into its substance? But as for earth contained and bound together within another world, there is no need to raise the puzzle of why it does not, breaking off through its weight, migrate over into this one, once we observe the nature of the whole and the tension by which each of its parts is held together. For if we take 'below' and 'above' not with reference to the world but outside it, we shall fall into the same difficulties as Epicurus, who moves all the atoms toward the regions 'beneath the feet,' as though the void had feet, or as though infinity allowed one to conceive within itself of 'below' and 'above.'
"For this reason one may well wonder at Chrysippus — or rather be utterly at a loss — as to what possessed him to say that the world is established in the middle, and that its substance, having eternally occupied the central place, is held together thereby not least for the sake of its permanence and, so to speak, its indestructibility. For he says these things in the fourth book of his work On Possibles, though he is not correctly dreaming up 'a center for the infinite,' and is positing as the cause of the world's permanence something more absurd than the permanence itself — a nonexistent center; and this though he has often said elsewhere that substance is governed and held together by motions toward its own center and motions away from its own center."
"And indeed, as for the rest of the Stoics' objections, who would be afraid of them — of those who ask how a single fate and providence could hold, and why there will not be many Dises and Zeuses, if there are several worlds? For in the first place, if it is absurd for there to be many Dises and Zeuses, then surely their own view will be far more absurd; for in their infinite cycles of worlds they make an infinite number of suns and moons, Apollos and Artemises and Poseidons. And in the second place, what necessity is there for there to be many Zeuses if there are several worlds, and not, in each one, a first ruling and governing god possessing mind and reason, such as he who among us is called lord of all and father? Or what will prevent all the worlds from being subject to the fate and providence of a single Zeus, who oversees and directs each in turn, implanting in all of them the beginnings, seeds, and principles of the things that come to pass?
"For it is not the case here that a single body is often composed of separate bodies — as an assembly, an army, or a chorus — each of which, as Chrysippus supposes, happens to live, think, and learn as a unit; while in the universe as a whole it is impossible for ten, fifty, or a hundred worlds to make use of a single reason and to be arranged under a single governing principle. On the contrary, such an arrangement is altogether fitting for gods; for one ought not to make the gods rulers confined without exit, like the leaders of a swarm, guarding by shutting themselves in — or rather sealing themselves up — within matter, as these thinkers do, who make the gods into mere states of air and blended powers of water and fire, holding that they are born together with the world and again burned up together with it, not free and independent, like charioteers or helmsmen, but, just as statues are riveted and fused to their pedestals, so shut up within the corporeal and bolted fast to it, sharing in its fate all the way to its destruction, its total dissolution, and its change."
"That other account, I think, is more dignified and more magnificent: that the gods, being without master and self-ruling, come to the aid of those caught in storms just as the sons of Tyndareus do — approaching and by their power calming the sea and the swift blasts of the winds, not themselves sailing along and sharing the danger, but appearing from above and bringing deliverance; in just this way they visit now one, now another of the worlds, drawn by the pleasure of the spectacle and guiding each in accordance with its nature. For Homer's Zeus shifted his gaze no great distance, from Troy to Thrace and the nomads around the Ister; but the true Zeus enjoys fine and fitting changes of scene among a plurality of worlds, gazing not out upon an empty infinity, nor upon nothing at all else (as some have supposed), but contemplating the many works of gods and men, and the movements and courses of the stars in their revolutions. For the divine does not shun change but delights in it greatly, if we are to judge from visible things by the successive changes and revolutions in the heavens.
"Infinity, then, is altogether senseless and irrational, admitting god nowhere at all, but treating everything according to chance and automatically; whereas care and providence exercised over a definite multitude and number of worlds seems to me to have nothing more undignified or more burdensome about it than care and providence sunk into a single body, attached to that one thing, endlessly reshaping and remolding it."
Having said this much, then, I stopped. Philip, after not pausing long, said, "As to whether the truth about these matters stands this way or otherwise, I myself would not insist. But if we remove god from a single world, I think I should be glad to learn why we make him the craftsman of five worlds only and not more, and what the relation of this number to the totality is — gladder, indeed, than to learn the meaning of the dedication of the E here. For neither is a triangle...
"is neither triangular nor square, nor perfect, nor cubic, nor does it appear to offer any other elegance to those who delight in and admire such things. As for the approach from the elements, which he himself hinted at, it is altogether hard to grasp, and shows nothing of the plausibility that drew him on to say that, given five bodies with equal angles and equal sides contained by equal planes, once they have come to be present in matter, that many worlds are immediately produced from them."
"And indeed," I said, "Theodorus of Soli seems to me to pursue the argument not badly, in expounding Plato's mathematics. He proceeds as follows. The pyramid, the octahedron, the icosahedron, and the dodecahedron, which Plato ranks first, are all beautiful in the proportions and equalities of their ratios, and it is impossible to compose anything better than they are, or anything similar, for nature to fit together. Yet they do not all belong to a single class of construction, nor do they have a similar origin; rather, the pyramid is the finest and smallest, while the dodecahedron is the largest and made of the most parts. Of the remaining two, the icosahedron is greater than the octahedron, or more than double it, in the number of its triangles; hence it is impossible for all of them to come into being from matter at the same time.
For the fine and small bodies, being simpler in construction, must be the first to submit to and be shaped by that which moves and fashions matter, and must be completed and pre-exist before the coarser bodies made of many parts, whose composition is more laborious — bodies such as the dodecahedron is composed of. It follows from this that the pyramid alone is the first body to exist, while none of the others exist yet, since nature is still short of producing them.
There is, then, a remedy also for this absurdity: the division and separation of matter into five worlds. In one place the pyramid arose (for it came to be first), in another the octahedron, in another the icosahedron. And from the body that pre-existed in each, the rest will have their origin, since change occurs in all things for all things through the combination and separation of parts, as Plato himself indicates,
going through the matter in nearly full detail, though for us a brief account will suffice. Since air arises when fire is extinguished, and, becoming rarefied again, in turn gives off fire from itself, one must observe the affections and changes in the seeds of each. Now the seeds of fire are the pyramid, composed of twenty-four primary triangles; the octahedron, that of air, is composed of forty-eight
of the same triangles. So one element of air comes to be from two elements of fire combined and united together; and conversely, the element of air, when broken up, separates into two bodies of fire, but when it is compressed upon itself again and collapses, it passes into the form of water. Thus everywhere the body that pre-exists always readily provides, through change, the origin of all the others; and it is not the case that there is only one
first body, while another body, having in a different system the initiating and anticipatory motion toward generation, keeps the same name in all cases." And Ammonius said, "These points have been worked out by Theodorus manfully and with great ambition; but I would be surprised if he does not seem to be using premises that destroy one another. For he claims that the constitution does not occur in all five bodies at once, but that the finest, the one formed with the
least effort, is always the first to emerge into being. Then, as though it followed rather than conflicted with this, he lays down that not all matter first brings in the finest and simplest body, but that in some places the heavy, many-parted bodies anticipate and arise before the others out of matter. And apart from this, given that there are five primary bodies underlying things, and that for this reason there are said to be that many worlds, he applies his plausible argument to only
four of them, while he has spirited away the cube as though in a game of counters — as if it were not naturally suited to change into the others, nor to provide them a change into itself, since its triangles are not of the same kind as theirs. For those four bodies have as their common basis the half-triangle, whereas in the cube the isosceles triangle alone is proper to it, which does not converge with the other kind, nor admit of any unifying mixture with it. If, then, there really are
five bodies and five worlds, and in each one body holds the leading role in generation — namely, wherever the cube came into being first — none of the others will exist there, since the cube is not by nature able to change into any of them. And I pass over the fact that they also make the element of the so-called dodecahedron something different, not that scalene triangle out of which Plato constitutes the pyramid, the octahedron, and the icosahedron."
"So then," said Ammonius, laughing, "either you must resolve these difficulties for yourself, or you must say something of your own about our common puzzle." And I said, "I have nothing more plausible to say at present; but perhaps it is better to be answerable for one's own opinion than for another's. Let me then say again, from the beginning, that since there are two underlying natures — one perceptible, subject to generation and destruction
changeable and borne now this way, now that; the other intelligible in its being, always remaining the same in the same way — it would be strange, my friend, if the intelligible nature has been marked off and possesses difference within itself, while the bodily and passible nature, unless one leaves it as a single thing, grown together with itself and converging, but instead one divides and separates it, this should provoke vexation and displeasure. For surely things stable and divine
ought rather to hold fast to themselves and to flee, so far as possible, all cutting and separation. But even in their case the power of otherness, when it touches them, has wrought among the intelligibles differences and dissimilarities in reasoned account and form greater than the spatial separations found among perceptible things. Hence, in opposing those who declare the universe to be one, Plato says that being exists, and the same, and the other,
and, over and above all these, motion and rest. Since, then, these are five, it would not be strange if each of those five bodily elements is, by its nature, an imitation and image that has come to be of each of these — not unmixed nor pure, but by each element chiefly partaking of each power. The cube, plainly, is a body suited to rest, on account of the stability and
firmness of its planes; while in the pyramid anyone might discern the fiery and mobile quality in the thinness of its sides and the sharpness of its angles. The nature of the dodecahedron, being all-embracing of the other figures, would seem to have come to be an image of being in relation to everything bodily; and of the remaining two, the icosahedron has partaken most of the nature of the other, and the octahedron
has partaken most of the character of the same. Hence the latter furnished air, which relates to all substance in a single form, while the former furnished water, which through mixture turns into very many kinds of qualities. If, then, nature demands equality among all things, it is likely that the worlds have come to be neither more nor fewer than the models, so that each may have, in each world, a leading rank and power,
just as it has in the constitutions of the bodies." "Still, let this stand as a consolation for one's wonder, if we divide the nature that is in generation and change into so many kinds. But consider now, all together, this further point: of the highest principles — I mean the One and the indefinite dyad — the one, being the element of all shapelessness and disorder, is called unlimitedness,
while the nature of the One, by delimiting and taking hold of the void, the irrational, and the indeterminate belonging to unlimitedness, renders it shaped, and will show that the resulting predication concerning perceptible things somehow submits to and receives this. These are the first principles that appear in connection with number — or rather, plurality is not number at all unless, like a form imposed on matter, the One, having come to be,
cuts off from the unlimitedness of the indeterminate now a greater, now a lesser portion. For then each of the pluralities becomes a number, being delimited by the One; but if the One is removed, the indefinite dyad again throws everything into confusion and renders it rhythmless, unlimited, and immeasurable. And since form is not a removal of matter but the shape and order of what underlies it, it is necessary
that both principles inhere in number as well; whence the first and greatest difference and dissimilarity has arisen. For the indeterminate principle is the maker of the even, while the better principle is maker of the odd; and the first of the even numbers is two, the first of the odd numbers is three, from which five arises — a number that in its composition is common to both, but in its power
has become odd. For it was necessary that, since the perceptible and bodily is divided into more parts because of the innate necessity of otherness, neither the first even number nor the first odd number should come to be, but rather the third number composed from these, so that it might arise from both principles — both the one that fashions the even and the one that fashions the odd; for it was not possible for the one
to be rid of the other, since each has the nature and power of a principle. So, with both combined, the better principle prevailed over the indeterminacy of the dividing principle and took its stand in the bodily realm; and since matter is set apart in both, it placed the monad in the middle and did not allow the whole to be divided in two, but rather a plurality of worlds came to be through the otherness and difference of the indeterminate, while an odd plurality was wrought by the power of sameness
and of the determinate; and it is odd in this sense, that it did not allow nature to proceed further than what is better. For if the One had been unmixed and pure, matter would not have had any separation at all; but since it is mixed with the divisive character of the dyad, it received cutting and division, yet came to rest at this point, the odd having mastered the even." "For this reason too,
the ancients were accustomed to call counting 'pempazein' [to five-count]. And I think that the word 'all' (panta) has also come to be, reasonably, a derivative of 'five' (pente), inasmuch as the pentad is composed of the first numbers. For other numbers, when multiplied by others, pass over into a number different from themselves, whereas the pentad, if it is taken an even number of times, produces ten, a perfect number; but if taken an odd number of times,
it renders itself again. And I pass over the fact that the pentad is the first number composed of the first two squares, that of the monad and that of the tetrad; and that it is the first number equal in power to the two numbers before it that constitutes the most beautiful of right-angled triangles; and that it is the first to produce the ratio of one and a half. For perhaps these facts are not properly relevant to the matters before us; but rather this, that it is by nature divisive
of number, and that nature distributes very many things according to it. For nature has allotted to us ourselves five senses and five parts of the soul — the nutritive, the perceptive, the appetitive, the spirited, and the rational; and just as many fingers on each hand; and the most generative seed is divided fivefold. For no woman has ever been recorded to have borne more than five children at a single birth. And the Egyptians tell in myth that Rhea bore five gods,
hinting thereby at the generation of the five worlds from a single matter. And in the universe, the region around the earth is marked off by five zones, and the heaven is divided by five circles — two arctic, two tropic, and the equinoctial in the middle; and there have come to be five circuits of the wandering stars, since the sun, the Morning Star, and Mercury move together on the same course. The arrangement of the cosmos is also harmonious,
just as, to be sure, our own music is seen to be tuned according to five positions of the tetrachords — the lowest, the middle, the conjunct, the disjunct, and the highest — and the melodic intervals are five: the quarter-tone, the semitone, the tone, the tone-and-a-half, and the ditone. Thus nature seems to delight in making all things by means of the number five rather than by means of the spherical, as Aristotle used to say." "Why then,
someone might ask, did Plato refer the number of the five worlds to the five figures, saying that with the fifth construction 'god made use of it for the whole, decorating that'? And then, having proposed the difficulty about the plurality of worlds — whether it is fitting to say that they are by nature one or five in truth — he clearly shows that he supposes this suspicion to have started from that very point. If, then,
we must bring what is likely to bear upon his meaning, let us consider that, by the differences among those bodies and figures, differences of motion must immediately follow as well, just as he himself teaches, declaring that whatever is separated out or combined together changes its place at the same time as its substance undergoes alteration. For if fire arises from air, the octahedron being dissolved and broken up into pyramids,
or again air arises from fire, the pyramids being pressed together and compressed into an octahedron, it is not possible for it to remain where it was before, but it flees and is carried off to another region, being forced out and contending against the things that resist and press upon it. What happens is shown still more clearly by an image: he compares it to the way "things shaken and winnowed by sieves and instruments used for the cleansing of grain," saying likewise that the
elements, shaking matter and being shaken by it in turn, always draw the like ever nearer to the like, and that different things occupy different places before the whole was brought, out of them, into order. Since, then, matter was disposed as is likely for the whole to be disposed where god is absent, at once the first five qualities, each having its own proper inclination, were carried apart from one another, not entirely nor purely separated out, because
since all things were mixed together, the elements that were mastered always followed, contrary to their own nature, those that had the mastery. For this reason, then, as the different kinds of bodies were carried off in different directions, they produced portions and divisions equal in number to them: one not of pure fire but fire-like; another not of unmixed aether but aether-like; another not of earth itself by itself but earth-like; and above all, the commingling of air with
water, because, as has been said, they departed still filled with many of the other kinds. For god did not separate or settle the substance apart; rather, having taken it over already separated by itself and being carried apart in such great disorder, he ordered and fitted it together by means of proportion and mean terms; and then, having established in each a ratio to act as its governor and guardian, he made as many worlds as there
were kinds of the primary bodies." "Let this, then, be dedicated to the grace of Plato, through Ammonius. As for myself, I would never insist that the number of worlds is exactly that many; but I regard the opinion that holds there to be more than one, yet not infinite but limited in number, to be no less reasonable than either of the other two views, since I observe that the scattered and divisible nature of matter is neither confined to one thing nor
...to proceed under the guidance of reason. And if here, as elsewhere, we remind ourselves of the Academy and strip away excessive confidence, preserving only our safety, as though in a treacherous place, by means of the argument from infinity.” When I had said this, Demetrius said, “Lamprias is right to urge caution. For it is not by ‘the many shapes of sophistries,’ as Euripides says, but by the shapes of facts that the gods ‘confound us,’ whenever we venture to pronounce on matters so great as though we understood them. But the argument,” he went on, quoting the same poet, “must be brought back to its original starting point. For to say that when the daemons withdraw and abandon the oracles, these lie idle and voiceless like the instruments of craftsmen, raises a further and greater question — the question of the cause and power by which the daemons, when present, make prophets and priestesses possessed and susceptible to visions. For it is not possible to blame the failure of the oracles on an eclipse unless we have first been persuaded in what manner the daemons, by standing over the oracles and being present at them, make them active and articulate.”
Ammonius then took up the argument: “Do you suppose,” he said, “that the daemons are anything other than souls that wander about ‘clad in air,’ as Hesiod says? To my mind, the difference a soul that has been fitted out with a body suited to the present life has from another soul is like the difference a man has from another man who is acting a tragedy or a comedy. There is nothing unreasonable, then, nor astonishing, if souls in contact with souls produce impressions of the future, just as we ourselves communicate much to one another, and give signs of things past and foretokens of things to come, not only by speech but by writing, and merely by touch and by a glance — unless, Lamprias, you have something different to say. Indeed a report recently reached us that you had discussed these very matters at length with some visitors at Lebadeia, though the man who told us of it could not recall any of it accurately.”
“Do not be surprised,” I said. “Many activities and preoccupations, occurring together because of the oracle and the sacrifice, scattered our conversation and broke it into pieces.” “But now,” said Ammonius, “you have listeners who are at leisure and eager, some to inquire, others to learn, since strife is out of the way and all contentiousness, and, as you see, license and freedom of speech are granted to every argument.” When the others joined in urging me as well, I paused a little and said, “Well, Ammonius, it was by a kind of chance that you yourself gave a certain starting point and opening to what was said then. For if souls that have been separated from the body, or have never had any part in it at all, are daemons, as you and the divine Hesiod hold — ‘holy beings dwelling on earth, guardians of mortal men’ — why do we deprive the souls that are in bodies of that power by which daemons are naturally able to foreknow the future and reveal it beforehand?
It is not reasonable that souls, when they leave the body, should acquire some power or faculty they did not possess before; rather they always possess it, but possess it in a weaker form while mixed with the body — in some cases wholly obscure and hidden, in others feeble and dim, comparable to people seeing through a mist or moving in water, sluggish and slow to act, and greatly in need of care and recovery of what is proper to it, and of the removal and purging of what covers it. For just as the sun does not become bright only when it escapes the clouds, but is always bright, though it appears to us dim and obscured when veiled in mist — so the soul does not acquire the power of divination by leaving the body as though escaping a cloud, but possesses it even now, though it is blinded by its admixture and confusion with what is mortal.
One should not be surprised, nor disbelieve, when one observes — if nothing else — how great an achievement the soul’s power that is the counterpart to divination, which we call memory, shows itself to be, in preserving and guarding things past, or rather things that no longer even exist at all. For of things that have happened, nothing exists or subsists; all things come into being and perish together — actions, words, and experiences — as time carries each of them along like a stream. Yet this power of the soul, in some way I cannot explain, lays hold of things not present and clothes them with appearance and being. The oracle given to the Thessalians about Arne bade them ‘tell the hearing of the deaf and the sight of the blind’; and memory is for us both the hearing of deaf things and the sight of blind things.
Hence, as I said, it is not surprising if a soul that has mastery over things that no longer exist should anticipate many things that have not yet come to be; for these belong to it all the more, and it is in sympathy with them, since it reaches out and directs itself toward the future, and is released from things past and finished, except insofar as it remembers them.” “Souls, then, possessing this power as something innate but faint and hard to bring into vivid image, nevertheless often burst into bloom and recover it, both in dreams and, in some cases, near the end of life, either because the body becomes pure, or takes on some mixture suited to this purpose, or because the reasoning and calculating faculty is relaxed and released from present concerns, turning instead, by its irrational and image-forming part, toward the future. For it is not true, as Euripides says, that ‘the best seer is he who guesses well’; rather, that man is sensible who, following the part of the soul that has understanding and reasons from probability, walks along the right path.
The faculty of divination, on the other hand, is like a writing tablet that is blank, without reason, and undetermined in itself, but receptive to impressions through affections and presentiments, and it grasps the future without reasoning, most of all when it stands furthest outside the present. It is put into this state by a certain temperament and condition of the body, occurring in a process of change which we call enthusiasm, or inspiration. Now the body of itself often falls into such a condition on its own account; but the earth also sends up to men springs of many other powers, some causing derangement, disease, and death, others beneficial, gentle, and helpful, as becomes clear to those who encounter them by experience. The prophetic current and vapor is most divine and most holy, whether it rises up by itself through the air or is carried along with a stream of moisture.
For when it mingles into the body it produces in souls a temperament that is unusual and strange, the particular nature of which it is hard to state clearly, though reason allows many ways of conjecturing about it. It is likely that by heat and diffusion it opens certain passages that give images of the future, just as wine, when it rises as vapor, reveals many other movements and words that lie stored away and hidden. For the Bacchic and the frenzied condition, according to Euripides, has much prophetic power in it, whenever the soul, becoming heated and fiery, casts off the caution which mortal prudence, by intruding, often turns aside and quenches — the very state of enthusiasm.
At the same time one might not unreasonably say that a certain dryness, arising together with the heat, thins the breath and makes it ethereal and pure; for ‘a dry soul,’ according to Heraclitus, [is best]. Moisture not only dulls sight and hearing, but also, when it touches mirrors and mixes with the air surrounding them, takes away their brightness and their gleam. Conversely again, by a certain chilling and condensation of the breath, it is not impossible that the prophetic part of the soul should be tempered and given an edge, as iron is by tempering. Indeed, just as tin, melted into bronze that is porous and full of gaps, both tightens and condenses it and at the same time renders it brighter and purer, so there is nothing to prevent the prophetic vapor, having some affinity and kinship with souls, from filling up their gaps and holding them together by fitting into them.
For different things are suited and appropriate to different substances, just as the bean is what carries the dye for purple, and natron for saffron, when mixed in; and to grey-white linen, kermes-dye is mixed, as Empedocles has said. As for the Cydnus river and the sacred knife of Apollo at Tarsus, my dear Demetrius, we heard you tell how the Cydnus alone cleanses that iron, and no water but that river can cleanse the knife — just as at Olympia they mold the ash onto the altar and make it set firm by pouring water from the Alpheus over it, whereas when they try other rivers they cannot get the ash to bind or stick together in the same way.”
“It is not to be wondered at, then, that although the earth sends up many streams, only these particular ones dispose souls to enthusiasm and to visionary impressions of the future. Indeed, the traditions about the fame of this place agree with our account; for they relate that the power connected with this spot first became manifest here when a certain goatherd fell in by some chance, and then uttered inspired cries, of which those present at first took no notice, but later, when what the man had foretold came to pass, they were astonished. The most learned of the Delphians, remembering also the man’s name, say he was called Coretas.
It seems to me that the soul takes on such a blending and combination with the prophetic breath as the faculty of sight, made receptive, takes on with light. For although the eye possesses the power of seeing, it can do nothing without light; and likewise the prophetic faculty of the soul, like an eye, needs something proper to it that kindles and sharpens it further. Hence most of the ancients held that Apollo and the sun were one and the same god; but those who understood and honored the fine and wise analogy — that body is to soul, sight to mind, and light to truth, what the sun’s power is to the nature of Apollo — represented the sun as truly the offspring and ever-continuing progeny of Apollo, always coming into being. For the sun kindles, advances, and stirs up together the visual power of sense, just as Apollo does the prophetic power of the soul.”
“Those, however, who hold the view that god is one and the same reasonably assigned the oracle jointly to Apollo and to Earth, supposing that the sun produces in the Earth the disposition and temperament from which the prophetic vapors are given off. As for the Earth itself, just as Hesiod, thinking better than some philosophers, called it ‘the secure seat of all things,’ so we too consider it both everlasting and imperishable; but as for the powers connected with it, it is likely that in some places there occur failings, in others new beginnings, and elsewhere shiftings and changes of flow from other quarters, and that such cycles recur repeatedly around it through all time, as one may infer from what is observed.
For there have been failures of lakes and rivers, and even more of hot springs, in some places complete disappearances and destructions, in others what amounts to a fleeing away and sinking underground; then again after intervals of time they come back, appearing in the same places or flowing nearby underground. We also know that new obscurings of mines have occurred, as with the silver mines around Attica, and the copper ore in Euboea from which cold-forged swords used to be made, as Aeschylus says — ‘taking a self-sharpened Euboean sword’; and at the rock in Carystus it is not long since the soft, thread-like coils of stone it used to yield ceased to be produced. Indeed I think some of you have seen hand-towels and nets and hairnets from there, which are not at all burned by fire; rather, whatever soiling they take on in use is removed by throwing them into a bright, clear flame, and they come out again — but now that material has vanished, and scarcely any fibers or sparse threads run through the mines any longer.”
“And yet the followers of Aristotle declare that in all these cases the earth’s exhalation is the productive agent, and it is necessarily this same exhalation that must fail together with them, shift together with them, and blossom forth again together with them, when such phenomena occur. The same must be thought concerning the prophetic vapors — that they do not possess an everlasting or unaging power, but one subject to change. For it is likely that excessive rains quench them, and that they are dispersed when thunderbolts strike, and especially when the earth undergoes a subsidence and takes on silting and a filling-in at depth, that the exhalations shift elsewhere or are altogether blinded — just as they say the effects of the great earthquake that overturned the city itself still persist here.
And at Orchomenus they say that when a plague occurred, many people perished, and the oracle of Tiresias failed altogether, and remains to this day idle and voiceless. And if something similar has happened in the region of Cilicia, as we hear, no one could tell us more clearly than you, Demetrius.” And Demetrius said, “I myself do not know, at least not now, for as you know I have been away from home for a very long time now; but while I was still there, the oracles of both Mopsus and Amphilochus were flourishing. And I can tell of a most remarkable thing that happened to me when I visited the oracle of Mopsus.
The governor of Cilicia, himself still of divided mind about matters divine — out of a weakness of unbelief, I think, for in other respects he was an insolent and worthless man — having about him certain Epicureans, men of the fine sort who pride themselves on natural philosophy and who, as they themselves say, mock such things, sent in a freedman, disguising him as though he were a spy sent among enemies, carrying a sealed tablet in which the question was written, known to no one. The man, then, having spent the night, as is the custom, in the shrine, and having fallen asleep, reported the next day such a dream as this: it seemed to him that a handsome man stood over him and spoke only this one word, ‘black,’ and nothing more, and then straightway vanished.
This seemed strange to us and caused much perplexity; but that governor was astonished and did obeisance, and opening the tablet showed us the question written in it: ‘Shall I sacrifice to you a white bull or a black one?’ — so that even the Epicureans were confounded, and the man himself both carried out the sacrifice and continued ever after to reverence Mopsus.” When Demetrius had said this, he fell silent; and I, wishing to set a kind of capstone upon the discussion, looked again toward Philip and Ammonius, who were sitting together. It seemed to me they wished to say something, and I checked myself again.
But Ammonius said, “Philip too, Lamprias, has something to say about what has been said; for he, like most people, supposes that Apollo is not a separate god but the same as the sun. My own perplexity is greater, and concerns greater matters. For just now, I do not know how, in the course of our argument, we surrendered the art of divination from the gods to the daemons, virtually banishing it from among the gods altogether; and now it seems to me we are again thrusting those very daemons out and driving them away from the oracle and the tripod, resolving the origin — or rather the very substance and power — of divination into currents and vapors and exhalations. For these blendings and heatings that have been mentioned, and...
"...the tempering and hardening," [I said,] "the more they draw opinion away from the gods and introduce some such reckoning of causation as Euripides makes his Cyclops use, when he says: 'The earth, whether she will or no, of necessity brings forth grass and fattens my flocks.' Except that the Cyclops at any rate does not claim to sacrifice to the gods but to himself, and 'to the greatest of the divinities, his own belly'; whereas we both sacrifice and pray at the oracular shrines—for what purpose, if it is only that the souls possess in themselves a mantic power, and the mixture of air or breath that stirs it up is nothing more than some blend of vapor? And what do the libations poured over the victims mean, and the rule that no oracle may be given unless the victim, from the tips of its hooves upward, trembles all over and is shaken as the libation is poured on it? For it is not enough for it to shake its head, as in other sacrifices; every part of the body must be seized at once by a shuddering and pulsation, accompanied by a tremulous sound—and if this does not happen, they say the oracle does not function and they do not bring in the Pythia. And yet, if one attributes the greater share of the cause to a god or a daimon, it is reasonable to do and believe this; but on your account it is not reasonable. For the vapor, whether the victim shudders or not, being present, will produce the inspired state and will affect the soul in like manner, not only of the Pythia but of any body that happens to come near it. Hence it is foolish to make use of a single woman for the oracles, and to burden her with the trouble of keeping herself chaste and pure her whole life through. As for that famous Coretas, whom the Delphians say was the first to fall in with the power belonging to the place and to give evidence of it, I think he was in no way different from other goatherds and shepherds—if indeed this is not a myth and an empty fiction, as I for my part believe. And when I reckon how great the benefits are of which this oracle has been the cause for the Greeks, in wars and in the founding of cities, in plagues and in failures of crops, I think it a terrible thing not to ascribe its discovery and origin to a god and to providence, but to attribute it to chance and to what happens automatically."
"In view of this," he said, "I wish to converse with Lamprias—will you wait?" "By all means," said Philip, "and so will all these others, for the discourse has stirred all of us." And I said to him, "It has not only stirred me, Philip, but has thrown me into confusion, if in the presence of men so numerous and so eminent as you I seem, beyond my years, to be preening myself on the plausibility of my argument and to be doing away with and disturbing beliefs truly and piously held about the divine. I shall defend myself, however, by bringing forward Plato as both witness and advocate at once. For that man found fault with Anaxagoras of old, because, being too bound up with physical causes and always pursuing and tracking down what is brought about by necessity in the affections of bodies, he let go of the better causes and principles—the 'that for the sake of which' and the 'by which'—while Plato himself was the first, or chiefly among the philosophers, to pursue both, assigning to god the principle of things that follow reason, yet not depriving matter of the necessary causes that contribute to what comes to be, but seeing that in this way, too, the whole sensible universe is arranged, not pure nor unmixed, but taking on its coming-to-be through matter interwoven with reason."
"Consider first the case of craftsmen: take, for instance, the famous base and stand of the mixing-bowl here, which Herodotus called the 'stand of the mixing-bowl'—it had material causes, fire and iron and the softening produced through fire and the tempering through water, without which no device could bring the work into being; but the more authoritative principle, the one that set these in motion and worked through them, was supplied to the work by art and reason. And indeed, of these very imitations and images, the maker and craftsman is inscribed: 'Polygnotus, a Thasian by birth, son of Aglaophon, painted the sacked citadel of Ilium, as it is seen painted'; yet without pigments ground and blended together with one another, it would have been impossible for such an arrangement and appearance to come into being. Does the man, then, who wishes to grasp the material principle, seeking and teaching the affections and changes that a red ochre mixed with a pale pigment undergoes, and a dark one mixed with a whitish, thereby take away the credit due to the craftsman? Does the man who explains the tempering and softening of iron—that when relaxed by fire it yields and gives way to those who hammer and beat it, but when plunged again into pure cold water, and by its coldness, on account of the softness and porosity engendered in it by the fire, is compressed and made dense, it acquires that firmness and hardness which Homer called 'the strength of iron'—does such a man any the less preserve for the craftsman the credit for the coming-into-being of the work? I for my part do not think so. Indeed, some medicinal powers, too, have their qualities called into question, without thereby doing away with the medical art itself. Just as, of course, Plato too, while declaring that we see by the light from our eyes blending with the light of the sun, and hear by the impact of the air, did not thereby do away with our having become creatures able to see and hear in accordance with reason and providence."
"For, speaking generally," I said, "since every coming-into-being has a twofold cause, the very ancient theologians and poets chose to attend to the superior one, uttering that common refrain applied to all things: 'Zeus the beginning, Zeus the middle, and from Zeus all things have their being'; but they no longer went on to the necessary and physical causes. The more recent thinkers, however, called the 'natural philosophers,' straying in the opposite direction from that fine and divine principle, place everything in bodies and the affections of bodies, in impacts and changes and mixtures. Hence in both cases the account falls short of what is fitting: the one group is ignorant of, or leaves aside, the 'through which' and 'by which,' the other the 'out of which' and 'through which.' But the man who was the first to lay hold clearly of both, and who, along with the agent that acts and moves in accordance with reason, also took in, as necessary, the underlying subject that is acted upon, frees both himself and us from every suspicion and false charge. For we are not making divination godless or irrational when we assign to it as matter the soul of man, and as instrument or plectrum, so to speak, the inspiring breath and the vapor. For, in the first place, it is the earth that gives birth to the vapors, and the sun that imparts to the earth its whole power of tempering and change—being, by ancestral custom, a god for us; and then there are daimones set over it, going about and guarding it, as it were the harmony of this mixture, at one time relaxing it in due season, at another intensifying it, and removing what is excessively frenzied and disturbing in it, while allowing what is stimulating to be blended in, harmlessly and without hurt, for those who make use of it—we shall not, I think, be considered to be doing anything irrational or impossible."
"Nor, again, in offering sacrifices beforehand and garlanding the victims and pouring libations over them, do we act contrary to this account. For the priests and the sacred officials say that they sacrifice the victim and pour the libation and observe closely its movement and its trembling, taking this as a sign of nothing other than the god's readiness to prophesy; for the thing to be sacrificed must be pure and unharmed and undamaged, in body as well as in soul. Now the signs revealing conditions of the body are not very difficult to detect; but they test the soul by setting barley-groats before the bulls and chickpeas before the boars, for they think that one which does not taste of them is not in good health. And they test the goat by cold water: for they hold that it is not in the nature of a soul that is in its natural state to be unaffected and unmoved at being doused with the libation. As for myself, even if it is well established that shuddering is a sign of the god's readiness to prophesy, and the opposite a sign that he is not ready, I do not see what awkward consequence follows from this for what has been said. For every power, given the right occasion, produces its natural effect better or worse; and since the right occasion escapes us, it is reasonable that the god should give signs of it."
"I think, then, that the vapor does not remain in the same condition invariably at all times, but has certain periods of relaxation and, again, of intensity; and for the evidence I use, I have as witnesses both many strangers and all those who tend the shrine. For the chamber in which they seat those who consult the god is filled, not often nor regularly but as chance has it, at intervals of time, with a fragrance and a breath such as the sweetest and most costly of perfumes might send forth, as though from a spring, the innermost sanctuary being its source; for it is likely to bloom forth on account of heat or some other power that arises in it. And if this does not seem plausible, at least you will agree that the Pythia herself is subject, at different times, to different affections and changes in that part of the soul with which the breath comes into contact, and does not always maintain one and the same tempering, unvarying like a fixed harmony, at every season. For many disturbances and movements, some perceived, but more of them unnoticed, take hold of the body and steal through into the soul; and when she is full of these, it is not better for her to go there, nor to present herself to the god when she is not altogether pure, like an instrument well strung and tuneful, but instead subject to passion and unsettled."
"For neither does wine always affect the drinker in the same way, nor the pipe always produce the same enthusiastic effect; rather, at one time the same people are stirred into Bacchic frenzy less, at another more, since the mixture within them has become different. And it seems that above all the imaginative part of the soul is overmastered and changes along with the body as the body is altered, as is clear from the case of dreams: at times we find ourselves amid many and varied dream-visions, but at other times, again, there is complete calm and quiet from such things. We ourselves know that Cleon of Daulis, over the many years of his life, used to claim that he had never once seen a dream; and the same is said by the older men about Thrasymedes of Heraea. The cause is the tempering of the body—just as, on the other hand, that of melancholic people is full of dreams and full of imaginings, and it seems that they possess the gift of true dreaming; for, since the imaginative faculty turns to different objects at different times, like men throwing many casts, they often hit the mark."
"Whenever, then, the imaginative and mantic faculty is in due accord with the tempering of the breath, as of a drug, inspiration must necessarily arise in those who prophesy; but when it is not so, it either does not arise, or arises distorted and impure and disturbed, as we know happened in the case of the Pythia who died recently. For when envoys had come from abroad, it is said that the victim endured the first libations poured over it unmoved and unaffected; but when the priests, out of eagerness for honor, went to excess and were insistent, it scarcely gave way, and only after being drenched and thoroughly soaked. What, then, happened concerning the Pythia? She went down into the oracular chamber, as they say, unwilling and reluctant; and straightaway, at her first responses, it was evident from the roughness of her voice that something was wrong—she was not, like a ship driving before the wind, bearing up under it, but was full of a voiceless and evil spirit. Finally, thrown into utter turmoil, and rushing with a fearful cry toward the exit, she flung herself down, so that not only the envoys fled but the prophet Nicander as well, and those of the sacred officials who were present. However, going in a little later, they picked her up, still conscious, and she lived on for a few days."
"For these reasons they keep the body of the Pythia chaste from intercourse and her whole life free of mixture with intercourse of any foreign kind, and untouched; and before consulting the oracle they take the signs, believing that it is clear to the god when she has the fitting tempering and disposition to endure the inspiration without harm. For the power of the breath does not affect everyone, nor the same people always, in the same way, but it merely supplies fuel and a starting-point, as has been said, for those disposed by nature to be affected and changed by it. It is indeed truly divine and of a daimon's nature, yet not inexhaustible nor imperishable nor ageless and enduring for infinite time—that time by which all things between earth and moon grow weary, according to our account. There are those, too, who say that even the things above the moon do not persist, but, giving out before the eternal and infinite, undergo swift changes and rebirths."
"These matters," I said, "I urge both you and myself to reconsider often, since I hold many objections and suspicions on the opposite side, which the present occasion does not allow me to pursue through in full; so let these too be set aside, along with what Philip is puzzling over concerning the sun and Apollo."

======== Moralia: De E Delphos ========

I recently came across some verses of no mean quality, my dear Sarapion, which Dicaearchus believes Euripides addressed to Archelaus: "I do not wish, though poor, to give gifts to a rich man, lest you judge me foolish, or think that in giving I am really asking. For the giver of small things from little means confers no favor on those who possess much, and if he is distrusted while giving, he gains nothing but a reputation for ill nature and meanness besides." Consider, then, how far gifts of money fall short, in generosity and beauty, of the gifts that come from reasoned wisdom—gifts which it is honorable to give, and for which the givers may fairly ask like gifts in return from those who receive them. I, for my part, in sending to you and, through you, to our friends there some of my Pythian discourses as a kind of first-fruits, confess that I expect others, more numerous and better, from you in return, inasmuch as you live in a great city and enjoy leisure amid a wealth of books and studies of every kind.
Our friend Apollo, then, seems to heal and resolve the perplexities of life by giving oracles to those who consult him, but the perplexities that concern reasoned discourse he himself instills and sets before the mind naturally inclined to philosophy, implanting in the soul a desire that leads it on toward truth—as is clear from many other things and especially from the consecration of the E. For it is reasonable to suppose that this letter did not come to occupy a place of honor beside the god by chance, nor merely as if it had been allotted its rank among the letters at random, and so received the status of a sacred dedication and a spectacle—but rather that either those who in the beginning philosophized about the god perceived in it some peculiar and extraordinary power, or else made use of it as a symbol pointing to something else worthy of study, and so admitted it in this way.
Often, then, on other occasions, when the subject was raised in the school, I would gently turn it aside and pass it by; but recently I was drawn into it by my sons, who were vying to entertain some strangers whom—since they were about to leave Delphi at once—it was not decent to put off or to refuse, eager as they were to hear something before all else. So, sitting down beside the temple, I began partly to inquire on my own and partly to question them, and under the influence of the place and of the discussion itself, I recalled what we once heard long ago, at the time when Nero was visiting, from Ammonius and certain others who were discussing the matter, when the same difficulty had likewise arisen there. That the god is no less a philosopher than a prophet seemed to everyone plain, and on this point Ammonius rightly assigned each of the names, explaining that he is called Pythian for those who are beginning to learn and to inquire; Delian and Phanaean for those to whom something of the truth is already being disclosed and is beginning to shine forth; Ismenian for those who already possess knowledge; and Leschenorian whenever men are active and take their pleasure in conversing and philosophizing with one another.
"And since," he said, "the beginning of philosophizing is inquiry, and inquiry is wonder and perplexity, it is reasonable that most matters concerning the god should seem to be hidden away in riddles, and to call for some account of the why and an explanation of the cause—for example, in the case of the undying fire, the fact that only fir and laurel among woods are burned there as incense; and the fact that two Fates, though three are usually reckoned, are set up everywhere; and the fact that no woman is permitted to approach the oracle; and the matter of the tripod, and all such things—these, offered to men who are not utterly without reason or without soul, entice and invite them to consider something, and to listen, and to converse about them.
Consider also these inscribed maxims, 'Know thyself' and 'Nothing in excess'—how many inquiries they have set philosophers in motion, and what a multitude of discourses has sprung up from each of them as if from a seed! Of none of these, I think, is the subject now under inquiry any less fruitful a source of discourse." When Ammonius had said this, his brother Lamprias said, "Well, the account we have heard is simple and quite brief. For they say that those wise men—called by some sophists—were themselves five in number: Chilon, Thales, Solon, Bias, and Pittacus; but when Cleobulus, the tyrant of Lindos, and then Periander of Corinth, who had no share at all in virtue or wisdom, but by force of power, friends, and favors compelled a reputation for themselves, thrust their way into the title of the wise, and sent out and scattered abroad through Greece certain maxims and sayings resembling those spoken by the genuine sages—the true men, indignant at this, being unwilling to expose the imposture openly, nor to incur the enmity of men of great power for the sake of reputation, and to fight it out with them, instead met together by themselves in this place and conferred with one another, and dedicated the letter which stands fifth in the order of the alphabet and signifies the number five, calling the god to witness on their own behalf that they were five, and rejecting and casting off the sixth and the seventh as not belonging to them.
And that this is said not without reason, one might learn by hearing what those connected with the shrine report: that the golden E was called that of Livia, Caesar's wife; the bronze one that of the Athenians; but the first and oldest one, which in substance is still wooden, they call to this day 'the E of the wise men,' as having become a dedication not of one man but common to all of them." Now Ammonius smiled quietly to himself, suspecting that Lamprias was making use of an opinion of his own, but pretending it was history and hearsay from others, so as to avoid responsibility for it.
Then another of those present said that this resembled the nonsense that a Chaldean stranger had been talking recently—that seven of the letters emit a sound of their own, and seven are the stars that move in heaven with a motion complete in itself and unconnected with others; and that E stands second in order among the vowels from the beginning, just as the sun stands second among the planets counting from the moon; and that virtually all Greeks consider Apollo to be identical with the sun. "But this," he said, "is entirely from the market stall and the assembly-crowd. It seems Lamprias, without realizing it, has stirred up against himself men who came from the shrine to hear his own account." For what that man had said, none of the Delphians knew; but they were bringing forward into the open the common and touristic opinion, holding that it is neither the visual shape nor the sound but only the name of the letter that has some symbolic meaning.
"For it is," as the Delphians suppose, and as Nicander the priest, who was then presiding, used to say, "the form and figure of an approach to the god, and it holds the leading place among the questions that those who consult the oracle put to him each time as they make their inquiries: 'shall I be victorious?' 'shall I marry?' 'is it advantageous to sail?' 'to farm?' 'to go abroad?' But the god, being wise, bids the logicians good day, thinking that nothing results from the particle 'if' together with the proposition that follows it, and that all questions are subordinate to this—yet he conceives of and welcomes them all as real matters of fact.
Since, moreover, to ask questions, as one asks a seer, is peculiar to us, while to pray is common to us as addressed to a god, they hold that the letter contains no less the power of wishing than of asking: for 'if only' (ei gar), each one who prays says. And Archilochus: 'If only it might be granted me to touch Neobule's hand.' And they say that the second syllable of the word eithe ('would that') is a mere lengthening, as in Sophron's phrase 'along with children, would that she needed'; and in the Homeric line, 'so, I think, I too shall loosen his fury' — while in the word 'if' the optative sense is sufficiently and adequately expressed."
When Nicander had gone through all this—you know our companion Theon—he asked Ammonius whether logic had any right to speak up for itself, having heard itself so thoroughly abused; and when Ammonius urged him to speak and come to its defense, Theon said: "Well, that the god is most given to logical reasoning, most of his oracles make plain, for it belongs to the same faculty both to resolve and to create ambiguities. Further, as Plato used to say, when an oracle was given commanding that the altar at Delos be doubled, a task which is the very height of achievement in geometry, the god was not really commanding this, but was instructing the Greeks to study geometry: so, then, in issuing ambiguous oracles, the god increases and strengthens the art of logical reasoning, as being necessary for those who are going to understand him correctly.
In logic, surely, this connective conjunction 'if' has the greatest power, since it forms the most rational of propositions, the conditional. For how could the conditional be otherwise, seeing that even the beasts have knowledge of the existence of things, while nature has granted to man alone the contemplation and judgment of consequence? For that 'it is day and there is light,' wolves and dogs and birds, of course, perceive; but that 'if it is day, there is light'—nothing else but man understands, since he alone has a conception of the connection and interrelation of the leading and the following terms with one another, and of their relation and difference, from which demonstrations take their most authoritative starting point.
Since, then, philosophy is concerned with truth, and the light of truth is demonstration, and the starting point of demonstration is the conditional, it is fitting that the power which holds this together and produces it should have been consecrated by wise men to the god who most of all loves truth. And the god is a prophet, while the prophetic art concerns the future as derived from what is present or past; for of nothing is the coming-into-being uncaused, nor is foreknowledge without reason—but since all things that come to be follow upon and are bound up with the things that have already come to be, and the things that will come to be with the things now coming to be, in a chain proceeding from beginning to an end that completes it, the one who knows how to bind and interweave the causes with one another in accordance with nature also knows how to foretell things present, things future, and things past.
And Homer did well to place first the things present, then the future, and then the past; for it is from what exists that the syllogism proceeds, according to the power of the conditional, as in 'if this is, this precedes it,' and again, 'if this is, this will come to be.' For the technical and logical element, as has been said, is knowledge of sequence, while perception supplies the minor premise to reason. Hence, even though it may seem a strained point to make, I shall not shrink from asserting that this—reasoned discourse—is the true tripod of truth, which, having established the sequence of the consequent upon the antecedent, then, adding the fact of existence, draws the conclusion of the demonstration.
As for the Pythian god, then, if indeed he delights in music and in the songs of swans and the sounds of the lyre, what wonder is it that out of love for logical reasoning he should embrace and cherish this part of discourse, which he sees philosophers making use of most and to the greatest degree? And Heracles—not yet having freed Prometheus, nor yet having conversed with the sophists in the company of Chiron and Atlas, but still young and thoroughly Boeotian—by rejecting logic and mocking the word 'if,' seemed to be tearing away by force the second leg of the tripod and contending against the god on behalf of his own art; since, as time went on, he too seems to have become at once most prophetic and most skilled in logic."
When Theon had finished, it was, I think, Eustrophus the Athenian who said to us: "Do you see how eagerly Theon defends logic, all but putting on the lion's skin himself? So it is not likely that we too, who reckon absolutely all things—facts, natures, and first principles alike, both divine and human—in terms of number, and who make this above all our guide and lord over the things that are beautiful and honorable, should keep silent, but rather that we should offer to the god the first-fruits of our beloved mathematics: holding that the E itself, in itself, differs from the other letters neither in power nor in shape nor in name, but that it has been honored as the sign of a number great and sovereign over the whole—the pentad, from which the wise called the act of counting 'pempazein.'"
Eustrophus said this to us not in jest, but because at that time I was passionately devoted to mathematical studies, and was likely soon to be honoring 'nothing in excess' in all things, once I had come to the Academy. I said, then, that Eustrophus resolved the puzzle most excellently by means of number: "for," I said, "since every number is divided into the even and the odd, the monad is common to both in its power (which is why, when added, it makes the odd number even, and the even number odd), and since two is taken as the origin of the even, and three of the odd, and five is generated when these are mixed together, it has reasonably come to be honored as the first number produced from the first numbers, and has been named 'marriage' from the resemblance of the even to the female and, in turn, of the odd to the male.
For in divisions of numbers into equal parts, the even number, when split apart in every way, leaves behind a certain receptive principle and space within itself, as it were, whereas in the odd number, when it undergoes the same treatment, there is always a productive middle term left over from the division; by which it is more fruitful than the other, and when mixed it always dominates and is never dominated—for from the mixture of the two, by no combination does an even number result, but by every combination an odd one does.
Further, and still more, each shows its distinctive character by being multiplied by and combined with itself: for no even number, when joined with an even number, ever produces an odd result, nor does it depart from its own nature, being through weakness barren and incapable of producing anything other than itself; whereas odd numbers, when combined with odd numbers, produce many even numbers because of their thoroughgoing fruitfulness. The other powers and distinctions of numbers one could not properly go through at present. As, then, the five, arising from the union of the first male number and the first female number, the Pythagoreans called 'marriage'; and it is also called 'nature,' because, when multiplied by itself repeatedly, it always comes back around to itself again.
For just as nature, taking a grain of wheat as seed and pouring it out, produces in the middle many shapes and forms through which it brings the work to its end, but at the very end reveals wheat once more, restoring the beginning in the completion of the whole process—so too, among the other numbers, when they are multiplied by themselves, they end in others as they grow; only the number five, and six along with it, when multiplied by themselves that many times over, reproduce and preserve themselves. For six times six is thirty-six, and five times five is twenty-five.
And again, the number six does this only once, becoming a square from itself in a single way; but for the pentad, while this too happens through multiplication, it also has the peculiar property of producing, by addition, either itself or the decad, adding itself to itself part by part, and this happens continually, the number thereby imitating the principle that orders and governs the whole universe. For just as that principle preserves...
...out of itself produces the cosmos, and out of the cosmos again produces itself: “All things are exchanged for fire,” says Heraclitus, “and fire for all things, just as goods are exchanged for gold and gold for goods.” So too the pentad's union with itself is naturally disposed to generate nothing incomplete or foreign, but has fixed transformations: for it produces either itself or the decad, that is, either what is proper to it or what is perfect.”
“So if someone should ask what this has to do with Apollo, we shall say: not to Apollo alone, but to Dionysus as well, who has no less a share in Delphi than Apollo does. We hear the theologians, some speaking in verse and some without meter, singing that the god, being by nature indestructible and eternal, but subject to certain transformations of himself ordained by fate and reason, at one time kindles his nature into fire, making all things alike to all, and at another time becomes manifold, appearing in different shapes and passions and powers, as he does now, and is called the cosmos, by the most familiar of his names.
But the wiser among them, concealing this from the many, call his transformation into fire 'Apollo' on account of his oneness, and 'Phoebus' on account of his purity and unstained nature. As for his turning into winds and water and earth and stars and the generations of plants and animals, and the ordering that results, they hint at this affection and change as a kind of tearing apart and dismemberment, and they call him Dionysus and Zagreus and Nyktelios and Isodaites; and those who speak of his deaths and rebirths recount, in myths and riddles proper to the changes described, certain destructions and disappearances.
And to the one they sing dithyrambic songs full of suffering, with a certain wandering and dispersion characteristic of change — for Aeschylus says that a tumultuous dithyramb befits accompanying the revel-band of Dionysus — while to the other they sing a paean, an orderly and temperate strain. They depict the one as ever ageless and young, the other as manifold and multiform in paintings and sculptures; and in general they attribute to the one likeness, order, and unmixed seriousness, and to the other a certain irregularity mixed with playfulness, insolence, seriousness, and madness, invoking him as 'Dionysus the reveler, rouser of women, who flourishes amid frenzied honors' — not unreasonably taking what is proper to each of the two changes.
Since the periods of these changes are not of equal length, but the one they call 'satiety' is longer, and the one called 'want' shorter, they observe the proportion accordingly: for the rest of the year they use the paean at the sacrifices, but at the onset of winter they rouse the dithyramb and put a stop to the paean, and for three months they invoke this god in place of that one — reckoning that the ratio of the ordered world's time to the time of the conflagration is three to one.
“But this has been drawn out beyond due measure. It is clear, though, that they associate the pentad with him, since it produces at one time itself, like fire, and at another the decad out of itself, like the cosmos.
“And do we suppose that music, which is most pleasing to the god, has no share in this number? For the greatest part, one might almost say, of the art of harmony concerns the concords. And that these are five and no more, reason refutes anyone who wishes to hunt for them irrationally, by sensation alone, among strings and finger-holes. For all of them derive their origin from ratios of numbers: the ratio of the fourth is four to three, of the fifth three to two, of the octave two to one, of the octave-plus-fifth three to one, and of the double octave four to one.
As for the interval which the theorists of harmony introduce alongside these — the so-called octave-plus-fourth, which steps outside due measure — it is not worth accepting, since in doing so they indulge the irrational element of hearing against reason, as though granting it special privilege. And to pass over the five positions of the tetrachord, and the five primary tones — or modes, or scales, whichever we should call them — by whose raising and lowering, more or less, all the remaining degrees of pitch, low and high, arise: is it not true that, though the intervals are many, or rather infinite, only five are melodic — the quarter-tone, the semitone, the tone, the tone-and-a-half, and the ditone — and that no other space in sound, smaller or larger, bounded by high and low pitch, is melodic?”
“There are many other such instances,” I said, “which I could bring forward, passing over Plato, who says there is one cosmos, on the ground that if there are others besides this one, and this one is not alone, they would be five in all and no more. And yet even if this cosmos is one and unique, as Aristotle too believes, in a certain way it too is composed and fitted together out of five worlds: one of earth, one of water, a third of fire, and a fourth of air; and the fifth, heaven, which some call light, others aether, and others simply a fifth substance — since to move in a circle is, by nature, the property of that body alone, not by necessity nor by chance. And having recognized also the five most beautiful and most perfect figures found in nature — the pyramid, the cube, the octahedron, the icosahedron, and the dodecahedron — he assigned each one appropriately to each element.
There are also those who match the powers of the senses, equal in number to those primary elements, to them: observing that touch is resistant and earthy, and that taste receives the qualities of things tasted through the moisture of what is tasted. Air, when struck, becomes voice and sound for hearing. Of the two remaining senses, smell, the province of the sense of smell, is an exhalation generated by heat and is of a fiery nature; while sight, kindred to aether and light and shining forth through that kinship, produces a blending of the two that share a common nature, a kind of fusion. Neither the living creature has any other sense, nor does the cosmos have any other simple and unmixed nature — but a wondrous distribution and correspondence, it seems, has come about between the five senses and the five elements.”
Then, pausing and stopping for a moment, “What an oversight, Eustrophus,” I said, “we have very nearly committed, passing over Homer — who was the first to divide the cosmos into five portions, assigning the three middle ones to the three gods, and leaving the two extremes, Olympus and earth, of which the one is the boundary of the lower regions and the other of the upper, as common to all and unallotted to any.
“But,” I went on, “the argument must be brought back, as Euripides says. For those who honor the tetrad teach us, not without merit, that by its principle every body has come into being. Since everything solid consists of length and breadth that has acquired depth, and a point, ranked as a unit, precedes length; and length without breadth is called a line, and is length; and the motion of a line in breadth produced the generation of a surface, in a triad; and when depth is added to these, through a fourth term the growth advances into a solid — it is clear to everyone that the tetrad, having advanced nature this far, to the point of completing a body and providing a tangible, resistant mass, then leaves it deficient in the greatest thing.
For the soulless, simply put, is orphaned and incomplete and fit for nothing whatsoever, so long as soul does not make use of it; but the motion or disposition that engenders soul, coming about by a change through a fifth term, renders nature complete, and possesses a principle that much more authoritative than the tetrad's, by as much as the living being surpasses the soulless in worth.
Furthermore, the symmetry and power of the pentad, prevailing still further, did not allow the ensouled to proceed into infinite kinds, but furnished five forms for all living things. For there are, surely, gods, and daemons, and heroes, and after these, as a fourth kind, human beings, and last, as a fifth, the irrational and beast-like kind. Again, if you were to divide the soul itself according to its nature, its first and dimmest part is the nutritive, the second the perceptive, then the appetitive, and after that the spirited; and having arrived at the power of reason and brought nature to completion, it comes to rest, as it were, at the summit, in the fifth.
“Now since the number possesses so many and such great powers, its origin too is beautiful — not the one we already discussed, arising from a dyad and a triad, but that which the unit produced by uniting with the first square number. For the unit is the origin of every number, and the first square is the tetrad; and from these, as though form met matter reaching its limit, comes the pentad. And if some rightly hold that the unit itself is also a square — being its own power and terminating in itself — then the pentad, having arisen from two of the primary squares, leaves no possibility of surpassing it in nobility.” “But the greatest point,” I said, “I am afraid, once spoken, will embarrass our Plato — just as he himself said Anaxagoras was embarrassed over the matter of the moon, when he claimed as his own an opinion about its illumination that was in fact very ancient. For has he not said as much in the Cratylus?”
“Certainly,” said Eustrophus, “but I do not see what parallel there is.” “Well, you surely know that in the Sophist he demonstrates five principal first-principles: being, sameness, otherness, and, fourth and fifth in addition to these, motion and rest. And again, using another kind of division in the Philebus, he says that the one is the unlimited and the other the limit, and that when these are mixed, all generation results. As the cause by which the mixture occurs, he posits a fourth kind; and he has left us to infer a fifth, by which the things mixed are again separated and set apart.
I conjecture that these are spoken of as images of those former principles: the unlimited corresponding to becoming, the limit to rest, the mixing principle to sameness, and the separating principle to otherness. But even if these are different, either way the result stands in five kinds and distinctions.
“Someone will say that, having perceived this before Plato and learned of it, he consecrated two E's to the god, a manifest sign and symbol of the number of all things. But indeed he also recognized that the good appears manifest in five kinds, of which the first is measure, the second the well-proportioned, the third mind, the fourth the sciences and arts and true opinions concerning the soul, and the fifth, if there is any pure pleasure unmixed with pain — at which point he stops, adding the Orphic line: 'In the sixth generation, cease the order of the song.'”
“On top of what has been said,” I remarked, “I shall sing to you one brief word for the understanding, to those around Nicander: for on the sixth day of the new month, when someone brings the Pythia down into the town hall, the first of the three lots comes about for you by casting five against each other, her side taking three and his side two. Is that not how it stands?” And Nicander said, “So it is, but the reason may not be disclosed to others.” “Well then,” I said, smiling, “until the god grants us, once we have become his priests, to learn the truth, this too shall be added to what has been said in praise of the pentad.”
Such, as I recall, was the end of the arithmetical and mathematical encomium of the E.
Ammonius, since he himself placed no small part of philosophy in mathematics, was pleased with what had been said and remarked: “It is not worthwhile to argue too precisely against the young men on these points, except to note that each of the numbers will furnish no small material to those who wish to praise and celebrate it. And what need is there to speak of the other numbers? For Apollo's sacred hebdomad would use up the whole day before one could go through all its powers in speech. In that case, by the common rule, we shall be declaring our wise men to be at war both with the god and with long tradition, if — having pushed the hebdomad aside from its presidency — they consecrated the pentad to the god as somehow more fitting.
“I think, then, that the letter signifies neither a number, nor an order, nor a connective, nor any other of the deficient parts of speech; rather, it is a complete address and greeting to the god in its own right, which, by the very utterance, sets the speaker's mind upon the god's power. For the god, as each of us approaches him here, greets us, as it were, with the words 'Know thyself' — which is no less a greeting than 'Hail.' And we, in turn, answering the god, say 'Thou art,' rendering to him this address of being as true and without falsehood, and belonging to him alone who alone possesses it.
“For in reality we have no share whatsoever in being; rather, every mortal nature, existing between coming-to-be and perishing, offers only a dim and uncertain appearance and semblance of itself. And if you press your thought to grasp it, it is like a violent attempt to grip water: by squeezing and compressing it together, the very act destroys what it seizes as it flows away; so too, reason, pursuing the excessive vividness of each thing among the things that are affected and changed, is thrown off — swept now toward its coming-to-be, now toward its perishing — unable to lay hold of anything that abides or truly is.
“For it is not possible, according to Heraclitus, to step twice into the same river; nor is it possible to touch a mortal substance twice in the same state, but by the sharpness and speed of its change 'it scatters and gathers again' — or rather not even 'again' nor 'afterward,' but at the same instant it comes together and departs, 'approaches and withdraws.' Hence what is coming-to-be of it does not even reach the point of being, because its generation never ceases nor stands still, but, ever changing from seed, makes first an embryo, then an infant, then a child, then in turn a stripling, a young man, then a man, an elder, an old man — each later stage of growth and age destroying the earlier ones.
“But we, absurdly, fear one single death, though we have already died so many times, and are dying still. For it is not only, as Heraclitus said, that 'death for fire is birth for air, and death for air is birth for water,' but still more plainly in our own case: the man in his prime perishes when the old man comes to be, the young man perished into the man in his prime, and the child into the young man, and the infant into the child; he of yesterday has died into him of today, and he of today is dying into him of tomorrow. No one remains, nor is anyone one thing, but we become many, circling around some one...
...a phantasm, and the common imprint of matter as it is driven around and slips away. For how, remaining the same, do we now delight in one set of things, formerly in another, love or hate opposite things, admire and blame opposite things, use different words and different feelings, no longer having the same appearance, the same form, or the same mind? For it is not likely that one undergoes different experiences without changing, nor that one who changes remains the same; and if
he is not the same, then he does not exist at all, but this very thing changes, becoming one person out of another; and perception is deceived through ignorance of what really is, taking the apparent for the real. "What then truly is? That which is eternal, ungenerated, and imperishable, to which time brings no change at all. For time is something in motion, appearing together with matter that is in motion, ever flowing and never containing anything, like
a vessel of destruction and generation. Of time, indeed, the words ‘afterward’ and ‘before,’ and ‘will be’ and ‘has been,’ the moment they are spoken, are of themselves a confession of not-being: for to say of what has not yet come to be, or has already ceased to be, that ‘it is,’ is foolish and absurd. And as for that on which we most rest our thought of
time when we utter ‘it is now present’ and ‘it is here’ and ‘now,’ this too our reasoning, slipping away, wholly destroys once again. For it is squeezed out into the future and the past, like a point that those wishing to see it are forced, of necessity, to split apart. And if the nature that is measured undergoes the same fate as the thing that measures it, then none of it remains or truly is, but all things come to be and perish according to
their apportionment with respect to time. Hence it is not even pious to say of Being that it ‘was’ or ‘will be’; for these are certain declensions and transitions and variations belonging to what is not by nature fitted to remain in being." "But God is—one must say so—and he exists in respect to no time at all, but in respect to the eternity that is unmoving, timeless, and unswerving,
in which there is nothing earlier or later, nothing future or past, nothing older or younger; but being one, he has filled up ‘forever’ with a single ‘now,’ and only what exists in this way is truly real—not having come to be, nor being about to be, nor having begun, nor going to cease. So then we must worship and greet him in this manner, revering him, or indeed, by Zeus, as some of the
ancients did, say ‘Thou art.’ For the divine is not many, as each of us is—an assortment gathered out of countless differences arising amid our passions, a motley aggregate mixed together as at some festival crowd; rather, what truly is must be one, just as the One is what truly is. Otherness, through its difference from Being, passes over into the coming-to-be of not-being. Hence it is fitting that the first and
second and third of the god’s names have this character. For Apollo is, as it were, one who denies the many and disavows plurality; Ieius, as one and alone; and Phoebus, of course, is the name the ancients gave to everything pure and undefiled—just as even now the Thessalians say that their priests, when on the forbidden days they keep to themselves apart, are being ‘phoibonomized,’ that is, I think, purified. And the one is unmixed and
pure, for defilement comes from the mingling of one thing with another—just as somewhere Homer too says that a certain piece of ivory ‘is stained’ when it is reddened with dye; and dyers say that colors which are mixed together are ‘spoiled,’ and they call the mixture ‘corruption.’ It is fitting, then, that to be one and unmixed always belongs to what is imperishable and pure." "As for those who hold that Apollo and the sun are the same, it is right to embrace them and
to love them for their piety of speech, since they place their conception of the god in that thing which, of all they know and desire, they honor most. But now, as we dream of the god in the fairest of dreams, let us wake ourselves and urge him to lead us further upward and to let us behold his waking reality and his very being; and let us also honor this image here and revere the generative power that surrounds it, so far as
it is possible for what is perceptible to honor what is intelligible, and what is in motion to honor what abides—displaying, as it flickers, certain reflections and images somehow of that being’s benevolence and blessedness. But as for his departures and transformations as he sends forth fire, which they say draw him upward, and again his pressing down here and stretching himself into earth and sea and winds and living creatures, and the dreadful sufferings of both animals and plants—it is not even pious to hear of it,
or else he would be inferior to the child in the poet’s image, who plays that game with a heap of sand, piling it up and then scattering it again himself, dealing with the universe always in this same manner, molding the world when it does not exist and then destroying it once it has come to be. On the contrary, whatever has in any way come to be present within the world, this binds its substance together and masters the weakness of the corporeal, which tends toward destruction.
And it seems to me that the saying most opposed to this account—and calling on it as a witness against it—is to say ‘Thou art’ to the god, as though no departure or change ever occurs about him, but that it belongs to some other god, or rather to some daimon appointed over the nature that is bound up with destruction and generation, to do and to undergo this. This is clear at once from the names themselves, which are, as it were, opposite and
antiphonal to one another. For the one is called Apollo, the other Pluto; the one Delian, the other Aidoneus; the one Phoebus (the bright), the other Skotios (the shadowed); and with the one are the Muses and Memory, with the other are Forgetfulness and Silence; and the one is Theorios and Phanaios, while the other is ‘lord of murky night and idle Sleep’;
and the one is ‘of all the gods most hateful to mortals,’ while of him Pindar spoke, not unpleasingly, that ‘he was judged by mortals to be gentlest of all.’ Fittingly, then, Euripides said: ‘the libations for the dead, the dirges for the departed, golden-haired Apollo does not accept.’ And even before him, Stesichorus: ‘Apollo indeed loves above all sportive play and song, but to Hades fell cares and lamentation.’
Sophocles too, assigning to each of the two gods one of the instruments, makes this plain in these words: ‘not the nabla dear to wailing, nor the lyre.’ For the aulos, too, only recently and of late, dared to send forth its voice ‘over things desired’; but in the earliest time it was drawn toward mourning, and its office in that regard was held in no great honor and was not bright or cheerful—until later, all things became mixed together with all.
...they have plunged themselves into confusion, above all by confounding the divine with the daimonic. But surely to the E the saying ‘Know Thyself’ seems, in a way, to stand opposed, and yet in another way it also harmonizes with it once more: for the one has been proclaimed to the god in astonishment and reverence, as to one who exists forever, while the other is a reminder to the mortal of his own nature and weakness."

======== Moralia: De Esu Carnium ========

But you ask me by what reasoning Pythagoras abstained from eating flesh? I, for my part, wonder rather by what feeling, or with what sort of soul or reason, the first human being touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a slaughtered animal — set out tables of dead and stale bodies, and called them delicacies and luxuries, when the very parts that a little before were bellowing and speaking and moving and seeing —
how did his sight endure the slaughter, when they were being cut open, flayed, torn limb from limb? How did his sense of smell bear the stench? How did his taste not turn away in disgust at handling the pollution of other creatures' sores and deadly wounds, and taking in their juices and discharges? "The hides crawled, and the meat, both roasted and raw, bellowed on the spits, and gave out a voice like that of cattle" — this is invention and fable;
but the dinner itself was truly monstrous: to devour something that was still, so to speak, lowing, and to instruct oneself in what living, still-speaking creatures one ought to be nourished from, prescribing certain seasonings and roastings and side-dishes. One ought to look for the man who first began this, not the one who only recently gave it up; or one might say that for those very first men who attempted to eat flesh, the whole cause was simply their want of resources —
for they did not come to this through consorting with lawless appetites, nor through wantoning into pleasures contrary to nature out of some abundance of necessities. No — they would say, if they could receive perception and voice for the moment: "O blessed and beloved-of-the-gods are you who now exist, allotted such an age of life, enjoying and possessing an ungrudging inheritance of good things — all that grows for you, all that you may harvest, what wealth from the
fields, what pleasures it is possible to pluck from the plants! You may even live luxuriously without being defiled. But we were received by the gloomiest and most fearsome portion of life and time, cast down by our first origin into a helpless and boundless want. As yet the air still hid the sky, and the stars were confused with turbid and scarcely distinguishable moisture and fire and gusts of wind; not yet had the sun taken up a fixed
and steady course that marked out dawn and setting, nor did it lead the seasons back around again, crowned with fruit-bearing wreaths of blossom. The earth was ravaged by the disordered outpourings of rivers, and much of it was rendered savage and shapeless by marshes and deep mud and barren thickets and forests; there was as yet no instrument for the bearing of cultivated fruits, nor any device of skill; and famine gave no time, nor
did the yearly seasons wait for a sowing that did not yet exist. What wonder, then, if we made use of the flesh of animals contrary to nature, when mud was being eaten and the bark of trees was being devoured, and it was good fortune merely to find a sprouting couch-grass or some root of reed? When they tasted and ate of the acorn, they danced for joy around some oak or holm-oak, calling it life-giving and mother and nurse: that
was the festival the life of that time knew, while everything else was full of oppression and gloom. But as for you now living — what madness, what frenzy, drives you to bloodshed, when you have such abundance of necessities? Why do you slander the earth as though it were unable to nourish you? Why do you commit impiety against law-giving Demeter, and put to shame the gentle and gracious Dionysus of the vine, as though what comes from
them were not sufficient for you? Are you not ashamed to mix the gentle fruits with blood and slaughter? Yet you call serpents and leopards and lions savage, while you yourselves commit bloodshed, leaving nothing of savagery to them — for to them, killing is nourishment, but for you it is a mere relish. For surely it is not lions and wolves that we eat in self-defense; rather, we let those be, and instead seize and kill the harmless and tame
creatures, without stings or claws or teeth sharp enough to bite, which nature seems to have brought forth for the sake of beauty and grace as well. It is as if someone, seeing the Nile in flood and filling the land with its life-giving and fruit-bearing stream, did not marvel at this in what it carries — the planting and fruit-bearing of the tamest and most useful crops — but instead, having seen somewhere
a crocodile swimming or an asp dragging itself along, or mice — wild and foul creatures — should cite these as the causes of his complaint and as proof of the necessity of the thing; or as if someone, looking at this earth and this ploughland filled with cultivated crops and heavy with ears of grain, should then peer among these crops and, spotting somewhere a stalk of darnel or some blighted ear, should then abandon the rest —
and, instead of harvesting and enjoying them, complain about these alone. Something of the same kind happens when one watches a speech of an orator overflowing and carried along in some lawsuit or defense, coming to the aid of men in danger, or indeed in refutation and accusation of wrongdoing, with proofs — flowing and being carried along not simply nor plainly, but together with many, indeed all sorts of, emotional appeals, into souls likewise many and varied and different —
among the listeners or the judges, souls which the speech must turn and change, or indeed soothe and tame and settle; and then, instead of watching and measuring this — the guiding purpose and the real contest of the matter — one instead picks out incidental phrases which the speech, in its downward course, swept along with the rush of its movement, phrases that fell out and slipped along together with the rest of the speech. And so too with some popular orator one may watch this. But nothing about us
abashes us — not the flower-bright form of the coloring, not the persuasiveness of the melodious voice, not the cunning of the soul, not the cleanliness in habits and the refinement in understanding of these wretched creatures — no, for the sake of a little scrap of flesh we take away from a soul the sun, the light, the span of life for which it was born and made to live. And then the sounds it utters and prolongs we suppose to be inarticulate noise, not entreaties and supplications and pleas of justice,
each one saying, as it were, "I do not beg off from your need, but from your wanton insult; kill me in order to eat, but do not kill me merely so that you may eat with more pleasure." O the cruelty! It is a dreadful thing indeed to see the table of rich men being laid, with its corpse-adorning cooks and caterers, but more dreadful still to see it being carried away — for what is left over is more than what has been eaten. So these creatures died for nothing! Yet other men, sparing what has
been set before them, will not allow it to be cut or carved up further, declining the dead flesh — though they did not spare it while it lived. For we say it is unreasonable for those men to claim that nature is the origin and authority for this practice; for that eating flesh is not in accordance with human nature is shown, first of all, from the very construction of our bodies. The human body resembles none of those creatures born for carnivorous feeding: it has no hooked beak, no
sharp claw, no roughness of tooth, no strength of stomach or heat of digestive spirit able to turn and process what is heavy and full of flesh. Rather, nature itself, by the smoothness of our teeth and the smallness of our mouth and the softness of our tongue and the bluntness of our digestive capacity for processing, disowns carnivorous eating from the outset. If you claim that you were born by nature for
such a diet, then first kill, yourself, whatever you wish to eat — do it yourself, by your own hand, without using a cleaver or any club or axe. Rather, as wolves and bears and lions themselves kill whatever they eat, so you: fell an ox with your teeth, or a pig with your mouth; tear apart a lamb or a hare and eat it, falling upon it while it is still alive, as those animals do. But if you wait for what you are about to eat to become a corpse,
and if the living soul present in it, once it perceives what is happening, makes you ashamed to enjoy the flesh, why do you eat what is animate, against nature? And yet no one would even eat it lifeless and as a mere corpse just as it is — instead you boil it, roast it, transform it through fire and drugs, altering and converting and quenching the act of slaughter with a thousand seasonings, so that the sense of taste, thus deceived, may accept what is alien to it. And yet there is a charming story of the Spartan who,
having bought a little fish at an inn, handed it to the innkeeper to prepare; and when the innkeeper asked for cheese and vinegar and oil, he said, "If I had had these, I would not have bought a fish." But we, by contrast, indulge ourselves so far in this bloody business that we call the flesh a "relish," and then, in turn, we need relishes for the meat itself, mixing in oil, wine, honey, fish-sauce, and truly seasoning it with Syrian and Arabian spices, as though we were
embalming a corpse with vinegar. And indeed, once the flesh has been thus broken down and softened and, in a manner of speaking, half-decayed, it is hard work to master the digestion of it, and once mastered it produces terrible heaviness and sickly indigestions. Diogenes dared to eat an octopus raw, in order to do away with the cooking of meats by fire; and with many people standing around him, he wrapped himself in his cloak and, bringing
the flesh to his mouth, said, "It is on your behalf that I run this risk and face this danger." A fine danger indeed, by Zeus! For it was not, like Pelopidas facing danger for the freedom of Thebes, or like Harmodius and Aristogeiton for that of the Athenians, that the philosopher took the risk beforehand, wrestling with a raw octopus — was it to make life itself more bestial? It is not only the eating of flesh, then, that works against nature upon our bodies; it also makes our souls
coarse through satiety and excess: "For wine and gorging on flesh make the body strong and robust, but the soul weak," as the saying goes. And so as not to offend the athletes, let me use examples closer to home: for the Athenians call us Boeotians thick, insensible, and stupid, chiefly on account of our gluttony — "these men, in turn," as Menander says, "who have jaws,
" and as Pindar says, "to understand thereafter..." — "a dry radiance is the wisest soul," according to Heraclitus. Empty jars, when struck, resound; but once filled, they no longer answer to the blows. Of bronze vessels, the thin ones send their ringing sound out in every direction, until someone stops it and deadens it by grasping with the hand the vibration as it travels round; the eye, when filled to excess with moisture, grows dim and loses its keenness
for its proper function. When we behold the sun through moist air and a multitude of undigested vapors, we see it not clear and bright, but sunk in mist and murk, its rays slipping away from view. So too, through a body that is turbid and gorged and weighed down with foods alien to it, the brightness of the soul and its radiance must of necessity suffer dullness and confusion, and wander
and drift, having no clear vision or vigor toward the fine and hard-to-discern ends of things. Apart from all this, is it not a marvel in itself, this habituation toward kindness to humanity? For who would wrong a human being, so disposed as he is toward alien evils and creatures unrelated to him, gently and humanely? I recalled, in a discussion three days ago about Xenocrates, that the Athenians imposed a penalty on the man who had flayed a ram
while it was still alive; and, I think, the one who tortures a living creature is no worse than the one who takes away its life outright and kills it — but rather, it seems, we are more sensitive to what goes against custom than to what goes against nature. These things I was saying there in a more general way; but as for the great and mysterious doctrine, incredible to cowardly men and to those who think only mortal thoughts, as Plato says, that lies at the origin of the teaching — I hesitate
still to set it in motion with argument, just as a ship's captain hesitates in a storm, or a stage-machinist raises his device in the theater while the scenery is being wheeled about. Yet perhaps it is no worse to strike up a prelude and give voice beforehand to the words of Empedocles: for there he speaks allegorically of souls, saying that, paying the penalty for murders and the eating of flesh and mutual devouring, they are bound within mortal bodies. And indeed this doctrine appears to be older still: for the
myths told about Dionysus concerning his suffering of dismemberment, and the daring deeds of the Titans against him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they tasted of the slaughter — all this is a myth riddling at rebirth. For that irrational and disorderly and violent element within us, the ancients named not divine but demonic, calling it the Titans — and this is the part that is being punished and is paying the penalty.

======== Moralia: De Esu Carnium 2 ========

Reason calls upon us to become, as it were, fresh recruits against our stale habit of eating flesh, both in our thoughts and in our zeal. For it is difficult, as Cato said, to speak to bellies that have no ears; and the potion of habit has already been drunk, like Circe's brew of "pangs and pains, deceits and wailings"; and it is not easy to pull out the hook of flesh-eating, fixed and driven deep as it is into our love of pleasure. Since it would have been well—just as the Egyptians, in preparing a corpse, remove the belly and, holding it up to the sun, cast it away as the cause of all the wrongs the man committed—so too we, cutting off from ourselves our own gluttony and blood-lust, might live the rest of our life in purity, since the belly itself is not blood-guilty, but is defiled by our lack of self-control.
Still, even if, by Zeus, it is impossible because of habit to be wholly free of wrongdoing, let us at least, ashamed of our wrongdoing, make use of reason: let us eat flesh, but because we are hungry, not out of luxury; let us kill an animal, but with pity and grief, not with insolence or torture—such as many now commonly inflict, some driving red-hot spits into pigs bound for slaughter, so that, through the quenching action of the iron, the blood, dispersing through the flesh, may soften and tenderize it; while others leap upon and trample the udders of sows heavy with young, so that, having stirred together blood and milk and the gore of embryos destroyed together in the pangs of birth—O Zeus the Purifier!—they may eat the most inflamed part of the animal. Others sew shut the eyes of cranes and swans and, shutting them up in darkness, fatten them, dressing their flesh with outlandish mixtures and elaborate sauces.
From this it is above all clear that it is not for nourishment, nor need, nor necessity, but out of surfeit and insolence and extravagance that men have made lawlessness into a pleasure. Then, just as erotic passion in women who know no limit of pleasure, testing everything, wandering, growing ever more unrestrained, falls away at last into things unspeakable—so too the excesses connected with eating, once they pass beyond what is natural and necessary, end by embellishing appetite with savagery and lawlessness.
For the senses fall sick together with one another, persuade one another, and grow unrestrained together, once they no longer master their natural measures. Thus hearing, once diseased, has corrupted music, from which what is enervated and dissolved now craves shameful caresses and womanish ticklings. The same corruption has taught the eye to take no delight in war-dances, nor in expressive gesture, nor in graceful dancing, nor in statues and paintings, but to make of the murder and death of men, of wounds and battles, its most extravagant spectacle.
Thus disorderly banquets are followed by unrestrained sexual unions, shameful acts of love by tasteless entertainments, licentious songs and hearings by degenerate theaters, and savage spectacles by insensibility toward human beings and by cruelty. For this reason the godlike Lycurgus, in his three rhetras, ordained that the doors of houses and their roof-beams be made with saw and axe alone, and that no other tool be brought to bear—not, surely, because he was waging war on gimlets and adzes and whatever tools are naturally suited to fine work, but because he knew that through such crude work you will not bring in a gilded couch, nor will you dare to bring into a plain house silver tables and purple carpets and costly stones; but upon such a house and couch and table and cup there follows a simple dinner and a plebeian breakfast—for, as an unweaned foal runs beside its mare, so all luxury and extravagance run together from the very beginning of a corrupt way of life.
What dinner, then, is not extravagant, into which nothing living is put to death? Do we reckon a soul a small expenditure? I do not yet speak of it as perhaps belonging to a mother or father or friend or child, as Empedocles said—but at least as a thing that shares in sensation, in sight, hearing, imagination, understanding, which each creature has received from nature for the acquiring of what is its own and the avoiding of what is alien to it.
Consider, then, which of the two better civilizes us—the philosophers who bid us eat our children and friends and fathers and wives once they are dead, or Pythagoras and Empedocles, who accustom us to be just even toward the other, non-human parts of creation. You laugh at the man who will not eat a sheep; but we, they will say, when we see someone cutting portions from his dead father or mother and sending some off to absent friends, and inviting those present and setting unstinting servings of flesh before them—shall we not laugh a little too?
But perhaps even now we are doing something wrong, whenever we touch these books, without first purifying our hands and eyes and feet and ears—unless, by Zeus, the purification for such matters is simply this: to discuss them while "washing the brine from our ears with a draught of fresh discourse," as Plato says.
But if one were to set the books beside each other, and the doctrines beside each other, the former would belong to the philosophy of Scythians and Sogdians and Melanchlaeni—peoples about whom even Herodotus, in reporting, is disbelieved—whereas the teachings of Pythagoras and Empedocles were once the laws of the ancient Greeks, and their diets that used no fire. As for the claim that we have no obligation of justice toward the irrational animals—who, then, were the ones who later came to know this? "They who first forged the wicked wayside knife, and first tasted of the plowing ox." In just this way tyrants, too, begin their rule with blood-guilt.
For just as the Athenians first put to death the vilest of their informers, the one nicknamed "the Expedient," and then a second in the same way, and a third—and thereafter, having grown accustomed to it, looked on unmoved while Niceratus the son of Nicias, and Theramenes the general, and Polemarchus the philosopher were destroyed—so too the first thing eaten was some wild and destructive animal; then some bird or fish was drawn in and tasted; and so, having been practiced and rehearsed upon these, the murderous impulse advanced to the plow-ox and the well-behaved sheep and the house-guarding cock, and, having thus by degrees whetted their insatiable appetite, men proceeded to the slaughter of human beings, and to wars, and to murders.
But unless one goes further and proves that souls, in their rebirths, make use of bodies in common, and that what is now rational becomes irrational again, and what is now savage becomes tame again—that nature changes and transplants everything, clothing it in an unfamiliar garment of flesh—even so, these facts do not turn people away from the licentiousness shown toward creatures once killed, the very licentiousness that produces diseases and heaviness in the body as well, and corrupts the soul as it turns toward war with ever more lawless passions, whenever we grow accustomed not to entertain a guest, nor to celebrate a marriage, nor to meet with friends, except with blood and murder.
And yet, even if what is said about the transmigration of souls into bodies is not worthy of belief as demonstrated, still the very uncertainty of the matter deserves great caution and fear. It is as if, in a night battle between armies, a man attacking with his sword a fallen soldier whose body is hidden beneath his armor should hear someone say that he does not know for certain, but thinks and suspects that the man lying there is his own son, or brother, or father, or tent-companion—would it not be better, giving weight to an unfounded suspicion, to let an enemy go as though he were a friend, than, disregarding the uncertainty, to kill a kinsman as though he were an enemy?
That, you will all say, would be a terrible thing. Consider too the Merope of tragedy, raising an axe against her own son, taking him for the murderer of her son, and saying, "A dearer-bought blow than this I give you." What commotion this stirs in the theater, the audience rising up together in fear, dreading lest she strike before the old man restraining her can stop her, and wound the young man! And if one old man stood by saying, "Strike, he is an enemy," and another, "Do not strike, he is your son"—which would be the greater wrong: to let an enemy escape punishment for the sake of a supposed son, or to fall into the murder of one's own child through anger at an enemy?
Since, then, it is neither hatred nor anger that leads us to this slaughter, nor any act of self-defense or fear on our own behalf, but the victim stands there for the sake of pleasure alone, its neck bent back and exposed beneath the knife—then one philosopher says, "Cut it down, the creature is irrational," while another says, "Hold back—what if the soul of a kinsman, or of some god, has come to dwell there?" Is the risk not equal and alike, O gods, whether I refuse to eat meat, or refuse to believe that I might be killing a child or some other kinsman? And yet this contest, too, is not an equal one for the Stoics, on behalf of flesh-eating.
For what is all this great exertion directed toward—the belly and the kitchens? Why, after so effeminizing and denouncing pleasure as neither a good, nor something to be pursued first, nor proper to us, have they concerned themselves so seriously with matters of pleasure? And surely it would have been consistent for them, if they banish perfume and pastry from their banquets, to be still more offended by blood and flesh. As it is, though, just as people who philosophize only about their daily accounts cut expense from their dinners solely in what is useless and superfluous, while not renouncing what is savage and murderous in their extravagance.
"Yes," one says, "for we have no obligation of justice toward irrational creatures." Nor, one might reply, toward perfume, nor toward foreign spices either—yet you turn away from these too, driving out from every side whatever is not useful or necessary, for the sake of pleasure. Well then, let us examine this point as well—that we have no obligation of justice toward animals—not with technical skill nor with sophistry, but by looking into our own feelings, and speaking to and questioning ourselves as human beings.

======== Moralia: De Exilio ========

They say that the best and most reliable words, like the best and most reliable friends, are those that are present in misfortunes and give useful help. For indeed many are present and converse with people who have stumbled, but uselessly, or rather harmfully, like non-swimmers who try to help drowning men and end up entangled with them and dragged under together. What is needed from friends and from those who help with words is consolation, not advocacy for the thing that is causing the pain.
For we have no need of people who weep and wail along with us like tragic choruses amid unwelcome events, but rather of people who speak frankly and teach that grieving and abasing oneself over everything is useless, and happens vainly and foolishly; whereas, when the facts themselves, examined and uncovered by reason, allow a man to say to himself, "You have suffered nothing terrible," that is so, unless he merely pretends it is.
It is altogether ridiculous not to inquire of the flesh what it has suffered, nor of the soul whether it has become worse because of this misfortune, but instead to use as teachers of one's grief people from outside who join in one's distress and share one's indignation. That is why, becoming judges by ourselves, on our own, we should examine the weight of each of our misfortunes as though they were loads: the body is weighed down by the burden of what oppresses it, but the soul often adds the weight to circumstances out of itself.
A stone is by nature hard, ice is by nature cold — we are not the ones who, from outside, arbitrarily impose these qualities of resistance and solidity upon them. But exile and disrepute and the loss of honors — and, on the other hand, their opposites, crowns and offices and seats of honor — have as the measure of their power to grieve or gladden us not their own nature but our judgment; each person makes these things light or heavy and easy to bear for himself, and the opposite as well.
One can hear how Polyneices answered this very question, and how Alcman did, as the man who wrote the little epigram has represented him: "Sardis, ancient custom of my fathers — had I been raised among you, I would have been some gaudy priest of Cybele, beating fine drums; but as it is my name is Alcman, and I belong to Sparta of the many tripods, and I have learned the Muses of Helicon, who have made me greater than the tyrants Dascylus and Gyges." For the very same thing — reputation — makes itself, like a coin of good standing, easy to spend for one man, but hard to spend and harmful for another.
Let exile, then, be a terrible thing, as the many say and sing. And indeed among foods too there are many that are bitter and sharp and biting to the taste; but by mixing in with them some of what is sweet and pleasant we remove their unpleasantness. There are also colors that are painful to the sight, against which the eye becomes confused and dazzled because of their harshness and an unbearable intensity. If, then, as a remedy for that discomfort we mixed in shade with them, or turned our gaze aside to something green and gentle, this we may do also with respect to our misfortunes,
blending with them the useful and kindly elements among the things now present to you — abundance, friends, freedom from public business, the lack of any want of what is necessary for life. For I do not think there are many people of Sardis who would not gladly choose to have your circumstances, even along with the exile, and who would not be content to live abroad in this fashion, rather than, like snails,
be fused to their shells and possess no other good, merely sharing without grief in what is at home. So, just as in a comedy someone urges an unfortunate friend to take courage and defend himself against fortune, and when asked "in what way?" answers "philosophically" — so let us too defend ourselves against fortune by philosophizing worthily. But when Zeus rains, how do we defend ourselves? And when the north wind blows, how? We seek fire, a bath, a cloak, shelter; for indeed we do not,
when it rains, sit still and weep. So too for you, as for anyone whatever, it is possible to rekindle and warm again this chilled part of your life, needing no other remedies but making sensible use of what is present. For the doctor's cupping-glasses draw out the worst matter from the body and thereby relieve it and preserve the rest; but those who love grief and love to find fault, by constantly gathering together
the worst of their own circumstances, and by dwelling on them and being consumed by their troubles, render useless even what is useful to them, at the very moment when it is most naturally able to help. For the two jars, my friend, which Homer said stood in heaven full of fates, the one of good things and the other of bad, are not dispensed by Zeus sitting there as steward, mixing gentle streams for some and pouring unmixed streams of evils for others;
rather, among us ourselves, those who have sense, by drawing from the good things to dilute the bad, make life sweeter and more palatable, while for most people, as though through sieves, the worst things remain and cling, while the better things flow away underneath. Therefore even if we truly fall into some real evil and grief, we must draw in cheerfulness and good spirits from the good things that remain and are still available to us,
smoothing over what is foreign with what is our own. But as for things whose nature contains no evil at all, and whose whole capacity to pain us has been fashioned entirely out of empty opinion, these we must treat as we do with children who are afraid of masks: by bringing the masks close and putting them into their hands and turning them about, we accustom the children to despise them; likewise, by handling our reasoning close up and pressing hard upon it, we must uncover what is rotten and empty and merely staged for tragic effect in these things. Such, for instance, is
this change now present for you, away from your so-called native land. For by nature there is no such thing as a native land, just as there is no house, no field, no smithy — as Ariston used to say — nor any doctor's office; rather, each of these things comes to be, or rather is named and called such, always in relation to the one who inhabits and uses it. For man, as Plato says, is "a plant not rooted in the earth," nor immovable, but
"heavenly," as it were, since the root — his head — holds the body upright and turned toward the sky. That is why Heracles spoke well when he said, "I am not Argive, nor Theban; I do not claim citizenship of one city alone; every tower of the Greeks is my native land." But Socrates spoke even better, saying he was not an Athenian nor a Greek but a citizen of the world (as one might say a Rhodian or a Corinthian); for he did not confine himself
within Sunium, nor Taenarum, nor the Ceraunian mountains. Do you see this boundless upper air, and the earth encircled all about in its moist embrace? These are the boundaries of our native land, and no one here is exile or stranger or foreigner, where fire, water, and air are the same for all, where the same rulers and administrators and presiding officers govern — sun, moon, morning star — where the same
laws hold for all, under a single ordinance and a single sovereignty: solstices in the north, solstices in the south, equinoxes, the Pleiades, Arcturus, the seasons for sowing, the seasons for planting; and there is one king and ruler, "God, holding the beginning and middle and end of the whole, proceeding in a straight course according to nature; and Justice follows him, punisher of those who fall away from the divine law" — by nature we all, as human beings, treat all
other human beings as our fellow citizens. That you do not dwell in Sardis is nothing at all; for not all Athenians dwell in Collytus, nor all Corinthians in Craneum, nor all Spartans in Pitane. Are, then, those Athenians who have moved from Melite to Diomeia strangers and without a city, though they even keep a month named Metageitnion and hold a sacrifice named after their change of residence, the Metageitnia, receiving the neighborly nearness of others readily and gladly,
and cherishing it? You could not say so. What then, of the inhabited world or of the whole earth, is far from any other part, when mathematicians demonstrate that it holds the ratio of a mere point without extension in relation to the heavens? But we, like ants or bees fallen from a single anthill or a single hive, grow distressed and feel like strangers, not knowing or having learned to treat everything as our own and to regard it as such,
which indeed it is. And yet we laugh at the foolishness of the man who claims the moon in Athens is finer than the one in Corinth — though we in a way suffer the same thing ourselves, whenever, finding ourselves in a foreign land, we grow uncertain about the earth, the sea, the air, the sky, as though they were different and other than what we are used to. For nature releases us free and unbound, but we ourselves bind ourselves, cramp ourselves, wall ourselves in, driving ourselves into
small and cramped quarters. And then we laugh at the kings of Persia, if it is indeed true that, drinking only the water of the Choaspes, they make the rest of the inhabited world waterless for themselves — yet whenever we move to other places, longing for the Cephisus and yearning for the Eurotas or Taygetus or Parnassus, we make the whole inhabited world cityless and uninhabitable for ourselves. Now among the Egyptians,
those who were resettled to Ethiopia out of some anger and harshness on the part of the king, when those who wanted them to return to their children and wives displayed their genitals in a rather cynical fashion, said they would lack neither marriages nor children so long as they had these with them. But it is more decorous and dignified to say that wherever and to whomever it falls to have a modest sufficiency for life, there he is
neither cityless nor homeless nor a stranger; he need only have, in addition to this, intelligence and reason, like an anchor or a pilot, so that wherever he puts in he can make use of any harbor. For it is not easy or quick to gather again wealth once thrown away; but every city at once becomes a native land to the man who has learned to make use of it and has roots capable of taking hold and thriving everywhere —
such roots as Themistocles had, such as Demetrius of Phalerum had. This latter, in Alexandria after his exile, being foremost among the friends of Ptolemy, not only lived himself in abundance but also sent gifts to the Athenians. Themistocles, maintained by royal bounty, is said to have remarked to his wife and children, "We would have been ruined, had we not been ruined." That is also why Diogenes
the Cynic, when someone said to him, "The people of Sinope have condemned you to exile from Pontus," replied, "And I have condemned them to stay in Pontus" — on the rocky shores of the inhospitable strait. And Stratonicus asked the stranger from Seriphus for what crimes exile was appointed as the penalty among them; and when he heard that they exiled swindlers, he said, "Why then did you not commit some swindle, so as to be removed from
this cramped little place?" — the island of which the comic poet says its figs are harvested with slings, and that it has everything one needs. For if you look at the truth apart from empty opinion, the man who possesses only one city is a stranger and foreigner to all the others. For it does not seem noble or just to abandon one's own city in order to manage another. "You have been allotted Sparta: adorn it," even if
it is without renown, even if it is sickly, even if it is disturbed by factions within itself and by unhealthy affairs. But to the man from whom fortune has taken away his own, she gives leave to have whichever one pleases him. For that fine precept of the Pythagoreans, "choose the best life, and habit will make it pleasant," is wise and useful here too: "choose the best and pleasantest city, and time will make it your native land" —
and a native land that does not distract you, does not trouble you, does not command you: "contribute, go as ambassador to Rome, receive the governor, perform public service." For if a man of sound mind, and not utterly deluded, keeps these things in view, he will choose, even having become an exile, to inhabit an island — Gyarus or Cinarus, harsh, unfruitful, and bad for planting — without losing heart or lamenting or saying those words of the women in Simonides,
"the roar of the purple sea, churned all about, holds me fast." Rather, he will reckon like Philip: for when he fell in the wrestling-school and turned over, and saw the imprint of his body, he said, "Heracles, how small a portion of the earth we naturally possess, and yet we desire the whole inhabited world!" I suppose you have been a spectator of Naxos; or if not, of Hyria nearby here,
which was the dwelling-place of Ephialtes and Otus; and the other island received Orion. And Alcmaeon settled on the newly formed silt deposited by the Achelous, fleeing the Furies, as the poets say; and I imagine that he too, fleeing political turmoil and factions and the fury of malicious accusations, chose a small piece of ground to inhabit quietly and without public trouble. And Tiberius Caesar, on
Capri, spent seven years there up to his death; and the ruling sanctuary of the inhabited world, gathered as it were into a single heart, did not shift from that spot for so long a time. But for him the cares of empire, poured in and brought to him from every side, did not allow the island's quiet to remain pure or free from disturbance; whereas the man who is able, having stepped off onto a small island, to be rid of no small evils — such a man is wretched only if he does not
talk to himself in the words of Pindar, and often sing to himself of loving "the light cypress" and leaving "the pasture-land of Crete rich in fields" to others: "to me a small portion of earth has been given, from which no oaks grow, but I have had no share of griefs, nor of factions, nor of the commands of governors, nor of the services and hard-to-refuse public burdens demanded in political affairs." For where Callimachus is thought to speak not badly in saying, "do not measure wisdom by the Persian rope" —
surely we too, if we measure our happiness by ropes and parasangs, ought not, if we inhabit an island of two hundred stades and not one requiring four days to sail around like Sicily, to torment and lament ourselves as though we were unfortunate? For what does a wide country contribute to a griefless life? Do you not hear Tantalus saying in the tragedy, "I sow a field a twelve days' journey across, the region of Berecyntus" — and then a little
later saying, "but my fate, which once touched the sky above, falls to the ground, and speaks this to me: learn not to revere human things too greatly"? And Nausithous, abandoning the spacious Hyperia because the Cyclopes lived too near it, and moving to an island far from men who toil for bread, and dwelling apart, unmixed with other men, in the surging sea, provided the sweetest life for his own citizens. And the
Cyclades were inhabited first by the sons of Minos, and later by the sons of Codrus and Neileus — the very islands in which foolish exiles nowadays imagine themselves to be punished. And yet what island of exile is not more spacious than the district of Scillus, where Xenophon, after his campaigns, saw a comfortable old age? And the Academy, a little plot of ground bought for three thousand drachmas, was the dwelling place of Plato and Xenocrates and
of Polemo, who spent their time and lived out their whole lives there, except for a single day, on which Xenocrates went down each year into the city for the Dionysia to see the new tragedies, as they say, keeping the festival. Aristotle, too, was reviled by Theocritus of Chios for having grown fond of his life at the court of Philip and Alexander and having chosen to dwell by the outflow of the Borborus rather than at the Academy. For there is a river near Pella, which the Macedonians
they call the Mudflat. As for the islands, the poet, as if he made it his special task to praise and commend them to us, says: "and he came to Lemnos, city of godlike Thoas"; and "as much of lofty Lesbos, seat of the blessed, as it encloses"; and "and having taken steep Scyros, citadel of Enyeus"; and "and those from Dulichium and the sacred Echinades, islands that lie across the sea, facing Elis." And he says that the most illustrious of men dwelt on an island—
the god-beloved Aeolus, the wisest Odysseus, the bravest Ajax, the most hospitable Alcinous. So when Zeno learned that the one ship he still had left, along with its cargo, had been swallowed by the sea, he said, "Well done, Fortune, to drive us toward the cloak and the philosophic life." And a man not altogether puffed up with pride, nor maddened by the crowd, would not, I think, find fault with Fortune
for driving him onto an island, but would rather praise her, because, stripping away his great wandering restlessness and roving, his travels abroad, his dangers at sea, and his tumults in the marketplace, she truly gives him a settled, leisured, undistracted life of his own, marking out with a fixed radius the supply of what is necessary. For what island lacks a house, a walk, a bath, fish, hares for those who wish
to hunt and to play? The greatest thing is quiet, for which others thirst, and which is often yours to have—whereas at home, while men are playing draughts and keeping out of sight, informers and busybodies track them down and chase them from their suburbs and gardens into the marketplace and the courthouse, dragging them by force; but on an island no one troubles you, no one asks you for anything, no one borrows from you, no one calls on you to stand surety or to join in canvassing for office, except out of goodwill
and longing that the best of one's necessary kin sail out to visit; and the rest of one's life is set apart as inviolate and sacred for whoever wishes and has learned how to be at leisure. The man who counts happy those who run about outside and spend the greater part of their life in inns and ferry-boats is like the man who thinks the wandering planets fare better than the fixed stars—and yet each of the planets, within
a single sphere, circling as though within an island, keeps its order: "for the sun will not overstep his measures," says Heraclitus, "or else the Furies, ministers of Justice, will find him out." But let us say these things, my friend, and others like them, to those men, and sing them as a charm to those men, for whom being settled on an island makes everything else beyond their reach—"the sea, whose brine holds many back against their will":
but for you, since not merely one place but no place has been forbidden you, the exclusion from a single city leaves you the freedom of them all. Indeed, set against "we do not rule, nor sit in council, nor preside over the games" the reply, "we do not engage in faction, nor spend money, nor hang about the doors of a governor: it makes no difference to us who has drawn the lot of the province, whether he is short-tempered or overbearing." But we, like Archilochus,
who, overlooking the fruit-bearing, vine-planted lands of Thasos, slandered the island because of its rough and uneven ground, saying, "this island stands like the spine of an ass, crowned with wild woodland"—so too we, straining our attention toward the one inglorious aspect of exile, overlook its freedom from business, its leisure, and its liberty. And yet men used to call the Persian kings blessed for spending the winter in Babylon, the summer in
Media, and the most pleasant part of spring in Susa. It is surely open also to the exile to spend time at the Mysteries in Eleusis, at the Dionysia in Athens, to attend the festival panegyris of the Olympic games at Pisa, the Nemean games at Argos, to go to Delphi when the Pythian games are held, to Corinth for the Isthmian games, if he is fond of such spectacles; and if not, there is leisure, walking, reading, untroubled sleep—the saying of Diogenes: "Aristotle dines when
it seems good to Philip, Diogenes when it seems good to Diogenes"—with no business, no ruler, and no governor disturbing his accustomed routine. This is why you would find few of the wisest and most prudent men buried in their own native lands; most of them, with no one compelling them, themselves weighed anchor and shifted their lives elsewhere, some moving to Athens, others away from Athens. For who has spoken
such an encomium of his own homeland as Euripides has? "In her, first of all, our people are not settlers brought in from elsewhere, but we are native-born; while the other cities, scattered about like the throws of dice, are peopled by immigrants drawn from one place and another. And if I must boast further of something incidental, we have a sky above our land tempered well, so that neither excessive heat nor winter cold befalls it. And whatever things Greece and Asia"
nurture that are fairest on earth, holding out this land as a lure, we hunt them all together for ourselves." Yet the man who wrote this went off to Macedonia and lived out his life at Archelaus's court. And you have surely heard this little epigram too: "This tomb conceals Aeschylus son of Euphorion, an Athenian, dead at wheat-bearing Gela"—for he too departed for Sicily, as Simonides had done before him. And as for "This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus," many rewrite it as "of Herodotus of Thurii":
for he moved to Thurii and took part in that colony. And the sacred, divine spirit among the Muses, "Homer, marshaller of the Phrygian battle"—has this not made him a subject of dispute among many cities, precisely because he is not the encomiast of one alone? And Zeus the god of hospitality receives many great honors. But if someone should say that these men were hunting after fame and honors, go to the wise men and to the
wise schools and discourses at Athens: review those in the Lyceum, those in the Academy, the Stoa, the Palladium, the Odeum. If you especially embrace and admire the Peripatetic school, Aristotle was from Stagira, Theophrastus from Eresus, Strato from Lampsacus, Lyco from the Troad, Ariston from Ceos, Critolaus from Phaselis; if the Stoic school, Zeno was from Citium, Cleanthes from Assos, Chrysippus from Soli, Diogenes
of Babylon, Antipater of Tarsus—while Archedemus the Athenian, having moved to the land of the Parthians, left behind a Stoic succession in Babylon. Who, then, drove these men out? No one: rather, it was they themselves, in pursuit of the quiet that those at home who hold any reputation or power have scarcely any share in, who teach us this lesson—not so much by their words as by their deeds. Indeed, even now the most reputable and eminent men live abroad,
not because they were forcibly removed, but because they themselves moved; not because they were banished, but because they themselves fled the business, distractions, and preoccupations that their homelands bring. And indeed for the ancients too, it seems, the Muses took exile as their collaborator and thereby brought to completion the finest and most esteemed of their compositions. Thucydides the Athenian composed his history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians in Thrace, near Scapte Hyle; Xenophon wrote his in Scillus, in the territory of
Elis; Philistus in Epirus; Timaeus of Tauromenium in Athens; Androtion the Athenian in Megara; Bacchylides the poet in the Peloponnese. All these men, and many others besides, though cast out of their homelands, did not despair or abandon themselves, but instead used their natural gifts, taking their exile as provisions supplied by Fortune, through which, even in death, they are remembered everywhere; whereas of those who expelled them and drove them out by faction, not a single one
has left behind any word at all. This is why it is ridiculous for anyone to suppose that disgrace attaches to exile. What are you saying? Is Diogenes a man without honor—Diogenes, whom Alexander, seeing him sitting in the sun, approached and asked whether he needed anything; and when Diogenes told him he needed nothing except that he move a little out of his light, Alexander, astonished at his spirit, said to his friends, "If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes." Was Camillus without honor,
driven out of Rome—Rome, of which he is now proclaimed a second founder? And surely Themistocles, in fleeing, did not lose his reputation among the Greeks, but gained further reputation among the barbarians; and there is no one so lacking in ambition or so ignoble that he would rather be Leobates, who brought the indictment, than Themistocles, who was driven into exile; or Clodius, who cast Cicero out, rather than Cicero, who was cast out; or Aristophon,
who brought the accusation, rather than Timotheus, who was forced to move from his homeland. But since the words of Euripides move many people, on the grounds that he seems to speak forcefully against exile, let us examine what he says, questioning and answering point by point; for these claims are, in the first place, neither rightly nor truly esteemed. First, "not to say what one thinks" is not the mark of a slave, but of a man of sense, in circumstances and situations
that call for discretion and silence, just as Euripides himself has better said elsewhere: "to be silent where one must, and to speak where it is safe." Next, ignorance on the part of those in power must be endured no less by those who stay at home than by those in exile; indeed, often those who remain fear the powerful men in their cities more than those who have departed, dreading unjust prosecution or violence at their hands. But the greatest and strangest thing of all is if one supposes that free speech
is taken away from exiles: for it would be astonishing if Theodorus lacked free speech—Theodorus, who, when King Lysimachus said to him, "Your homeland banished a man like you," replied, "Yes—because it could not bear me, just as Semele could not bear Dionysus." And when Lysimachus showed him Telesphorus shut in a cage, his eyes gouged out, his nose and ears cut off, and his tongue excised, and said, "This is how
I treat those who wrong me," Theodorus said, "What does it matter to Theodorus whether he rots above the earth or below it?" And what of Diogenes—did he lack free speech, when he went into Philip's camp just as Philip was setting out to fight the Greeks, and, being brought before him as a spy, said, when asked if he was indeed a spy, "Yes, a spy come to see your insatiable greed and your folly, since in a short span
of time you are staking everything on the throw—your rule and your life together"? And what of Hannibal the Carthaginian—did he not use free speech with King Antiochus, though he himself was an exile, when, at a moment favorable for attack, he urged the king to fall upon the enemy, and the king, having sacrificed, said the entrails forbade it, and Hannibal rebuked him, saying, "You are looking at the flesh of an animal, not at what a man of sense should consider"? Nor indeed does exile take away
free speech even from geometers and students of line-drawing, when they discuss matters they know and have learned—how much less, then, from good and noble men? No, it is baseness of character that everywhere "stops up the voice, twists the tongue, chokes it, and forces it into silence." And what of the lines that follow in Euripides—what sort are they? This too is a charge against foolishness rather than against exile. For it is not those who have learned and know how to make use of what is
present, but those who are forever hanging upon the future and grasping after what is absent, who are tossed about, as if on a raft of hope, even though they never once venture beyond the city wall. These, then, are the graceless and thankless words of Polynices, who charges exile with dishonoring noble birth and depriving one of friendship—though it was precisely because of his noble birth that, exile though he was, he was thought worthy of a royal marriage, and, fortified by the alliance and might of friends so great, he went to war,
as he himself soon admits: "and many chief men of the Danaans and Mycenaeans are here, granting me a grudging but necessary favor." Similar too are the laments of his mother: "I did not kindle for you the marriage torch, nor was the Ismenus honored, as is customary, with the bridal bath's luxury." She ought to have rejoiced and been glad to learn that her son was dwelling in so great a palace; instead she laments
the torch that was not lit and the Ismenus that did not supply the bridal bath, as though in Argos those who marry have neither water nor fire—thus attaching to exile the evils that belong to vanity and folly. But is the exile truly held in reproach? Only among fools, who make a term of abuse even of the poor man, the bald man, and the short man, and, by Zeus, the foreigner
and the resident alien. But surely those who are not carried away by such prejudices admire good men, whether they are poor, or foreigners, or exiles. Do we not see that, just as with the Parthenon and the Eleusinion, so too with the Theseum, all men bow down before it? And yet Theseus was an exile from Athens—Theseus, because of whom men now come to Athens—and he lost a city that he had not inherited but had himself
created. And what fine thing would be left to Eleusis, if we were to feel shame at Eumolpus, who, having moved from Thrace, initiated the Greeks into the Mysteries and initiates them still? And Codrus—whose son was he, that he became king? Was he not the son of Melanthus, an exile from Messenia? And do you not approve the reply of Antisthenes to the man who said to him, "Your mother is Phrygian"—"Yes, and so is the mother of the gods"? Why, then, do you not likewise,
when reviled as an exile, answer, "Indeed, the father of Heracles of the glorious victories was also an exile, as was the grandfather of Dionysus, who, when sent out to find Europa, never returned himself, though he was a Phoenician by birth—"and from him our race is named"—having come to Thebes, "bringing the raving Dionysus, rouser of women, who flourishes amid frenzied honors"? And as for what Aeschylus hinted and darkly signified when he said, "holy Apollo, an exile
from heaven, a god—"let a good word rest upon it," as Herodotus says. And Empedocles, at the beginning of his philosophy, proclaims in advance: "There is a decree of Necessity, an ancient ordinance of the gods, that whenever one in his transgressions defiles his own dear limbs with bloodshed—the spirits who have obtained long life as their portion—he must wander thrice ten thousand seasons away from the blessed ones. Such a one am I too, now, an exile from the god and a wanderer": it is not himself, but
the very act of coming to be, that Empedocles here shows to make all of us, from the moment we leave the god, migrants in this world, and strangers, and exiles. For it is not blood, he says, nor breath mingled together, O men, that furnished the substance and origin of the soul, but the body is molded together out of these elements, earthborn and mortal; whereas the soul, having come here from elsewhere, calls its coming-to-be by the gentlest of names, "a journey abroad"; but the truest name for it is that it flees
and wanders, driven by divine decrees and laws. Then, as though on an island tossed by great swell, just as Plato says, bound to the body "in the manner of an oyster," because it does not recall or remember from what honor and how great a happiness it has been displaced—not from Sardis to Athens, nor from Corinth to Lemnos or Scyros, but having exchanged heaven and the moon for earth and
life upon it—if it should shift even a small distance from one place to another here below, it grows distressed and feels itself a stranger, withering away like some ignoble plant. And yet for a plant, one region may indeed be more suited than another, in which it is nourished and grows better; but from a human being no place takes away happiness, any more than it takes away virtue or wisdom: rather, Anaxagoras, in prison, worked out the squaring of the circle,
while Socrates, drinking the poison, went on philosophizing and urging his companions to philosophize, and was counted happy by them for it; whereas Phaethon and Tantalus, who ascended into heaven, the poets say met with the greatest misfortunes on account of their folly.

======== Moralia: De Faciae Quae In Orbe Lunae Apparet ========

"Well then," said Sulla, "that belongs to my tale, and comes from that source too; but if you have already struck up something, before I begin, about the views that are current in everyone's hands and on everyone's lips concerning the face on the moon, I should be glad to hear it first." "Of course," I said, "we were bound to be driven onto those very questions by our perplexity over the ones just discussed. For just as, in chronic illnesses, when men have given up on the ordinary remedies and the customary regimens, they turn to purifications and amulets and dreams, so too in inquiries that are hard to see through and hard to resolve, when the common, reputable, and familiar accounts fail to persuade, it is necessary to try the stranger ones, and not to despise them, but simply to charm ourselves, as it were, with the sayings of the ancients, and through all of them to test out the truth."
"You see at once," I went on, "how absurd it is to say that the visible shape on the moon is an affection of our sight, which yields to the brightness through weakness — the very thing we speak of as 'dazzling.' Such a person fails to notice that this ought rather to happen with respect to the sun, which strikes and pierces the sight more sharply, as Empedocles too, not unpleasingly, renders the difference between the two: 'the sun sharp-darting, and the moon mild.' It is her attractive, cheerful, and painless quality that he thus describes; and then he gives an explanation according to which faint and weak eyesight discerns no difference of shape on the moon, but her disc shines back at them smooth and full all over, whereas those who see keenly and vividly make out more precisely and distinguish the shapes of the face as they stand out in relief, and grasp the difference more clearly.
That, I think, ought to be the very opposite: if it were an affection of an overpowered eye that produced the appearance, then the weaker the affected organ, the clearer the appearance ought to be. But the unevenness of the markings altogether refutes this account; for it is not the look of a continuous, blended shadow. Rather, Agesianax, sketching it not badly, has said: 'All round about she blazes with fire, but in the middle there shines a bluer light, like a girl's eye and her moist brow';
'and the features resemble a face.' For indeed the shadowy parts really do sink beneath the bright ones as they pass round, and are in turn pressed and cut off by them, and altogether they are woven through one another, so that the outline of the shape has a painterly quality. This too, Aristotle, seemed not implausibly said with reference to Clearchus, your countryman — for he was your countryman, having been an associate of the elder Aristotle, even if he diverged considerably from the Peripatos."
When Apollonides took up the discussion and asked what Clearchus's view had been, "It is less fitting for anyone to be ignorant of it than for you," I said, "since it is an account that sets out, as it were, from the very hearth of geometry. For the man says that the so-called face in the moon consists of mirror-images and reflections of the great sea, appearing on the moon; for
the rim of the moon, being curved back at many points, is naturally suited to make contact with things not seen along a straight line, and the full moon herself, of all mirrors, is the most beautiful and purest in evenness and polish. Just as you people suppose that the rainbow is seen when our sight is bent back toward the sun by a cloud that has taken on a gentle moist smoothness and a fusing quality, so, he says, is seen in the moon the outer sea — not
the region in which it actually lies, but the point from which the refraction brought about the sight's contact with it and its reflected image; as Agesianax again put it somewhere: 'or the great wave of the sea, surging opposite, might show a phantom-image of a fire-blazing mirror.'" Apollonides was delighted and said, "How original, and altogether novel, is this contrivance of a theory, coming from a man with a certain boldness and poetic touch!
But in what way did you bring your refutation to bear on him?" "First," I said, "in that the outer sea is of one single nature, a confluent and continuous expanse, whereas the reflected image of the dark patches on the moon is not single, but has, as it were, isthmuses, the bright part dividing and marking off the shadowy part; so that, each region being separated off and having its own boundary, the incursions of the bright areas upon
the dark ones, taking on the appearance of height and depth, have shaped the resemblances that appear around what look like eyes and lips with great exactness. The result is that we must either suppose there are several outer seas, cut off from one another by certain isthmuses and continents — which is absurd and false — or, if it is a single sea, it is not plausible that so torn-apart an image of it should appear. That other question, however, is safer to ask than to pronounce upon in your presence: whether, the inhabited world
being equal in breadth and length, it is possible for the sight, reflected in the same way from the moon for everyone alike, to touch the sea — and, by Zeus, even for those who sail upon that very great outer sea and dwell there, like the Britons — and this even though the earth, as you people say, does not even hold the ratio of a center-point relative to the sphere of the moon. This, then," I said, "is your task to examine; but as for the refraction of sight
toward the moon, that is no longer your affair, nor Hipparchus's either — and yet, my dear fellow, many are not pleased, when discoursing on the physics of vision, to suppose that it undergoes an affection of like-with-like blending and coalescence, rather than certain impacts and reboundings, such as Epicurus used to fashion for his atoms. I do not think Clearchus will be willing to suppose, as you people do, that the moon is a heavy, solid body, but rather a star,
ethereal and light-bearing, as you say; and a body of that kind ought to shatter and turn back the sight, so that the reflection would be lost entirely. And if anyone presses us further, we shall ask how it is that only in the moon is there a mirror-image of the sea forming a face, while in none of the countless other stars is anything of the kind seen — and yet it is reasonable to demand that this happen to sight either in the case of all of them, or of none."
But then, looking toward Lucius, I said, "Remind us of what was first said on our side." And Lucius said, "But let us not seem to be treating Pharnaces with utter contempt, passing over the Stoic doctrine so completely without a word — say something to the man in any case, since he supposes the moon to be a mixture of air and gentle fire, and then claims that, as when a shudder runs beneath a calm sea's surface, so, as the air darkens,
a face-like appearance comes about." "How graciously, Lucius," I said, "you clothe the absurdity in polite words! Our friend did not put it that way; rather — and this was the truth of the matter — he said that they were 'blackening the moon's eye,' filling it with spots and dark patches, while at the same time invoking her as Artemis and Athena, and at the same time making her a mixture and a kneaded compound of murky air and glowing coal-fire, possessing neither a kindling of her own nor
any light that belongs to her, but rather some ill-defined body, forever smoldering and scorched by fire, like those thunderbolts that poets call 'lightless' and 'sooty.' Yet that a coal-like fire, such as these men make the moon's fire to be, has no persistence or coherence at all unless it takes hold of some solid matter that at once contains it and feeds it — this, I think, is something better understood by looking at the philosophers who playfully
say that Hephaestus is called lame because fire, apart from wood, cannot proceed, just as the lame cannot go without a staff. If, then, the moon is fire, where has so much air come to be within her? For that region up above, moving in a circle, is not made of air, but of a superior substance, whose nature it is to attenuate and kindle everything together with it; and if air has indeed come to be there, how is it that it has not vanished, transformed
into another form, turned wholly into fire, but instead is preserved and dwells together with fire for so long a time, as though it were a nail fastened and riveted forever to the same parts? For a thing that is rarefied and confused ought not to remain but to be dispersed; and it is impossible for a thing mixed with fire, and partaking neither of moisture nor of earth — the only things with which air is naturally suited to solidify — to become compacted. And yet the very rush and
violence of the fire's whirling burns up even the air within stones, and the air within cold lead, let alone the air whirling within fire itself with such great speed! Indeed, people are also displeased with Empedocles, who makes the moon a frozen, hail-like mass of air, held together by the enclosing sphere of fire; yet these men themselves say that the moon, being a sphere of fire, contains within it a different sort of air, torn apart in one place and another, and this
though it has neither ruptures within itself nor depths and hollows, such as those who make it earthy leave room for — but rather, evidently, lying superficially upon its convex surface. But this is both unreasonable with a view to permanence, and impossible to observe, at the times of full moon; for there ought not to be a sharp boundary between black and shadowed, but rather a fading out as it is hidden, or a shining together with the rest, as the moon is overtaken by the sun's light. For indeed, among us too,
the air in the depths and hollows of the earth, where light does not penetrate, remains shadowy and unlit, while the air poured round the earth from outside has brightness and a luminous color; for it is, on account of its rarity, readily blended with every quality and power, and above all, whenever it is touched and reached by light alone, as you say, it is illuminated throughout, being altered. The very same thing, then, applies also
to those who force the shadows into certain depths and ravines: in the moon the air seems admirably to help you, but it thoroughly refutes you people who somehow mix and fit together her sphere out of air and fire; for it is not possible for a shadow to remain on the surface when the sun illuminates with its light all that portion of the moon which we, too, cut off with our sight from
the rest of the moon." And Pharnaces, while I was still speaking, said, "Here it is again, that revolving stage-device from the Academy has reached us — the practice, when arguing against others, of continually failing to give an account of the very things they themselves assert, but always playing the defendant rather than the accuser, whenever they meet with people. Well, you at any rate will not draw me out today into giving an account of what you charge the Stoics with, until I have received satisfaction
from you people, who turn the world upside down." And Lucius laughed and said, "Only, my good man, do not proclaim a charge of impiety against us, as Cleanthes thought the Greeks ought to summon Aristarchus of Samos on a charge of impiety for moving the hearth of the universe, because the man was trying to save the phenomena by supposing that the heaven remains still while the earth revolves along an oblique circle,
and at the same time rotates about its own axis. We ourselves, of course, are asserting nothing on our own account; but those who suppose the moon to be earth — my good sir — in what way do they turn things upside down any more than you do, when you people set the earth up here, suspended in mid-air, though it is many times greater than the moon, as the mathematicians measure the magnitude of its distance from the phenomena of eclipses and from the passages of its shadow
through the ecliptic? For the earth's shadow, cast by a source of light greater than itself, tapers as it extends, and the fact that the upper part of that very shadow is thin and narrow did not escape Homer either, so they say, but he called the night 'swift' on account of the sharpness of the shadow. Yet the moon, caught by this shadow in eclipses, nevertheless clears it after barely three of
her own diameters. Consider, then, how many moons' breadth the earth measures, if the shadow it casts, at its narrowest, has a breadth of three moons. And yet you are afraid the moon might fall, while as for the earth, perhaps Aeschylus has persuaded you, when he says that Atlas stands, propping the pillar of heaven and earth upon his shoulders, a burden not easy to embrace in the arms — as though, while for the moon light air runs beneath it, unable in good faith to bear so solid
a mass, the earth is held up, as Pindar says, by 'columns shod in adamant.' And that is why Pharnaces himself feels no fear that the earth might fall, yet pities the Ethiopians or the Taprobanians who lie beneath the moon's course, lest so great a weight fall upon them. And yet for the moon, the very thing that helps it against falling is its motion itself and
the whirling rush of its revolution — just as objects placed in slings are prevented from falling by the circular whirling motion. For each thing is carried by its natural motion, unless it is turned aside by something else. That is why weight does not carry the moon down, its downward tendency being knocked out of it by the revolution. But it would perhaps make more sense to wonder, rather, if it remained absolutely still and motionless, as the earth does. As it is,
the moon has a strong reason for not being carried down here; but as for the earth, being without a share in any other motion, it would be reasonable for it to be moved only by that which weighs it down. And it is heavier than the moon, not merely in proportion to its greater size, but even more so, inasmuch as the moon, through heat and combustion, has become light. In general, it appears from what you say that the moon, if it is fire, all the more
needs earth and matter, in which it can stand and take root and hold itself together and keep its power kindled; for it is not possible even to conceive of fire preserved apart from matter. Yet you people say that the earth persists without any base or root." "Quite so," said Pharnaces, "since it holds the middle place, as being proper and natural to it; for this is the point about which all weights, inclining, lean
and are carried and converge from every side; while the whole region above, even if it should receive some earthy body hurled up by force, at once squeezes it out from itself, or rather lets it go, since it is naturally carried downward by its own proper inclination." To this I, wishing to give Lucius time to collect his thoughts, called on Theon and said, "Theon, which of the tragic poets has said that physicians purge bitter bile
with bitter drugs?" And when Theon answered that it was Sophocles, "That," I said, "must be granted to those men out of necessity; but philosophers ought not to be listened to, if they wish to ward off paradoxes with paradoxes, and, fighting against the astonishing features of their opponents' doctrines, fashion others still more absurd and astonishing — as these men do in introducing motion toward the middle. What paradox is not contained in that notion? Is it not paradoxical that the earth is a sphere, having such great depths
and heights and irregularities? That there dwell antipodes, like woodworms or lizards turned upside-down, clinging to the earth head downward? That we ourselves do not stand upright but lean sideways, tilted like drunkards? That thousand-talent masses of molten metal, carried through the depths of the earth, come to rest when they reach the middle, though nothing meets or supports them; and if, carried down by their own rush,
they should overshoot the middle, they turn back again and rebound from it? That sections, as it were, sawn off from either side of the earth do not fall downward continuously, but, striking against the earth from outside, are pushed inward and hidden away around the middle? That a raging torrent of water, carried downward, if it should reach the middle point — as these men themselves say — a thing without body, would come to a stop, hanging suspended in mid-air, or
“revolving in a circle, an unceasing and unresting suspension? For one could not falsely charge some of these consequences upon anyone who tries, as far as possible, to bring his thought into line with the theory. For this is what it means for things to be turned upside down and everything reversed: that whatever is on the near side of the center becomes ‘down,’ while whatever is beneath the center becomes ‘up’ in turn — so that, if by the earth’s sympathetic attraction someone were to stand with the center of the earth at his navel, he would have both his head up and his feet up at the same time; and if someone should dig through to the region beyond him, the man being dug up would find his own being rising and being drawn down from above; while if someone else, standing opposite to this first man, were imagined, both of their feet together would become and be called ‘up.’”
“Indeed, of such and so many paradoxes—by Zeus, not a beggar’s wallet but the baggage of some conjuror, and a whole festival-load of them, they load onto their backs and drag others along with them, saying that we are joking when we place the moon, which is earth, up above, establishing it not where the center is. And yet, if every heavy body converges toward the same point and presses back with all its parts toward its own center, then the earth is the center of the universe not so much because it is a whole to which the parts, being its own weights, belong.
And it will be proof that the things that incline downward do so not because of a centrality belonging to the earth in relation to the cosmos, but because of some kinship and affinity to the earth felt by the things thrown off from it and then falling back again. For just as the sun draws back into itself the parts of which it is composed, so also the earth receives the stone as something of its own and proper to it, and carries it toward itself; hence each such thing becomes united with it over time and grows together with it.
But if some body happens not to have been apportioned to the earth from the beginning, nor torn away from it, but somewhere has acquired its own constitution and nature independently — as those men would say the moon has — what prevents it from being separate and remaining around itself, held together and compacted by its own parts? For neither is the earth shown to be the center of the universe, nor does the cohesion and constitution of the things here in relation to the earth indicate the manner in which the things that fell together there are likely to remain in relation to the moon.
He who drives together all earthy and heavy things into one region and makes them parts of a single body — I do not see why he does not render the same necessity to the light things as well, but instead allows so many separate systems of fire to exist, and thinks it necessary, without gathering all the stars into the same place, that there should nonetheless be a single common body of all things that tend upward and are flame-like.”
“But you say,” I said, “my dear Apollonides, that the sun is countless myriads of stadia distant from the upper revolution, and Venus upon it, and Mercury shining, and the other planets set lower than the fixed stars and carried at great distances from one another; yet you think the cosmos affords no roominess or spacing within itself to the heavy and earthy things. Do you not see how absurd it is, if we shall say the moon is not earth because it stands apart from the lower region, yet shall call it a star, seeing it thrust away from the upper revolution by so many myriads
of stadia, and as it were sunk into some depth — while of the stars it is so much lower that one could not even state a measure, but the numbers fail even you mathematicians when you try to calculate it — whereas it in some manner touches the earth, and revolving nearby traces, as it were, the track of a chariot-wheel, as Empedocles says; and near its edge it does not even overstep its own shadow,
though that shadow is often raised up only a little, because the illuminating body is so vast. But the moon seems to circle so close to the skin, so nearly in the very arms of the earth, that it is screened off from the sun by the earth itself, never rising above this shadowy, earthy, nocturnal region, which is the earth’s own portion. Therefore, I think, one should say boldly that the moon lies within the bounds of the earth, being eclipsed by
the earth’s own projections.” “But consider, setting aside the other fixed stars and planets, what Aristarchus demonstrates in his book On Sizes and Distances: that ‘the distance of the sun from the distance of the moon’ — the moon’s distance from us — ‘is more than eighteen times but less than twenty times’ as great, although the man who places the moon at its greatest remove says it is fifty-six times as far from us,
reckoned from the center of the earth; and this distance is forty myriad stadia according to those who measure it moderately; and reckoning from this figure, the sun is more than four thousand and thirty myriad stadia distant from the moon. Thus is it removed from the sun on account of its weight, and it has drawn so close to the earth, that if one must distinguish substances by their places, the earth’s domain and jurisdiction lays a claim upon the moon and
upon the affairs and bodies around the earth, by right of nearness and neighborhood. And I think we do nothing amiss in this, that while we grant to the things called ‘above’ so great a depth and interval, we leave to the things ‘below’ some circuit and breadth as well, as much as the distance from earth to moon amounts to. For neither is the man who calls only the outermost surface of the heaven ‘above’ and everything else ‘below’ speaking with due measure,
nor is the man tolerable who marks off ‘below’ as belonging to the earth, or rather to the center; but instead, as the cosmos yields the needed space in that direction as well, on account of its magnitude, motion belongs there too. And against the man who insists that everything immediately away from the earth must at once be ‘up’ and aloft, another voice answers back that everything immediately away from the sphere of the fixed stars must at once be ‘down.’” “And in general, how can it be said
and of what is the earth the center? For the universe is infinite; and to the infinite, which has neither beginning nor end, it does not belong to have a center, for a center is itself a kind of boundary, and infinity is the privation of boundaries. But the man who declares the earth to be the center not of the whole, but of the ordered cosmos, is agreeable enough — unless he supposes the cosmos itself, too,
to be caught in the very same difficulties. For the universe leaves no center even to the cosmos itself, but it is homeless and unfounded, borne in infinite void toward nothing that is its own, or else, having found some other cause for remaining, it stands fixed, not in accordance with the nature of place. One may conjecture similarly about the earth and about the moon, that they differ rather by having each a different soul and nature,
the one remaining at rest here, the other also being carried in motion. But apart from these considerations, see whether some great point has escaped them: for if whatever, in whatever way, comes to be outside the center of the earth is ‘up,’ then no part of the cosmos at all is ‘down,’ but the earth itself, and the things upon the earth, and simply every body that stands around or lies about the center,
becomes ‘up’; and only one thing is ‘down,’ that bodiless point itself, which must stand opposed to the whole nature of the cosmos, if indeed ‘down’ is by nature opposed to ‘up.’ And this is not the only absurdity, but it also destroys the very cause on account of which heavy things incline and are carried here: for there is no
body ‘down there’ toward which they move, and the bodiless point is not likely, nor do they themselves wish it, to have such power as to draw everything toward itself and hold it together around itself. But altogether it is found irrational and at odds with the facts, that ‘up’ should be the whole cosmos, while ‘down’ is nothing but a bodiless, dimensionless limit; whereas that view is reasonable, as
we ourselves say, according to which ‘up’ has been allotted a region, and ‘down’ likewise a great one, possessing breadth.” “But nevertheless, granting, if you wish, that the motions of earthy bodies in the heaven are contrary to nature, let us consider the matter calmly, not tragically but gently: does this show that the moon is not earth at all, or rather that it is earth existing where it does not naturally belong? Since even the fire
on Etna, though beneath the earth, is contrary to nature, yet it is still fire; and the breath enclosed in wineskins is by nature upward-tending and light, yet it comes to be where it does not naturally belong, by compulsion. And the soul itself, by Zeus,” I said, “is it not contrary to nature that it is yoked to a body — the swift to the slow, the fiery to the cold, the invisible to the perceptible, just as you yourselves say? Is that why, then,
we should say that there is no soul in a body, nor any divine portion of mind, though under weight or thickness it comes to encompass and fly through heaven and earth and sea all together, and yet arrives at flesh and sinews and marrow and moistures full of countless passions? This Zeus of yours — does he not, using his own nature, exist as one great continuous fire,
but now has been let down and bent and reshaped, having become and becoming every color amid the changes? So take care and consider, my good sir, lest, by shifting and dragging each thing away from where it naturally belongs, you are philosophizing a dissolution of the cosmos, and bringing in Empedocles’ Strife upon the world — or rather, stirring up against nature the ancient Titans and Giants, and longing to behold that mythic
and fearful disorder and confusion, setting all that is heavy apart and all that is light apart, ‘where neither the sun’s bright form is discerned, nor the shaggy race of earth, nor the sea,’ as Empedocles says: earth had no share in heat, water none in breath, nothing heavy was above, nothing light below, but the first principles of all things were unmixed and unloving units,
admitting no combination of one with another, nor any communion, but fleeing and turning away and being carried each in its own willful, separate course — they were as everything is, according to Plato, from which god is absent, that is, as bodies are when mind and soul have left them; until Desire came upon nature by providence, when Friendship arose, and
Aphrodite and Eros, as Empedocles says, and Parmenides, and Hesiod, so that, exchanging places and receiving powers from one another, some bound and compelled by necessity to motion, others to rest, toward the better, from which each had its nature, they might yield and change and bring about harmony and communion for the whole.” “For if no other part of the cosmos either
were possessed of anything contrary to nature, but each lies as it naturally is, needing no relocation or rearrangement, nor having needed any at the beginning, then I am at a loss what work providence has, or of what Zeus, ‘the master craftsman,’ has become the maker and father and artisan. For there would be no use for tacticians in an army, if each soldier of himself knew how to take up, at the right moment, the rank and place he needed,
and to keep it; nor any use for gardeners or builders, if in one place water of itself naturally flows toward those who need it and irrigates as it streams, while in another bricks and timbers and stones, using their natural inclinations and tendencies, of themselves attain the fitting arrangement and place. But if this is so, this argument outright destroys providence;
whereas if the ordering of things and their division belongs properly to god, what is astonishing in the world's being so arranged, and nature so fitted together, that fire is here and stars there, and again that earth is here below and the moon set above, held together by a bond more secure than the natural one — the bond of reason? For if all things must follow their natural inclinations
and be carried according to what is natural to them, then let not the sun revolve in a circle, nor Venus, nor any of the other stars; for it is not natural for light, fiery things to move upward in a circle. But if nature admits of such a change according to place, so that here fire is seen carried upward, yet when it comes into the heaven it is swept around together with the vortex, what is astonishing
if the heavy and earthy things too, once they come to be there, likewise happen to be overcome by the surrounding medium into another kind of motion? For it is surely not the case that the upward motion is taken away from the light things as being natural to the heaven, while the heaven is unable to overpower the downward tendency of the heavy things; rather, whatever power it once used upon the former, it has used the same power to rearrange the latter as well, adapting
their nature for the better.” “And yet, if one must at last set aside enslaved and habituated opinions and speak boldly of what appears, no part of a whole seems, by itself, to have its own order or position or motion which one could simply call ‘natural.’ Rather, whenever each thing, moving in a way useful and proper to that for the sake of which it came to be and toward which it is naturally suited or has been made, provides
itself — whether acting, being acted upon, or being disposed — usefully and properly, as is fitting for that thing’s preservation or beauty or power, then it seems to have its place, motion, and disposition according to nature. Man, for instance, as one who, like anything else that exists, has come to be according to nature, has above all the heavy and earthy parts placed around the head,
and in the middle regions the hot and fiery ones; and of the teeth, some grow from above and some from below, and neither is contrary to nature; nor is it natural for fire alone to glitter around the eyes above, while what is in the belly and heart is contrary to nature — rather, each has been arranged suitably and usefully. Indeed, in the nature of stony-shelled cockles and tortoises
and every kind of oyster, as Empedocles says when he studies it — ‘there you will see earth dwelling uppermost on the flesh’ — and the stony part does not press or crush the living tissue lying beneath it, nor again does the heat, on account of its lightness, fly away and depart into the upper region; rather they are somehow mingled with one another and coordinated according to the nature of each thing.” “As is likely also to hold
for the cosmos too, if indeed it is a living being, having earth in many places, and in many places fire and water and air, not compressed together by necessity but ordered by reason. For neither is the eye in this body squeezed out by lightness to its place, nor has the heart, slipping by its weight, fallen down into the chest; but each has been so arranged because it was better so. Do not, then,
Let us not, then, suppose that of the parts of the cosmos the earth lies here because it collapsed under its own weight, nor that the sun, as Metrodorus of Chios believed, was squeezed out into the upper region like a wineskin because of its lightness, nor that the other stars, as if inclining in the balance of a scale, came to be in the places where they now are. Rather, since reason governs, some bodies, like luminous eyes set in the face of the universe, revolve as they circle around, while the sun, possessing the power of a heart, sends out and disperses from itself heat and light as if they were blood and breath; and the cosmos makes use of earth and sea according to nature, as a living creature makes use of belly and bladder. The moon, lying between sun and earth like a liver, or some other soft inward organ, set between heart and belly, transmits the warmth from above to this region, and by a kind of concoction and purification refines the vapors that rise from here and gives them off around itself; but whether its earthy and solid part serves some other useful purpose besides is unclear to us. In everything, the better prevails over the merely necessitated.
"For what likelihood should we accept from what those men say? They say that of the aether, the bright and fine part, because of its rarity, became heaven, while the part that was condensed and compacted became the stars, and that of these the moon is the most sluggish and murkiest. And yet one can see that the moon is not cut off from the aether, but is still carried along within a great deal of it, and has beneath itself a great deal more, in which winds and comets whirl about. Thus no body is weighed down purely according to the inclinations of heaviness and lightness among bodies, but each has been ordered by a different principle."
When this had been said, and I was handing the argument over to Lucius, who was moving on to the proofs of his position, Aristotle smiled and said, "I call you to witness that you have directed your whole rebuttal against those who suppose the moon to be half fire, and who claim generally that bodies incline, of their own nature, some upward and some downward. But if there is anyone who says that the stars move in a circle by nature, and that they are of a substance far different from the four elements, it was not by chance that he came to our minds — so that both I and you, Lucius, might be relieved of the business." And Lucius said, "By no means, my good man — rather, as for the rest, perhaps against you who posit that the stars and the whole heaven belong to some pure and unmixed nature, free from the change that comes with passion, and who maintain an eternal and unending circular revolution, no one could, at least for now, contend, though there are countless difficulties. But when the argument comes down and touches upon the moon in this way, it no longer preserves in it that freedom from passion, nor that beauty of body,
but — to leave aside its other irregularities and differences — this very face that shows through it has come about either through some affection of its substance or through some admixture of another substance. And that which is mixed in also suffers something in the process, for it loses its purity, being forcibly filled with what is inferior. As for the moon's own sluggishness, its bluntness of speed, and its heat, feeble and dim — the heat by which, in Ion's words, 'the dark grape does not ripen' — to what shall we attribute these except to weakness and passion in it, if indeed an eternal and Olympian body can share in passion? For in general, my dear Aristotle, as earth it appears a wholly beautiful and majestic and well-ordered thing; but as a star, or a light, or some divine and heavenly body, I fear it may prove shapeless and unbecoming, disgracing its fair name — if indeed, when there are so many bodies in the heaven, it alone goes about needing a light not its own, forever, as Parmenides says, 'gazing toward the rays of the sun.'
"Now our companion, in his lecture, expounding this very Anaxagorean doctrine — that the sun implants its brightness in the moon — won approval; but I shall not repeat what I learned from you, or together with you, and will proceed, by my own choice, to what remains. That the moon is illuminated not as glass or crystal is, by the sun's shining and shining through it, is plausible; nor again by a kind of joint-kindling and joint-brightening, as torches do when their flame is fed — for in that case there would be no less a full moon at new moons than at mid-month, if the moon does not block or obstruct the sun but lets him through because of its own rarity, or lets him shine in through some blending, and kindles the light about itself. For there are no turnings or aversions of it to account for, of the kind one might posit around the conjunction, as when it is half, gibbous, or crescent-shaped; rather, as Democritus says, standing directly in line with the source of light, it takes up and receives the sun — so that it would be reasonable for the moon itself to appear and, at the same time, to let the sun shine through. But it is far from doing this:
for at that very time it is itself invisible, and it has hidden and made the sun disappear many times over, and has 'scattered its rays down upon the earth,' as Empedocles says, and 'has darkened as much of the earth as is the breadth of the grey-eyed moon' — as though into night and darkness, not onto another star, when the light falls upon it. As for what Posidonius says, that because of the depth of the moon the sun's light does not pass through it to us, this is plainly refuted. For the air, being boundless and having a depth many times that of the moon, is entirely suffused with sun and lit up by its rays throughout. What remains, then, is Empedocles' view: that the illumination we see here comes about through a certain reflection of the sun toward the moon and from it to us; and this is why neither heat nor brightness reaches us, as would be likely if there had been a genuine kindling and blending of lights. But just as voices, in echoing, produce a fainter version of the original sound, and the blows of rebounding missiles land more softly, so too, 'a ray striking the broad circle of the moon' meets with a weak and dim upward flow back toward us, its power spent through the refraction."
Taking up the argument, Sulla said, "To be sure, these points have some plausibility; but as for the strongest of the objections raised — did it, in fact, receive any answer, or did it slip past our friend?" "What do you mean by that," said Lucius, "other than the difficulty concerning the half-moon?" "Just so," said Sulla. "For there is something in this: since every reflection occurs at equal angles, whenever the moon, at the half phase, is at mid-heaven, its light ought not to be carried down to the earth but should slip past it beyond the earth's edge. For the sun, being on the horizon, touches the moon with its ray; hence, being reflected at equal angles, the ray will fall out at the opposite extremity and will not send its light here — or else there will be a great distortion and shift in the angle, which is impossible."
"But indeed, by Zeus," said Lucius, "this too was raised" — and turning to look at Menelaus, the mathematician, in the course of the discussion, he said, "I am ashamed, dear Menelaus, in your presence, to overturn a mathematical proposition, since it underlies matters of optics as a foundation; yet it must be said that the claim that every reflection occurs at equal angles is neither self-evident nor universally agreed. It is called into question in the case of convex mirrors, whenever they produce images larger than themselves relative to a single point of sight; and it is called into question by double mirrors, which, when tilted toward one another so that an angle is formed between them, each of the two planes yields a double image and produces four images from a single face — two inverted, in the outer parts, and two right-facing and dim, in the depth of the mirrors. Plato gives the explanation of how these arise.
For he has said that, since the mirror rises to a height on this side and that, the visual rays shift their reflection, passing over from one side to the other. If, then, of the visual rays some run straight back to us while others, slipping off to the other parts of the mirrors, are carried back to us again from there, it is not possible for all the reflections that occur — the very ones which people, going straight at the matter, claim hold equally for the rays coming from the moon — to occur at equal angles. As for streams flowing over the earth, they think the equality of the angles is destroyed there, and consider this far more plausible than the other case. Nevertheless, if we must grant this favor to beloved geometry, then, in the first place, it is likely to hold true only for mirrors perfected in smoothness; but the moon has many irregularities and roughnesses, so that the rays, being carried from so vast a body over considerable heights, receive counter-reflections and transmissions from one another, are reflected in all directions, become entangled, and join their own after-glow to themselves — as though being carried to us from many mirrors at once. Then again, even if we grant that the counter-reflections occur at equal angles right at the moon itself, it is not impossible that, traveling over so great a distance, the rays undergo refractions and slippages, so that the light becomes blurred together and simply shines. Some also try to demonstrate this by drawing diagrams, showing that many light sources send out a ray along a line running beneath an inclined line; but to construct a diagram while speaking, and before so large an audience, was not possible."
"But on the whole," he said, "I am amazed at how they bring the half-moon phase to bear against us, together with the gibbous and crescent phases. For if the sun were illuminating the moon's mass as being aethereal or fiery in nature, it would not leave a hemisphere of it forever shadowed and unlit to our perception; rather, even if the light merely grazed it in passing, it would be fitting for the whole to be filled and turned entirely to light, the brightness spreading everywhere with ease. For just as wine, touching water at its edge, or a drop of blood falling into a liquid, tinges the whole at once, turning it red throughout — so too they say that the air itself is illuminated by the sun not through any effluences or mingled rays, but through a turning and a change brought about by contact or touch with the light. How, then, do they suppose that star touching star, and light touching light, do not blend, and do not produce confusion and change throughout, but illuminate only those things which they touch on the surface?
For the circle which the sun, in its course, traces and turns about the moon — now falling upon the line that divides its visible part from its invisible part, now rising at right angles to it, so that it cuts that line and is cut by it in turn, and, through other inclinations and relations of the bright part to the shadowed part, yields gibbous and crescent shapes upon it — this, more than anything, shows that the illumination consists not in blending but in contact, not in joint-kindling but in encompassing light. And since the moon is not only itself illuminated but also sends back to us here the image of its brightness, this gives even greater support to arguing about its substance. For reflections do not occur against anything rare or finely dispersed, nor is it easy to conceive of light bounding off from light, or fire from fire; rather, whatever is to produce resistance and refraction must be dense and solid, so that there may be an impact against it and a rebound from it. The sun itself, at any rate, the air lets pass without offering any check or resistance, while wood, stones, and garments placed in the light give back many counter-gleams and reflected rays. So too we see the earth being illuminated by it: for the earth does not let the ray pass down into its depth as water does, nor all the way through as air does; but just as a certain circle of the sun's light goes around the moon and marks off a portion of it, so likewise another such circle goes around the earth, always illuminating that much of it and leaving the rest unlit — for the illuminated hemisphere of each body seems to be a little larger than the unlit one.
"Now allow me to put the point geometrically, by way of proportion: given that there are three things which the light from the sun approaches — earth, moon, and air — we observe that the moon is illuminated not as the air is illuminated, but as the earth is; and it is necessary that things which are affected in the same way by the same agent share a similar nature." And since everyone praised Lucius, I said, "Well done — you have added a fine proportion to a fine argument, for you ought not to be deprived of what is properly yours." And he, smiling in turn, said, "Then should we not also make use of a second proportion, so that we may show the moon to resemble the earth not only in being affected in the same way by the same agent, but also in producing the same effect? For grant me this: that nothing among the events connected with the sun is so similar to anything else as a solar eclipse is to a sunset — recalling that recent conjunction, which, beginning right at midday, revealed many stars in many parts of the sky, and produced a blending in the air just like that of twilight.
Otherwise, our friend Theon here will bring against us Mimnermus and Cydias and Archilochus, and besides these Stesichorus and Pindar, lamenting in their verses on eclipses 'the brightest star stolen away,' and 'night coming in the middle of the day,' and calling the sun's ray 'a pathway of darkness' — and, above all, Homer, who says that 'night and gloom hold fast the faces of men,' and that 'the sun has perished out of the heaven' — and this too is a thing that naturally happens around the moon, 'in the month's waning' as well as 'in its waxing.'
The rest of the matter, I think, has been brought by mathematical precision to a firm and settled conclusion: namely, that night is the shadow of the earth, and an eclipse of the sun is the shadow of the moon, whenever our line of sight falls within it. For the sun, setting beneath the earth, is blocked from our sight; and, in eclipse, it is blocked by the moon. Both are cases of darkening, but the one is the setting-darkness that belongs to the earth, the other the eclipse-darkness that belongs to the moon, its shadow overtaking our sight. From this, what follows is easy to see: if the effect is similar, the causes producing it are similar, for it is necessary that the same things happen to the same thing from the same causes. But if the darkness surrounding eclipses is not as deep as this, nor does it press upon the air in the same way that night does, let us not be surprised — for the substance of that which produces night and of the body which produces the eclipse is the same, but their size is not equal. The Egyptians, I believe, say that the moon is a seventy-second part of the earth's shadow; Anaxagoras says it is as large as the Peloponnese; and Aristarchus demonstrates that the diameter of the earth bears a ratio to the diameter of the moon of less than sixty to...
nineteen, and greater than the ratio of one hundred eight to forty-three. Hence the earth deprives the sight of the sun altogether because of its size — for the interposition is great, and lasts as long as the night — whereas the moon, even when it does sometimes hide the whole sun, produces an eclipse that has neither duration nor breadth, but a certain radiance still shows around the rim, not allowing the shadow to become deep and unmixed.
The elder Aristotle, among other causes, also gives this one for why the moon is seen eclipsed more often than the sun: the sun is eclipsed by the moon's screening it, whereas the moon is eclipsed by [the earth's shadow]. Posidonius, defining the phenomenon in this way, says: "An eclipse is a coincidence of the sun with the shadow of the moon, of which an eclipse occurs only for those upon whom the moon's shadow, catching their line of sight, cuts them off from the sun." Yet in agreeing that the moon's shadow is carried toward us, I do not know what he has left himself to say — for it is impossible for a star to cast a shadow, since what is unlit is called shadow, and light does not produce shadow but by its nature abolishes it.
"But what," he said, "was said after this, among the proofs?" And I said, "That the moon undergoes the same eclipse." "You are right," he said, "to remind me. But tell me whether I should now turn to the discussion on the assumption that you are already persuaded and hold that the moon is eclipsed by being caught by the shadow, or would you like me to rehearse the demonstration for you, enumerating each of the proofs one by one?" "By Zeus," said Theon, "do rehearse them for us. As for myself, I still need some persuading, having heard only this much — that eclipses occur when the three bodies, earth, sun, and moon, come to lie on a single straight line; for either the earth deprives the moon of the sun, or, again, the moon deprives the earth of it — the sun being eclipsed by the moon, the moon by the earth, whichever of the three stands in the middle. Of these, one occurs at conjunction, the other at full moon."
And Lucius said, "These, indeed, are pretty much the most authoritative of the points made. But first take, if you will, the argument from the shape of the shadow: it is a cone, inasmuch as it is the shadow cast by a great fire, or by a sphere of light, around a smaller spherical mass. Hence in eclipses of the moon the outlines of the darkened portions, where they meet the bright, have their divisions rounded; for whatever round body meets a round body, whether it receives or produces the cuts, these become circular everywhere on account of the resemblance. Second, I think you know that in eclipses of the moon the eastern parts are eclipsed first, but of the sun the western parts; and the earth's shadow moves toward the west from the east, while the sun and moon move, on the contrary, toward the east.
These things the appearances allow one to observe directly by sense, and one can also learn them from arguments not at all long; and from these the cause of the eclipse is confirmed. For since the sun is eclipsed by being overtaken, while the moon meets that which produces the eclipse, naturally — or rather necessarily — the one is caught first from behind, the other begins to be caught in front; for the interposition begins there, from wherever the interposing body first strikes — and it strikes the sun from the west, since the moon is racing to catch up with it, but it strikes the moon from the east, since the moon is being carried along in the opposite direction.
Take, then, a third point still, that of the duration and the magnitude of the moon's own eclipses. When high and at apogee she is eclipsed and hidden for a short time; but when near the earth and low, undergoing this same thing, she is pressed hard and departs slowly out of the shadow — and yet, being low, she employs the greatest motions, while being high she employs the least. But the cause of the difference lies in the shadow: for the shadow, being very broad at its base, like cones, contracts little by little to a fine and narrow point at its tip.
Hence the moon, when low, falls into the greatest circles of the shadow and is caught by it, and passes through the deepest and darkest part; but when high, as though in a shallow, because of the thinness of the shaded region, she is touched only briefly and is quickly freed. I pass over what was said separately about the particular bases and the discrepancies — for those points too admit the cause up to the point that is possible — but let me return to the argument at hand, which has its starting point in sense-perception.
We observe that fire, when seen from a shadowed place, appears brighter and shines more — whether this is because of the thickness of the dark air, which does not admit the fire's effluences and diffusions but confines and compresses its substance in the same place; or whether this is an affection of the sense of sight itself, just as hot things appear hotter beside cold ones, and pleasures more intense beside pains, so that bright things appear more manifest beside dark ones, our perception being intensified in each case by contrast with the opposite affection. The former explanation seems the more plausible: for in the sun every fiery nature not only loses its brightness but, by yielding to it, becomes sluggish and duller — for the sun's heat scatters and diffuses its power.
If, then, the moon possesses a weak and feeble fire, being a murkier star, as they themselves say, then none of what she now appears to undergo would be appropriate to her — rather the opposite of all this ought to happen to her: she ought to appear bright when hidden, and be hidden when she appears — that is, she ought to be hidden the rest of the time, dimmed by the surrounding aether, but shine out and become visible every six months, and again every five months, as she sinks into the shadow of the earth. For the four hundred and sixty-five cycles of eclipse full moons include four hundred four intervals of six months, and the rest of five months.
It would therefore be necessary, over such long intervals, for the moon to appear brightened while in the shadow — but instead she is eclipsed in the shadow and loses her light, and recovers it again only when she has escaped the shadow; and she often appears by day, showing herself to be anything rather than a fiery, star-like body."
When Lucius had said this, both Pharnaces and Apollonides broke in at once upon the argument, almost together; then, Apollonides yielding, Pharnaces said that this above all shows the moon to be a star or fire — for she is not entirely invisible during eclipses, but shows through a certain coal-like and grim color, which is peculiar to her. Apollonides objected concerning the word "shadow" — for the mathematicians, he said, always use that name for the unlit region, and the heavens do not admit of shadow.
But I said, "This objection is made more contentiously with regard to the name than in a scientific and mathematical spirit with regard to the fact. For whether or not one is willing to call the region screened off by the earth a 'shadow,' but rather a lightless place, it is nonetheless necessary that the moon, coming to be within it, [suffer accordingly]. And in general," I said, "it is foolish to deny that the earth's shadow reaches that far, when the moon's own shadow, falling upon our sight and extending to the earth, produces an eclipse of the sun.
But I shall turn to you, Pharnaces: that coal-like and glowing color of the moon, which you say is peculiar to her, belongs to a body that has density and depth; for no remnant or trace of flame is willing to remain in rarefied things, nor can a coal come to be except where there is a solid body which receives the burning throughout its depth and preserves it — as indeed Homer somewhere has said: 'but when the flower of fire had flown away, and the flame, having spread the coal-bed, ceased.' For a coal, it seems, is not fire but a body that has been fired and has been affected by fire, clinging to and lodging in a solid mass that has, so to speak, root; whereas flames are the kindling of something rarefied and streams of fuel and matter, quickly dissolving because of their weakness.
So there would be no other proof so clear that the moon is earthy and dense, if that coal-like color were indeed peculiar to her. But it is not, dear Pharnaces: for as she is eclipsed she changes through many colors, and the mathematicians distinguish these by time and by hour: if she is eclipsed from evening, she appears terribly black until the third and a half hour; if at midnight, she then sends out this reddish and fiery glow; from the seventh and a half hour on, the redness rises; and finally, toward dawn, she takes on a blue-gray and gleaming-eyed color, from which the poets, and Empedocles too, call her most of all 'gleaming-eyed.'
Seeing, then, that the moon takes on so many colors in the shadow, people are not right to fasten only on the coal-like one, which one might most say is actually foreign to her, and rather a mixture and remnant of the light shining around through the shadow; whereas what is peculiar to her is the black and earthy. Just as, in our world, where shaded regions lie near purple and crimson pools and rivers and lakes that catch the sun, they take on a shared color and are lit up all around, giving back many different reflected gleams because of the refractions — what wonder is it if a great stream of shadow, pouring as it were into a heavenly sea of light that is neither steady nor at rest but driven by countless stars, taking on all manner of minglings and changes, wipes off now one color, now another, from the moon and gives it back here to us?
For a star or fire could not, in shadow, show through as black or gray-blue or dusky blue; but on mountains and plains and seas many forms of color run over from the sun, together with shadows and mists, such as the bright light produces when mixed with painters' pigments — colors of which Homer has somehow tried to name those of the sea, calling it 'violet-colored' and 'wine-dark sea,' and again 'the purple wave,' and elsewhere 'gray-blue sea' and 'white calm'; but he has left aside the differences around the land, of colors appearing now one way, now another, as being infinite in number. And it is not likely that the moon, like the sea, has a single uniform surface, but that she resembles most of all the earth in nature — the earth which old Socrates described in myth, whether indeed he was hinting at this very moon or telling of some other. For it is not incredible or astonishing, if, having nothing corrupt or muddy in herself, but enjoying pure light from heaven and a warmth that is not scorching or maddening fire but moist and harmless and natural, she is full of it, and possesses wonderful beauties of regions — mountains that gleam like flame, and belts of purple, and gold and silver not scattered in her depths but blooming abundantly upon her plains or carried around on her smooth heights.
And if the sight of these things reaches us, altered now this way, now that, through the shadow, because of some variation and difference in the medium surrounding it, still this does not take away from the moon's honor or divinity — she who is held sacred by men more than a turbid and dreggy fire, as the Stoics say. For fire indeed has barbarian honors among the Medes and Assyrians, who out of fear worship the things that harm them, propitiating them ahead of what is truly holy; but the name of 'earth' is dear and honored, I suppose, by every Greek, and it is ancestral for us to revere it like some other god. We are far, then, from needing to think of the moon — being a heavenly earth — as a soulless and mindless body, having no share in what it is proper to offer as first-fruits to the gods, paying by custom the returns due to good things and by nature revering what is greater in excellence and power and more honorable.
So let us think we do nothing amiss in positing her as earth, and this face that appears on her — just as our own earth here has certain great gulfs, so that moon too is opened out with great depths and clefts containing either water or murky air, into which the sun's light does not descend and does not even touch, but is eclipsed there and gives back a scattered reflection." Apollonides, taking this up, said, "Then, in the name of the Moon herself, does it seem possible to you that these are shadows of certain clefts or ravines, and that they reach us here to our sight from there — or have you not reckoned with what actually follows, and shall I state it? Listen, even though you are not ignorant of it.
The diameter of the moon, at its apparent size at mean distances, measures twelve finger-breadths. Each of the dark and shadowy patches appears greater than half a finger-breadth, so that it is greater than a twenty-fourth of the diameter. And indeed, if we suppose the circumference of the moon to be only thirty thousand stades and its diameter ten thousand, then on this assumption each of the shadowy patches on her would be no less than five hundred stades. Consider, then, first, whether it is possible for the moon to have depths and roughnesses so great as to produce a shadow of such size; and next, how, being so great in magnitude, they are not seen by us."
And I, smiling at him, said, "Well done, Apollonides, for having devised such a proof, by which you will show both me and yourself to be taller than those famous sons of Aloeus — not at every hour of the day, however, but especially in the early morning and late afternoon, if you suppose, when the sun makes our shadows towering, that this fine syllogism holds good for the senses: that if the shadowed thing is large, the thing casting the shadow is immensely large. Neither of us, I am quite sure, has ever been to Lemnos; yet we have both often heard that well-worn iambic line: 'Athos will cover the flank of the Lemnian ox' — for the mountain's shadow falls, it seems, upon a certain bronze heifer, stretching its length across the sea no less than seven hundred stades, the shadowing height being what it is for the reason that the distances of light from bodies produce shadows many times greater.
Come, then, look also at the moon, when she is at the full and shows the articulated shape of her face most clearly through the depth of the shadow, the sun being then at its greatest distance from her — for it is this distance of the light that has produced the great shadow, not the magnitudes of the irregularities upon the moon's surface. And indeed, not even the projecting peaks of mountains are permitted to be seen by day, on account of the sun's surrounding brightness, though the deep hollows appear shadowy from far off. It is, then, nothing strange if the moon's own receiving and reflecting of light cannot be observed exactly either, while the juxtapositions of her shadowy patches...
"...are not, by their contrast with the bright regions, hidden from view."
"But that fact," I said, "seems rather to refute the theory of reflection alleged for the moon: that those standing in reflected rays happen to see not only the illuminated object but also the illuminating one. For whenever, as a ray leaps from water to a wall, sight comes to be in the very spot on the wall that is illuminated by the reflection, it discerns three things at once: the reflected ray itself, the water that produces the reflection, and the sun itself, from which the light, falling on the water, has been reflected. Since these facts are agreed and observed, they call on those who maintain that the earth is illuminated by reflection from the moon to show the sun appearing in the moon at night, just as it appears in water by day whenever a reflection occurs from it. But since this is not observed, they suppose that the illumination comes about in some other way, not by reflection; and if not by this, then the moon is not earth."
"What then," said Apollonides, "should be said against them? For the matter of reflection seems to bear on our view as well." "Indeed," I said, "in one way it is common to us, but in another way not at all. First observe how they take the image the wrong way round, upside down. For water lies on the earth, below, while the moon lies above the earth, aloft; hence the reflected rays form the angle in reverse, one having its apex above, near the moon, the other below, near the earth. So let them not demand that every kind of mirror, from every distance, produce a similar reflection, since that runs against plain observation. As for those who declare that the moon's body is not fine and smooth, as water is, but dense and earthy, I do not see how they can then demand that the sun's image appear in it for our sight; for milk does not yield such reflections either, nor does it produce reflections of sight, because of the unevenness and roughness of its particles. How, then, could it be possible for the moon to send sight back from itself, as the smoother mirrors send it back? And yet even these mirrors, if some scratch or dirt or roughness seizes the point from which sight is naturally reflected, go blind -- they themselves are still seen, but they no longer give back the answering gleam. And whoever insists either that our sight reaches the sun, or else that the sun is not reflected onto us by the moon itself, is being naive: he requires the eye to be a sun, sight to be light, and man to be heaven. For it is likely that the sun's reflection, on account of its force and brightness, travels toward us from the moon with something like a blow; but our sight, being weak and thin and scant, what wonder is it if it neither delivers a repelling blow nor, in rebounding, preserves its continuity, but instead breaks up and falls short, having no abundance of light with which to avoid being torn apart amid the unevenness and roughness? For from water and other mirrors, while it is still strong and close to its starting point, it is not impossible for the reflection to leap on to the sun; but from the moon, even if some slippages of it occur, they will be weak and faint and will give out before arriving, because of the length of the distance. Besides, concave mirrors make the reflected ray more intense than the incoming ray, so that they often send up actual flames, whereas convex and spherical mirrors, because they do not offer resistance from every side, make it weak and dim. You surely observe, whenever two rainbows appear, one cloud enclosing another, that the enclosing one makes the colors dim and indistinct -- for the outer cloud, lying farther from the eye, does not give back a vigorous or strong reflection. And why should I say more? Where the sun's light, reflected from the moon, loses all its heat, and only a thin, feeble remnant of its brightness reaches us with difficulty, is it likely that sight, traveling the same double course, could have any portion left over to reach the sun from the moon? I for one do not think so. Consider this too," I said, "you yourselves: if sight were affected the same way toward water as toward the moon, then the full moon would have to produce images of earth and plants and men and stars, as the rest of mirrors do; but if no reflections of sight occur with respect to these, because of its weakness or the moon's roughness, then let us not demand them with respect to the sun either."
"We, then," I said, "have reported as much as has not escaped our memory of what was said there. It is time now to call on Sulla, or rather to require his account of himself, since he has been, as it were, a listener under contract to repay us; so, if it please you, let us break off our walk, and sitting down on the benches, provide him with a settled audience." This was agreed, and when we had sat down, Theon said, "I myself, Lamprias, desire no less than any of you to hear what is to be told; but first I would gladly hear about those said to inhabit the moon -- not whether some in fact dwell there, but whether it is even possible to dwell there. For if it is not possible, then it is absurd even to hold that the moon is earth; for it will seem to have come into being for nothing, in vain, neither bearing fruit nor furnishing any seat, origin, or way of life for any beings -- for the sake of which, we say, this body too has come to be, according to Plato, our nurse and 'the exact guardian and maker of day and night.' And you see how much is said about these things, both in jest and in earnest. Some say that those who dwell beneath the moon hang, as it were, like Tantaluses over their own heads, while those who in turn dwell upon it are bound to it like Ixions, with such violent force -- although it moves with no single motion but, as it is somehow also called, 'goddess of the three ways,' being carried at once in length along the zodiac, and in breadth, and in depth; of which motions the astronomers name one 'revolution,' another 'spiral,' and another -- I do not know how -- 'anomaly,' although they see nothing anomalous or disordered in its returns. So then, if some lion once fell, by the force of this motion, into the Peloponnese, that is no cause for wonder; the wonder is rather that we do not constantly see countless fallings of men and violent expulsions of lives from up there, tumbling and turning over as it were. And indeed it is absurd to raise doubts about the dwelling of those beings there, on the ground that they cannot have origin or composition. For where the Egyptians and the Troglodytes, for whom the sun stands directly overhead for the merest instant of a single day at the solstice and then departs, come close to being scorched by the dryness of the surrounding air, surely it is likely that those on the moon endure twelve summers every year, since the sun, month by month, stands directly over them and stays fixed whenever there is a full moon? As for winds and clouds and rains, without which plants can neither come to be nor survive once they have, it is impossible to conceive of these forming there, because of the heat and thinness of the surrounding air; for not even here do the high parts of mountains receive the wild, opposing storms, but the air there, already unsettled by its own lightness, escapes such condensation and thickening -- unless, by Zeus, we are to say that, just as Athena dripped nectar and ambrosia into Achilles when he refused food, so the moon, called and in fact being Athena, nourishes her men, sending up for them a daily ambrosia, as Pherecydes of old supposed the gods themselves to feed. As for the Indian root which Megasthenes says those who neither eat nor drink, but are sweet of breath, singe and burn as incense and are nourished by its scent -- where could one get such a root growing there, since the moon is never rained upon?"
When Theon had said this, "Most excellent," I said, "and best of all, you have smoothed our frowning brows with the playfulness of your speech, and on that account we too take courage for our reply, not expecting too bitter or too severe a reckoning; for indeed those who are exceedingly harsh and distrustful about such matters, unwilling calmly to examine what is possible and what may be, are truly no different from those who are excessively convinced of them. So then, in the first place, it is not necessary -- if men do not inhabit the moon -- that it should have come to be in vain and for nothing. For we do not see even this earth of ours active or inhabited throughout its whole extent, but only a small part of it -- as it were certain headlands or peninsulas rising out of the deep -- is fruitful of animals and plants, while of the rest, some parts are desolate and barren from storms and droughts, and most has sunk beneath the great sea. But you, who always love and admire Aristarchus, do you not hear Crates reciting: 'Ocean, who has been made the source for all men and gods alike, sends forth over most of the earth'? Yet it is far from true that these things have come to be in vain: indeed the sea sends up soft exhalations and the sweetest of winds when summer is at its height, while from the uninhabited, frozen regions the snows, gently melting, relax and scatter... 'of day and night' it stands, exact, fixed in the middle, 'guardian,' according to Plato, 'and maker.' Nothing, then, prevents the moon likewise from being empty of living creatures, while still providing reflections for the light diffused about it, and a confluence and blending for the rays of the stars within it, by which it also helps digest the exhalations rising from the earth, and at the same time tempers the excessive fieriness and harshness of the sun. And perhaps, granting something also to ancient report, we shall say she was thought to be Artemis herself, as a virgin and childless, yet otherwise helpful and beneficial. Furthermore, dear Theon, none of the things you have said proves the reputed habitation on the moon impossible: for its whirling motion, possessing much gentleness and calm, smooths the air and distributes it as it is set in order together with the moon, so that there is no fear that those who have lived there would fall off and be dislodged; and the change and this varied, wandering character of its motion is not a mark of irregularity or disorder -- rather, the astronomers demonstrate a wonderful order and course in these very things, resolving it by certain circles unwound about other circles, some making the moon stationary, others making it carried back and forth smoothly and evenly at constant speeds. For it is these mountings and revolutions of the circles, and their relations to one another and to us, that most harmoniously bring to completion the apparent heights and depths of its motion, together with its deviations in latitude along with its periods in longitude. As for the great heat and continuous burning from the sun that you fear, you will stop fearing it once you set the full moons against the eleven summer conjunctions: you will find that the continuity of the change, since the extremes do not last long, produces its own proper blending and strips away the excess of each; and lying midway between these, it has, as is likely, a season most akin to spring. Moreover, toward us it sends its heat down through murky, resistant air, nourished together with the rising exhalations; but there, the air being thin and translucent, scatters and disperses the ray, since it has no fuel and no body to sustain it. Its produce and fruits are nourished here by rains, but elsewhere -- as, for example, up around Thebes in your country, and Syene -- the earth, drinking not rainwater but water native to itself, and making use of winds and dews, would not wish, I think, to trade its fruitfulness, owing to a certain excellence and blending, for that of the land most rained upon. The very same kinds of plants, among us, if pressed hard by winter, bear much fine fruit; but in Libya, and among you in Egypt, they are quite susceptible to cold and fearful of winters. As for the land of Gedrosia and the Troglodyte country, which reaches to the ocean, being unfruitful through dryness and utterly treeless, in the neighboring, encircling sea wonderful growths of plants are nourished and flourish even in the depths -- some of which they call 'olives,' others 'laurels,' others 'the locks of Isis.' And the plants called 'resurrection plants,' once pulled out of the earth, not only live on hanging for as long as one likes but actually put forth shoots. Some crops are sown before winter, others at the height of summer, like sesame and millet; and thyme, or centaury, if sown in good, rich soil and watered and irrigated, departs from its natural quality and loses its potency, but rejoices in drought and thrives when kept to what is proper to it; and if, as they say, it cannot even bear the dew, like most Arabian plants, but is dimmed and spoiled by being moistened, what wonder is it if there grow, around the moon, roots and seeds and matter that need no rains or snows at all, but are naturally well suited to a warm, thin air? And how is it not likely that winds should rise, warmed by the moon and by the agitation of its revolution, and that gentle breezes should accompany it, and that light dews and moistures should be poured around it, and, being scattered, should suffice for the things that sprout -- while the moon itself, in its own blending, is neither fiery nor parched, but soft and productive of moisture? For no effect of dryness reaches us from it, but much of moisture and of the feminine -- growth of plants, decay of meats, turnings and relaxings of wines, softenings of wood, easy deliveries for women. But I am wary of stirring up and provoking Pharnaces again, now that he is quiet, by bringing forward the ocean's floodings, as they themselves put it, and the swellings of straits, as these are dispersed and increased by the moon through its moistening power. So I shall turn instead to you, dear Theon; for it is you who tell us, in expounding these words of Alcman -- 'the daughter of Zeus, Dew, and divine Selene nourish' -- that here he calls the air 'Zeus,' and says that, being moistened by the moon, it turns into dew. For it seems, my friend, that the moon has a nature opposed to the sun's: since not only does she soften and disperse whatever he condenses and dries, but she also moistens and cools the heat that comes from him, as it falls upon her and mingles with her. Both those who suppose the moon to be a fiery, blazing body are mistaken, and those who demand that the creatures there require, for their origin, nourishment, and way of life, everything that creatures here require..."
...seem blind to the irregularities in nature, among which one can find greater and more numerous differences and dissimilarities between living things themselves than between living things and non-living things. And let there be no fine-mouthed men who are nourished by smells - I do not think such men exist at all; but as for the power that Ammonius himself expounded to us, Hesiod hinted at it when he said, ‘nor how much benefit there is in mallow and asphodel, a great boon.’ Epimenides made this evident in practice, teaching that nature, with only a small kindling, revives and sustains a living creature, so that if it receives just the size of an olive, it needs no further nourishment. As for the inhabitants of the moon, if indeed they exist, it is plausible that they are slight of body and can be sustained by whatever comes their way; for indeed the moon itself, like the sun - itself a fiery living creature, and many times larger than the earth - is said to be nourished from the moisture that rises from the earth, and the other stars too, though they are countless in number: so they suppose that the region above bears creatures light and frugal in their necessities. But we fail to perceive both this and the fact that a different region, a different nature, and a different temperament is suited to them.
Just as if, when we were unable to approach the sea or even touch it, but only gazed at the sight of it from afar and learned that its water is bitter, undrinkable, and salty, someone were to tell us that in its depths it nourishes many great creatures of every shape, and is full of beasts that use water just as we use air - this would seem like tales and marvels brought to their conclusion. So too, it seems, we are in the same condition and suffer the same thing with regard to the moon, disbelieving that any men dwell there. Yet I think that those inhabitants, for their part, would be far more astonished at the earth, looking upon it as a kind of sediment and dregs of the universe, appearing dimly through mists and clouds and moisture - a lightless, low, and motionless region - if it produces and nourishes living creatures that share in motion, breath, and warmth. And if they should ever happen to hear these Homeric lines - ‘dreadful, dank places, which even the gods abhor,’ and ‘as far beneath Hades as heaven is from earth’ - they would say that these words are spoken quite literally about this region, and that Hades and Tartarus are situated here, while the moon alone is earth, standing at an equal distance from those regions above and these regions below.
While I was still speaking, more or less, Sulla broke in and said, “Hold on, Lamprias, and bolt shut the little door of your discourse, lest, before you know it, you run your myth aground on the earth, so to speak, and throw into confusion my own drama, which has a different stage-setting and arrangement. I am, after all, its actor - though I will first name for you its poet, if nothing prevents it, beginning in Homeric fashion:
‘A certain island, Ogygia, lies far off in the sea, five days’ sail from Britain for one sailing westward; and three other islands, lying at an equal distance from it and from one another, lie roughly toward the setting of the summer sun. On one of these, the natives tell in myth, Cronus is imprisoned by Zeus, while his son keeps watch as guardian over those islands and over the sea which they call the Cronian Sea. Beyond them lies the great continent, by which the great outer sea is encircled all around, at a lesser distance from the other islands, but about five thousand stades from Ogygia for one traveling by oared ships - for the sea there is slow to cross and muddy on account of the multitude of currents; and these currents flow out from the great continent, and deposits are formed from them, making the sea heavy and earthy, for which reason it has even gained the reputation of being frozen solid.
Of that continent, Greeks dwell on the parts near the sea, around a gulf no smaller than the Maeotic Lake, whose mouth lies almost directly opposite the mouth of the Caspian Sea; and these Greeks speak of and consider themselves mainlanders, while calling the inhabitants of this land of ours islanders, on the ground that it too is washed all around by the sea. They believe that those who came with Heracles and were left behind there later mingled with the people of Cronus, and that the Greek element there, which was already dying out and being overpowered by the barbarian tongue and by foreign laws and customs, was as it were rekindled and became strong and numerous again; and that this is why Heracles is held in first honor there, and Cronus in second.
So whenever the star of Cronus - which we call Phaenon, but which those people, he said, call Nyctouros - enters Taurus, which happens every thirty years, they spend a long time preparing for the sacrifice and the voyage, then send off, by lot, in as many ships as are needed, men chosen along with a large retinue and the provisions necessary for those about to row across so great a stretch of sea and to live a long time in a foreign land. Once they have put out to sea, they meet with various fortunes, as one might expect, different men differently. Those who survive the crossing put in first at the islands lying off the coast, which are inhabited by Greeks, and there they see the sun disappear for less than one hour, over thirty days - this being their night, which has a light darkness, twilight-like, glowing from the west. After spending ninety days there, held sacred and treated with honor and hospitality, and addressed as such, they are at last carried across by favoring winds.
No one else dwells there except themselves and those sent out before them; for while it is permitted for those who have served the god together for thirty years to sail back home, most of them choose, understandably enough, to settle there for good - some out of habit, others because all things are available to them in abundance, without toil or trouble, while they spend their time amid sacrifices and festivals, or continually occupied with certain studies and with philosophy. For the nature of the island, they say, is wonderful, and so is the mildness of the surrounding air; and to some who plan to sail away, the divine power itself even stands in their way, appearing to them as to familiars and friends - not only in dreams and by omens, but many meet it openly, face to face, in visions and voices of daemons.
As for Cronus himself, he lies asleep, enclosed in a deep cave of gold-gleaming rock - for sleep has been contrived by Zeus as a bond to hold him - while birds fly in over the summit of the rock and bring him ambrosia, and the whole island is filled with fragrance, spreading from the rock as from a spring. And those daemons attend and serve Cronus, having become his companions in the time when he reigned over gods and men. These daemons, being themselves possessed of prophetic power, foretell many things on their own account, but the greatest matters, concerning the greatest things, they proclaim as they come down from the dreams of Cronus - for whatever Zeus premeditates, Cronus dreams. The Titanic passions and motions of the soul in him are utterly stilled by sleep, so that what is kingly and divine in him remains by itself, pure and unmixed.
It was to this place, then, that the stranger said he had been brought, and there, while attending upon the god at his leisure, he acquired as much knowledge of astronomy as one who has studied geometry can advance to, together with the rest of philosophy, so far as it can be pursued by natural methods. He also felt a certain desire and longing to become an eyewitness of the great continent - for that, it seems, is what they call our inhabited world. So, when the thirty years had elapsed, and the men who were to relieve him arrived from home, he bade his friends farewell and sailed off, lightly equipped in other respects, but carrying a considerable supply of provisions in golden cups.
Now what he experienced and how many peoples he passed through, encountering sacred writings and being initiated into every kind of mystery rite, is not the work of a single day to relate, as he himself reported to us, recalling everything most exactly and in detail. But listen to what is relevant to our present discussion. He spent the greatest part of his time at Carthage, since the god is held in great honor among us there, and because he discovered certain sacred hide-scrolls, which had been secretly carried off when the earlier city was being destroyed and had lain hidden in the ground undetected for a long time. He said that, of the visible gods, one ought - and he urged me too - to honor the Moon especially, as being most sovereign over life and closely bound up with it.’”
When I expressed my astonishment at this and asked to hear it more clearly explained, he said, “Many things, Sulla, are said among the Greeks about the gods, but not all of them correctly. For instance, though they are right to name Demeter and Kore, they are wrong to suppose that both are in one and the same place together; for the one has dominion over the things around the earth, and is in the earth, while the other is in the moon and has dominion over the things around the moon. She is called both Kore and Persephone - the latter name because she is a light-bringer, the former because we also give the name ‘kore’ (pupil) to that part of the eye in which the image of the beholder is reflected back, just as the light of the sun is seen reflected in the moon.
And in what is said about their wandering and their search for one another there is truth: for when apart they long for one another, and they are often entwined about the shadow. But that Kore is now in heaven and light, now in darkness and night, is no falsehood, though the reckoning of the time has caused an error in the number; for it is not for six months but at intervals of six months that we see her taken by the earth’s shadow, as if by her mother, and only rarely does this happen to her at intervals of five months. For it is impossible for her ever to leave Hades altogether, since she is the boundary of Hades - just as Homer too, veiling his meaning, put it not badly when he spoke of ‘the Elysian plain and the ends of the earth’: for where the shadow of the earth, extending outward, comes to an end, that is the point he set as the limit and boundary of the earth.
To this place no base or impure person ascends, but the good, once conveyed there after death, live out a life that is thus very easy, though not yet blessed or divine, until their second death.” “And what is this second death, Sulla?” “Do not ask me about that now, for I am about to explain it myself. Most people are right to consider man a composite being, but wrong to think him composed of only two elements; for they suppose that mind is somehow a part of the soul, erring no less than those who think the soul a part of the body. For mind is superior to and more divine than soul, by as much as soul is superior to body. Now the union of soul and body produces the irrational and passionate element, while the union of mind and soul produces reason - of which the one is the source of pleasure and pain, the other of virtue and vice.
Of these three constituents joined together, the earth furnished the body, the moon the soul, and the sun furnished the mind for our generation, just as the sun in turn furnishes the moon with light. As for the death that we die, the one death makes man two out of three, and the other makes one out of two. The former takes place in the domain of Demeter, on the earth itself - which is why the Athenians of old called the dead ‘Demeter’s people’ - while the latter takes place in the moon, in the domain of Persephone. And each of these deities has a Hermes dwelling with her, the one an earthly Hermes, the other a heavenly one. This earthly Hermes severs the soul from the body quickly and violently, but Persephone gently and over a long time separates the mind from the soul, and for this reason she has been called ‘only-begotten’ - for it is only the best part of a man, when separated by her, that becomes something ‘one alone.’
And each of these two deaths comes about naturally in the following way: every soul, whether mindless or possessed of mind, upon falling out of the body, is destined to wander for a time - not the same length of time for all - in the region between earth and moon; but the unjust and unrestrained souls pay the penalty for their wrongdoings there, while the decent souls must spend a fixed period of time in the mildest part of the air, which they call the meadows of Hades, purifying and breathing away the pollutions they have contracted from the body, as from some noxious vapor. Then, as though returning home from exile in a foreign land, they taste a joy such as those being initiated into mysteries taste, mingled above all with confusion and awe, blended with a sweet hope.
For the moon repels and washes back like a wave many souls even as they are already reaching for it, and some who are up there they see turning downward again and being submerged as if into an abyss. But those who succeed in rising and are firmly established there first go about, like victors in a contest, crowned with wreaths called wreaths of steadfastness, made of feathers, because the irrational and passionate part of their soul has been made obedient to reason with reasonable ease and has been kept orderly during their lifetime.
Secondly, in appearance they resemble a ray of light, and their soul, buoyed upward by fire, receives from the aether around the moon - just as, here below, iron receives its temper - firmness and strength, as things do when they are tempered by a quenching bath; for what was still rarefied and diffused becomes solidified and grows steady and translucent, so that it is nourished by whatever exhalation happens to reach it. And Heraclitus put it well when he said that ‘souls in Hades perceive by smell.’”
Now these souls behold, first of all, the size and beauty of the moon itself, and its nature, which is neither simple nor unmixed, but a kind of blend of star and earth: for just as the earth, mingled with breath and moisture, has become soft, and blood, mingled into the flesh, gives it sensation, so too, they say, the moon, being mingled with aether throughout its depth, is at once ensouled and generative, and at the same time possesses an even balance between weight and lightness. For in this way the cosmos itself, being composed of things that by nature move upward and things that move downward, has been freed altogether from motion in respect of place.
Xenocrates too seems to have grasped this by some divinely inspired reasoning, taking his starting point from Plato. For it is Plato who declared that each of the stars is composed of earth and fire, joined together through intermediate natures given in proportion; for nothing, he held, can reach our perception in which no admixture of earth and light is present. Xenocrates, for his part, says that the stars and the sun are composed of fire and the first density, while the moon is composed of the second density and its own peculiar air, while the earth is composed of water and air and the third of the dense substances; and that, in general, neither the dense taken by itself nor the rarefied is capable of receiving soul.
So much, then, for the substance of the moon. As for its breadth and size, it is not what the geometers say, but is many times larger; the moon measures out...
...but the earth's shadow only rarely exceeds the moon's own dimensions a few times over — not because of the shadow's smallness, but because of the moon's heat, by which it hastens its motion so as to pass quickly through the dark region, carrying off the souls of the good, who hurry along and cry out, for once they are in the shadow they no longer hear the harmony of the heavens. At the same time, from below, the souls of those being punished are then borne up through the shadow, wailing and shrieking. That is why most people are accustomed, during eclipses, to beat bronze vessels and make noise and clatter on behalf of the souls. They are also frightened by the so-called Face, whenever they come near it, since it appears grim and terrible to look upon.
But it is not really like that. Rather, just as our own earth has deep, great gulfs — one here, poured in through the Pillars of Heracles toward us, and outside, the Caspian and the seas around the Red Sea — so too these are the depths and hollows of the moon. The greatest of them they call the Hollow of Hecate, where souls pay and exact the penalties for whatever they have suffered or done once they have already become spirits; the two long ones...
for the souls cross over through them, now toward the parts of the moon facing heaven, now again toward the parts facing earth. The parts facing heaven are named the Elysian Plain, and the ones here the plain of Persephone, the Counter-Earth. The spirits do not always spend their time upon it, but come down here to attend to oracles, and they are present at and share in celebrating the highest rites,
becoming, in the mystic ceremonies, both chastisers and guardians against wrongdoing, and shining forth as saviors both in wars and at sea. But whatever they do amiss in these matters — whether from anger, or for the sake of some unjust favor, or out of envy — they pay the penalty for it: they are thrust back down to earth again, confined within human bodies. From among those better spirits, both the followers of Cronus,
so it was said, were themselves such beings; and earlier, in Crete, the Idaean Dactyls had come to be, and in Phrygia the Corybantes, and around Boeotia at Oudora the Trophoniadae, and countless others in many places of the inhabited world, whose shrines and honors and titles still remain, though the powers of some have faded, as they have attained a different place through the finest of transformations. Some attain it
sooner, others later, whenever the intellect is separated from the soul; and it is separated out of desire for the reflection that surrounds the sun, through which shines forth what is desirable and beautiful and divine and blessed, which every nature, each in its own way, reaches for. Indeed the moon herself, out of desire for the sun, forever circles and unites with him, longing to draw from him what is most fruitful. But there remains
behind, on the moon, the nature of the soul, preserving, as it were, certain traces of a life, and dreams. Concerning this it is rightly held that the line was spoken: 'and the soul, like a dream, having flown away, has taken wing' — for it does not undergo this at once, nor as soon as it is freed from the body, but later, when, bereft and alone, it becomes separated from the intellect. And of all that Homer said, he seems to have spoken most truly of all, and in accord with a god, concerning the dead in Hades,
when he said 'and after him I recognized mighty Heracles' — meaning his phantom — 'but he himself is among the immortal gods.' For each of us is, in truth, not anger, nor fear, nor desire, any more than we are flesh or bodily fluids, but that with which we think and understand; and the soul, being molded by the intellect, and in turn molding the body
and enfolding it on every side, is stamped throughout with its form, so that even if it should exist apart from either one for a long time, it preserves the likeness and the imprint, and is rightly called an image. Of these things the moon, as has been said, is the element: for into her the bodies of the dead are dissolved, just as into the earth the bodies of the dead are dissolved — quickly, the temperate souls, who at leisure have embraced a life free from business and devoted to philosophy; for, released
by the intellect and no longer employing the passions for anything, they wither away and fade out. But among the ambitious, the active, those given over to desire for bodies, and the spirited, some are kept in turmoil, as though in sleep, by dreams that are memories of their life — as was true of Endymion's soul. But when instability and susceptibility to feeling drive them out of themselves and drag them away from the moon toward another birth,
she does not allow it, but calls them back and charms them into calm. For it is no small, quiet, or settled task, whenever, without the intellect, they take hold of the body's passionate part. The Tityoi and the Typhons, and the one who seized Delphi and threw the oracle into confusion with insolence and violence — Typhon — were, it seems, drawn from just such souls, when their passionate part strayed through lack of reason and through delusion. But in time the moon
received even these back into herself and set them in order; then, once the sun has again sown intellect into the vital principle, she receives it and makes new souls; and the earth furnished a third body. For the earth gives nothing after death except what it receives back for a new birth; the sun receives nothing, but takes back the intellect while giving it in turn; and the moon both receives and gives, and combines and divides,
according to one power and another — of which the one that combines is called Eileithyia, and the one that divides, Artemis. And of the three Fates, Atropos, stationed about the sun, initiates the beginning of generation; Clotho, moving about the moon, binds together and blends; and last, Lachesis, who has the greatest share of chance, takes hold near the earth. For what is soulless is itself powerless and passive, acted upon by other things, while the intellect is impassive and self-ruling; but the soul, being mixed and intermediate, like the moon, has been made by god as a blend and mingling of the things above and below — standing, then, in the same relation to the sun that the earth has to the moon."
"These things," said Sulla, "I myself heard the stranger relate; and to him the attendants and servants of Cronus, as he himself said, reported them. But it is for you, Lamprias, to make use of the account, if you wish."

======== Moralia: De Fato ========

I shall try to write to you, dearest Piso, as clearly and concisely as I can, concerning our views about fate, since you have asked for this, well aware of the caution I feel about writing. First, then, know that "fate" is spoken of and understood in two ways: the one is an activity, the other a substance. Now Plato sketched out the activity in outline,
both in the Phaedrus, where he speaks of "this ordinance of Adrasteia, that whatever soul, having become a follower of a god..."; and in the Timaeus, of the "laws" which the god spoke to the immortal souls concerning the nature of the universe; and in the Republic he says that fate is "the word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity," declaring his own view not in the manner of tragedy but theologically. And if
one wished to render these in more ordinary terms by paraphrase, fate as spoken of in the Phaedrus would be a divine reason (logos) that cannot be transgressed, on account of a cause that cannot be hindered; while as in the Timaeus it would be a law consequent upon the nature of the universe, in accordance with which the things that come to be are administered. For this is what Lachesis accomplishes there, she who is truly the daughter of Necessity, as we noted earlier and shall come to know still more
in our discussions at leisure. This, then, is fate as activity. Fate as substance, on the other hand, appears to be the whole soul of the cosmos, distributed threefold: into the fixed sphere, and into that which is thought to wander, and third the sublunary sphere that exists around the earth. Of these, the uppermost is called Clotho, and the one after her Atropos, and the
lowest in turn Lachesis, who receives the heavenly activities of her sisters, and who weaves them together and distributes them to the earthly things ordered beneath her. This, then, is stated in outline as to what must be said concerning fate as substance: what it is, how great it is, of what kind, how it is ordered, and how it stands both in relation to itself and
indeed in relation to us, as has been said in summary; but the particulars concerning these matters are hinted at, in moderate measure, by that other myth in the Republic, and I too have tried, to the best of my ability, to explain them to you. Let us, however, take up again the discussion of fate as activity; for it is around this that the many questions arise, both physical and ethical and dialectical. What
fate is, then, has been reasonably well defined; of what kind it is must next be stated, even though to many this seems a strange thing to ask. For since the things that come to be are infinite, proceeding from an infinite past into an infinite future, is fate, which encompasses all things in a circle, not itself infinite? No, it is finite; for neither law nor reason nor anything divine could be infinite. You may further understand what is meant by considering
the whole cycle and the entire span of time: "whenever the relative speeds of the eight revolutions," as the Timaeus says, "have reached completion with respect to one another, measured out in a circle by the movement of the Same and uniformly moving." For within this determinate and observable period, all things both in heaven and on earth that are constituted from above by necessity will
once again return to the same state, and again from the beginning the whole will be rendered in the same way, according to the same pattern. At any rate, the configuration of the heavens alone, ordered in every respect both in relation to itself and in relation to the earth and all earthly things, will return again at some point through long cycles; and the configurations following it in sequence, each adjacent to the next, will occur in succession, each bringing about its own effects by
necessity. But let it be made clear, for the sake of the matters now before us, that it does not follow, just because the heavenly bodies are causes of all things, that my writing these particular words now, in this particular way, and your doing whatever it is you happen to be doing, are themselves caused by them directly; rather, once the same cause returns again, we, having become the same, will do the same things in the same way. And in this way too
all human beings, and the things that follow, will come to be and be done according to the cause that follows; and all things as a whole, both in the single complete cycle and in each of the complete cycles, will be rendered in the same way. It is now clear, then, what we meant when we said that fate, though in a certain sense infinite, is not infinite, and that the statement that it is a kind of circle has been adequately examined.
For just as the motion of a circle, and the time that measures it, is itself a kind of circle, so too the principle (logos) governing the things that come to be in a circular fashion might rightly be considered a circle. This, then, more or less makes clear what sort of thing fate is — except that this applies not to fate in its particular application, nor case by case. What sort of thing, then, is fate also in this
respect, in its formal character? It is, one might conjecture, like a civic law, which in the first place lays down most, if not all, of its prescriptions conditionally; and in the second place comprehends, as far as possible, in general terms what is fitting for the city. Again, we must examine what each of these two aspects is like. Accordingly, the civic law speaks of the man who distinguishes himself in battle and of the deserter, and
likewise of other such cases; but it is not a legal statute concerning this particular man or that one, but rather it deals primarily with universals, and only consequently with the particular cases that fall under them. For indeed we would say that honoring this particular man for having distinguished himself, and punishing that particular man for having deserted, is lawful, on the ground that the law has, in effect, made provision for these cases as well — in the way that the law of medicine or of gymnastic training, so to speak,
comprehends particular cases under universals only potentially. In the same way, too, the law of nature deals primarily with universals, and only consequently with particulars. And these particulars are, in a sense, also fated, being fated together with those universals; though perhaps one of those given to excessive precision in such matters might say the opposite — that the particulars are arranged as primary, and that the universal exists for their sake,
and that the end for the sake of which something exists takes precedence over the things that exist for its sake. But this must be examined elsewhere. That fate does not embrace all things purely and explicitly, but only universals, is what has been said here, and it has bearing both on the discussion that follows and on the point made a little earlier. For the determinate is proper to divine
wisdom, and is contemplated rather in the universal; such too is the divine law — the civic law, however, is concerned with the indeterminate in the particular. After this, we must consider what it means for something to exist "on a hypothesis" (conditionally); and that fate is of this kind should be understood. We said that something exists "on a hypothesis" when it is not established in itself, but is truly posited as dependent on some other thing, whatever it is that entails a
consequence. "This is the ordinance of Adrasteia: whatever soul, having become a follower of a god, catches sight of any of the truths, shall be free from harm until the next revolution; and if it is able to do this always, it shall always be unharmed." Such, then, is what is at once conditional and universal. And that fate too happens to be of this kind is clear both from its very substance and from its name.
For it is called "heimarmenē" as though it were something "strung together" (eiromenē); and an ordinance and a law consists in this, that the consequences are civically arranged to follow upon the things that come to be. Next we must examine matters of relation: how fate stands in relation to providence, and how it stands in relation to fortune, and to what is in our power, and to the possible, and to all such things. And in addition to
this, let it be determined in what sense the statement "all things happen according to fate" is true, and in what sense false. If it means that all things are contained within fate, this must be granted as true: whether one wishes to place within fate everything that happens to human beings, or everything on earth, or everything in the heavens, let this too be granted for the present. But if, as seems
more likely, "according to fate" signifies not everything, but only that which follows in consequence of it, then not everything should be said to be "according to fate." For not everything that the law comprehends is lawful or in accordance with law: the law also comprehends treason and desertion and adultery and many other such things, none of which anyone would call lawful — just as one would not call distinguishing oneself in battle, or killing a tyrant, or any
other such achievement, "lawful" either. For what is lawful is a command of the law; whereas, if it is objected that since the law does command these things, how could those who fail to distinguish themselves in battle or to kill the tyrant, and all who fail to achieve such things, not be disobeying and transgressing the law? Or how, if these men are lawbreakers, is it not just to punish them? Since these consequences are unreasonable,
we must say that only those things determined by the law with reference to whatever is done in any manner whatsoever are properly called "lawful" and "in accordance with law"; and only those things that follow upon what has taken precedence in the divine ordering are properly called "fated" and "in accordance with fate." So that, while fate comprehends all things that come to be, it is not correct to say that many of the things within it — indeed nearly all that take precedence — happen "according to fate." Since this is
so, we must next say that what is in our power, and fortune, and the possible, and the contingent, and things akin to these, being ranked among the things that take precedence, would themselves be preserved, and would preserve fate as well. For fate embraces all things, just as it seems to; but these things will not come about of necessity, but rather each of them will be such as it is by nature.
Now the possible is, by nature, prior as a genus to the contingent; and the contingent underlies, as matter, what is in our power; and what is in our power consists in making authoritative use of the contingent; and fortune intrudes upon what is in our power because of the contingent's tendency to incline either way. You may understand clearly what is meant if you consider that everything that comes to be, and coming-to-be itself,
does not exist apart from potentiality (dynamis), and potentiality does not exist without substance — for instance, the coming-to-be or the generated thing that is "a man" does not exist apart from the potentiality, and this potentiality pertains to man, while man is the substance. Since potentiality lies between the two, substance is that which has the potentiality, while coming-to-be and the thing coming to be are both possible (in potentiality). Of these three, then — potentiality, that which has the potentiality, and the possible —
that which has the potentiality is presupposed as existing in relation to the potentiality, while the potentiality itself is presupposed in relation to the possible. The possible, then, is clear enough in this way too; but it might be defined in outline more generally as that which is naturally disposed, by virtue of potentiality, to come to be; and more strictly as this same thing, whenever nothing external stands in the way of its coming to be. And of possible things, some could never be prevented, such as the things in
the heavens — risings and settings and things of that kind — while others are of a sort that can be prevented, as are many human affairs and many meteorological phenomena as well. The former, then, since they come to be of necessity, are called necessary; while the latter, which in a sense admit of the opposite, are called contingent. And these too might be defined thus: the necessary is that possible thing whose opposite is impossible, while the contingent
is that possible thing whose opposite is also possible. For instance, that the sun should set is both necessary and possible, and its opposite, that it should not set, is impossible; whereas that, after the sun has set, rain should occur or should not occur, both are possible and contingent. Again, within the contingent, one kind occurs for the most part, another kind occurs less often, and another
occurs equally either way, whichever happens to be the case: this last is clearly opposed to itself, while the "for the most part" and the "less often" are opposed to one another. And these belong for the most part to nature, while the "equally either way" belongs to what is in our power. For instance, heat or cold at the rising of the Dog Star, of which the one occurs for the most part and the other less often,
are both subordinated to nature; whereas walking or not walking, and all such things, each of which is subordinated to human impulse, is what is called "in our power" and "in accordance with choice." But "what is in our power" is the more general term; for there are said to be two kinds: the one arising from passion, whether anger or desire, and the other arising from reasoning or thought — and this latter is what one would call, more properly,
"in accordance with choice." And it stands to reason that the possible and the contingent are not the same thing as this which is spoken of in terms of impulse and "in our power," but are spoken of in a different respect: the former in respect of the more general notion of possible and contingent, the latter in respect of the present matter, "in our power" and "in accordance with impulse." They might be defined thus: the contingent is that which, together with
its opposite, [is possible]; while what is in our power is one part of the contingent, namely that which is already coming to be in accordance with our own impulse. That the possible, then, is prior by nature to the contingent, and the contingent is presupposed prior to what is in our power, and what each of these is, and whence it derives its name, and the things closely related to them, has now been stated more or less fully. Concerning fortune, then, and
the automatic (chance), and whatever else is observed beside these, we must now speak. Fortune, then, is a kind of cause. Of causes, some are causes in themselves, others are causes incidentally: for instance, in the case of a house or a ship, the builder's art or the shipwright's art is the cause in itself, while the art of music or of geometry is an incidental cause, and so is anything else that happens to belong to the builder's
or the shipwright's craft, whether in respect of body, or of soul, or of external circumstances. From this it is also clear that what is a cause in itself is determinate and single, while what is a cause incidentally is not single but indeterminate; for many and indeed countless things, differing entirely from one another, may belong incidentally to the one thing. What is incidental, however, whenever it occurs not only among things done for the sake of something, but
also among things involving deliberate choice, is then also called "a result of fortune": for instance, finding gold while digging in order to plant something, or suffering or doing something outside of one's habit while fleeing or pursuing or walking along some other way, or merely turning around — not for the sake of the very thing that resulted, but for the sake of something else entirely. For this reason such a cause is also called unforeseen and unclear to human
attributed chance to reason — this was the view of some of the ancients. But according to the followers of Plato, who come still closer to the truth in their account, chance has been defined as follows: it is an incidental cause, among things that happen for the sake of something, in the sphere of what is done by choice. Then, further, they add to this the notions of ‘unforeseen’ and ‘unclear to human reckoning’; and yet the rare and the unaccountable likewise appear
in the incidental. What this is, even if not from what has just been said, is made perfectly plain from what is written in the Phaedo. It is written thus: ‘Did they not ask, then, in what manner he died?’ ‘Yes: someone brought us that news, and indeed we wondered that, though he was condemned so long before, he appears to have died only much later. What was the reason for this,
Phaedo?’ ‘A certain chance befell him, Echecrates: for it happened that on the day before the trial the stern of the ship which the Athenians send to Delos had been garlanded.’ In this passage ‘it happened’ must not be taken as equivalent to ‘it came to pass,’ but rather to mean that it fell out from a concurrence of causes, one thing happening in relation to another. For the priest garlanded the ship for one purpose,
but not for the sake of Socrates, while the judges condemned him for a different reason altogether; and the actual outcome turned out to be as unaccountable, and of such a kind, as if it had come about by the forethought of some human agent, or of beings even more powerful still. Concerning chance, then, this much may suffice — namely, that it must be understood to coexist with these causes, being itself named, in a derivative sense, from that with which it coexists, and that its priority over what is in our power has already been stated. As for the automatic —
it extends more widely than chance: for it embraces chance itself as well, and many other things too, of the sort that by nature fall out now one way, now another. According to its very name, the ‘automatic’ (auto-maton) is said of what comes about by nature for the sake of something else, when that other end is not in fact achieved on account of it — as, for instance, the cold that occurs under the Dog Star is thought to be automatic; for at times the cold is not without purpose, nor yet altogether so, just as what is ‘in our power’ is a portion of the ‘possible,’ so
chance is a portion of the automatic. Each of the two is an accident of the other: the automatic is an accident of the possible; chance is an accident of what is in our power, and not of the whole of it, but only of whatever falls also under choice, as has already been said. For this reason the automatic is common to both animate and inanimate things, whereas chance belongs properly to man alone, who is capable of already acting deliberately. And a proof of this is that faring well
and being happy are held to be the same thing; and happiness is a kind of well-doing, and well-doing belongs to man alone, and to the perfect man. Now within the scope of fate fall such things as these: the possible and the contingent; choice and what is in our power; chance and the automatic; and, alongside these, what is meant by ‘perhaps’ and ‘probably.’ All of these
fate encompasses, yet none of them exists in accordance with fate. It remains, then, to speak also of providence, inasmuch as providence itself encompasses fate. Now providence is, first and highest, the intellection of the first god — or, it may be, his will — being beneficent toward all things, in accordance with which each of the divine things has, in the first instance, been ordered throughout in the best and
most beautiful way. The second providence belongs to the secondary gods who move through the heavens, in accordance with which mortal things come to be in due order, together with whatever tends to the preservation and continuance of each of the kinds. A third providence might reasonably be said to belong to those spirits (daimones) who are stationed about the earth, as guardians and overseers of human actions. Providence, then, being considered under three aspects,
and the term being used most properly and chiefly of the first, I would not hesitate to say — even if I should seem to be speaking against the philosophers — that all things indeed happen in accordance with fate and in accordance with providence, yet not in accordance with nature; but that some things happen in accordance with this providence, others in accordance with another, and some in accordance with fate; and that fate is altogether in accordance with providence, whereas providence
is in no way in accordance with fate. Let the present discussion, then, concern the first and highest providence. Now that which is ‘in accordance with’ something is in a certain sense posterior to that in accordance with which it is said to be — as, for instance, that which is in accordance with law is posterior to the law, and that which is in accordance with nature is posterior to nature; so likewise that which is in accordance with fate would be more recent than fate itself. But the highest providence is the most ancient of all things,
excepting only that of which it is the providence — whether it be will, or intellection, or both together. It belongs, as has been said before, to the father and craftsman of all things. ‘Let us say, then,’ says Timaeus, ‘for what cause he who framed this generated universe framed it. He was good; and in one who is good no envy of anything ever arises concerning anything; and being free of envy, he desired all things to come to be, so far as possible,
like unto himself.’ This, then, one would be most right to accept, following men of understanding, as the supreme and most authoritative origin of generation and of the ordered universe. For the god, wishing all things to be good and nothing base, so far as this was possible, thus took over all that was visible, which was not at rest but moving in a discordant and disorderly fashion, and brought it into order out of
disorder, judging that order was in every way better than disorder. Now it was not, nor is it, lawful for the best to do anything other than what is most beautiful. These words, then, and what follows them, down to the point concerning human souls, must be reckoned as having been constituted, at least in their first instance, in accordance with providence. What follows, spoken in this manner: ‘Having composed the whole, he assigned to it souls equal in number to the stars, and distributed each soul to each star,
and having mounted them as it were in a vehicle, he showed them the nature of the universe, and told them the laws that are fated for them’ — who would not think that these words plainly and most clearly signify fate, as it were a kind of foundation and civic legislation appropriate to human souls? And indeed he goes on next to state the cause of this. He indicates the second providence in something like the following words, saying: ‘Having established all these laws for them,
so that he might be blameless in the future for the wickedness of each, he sowed some of them into the earth, others into the moon, and others into the various other instruments of time. And after the sowing, he handed over to the young gods the task of fashioning mortal bodies, and of completing whatever else remained needful for the human soul, and all that follows upon these things, and of ruling
and, so far as they were able, of governing the mortal creature in the finest and best manner possible, so that it might not itself become to itself a cause of evils.’ In these words, the clause ‘so that he might be blameless in the future for the wickedness of each’ signifies most clearly the cause of fate; while the ordering and creative work of the young gods reveals the second providence; and it seems in some way to touch upon the third as well, if
indeed it was for this purpose that the legislation was given: ‘so that he might be blameless thereafter for the wickedness of each.’ For god, having no share in wickedness, would have no need of laws or of fate; but each of the young gods, drawn along by the providence of him who begot them, does his own proper work. These statements, being true and consonant with Plato, seem to me to find clear corroborating testimony in the words spoken by the Lawgiver in the Laws, as follows:
‘Since, if ever any man were by nature sufficient, having been born by divine allotment, to grasp these things, he would have no need at all of laws to rule over him; for there is no law nor any ordinance superior to knowledge, nor is it right that intellect should be subject to and a slave of anything, but rather that it should rule over all things, provided it is truly and genuinely free according to its nature.’ I, for my part, take
Plato's words in this sense. For providence being threefold, the first — inasmuch as it begot fate — in a certain manner encompasses fate itself; the second, having been begotten together with fate, is altogether comprehended along with it; while the third, as having come into being after fate, is likewise contained within it, in the same way as what is ‘in our power’ and ‘chance’ have been said to be. ‘For those with whom
the power of the divine sign joins in the association’ — as Socrates says, expounding to Theages what amounts almost to an ordinance, and one such as belongs to Necessity (Adrasteia) — ‘these are they of whom you too have had experience; for they make rapid and immediate progress.’ In this passage, then, the phrase ‘the divine sign joins with certain persons’ must be assigned to the third providence, while ‘making rapid and immediate progress’ belongs to fate; and the whole matter is not
unclear, in that this very thing is itself a kind of fate. Perhaps, indeed, it would seem far more plausible in this way that the second providence too is encompassed by fate, and, quite simply, all things that come to be — if indeed the fate that concerns substance has rightly been divided by us into the three portions, and the account of the chain includes the revolutions of the heavens among the things that follow from a given hypothesis.
But concerning these matters I myself would not wish to contend further, since they were originally stated only as hypotheses, rather than to say that it is more in keeping with fate that fate itself should take precedence as fated. Our own account, then, stated in its main points, would be something of this sort; while the account opposed to it places everything not merely within fate but also in accordance with fate. Now all these points agree with one another; and
whatever is consonant with the one is plainly consonant with the other as well. According to the present account, then, the contingent has been discussed first; and second, what is in our power; and third, chance and the automatic and whatever follows from them; praise and blame and their kindred notions come fourth; and fifth, and beyond all these, let there be reckoned prayers to the gods and their service. As for idle
and ‘reaping’ arguments, and the so-called argument ‘against fate,’ these turn out, according to the present account, to be sophisms in the truest sense. According to the opposite account, on the other hand, the first and foremost point would seem to be that nothing happens without a cause, but everything in accordance with antecedent causes; second, that this world is by nature governed as a single organism, breathing together and sympathetic with itself; and third, matters which
seem rather to serve as further testimonies — divination, in the first place, held in honor by all mankind as truly belonging to the gods; and second, the contentment of the wise with whatever befalls them, on the ground that all things happen according to what is allotted; and third, that much-repeated maxim, that every proposition is either true or false. Of these matters we have made mention only to this extent, so that the main
heads of the doctrine of fate might be set forth briefly, points which must be examined by the exact test of each of the two accounts; the particulars of each of these we shall take up on another occasion.

======== Moralia: De Fortuna ========

"Fortune, not good counsel, governs the affairs of mortals." Is it then true that justice too does not govern mortal affairs, nor fairness, nor self-control, nor good order, but that it was by chance and through fortune that Aristides persevered in poverty, though he could have become master of great wealth, and that Scipio, having taken Carthage, took and even looked at none of the spoils, while it was by chance and through fortune that Philocrates, taking gold from Philip, "bought prostitutes and fish," and that Lasthenes and Euthycrates destroyed Olynthus, "measuring their prosperity by the belly and by the most shameful things"? Was it from fortune that Alexander, son of Philip, himself kept away from the captive women and punished those who abused them, while the son of Priam, attended by an evil spirit and by fortune, slept with the wife of his host, and having taken her filled
the two continents with wars and evils? For if these things happen through fortune, what prevents us from saying that weasels too, and goats and monkeys, are ruled by fortune in their gluttonies, their incontinences, and their buffooneries? But if there is self-control and justice and courage, how does it make sense that there should be no practical wisdom — and if practical wisdom, how not also good counsel?
For self-control itself, as they say, is a kind of practical wisdom, and even good counsel; and justice too requires the presence of practical wisdom. Or rather, it is good counsel and practical wisdom itself that, when it produces good men amid pleasures, we call self-restraint and self-control; when amid dangers and hardships, we call endurance and manly courage; and when in partnerships and civic life, we call good order and justice. If, then, we are justified in saying that the works of good counsel belong to fortune,
then let the works of justice and of self-control belong to fortune as well — and, by Zeus, let stealing belong to fortune too, and purse-cutting, and licentiousness, and let us abandon our own reasoning and hand ourselves over to fortune, as though we were dust or rubbish driven and scattered by a great wind. If, then, there is no such thing as good counsel, it is not reasonable that there should be deliberation about affairs either, nor consideration, nor inquiry into what is advantageous, but Sophocles talked nonsense when he said that everything sought after is caught, while what is neglected escapes; and again, when distinguishing among affairs, he said: "the things that can be taught I learn, the things that can be discovered I seek, and the things that are to be wished for I have asked of the gods." For what is discoverable or teachable for men, if all things are accomplished by
fortune? What council of a city is not abolished, what assembly of a king is not dissolved, if all things are under fortune — fortune whom we revile as blind, as though we too were blind in stumbling upon her? What else are we to expect, when we gouge out good counsel, as it were the eyes of our own life, and take blind fortune as our guide? And yet let someone among us say that fortune, not sight, governs the affairs of those who see,
and not "eyes that bear light," as Plato says; and that fortune, not the faculty of perception, governs the affairs of those who hear — not the power of receiving the impact of air borne through the ear and the brain. It seems noble, apparently, to disparage sense-perception! But surely sight and hearing and taste and smell and the rest of the body's parts, together with their powers, nature has provided to us
as servants of good counsel and practical wisdom, and "mind sees and mind hears, while the rest are deaf and blind," as Heraclitus says; and just as, if the sun did not exist, we would count it night because of the other stars, so too, on account of the senses, if a human being had neither mind nor reason, he would differ in no way in his life from the beasts. But as it is, it is not by fortune nor spontaneously that we prevail over
and master them, but Prometheus — that is, reasoning — is the cause, having given us, according to Aeschylus, "the yoking of horses and asses, and the mating of bulls, gifts in return and receivers of toil." For as regards fortune and birth, nature has treated most of the irrational animals better. Some are armed with horns and teeth and stings; "but on hedgehogs," says Empedocles, "sharp-pointed hairs bristle on their backs," while others
are shod and clothed with scales and fleece and claws and hard hooves; only man, according to Plato, has been left by nature "naked and unarmed and unshod and unbedded." But by giving one thing she softens all these hardships: reasoning, and care, and forethought. "Slight indeed is the strength of man; but by the cunning of his mind he subdues the fearsome tribes
of sea and of creatures of earth and of air." The horse is lighter and swifter, yet it runs for man's sake; the dog is warlike and spirited, yet it guards man; the fish is most pleasant to eat and the pig is fleshy, yet both are man's food and delicacy. What is larger than the elephant, or more fearsome to behold? Yet even this has become man's plaything and a spectacle for festivals, learning to dance and to perform choral movements and acts of homage — not
uselessly are such things brought in, but so that we may learn to what heights practical wisdom raises man and over what things it sets him above, and how it masters and prevails over all things. For we are not blameless boxers, nor wrestlers, nor do we run swiftly with our feet, but in all these things we are less fortunate than the beasts; yet by experience and memory and wisdom and skill, according to Anaxagoras, we make use of ourselves
and we take honey and milk them and carry them and lead them, capturing them — so that here at least all things belong to good counsel, not to fortune. But surely the works of carpenters too are among the "affairs of mortals," and those of coppersmiths and builders and sculptors, in which we see nothing accomplished automatically or by chance. For while some slight element of fortune slips in among these, the greatest and most numerous
of works are accomplished by the arts through themselves, as the poet has intimated: "Come into the street, all you craftsmen folk, who turn to Athena Ergane, the grim-eyed daughter of Zeus, with your winnowing-baskets set up" — for the arts have Ergane, not Fortune, as their companion. Yet they say that Nealkes, painting a horse, succeeded well in all its other forms and colors, but
could not manage to render properly the foam gaping around the bit as it champed, together with the accompanying panting breath, though he painted and erased it many times; and finally, in anger, he threw at the panel the sponge, just as it was, full of paints, and its impact wondrously reproduced the effect and achieved just what was needed. This alone is recorded as an artful accident of fortune. Everywhere craftsmen employ rules and plumb-lines and measures and numbers, so that nothing haphazard
and accidental may find its way into their works. And indeed the arts are said to be small forms of practical wisdom, or rather outflows of practical wisdom and fragments scattered among the necessities of life, just as it is hinted that the fire divided by Prometheus was scattered piece by piece in different directions. For portions and small fragments of practical wisdom, broken off and divided into small change, have passed into the various trades. It is astonishing,
then, how the arts do not need fortune for their proper end, while the greatest and most perfect of all arts and the chief thing in human praise and vindication is nothing at all. Yet in the tightening and loosening of strings there is a kind of good counsel which they call music, and in the seasoning of dishes one which we call cookery, and in the washing of garments one which we call fulling;
and we teach our children both to put on their shoes and to dress themselves, and to take their food with the right hand while holding their bread with the left, on the ground that not even these things happen by fortune but require attention and care — yet the greatest and most decisive matters for happiness do not call upon practical wisdom, nor have any share in reason and forethought? But no one, having wetted earth with water,
has left it aside expecting that bricks will come to be by fortune and spontaneously; nor does anyone, having acquired wool and hides, sit praying to fortune that a cloak and shoes may come to him. But when a man has heaped together much gold and silver and a multitude of slaves and surrounded himself with courtyards of many doors and furnished himself with expensive couches and tables, he thinks that these things, even without practical wisdom being present to him, will bring him happiness and a life free of pain and
blessed and unchanging? Someone asked the general Iphicrates, as though testing him, what he was — "for you are neither a heavy-armed soldier, nor an archer, nor a peltast." And he replied, "I am the one who commands and makes use of all of these." Practical wisdom is not gold, nor silver, nor reputation, nor wealth, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty. What, then, is it? That which is able to make good use of all these things,
and on account of which each of them becomes pleasant and honorable and beneficial; without it they are hard to use and unfruitful and harmful, and they burden and disgrace their possessor. Surely Hesiod's Prometheus does well to charge Epimetheus never to accept gifts from Olympian Zeus, but to send back what belongs to fortune, meaning external goods — as if he were charging him not to pipe
when unmusical, nor to read when illiterate, nor to ride when unskilled in horsemanship, so likewise charging him not to rule while lacking sense, nor to be wealthy while illiberal, nor to marry while mastered by a woman. For not only does "faring well beyond one's desert become, for the senseless, an occasion for thinking ill," as Demosthenes said, but faring fortunately beyond one's desert becomes, for those who lack practical wisdom, an occasion for acting ill.

======== Moralia: De Fortuna Romanorum ========

Virtue and Fortune, who have often fought many great contests with each other, are now waging their greatest contest of all, disputing over the leadership of the Romans, as to which of them was its author and which begot so great a power. This will be no small piece of evidence for whichever of them prevails — or rather a defense against an accusation. For Virtue is accused of being fine but unprofitable, and Fortune of being a good that is unreliable.
They say the one labors fruitlessly, the other bestows gifts one cannot trust. Who, then, will not say, once Rome is added to the one side, that Virtue is most profitable, if it has done such great goods to good men; or that good fortune is most stable, since it has now preserved for so long what it has given? Ion the poet, then, in his prose writings not in verse, says
that fortune, though a thing most unlike wisdom, becomes the craftsman of the most similar results: both increase cities, adorn men, lead them up to glory, to power, to dominion. Why need one draw out a long list, enumerating the particulars? The very nature that begets and sustains all things for us — some hold it to be fortune, others wisdom. For this reason the present discourse confers a fine and enviable distinction on Rome,
if we are in doubt about her, as we are about earth and sea and heaven and the stars, whether she was constituted by chance or by providence. For my part, I think it right to suppose that, even though Fortune and Virtue are altogether always at war and at variance with each other, yet with regard to so great a structure of empire and power it is likely that they made a truce, came together, and, having come together,
jointly wrought and completed the finest of human works. And I believe — just as Plato says the whole cosmos came to be out of fire and earth, as the necessary and primary elements, so that it might be both visible and tangible, earth contributing to it weight and stability, fire color and form and motion, while the intermediate natures, water and
air, having softened and quenched the dissimilarity of each of the extremes, drew them together and mingled the matter through themselves — so too the time that laid the foundation of Rome mingled and yoked together fortune and virtue, with god's aid, so that by taking what was proper to each it might fashion for all mankind a hearth truly sacred and a giver of good gifts, and a “hawser” firm and an eternal element, an
“anchorage against the surge and wandering” of affairs adrift, as Democritus says. For just as the natural philosophers say that the cosmos is not yet a cosmos, nor are the bodies willing, once they have come together and mingled, to furnish a common form for all out of nature, but rather the smaller bodies, still moving in scattered fashion, keep slipping through and escaping entanglements and enclosures, while the more massive and already compacted bodies engage in terrible struggles against
one another and fall into disorder, so that there is surge and turmoil, and everything is full of destruction and wandering and shipwreck, until the earth, having attained magnitude out of the bodies coalescing and being carried along, was somehow made to stand fast — and it furnished to the other bodies as well a settled place in itself and around itself — so likewise, while the greatest powers and dominions among men were being driven and swept along by chance, since
no one was willing to prevail while all wished to, the drift and wandering and change of everything was unmanageable, until Rome, having gained strength and growth, and having bound to herself both nations and peoples within her own borders and, on the other hand, foreign and overseas dominions of kings, secured the greatest stability and safety, her empire revolving unstumbling into an order of peace and a single circle,
with all virtue having come to be present in those who contrived these things, and much fortune too having joined in, as it will be possible to show as the discourse proceeds. For now, however, it seems to me that, as if from a watchtower over the problem, I behold Fortune and Virtue advancing toward comparison and contest. But Virtue's gait is gentle and her gaze steady, while there blooms
upon her face as well, for the contest, a flush of ambition. She lags far behind Fortune, who is hastening on; but Fortune is led and escorted by a throng of men slain in war, wearing gore-stained armor, filled with wounds received facing the enemy, dripping blood mingled with sweat, mounted upon half-shattered spoils. Shall we ask who these men are? They say they are the Fabricii and the Camilli and the Mucii and the Cincinnati,
and the Maximi Fabii and the Claudii Marcelli and the Scipios. And I see Gaius Marius too, angry at Fortune, and there Mucius Scaevola shows his burning hand, crying, “Will you grant this too to Fortune?” And Marcus Horatius, the champion by the river, weighed down with Etruscan missiles and dragging a limping thigh, cries out from the deep whirlpool, “Then I too have been maimed by fortune.” Such is the
chorus of Virtue as it advances to the comparison, heavy, a wrestler in arms, terrible to its opponents. Fortune's movement, on the other hand, is swift, her spirit bold, her hope boastful; outstripping Virtue, she draws near — not lightening herself with soft wings, nor setting the tip of her foot upon some sphere in precarious and wavering fashion, only then to depart displeasing; but rather, as the Spartans say
Aphrodite, when crossing the Eurotas, laid aside her mirrors and her bracelets and her girdle, and took up spear and shield adorned to suit Lycurgus — so Fortune, abandoning the Persians and the Assyrians, flitted lightly over Macedonia and quickly shook off Alexander, and, carrying kingdoms about through Egypt and Syria, made her way through them, and turning many times bore up the Carthaginians on her shoulders; but on approaching the Palatine
and crossing the Tiber, it seems, she laid aside her wings, stepped out of her sandals, and abandoned the untrustworthy, ever-turning sphere. Thus she entered Rome as one who meant to stay, and she is present now, as it were, for the trial in just this fashion. “For she is not disobedient,” as Pindar says, “nor does she steer a double rudder,” but rather is “kin to Lawfulness and Persuasion, and daughter of Forethought,” as Alcman traces her lineage. And
that famous horn of plenty they sing of, she holds it in her hand — not filled always with ripening fruit alone, but with whatever all the earth bears, and all the sea, and rivers, and mines, and harbors, pouring it forth ungrudgingly and in streams. Bright and distinguished men, not a few, are seen in her company: Pompilius Numa from the Sabines, and Priscus from the Tarquins, whom, as immigrant kings and strangers,
she established firmly upon the thrones of Romulus. And Paulus Aemilius, leading his army unscathed from his victory over Perseus and the Macedonians and celebrating a triumph without a tear shed, extols Fortune; and Caecilius Metellus the Macedonicus extols her too, that old man, borne to his grave by four sons of consular rank — Quintus Balearicus and Lucius Diadematus and Marcus Metellus and Gaius Caprarius — and by two sons-in-law of consular rank, and by grandsons distinguished by illustrious achievements and
public offices. And Aemilius Scaurus, a new man raised up from a lowly life and a lowlier lineage by Fortune's own hand, is enrolled first among the great senate. And Cornelius Sulla — whom Fortune took up and carried from the bosom of Nicopolis the courtesan — she sets higher than the Cimbrian triumphs of Marius and the seven consulships, upon monarchies and dictatorships. This man openly enrolled himself with his deeds among the followers of Fortune, crying out, in imitation of
the Oedipus of Sophocles, “I count myself a child of Fortune.” And in Latin he was named Felix, while to the Greeks he wrote himself thus: “Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Beloved of Aphrodite.” And the trophies among us in Chaeronea, set up against the forces of Mithridates, are inscribed in just this way — and rightly so; for “most of all, not ‘night,’ as Menander says, but Fortune had a share of Aphrodite's favor.” Might someone, then, taking this
as a starting point proper to the case for Fortune, bring forward the Romans themselves as witnesses, on the ground that they assign more to Fortune than to Virtue? For Virtue, at any rate, had a temple founded among them late, and only after a long time, by Scipio Nomantinus, and then by Marcellus, the one called of Manliness and Honor together, and that of Mind, so called (which might be reckoned equivalent to Judgment), by Aemilius Scaurus, who lived around the time of
the Cimbrian wars — by which time speeches and sophistries and glib talk had already crept into the city, and men had begun to dignify such qualities with temples. But down to this day there is no temple of Wisdom, nor of Self-Control, nor of Endurance, nor of Greatness of Soul, nor of Self-Mastery; whereas the temples of Fortune are splendid and ancient, and were built almost together with the very first foundations of the city. For the first to establish
a temple of Fortune was Ancus Marcius, the grandson of Numa and the fourth king after Romulus; and perhaps it was because he owed his manliness to fortune that he named it thus, since fortune has the greatest share in victory. And they built the temple of Woman's Fortune when they turned back Marcius Coriolanus, who was leading the Volscians against the city, through the agency of the women. For these women, going as envoys to the man together with his mother and
his wife, implored him and prevailed upon him to spare the city and lead the barbarian army away. Then, it is said, the statue of Fortune, at the very moment of its consecration, uttered a voice and said, “In accordance with the city's sacred custom you have piously established me, women of the city.” And moreover Furius Camillus, when he had quenched the Gallic fire, and had thrown down Rome, tipped against the gold, from the balance and
the scale, established a shrine not to Good Counsel nor to Manliness, but to Rumor and Voice, beside the New Road, where they say that before the war a voice came to Marcus Caedicius as he walked by night, bidding him expect a Gallic war within a short time. And the Fortune by the river they call “Fortis,” which means strong, or the best in war, or manly — as one who holds the power of victory over all things.
And they built her temple in the gardens which Caesar left to the people, considering that he too became greatest through good fortune, as he himself bore witness. As for Gaius Caesar, I should be ashamed to say that he was raised to greatness by good fortune, had he not himself borne witness to it. For when, pursuing Pompey from Brundisium, he set sail one day before the Ides of January, in the depth of a stormy winter,
he crossed the open sea safely, Fortune having postponed her usual season; and finding Pompey encamped in full force, strong both on land and at sea, with all his forces gathered together, while he himself had but a few men and the army of Antony and Sabinus was slow in coming to him, he dared to embark on a small skiff and, unknown to both the shipmaster and the pilot, to put out to sea as though
he were someone's servant. When a fierce countercurrent arose against the river's stream and a strong swell, and he saw the pilot changing course, he pulled the cloak from his own head, and revealing himself, said, “Come, good man, take courage and fear nothing, but give your sails over to Fortune and receive the wind, trusting that you carry Caesar and Caesar's Fortune.” So thoroughly was he persuaded
that Fortune sailed with him, traveled abroad with him, campaigned with him, commanded with him — whose task it was to impose calm upon the sea, summer upon winter, speed upon the slowest, courage upon the most faint-hearted; and, more incredible than these, flight for Pompey and the murder of a guest-friend for Ptolemy, so that Pompey might fall and Caesar not be defiled by his blood. And what of this: his son, the first to be proclaimed Augustus, who ruled for fifty-four
years — did he not, when sending forth his own grandson on campaign, pray to the gods to give him the courage of Scipio, the goodwill of Pompey, and his own Fortune? As though inscribing Fortune upon himself as the craftsman of a great work — that same Fortune which, having set him over Cicero and Lepidus and Pansa and Hirtius and Marcus Antonius, first raised him to the heights through the prowess and hands and victories
and fleets and wars and armies of these men, and then, having cast down those very men through whom he had risen, left him alone. For it was on his behalf that Cicero conducted his statesmanship, and Lepidus commanded, and Pansa won his victory, and Hirtius fell, and Antony ran to excess. For I myself count even Cleopatra as Caesar's fortune, against whom, as against a reef, that great commander foundered and was shattered, so that Caesar alone might remain,
Caesar. And it is said that, since there was much intimacy and familiarity between them, when they often had leisure for games of ball or dice, or indeed contests of animals — quails, say, or fighting cocks — Antony was always the loser and came away defeated. And one of his attendants, who prided himself on his skill in divination, would often speak with frankness and admonish him, “O man, what business have you with this young man? Flee him: you are more renowned, older,
you rule more men, you are seasoned in wars, you excel in experience — but your guardian spirit fears his; and your fortune, though great in itself, plays the flatterer to his. Unless you keep your distance, it will desert you and go over to him.” But indeed, so many are the testimonies from witnesses that stand in Fortune's favor. We must, however, also introduce
those drawn from the facts themselves, taking the beginning of our discourse from the beginning of the city. At once, surely, who would not say, with regard to the birth and preservation and nurture and growth of Romulus, that Fortune laid the foundations while Virtue built the structure upon them? First, then, as to the birth and begetting of the very founders and builders of the city, it seems to have come about through a marvelous stroke of good fortune.
For she who bore him is said to have consorted with a god, and just as they say Heracles was begotten in a long night, the day being held back beyond nature and the sun delaying, so too they record that, at the time of Romulus's begetting and conception, the sun was eclipsed, having made an exact conjunction with the moon — just as Ares, though a god, consorted with Silvia, a mortal woman. And this same thing, they say, coincided with Romulus's
very passing from life as well: for they say that when the sun was eclipsed he vanished, on the Nones of Caprae, which day even now they celebrate publicly. Then, when they had been born, and the tyrant sought to destroy them, they were taken up by chance not by a barbarous or savage attendant, but by one who was compassionate and humane, so that he did not kill them; but there was a bank of the river, welling up with a green meadow and shaded by low
trees, and there he laid the infants down near a certain wild fig tree, which they called the Ruminal. Then a she-wolf, newly delivered and her breasts swollen and overflowing with milk, her own cubs having perished, herself in need of relief, stole about the infants and offered them her teat, as though setting down a second birth-pang, that of her milk. And a sacred bird of Ares, which they call the woodpecker, kept coming and perching at their side, watching over the infants in turn
prying open the mouth of each with his claw, would place a morsel in it, sharing out a portion of his own food. The wild fig tree, then, they named ruminalis after the teat which the she-wolf, crouching beside it, offered to the infants. For a long time afterward the inhabitants of that place kept the custom of exposing none of their newborn children, but raising and rearing them all, honoring in this way the suffering of Romulus and its likeness to their own.
And indeed the very fact that they were reared and educated at Gabii without being noticed, and that it went unrecognized that they were the sons of Silvia and the grandsons of King Numitor, appears altogether to be a piece of theft and contrivance on the part of Fortune, so that they should not perish before their achievements on account of their birth, but should come to light in the midst of their own successes, offering their virtue as the proof of their noble descent.
Here there comes to my mind the saying of the great and prudent general Themistocles, spoken to certain later generals who had enjoyed success at Athens and who claimed to be honored above Themistocles. He said that the Day-After once quarreled with the Festival, saying that the Festival was full of toil and business, while on the Day-After people enjoyed in peace what had been prepared for the Festival; and that the Festival replied, "What you say is true, but if I had not come to be, where would you be?" "So too," he said, "if I had not come to be at the time of the Persian Wars, what good would any of you be now?"
This, it seems to me, is what Fortune might say to the Valor of Romulus: "Brilliant indeed are your deeds, and great, and you have truly shown yourself to be of divine blood and lineage; but do you see how far you fall short of me? For if I had not then been present, kind and humane, but had abandoned and cast aside the infants, how could you have come to be, and from where would you have shone forth?
If a savage female beast had not then come upon them, swollen and inflamed from the abundance and flow of her milk and in need of being relieved rather than of nursing something, but instead some utterly untamed and famished creature, would these fine palaces and temples and theaters and colonnades and market-place and public buildings now exist, rather than herdsmen's huts and shepherds' folds, with men bowing before some Alban or Etruscan or Latin master as their lord?"
A beginning, then, is the greatest thing in everything, and most of all in the founding and establishment of a city; and this Fortune provided, by saving and guarding the founder. For Valor made Romulus great, but Fortune watched over him until he became great. And indeed the kingship of Numa, which proved the longest-lasting of all, was admittedly steered by a wonderful good fortune.
For the story that a certain Egeria, one of the Dryad nymphs, a wise spirit who fell in love with the man in their union, secretly instructed and helped shape his statesmanship, is perhaps rather too much like a myth. Indeed others too are said to have entered into divine marriages and become beloved of the gods — Peleus, Anchises, Orions, and Emathions — yet they did not all live out their lives happily, or contentedly, or free from grief.
But Numa seems truly to have had good Fortune as a genuine housemate, colleague, and co-ruler; she, as though in a turbid swell and troubled sea caused by the hostility and harshness of neighboring peoples, took hold of the city as it was being tossed about and inflamed by countless troubles and internal discords, and extinguished, like winds, the opposing passions and jealousies.
And just as they say the sea, receiving the halcyons' brood-time, keeps it safe and helps nurture it through the storm, so she, spreading out and establishing such a calm — a calm free from war, disease, danger, and fear — allowed the newly settled and still-trembling people to take root and to establish the city, growing in security firmly and without hindrance. For just as a merchant ship or a trireme is built amid blows and much violence, being battered with hammers and nails, with dowels, saws, and axes,
yet once built it must stand and settle for a fitting length of time, until its joints become firmly held together and its dowels take on a natural fit; but if, while its joinery is still fresh and slipping, it is dragged down into the water, everything will come loose, shaken apart, and it will let in the sea — so it was with Rome: the first ruler and builder, forming her, as it were out of raw, unseasoned timber, out of wild men and herdsmen, endured no small labors and met no small wars and dangers, being forced of necessity to fend off those who resisted her birth and founding;
but the second ruler, taking her over, provided time to fix and secure her growth through good fortune, gaining much peace and much quiet. But if at that time some Porsenna had pressed hard with an Etruscan camp and army against walls still fresh and trembling, or some warlike chieftain breaking away from the Marsi, or some Lucanian moved by envy and rivalry, a quarrelsome and war-making man, such as later were Mutilus, or bold Silo, or, the last wrestling-match of Sulla, Telesinus — arming, as if by a single signal, the whole of Italy — had sounded the trumpet around the philosopher Numa while he was sacrificing and praying, the leading magistrates of the city would not have withstood so great a storm and swell,
nor would they have grown in manpower and numbers; but as it is, that early peace seems to have become for the Romans a store of supplies for the wars to come, and the people, like an athlete who has trained his body in quiet for forty-three years after the contests of Romulus, made themselves fit to fight against those who later opposed them. For they say that in that time neither famine nor plague nor barrenness of the land nor untimely weather in summer or winter troubled Rome at all,
as though it were not human prudence but divine Fortune that was overseeing the affairs of that period. At that time, then, the double gate of Janus was closed — the gate they call the Gate of War: for it stands open whenever there is war, and is closed when peace comes about. When Numa died it was opened, as war broke out against the Albans.
Then, as countless other wars followed one after another without a break, it was closed again only after four hundred and eighty years, following the war against the Carthaginians, when peace came, in the consulship of Gaius Atilius and Titus Manlius. But after that year it was opened once more, and wars continued until Caesar's victory at Actium; at that time Roman arms rested for a time, but not long,
for the disturbances stirred up by the Cantabrians, together with the Gallic uprisings joined with the Germans, disturbed the peace again. But these things are recorded as testimonies to the good fortune of Numa. The kings after him too admired Fortune as the true founder, nurse, and, in Pindar's word, "city-bearer" of Rome. Servius Tullius, a man who more than any of the kings increased the power of the people and adorned the constitution,
who imposed order upon the voting and order upon the military levies, who became the first censor and overseer of morals and of temperance, and who was thought to be the most courageous and the most prudent of men — he himself attached his own fortunes to Fortune and derived his authority from her, so that he was even believed to have intercourse with Fortune, who descended to him through a certain window into his chamber, which is now called the Fenestella gate.
He founded, then, a shrine of Fortune on the Capitoline, that of the goddess called Primigenia, which one might translate as "First-born," and also that of Obsequens, whom some consider to be "Compliant" and others "Gentle." But rather than dwelling on the Roman titles, I shall try to enumerate in Greek the powers signified by these foundations. For there is also a shrine of Fortune Privata on the Palatine,
and that of the "Bird-catcher," which, ridiculous as it sounds, does carry a meaning by way of metaphor — as of one who draws in things from afar and holds fast whatever comes within her grasp. Near the spring called Muscosa there is also a shrine of Fortune the Virgin, and one at Aesculiae of Fortune Returning; and in the long lane there is an altar of Fortune the Hopeful; and beside the altar of Venus Epitalaria there stands
a seat of Fortune the Male. There are countless other honors and titles of Fortune, most of which Servius established, knowing that great weight — or rather, that everything — in human affairs rests with Fortune, and above all in his own case, since he had been advanced from a captive and an enemy race to kingship through good fortune. For when the city of the Corniculani was taken by the Romans, a captive maiden, Ocrisia,
whose beauty and character were not dimmed even by her misfortune, was given to Tanaquil, wife of King Tarquin, and served her; and a client — the sort the Romans call a cliens — kept her. From this union Servius was said to have been born. Others say it was not so, but that Ocrisia, a virgin, was accustomed to carry the first portions and libation from the royal table each time to the hearth, and once it happened
that as she was casting the first offerings into the fire, as was her custom, suddenly, as the flame died down, the fertile member of a man rose up out of the hearth, and the girl, terrified, told only Tanaquil of this. Tanaquil, being wise and sensible, adorned the girl as befits a bride and shut her up together with the apparition, believing it to be something divine. Some say it was the spirit of a guardian hero,
others that this love-encounter was that of Hephaestus. Servius, in any case, was born, and while still an infant a radiance like a flash of lightning shone from his head. But the followers of Antias do not tell it this way; rather, they say that Servius's wife, Gegania, happened to be dying, and that he, with his mother present, lay down to sleep from despondency and grief; and as he slept, the women saw his
face glowing, surrounded by fire — which was a sign of his birth from fire, and a favorable omen for the unexpected rule that he was to obtain after the death of Tarquin, through Tanaquil's eager efforts. For of all the kings this one seems to have been the least inclined toward sole rule and the least eager for it, since when he had resolved to lay down his kingship he was prevented: for she, dying, it seems, made him swear an oath to remain in office
and not to abandon the ancestral constitution of the Romans. Thus the kingship of Servius was in every respect a gift of Fortune, which he neither expected nor desired to receive, yet which he preserved. But so that we may not seem to be fleeing and withdrawing from the bright and clear proofs of history into the dim region of ancient times, as it were, come, let us leave the kings and turn our discussion to the most familiar events and the most celebrated
wars. In these, who would not acknowledge great daring and courage — "and reverence, the ally of war-loving valor," as Timotheus says? But the smooth flow of events, and the surge of the impulse toward such power and growth — an empire advancing not by human hands or human impulses, but hastened on by a divine escort and by the breath of Fortune — is displayed to those who reason correctly. Trophy
rises upon trophy, and triumph meets triumph, and the first blood shed by arms, still warm, is washed away as it is overtaken by the second. They count their victories not by the number of the dead and the spoils, but by captive kingdoms and enslaved nations and islands and continents added to the boundaries of their dominion by its sheer magnitude. In a single battle Philip lost Macedonia; with a single blow Antiochus yielded Asia; once defeated, the Carthaginians
lost Libya. One man, with the drive of a single campaign, added to Rome Armenia, the Pontic Euxine, Syria, Arabia, the Albanians, the Iberians, and the lands as far as the Caucasus and the Hyrcanians; and three times the Ocean that flows around the inhabited world saw him victorious. He drove back the Numidians in Libya as far as the southern shores, and subdued Iberia, which had joined its sickness with that of Sertorius, all the way to the Atlantic sea; and the kings of the Albanians, as they fled, he brought to a halt near the
Caspian sea. All this he accomplished by making use of the fortune of the state, and then was overturned by his own private fate. But the great guardian spirit of the Romans did not blow for only a day, nor flourish for a brief season, as did that of the Macedonians, nor was it confined to the land alone, as that of the Spartans, nor to the sea alone, as that of the Athenians, nor was it slow to stir, as that of the Persians, nor quick to cease, as that of the Colophonians, but from above,
from its very first origins, it grew up together with the city, increased together with it, and shared its political life with it, and remained steadfast on land and sea, in war and in peace, against both barbarians and Greeks. This spirit poured out and consumed, like a winter torrent, Hannibal the Carthaginian around Italy, though from his own home no envy or political enmity flowed against him. This spirit separated the armies of the Cimbri and the Teutones by great
intervals of place and time, so that Marius might suffice to meet each of them in turn, fighting them separately, and so that three hundred thousand undefeated and invincible warriors, falling upon Italy all at once, might not overwhelm it in a single flood. Because of this spirit, Antiochus was kept occupied while Philip was being warred upon, and Philip, while Antiochus was in danger, fell, already defeated beforehand; and while the Marsic War was setting Rome ablaze, Mithridates was held in check by the Sarmatian and Bastarnian wars;
and as for Tigranes, while Mithridates was still brilliant, suspicion and jealousy kept them apart, but once Mithridates was defeated, Tigranes joined himself to him, only to perish together with him. And did Fortune not also set the city right again amid its very greatest disasters? When the Gauls were encamped around the Capitoline and besieging the citadel, she sent a terrible disease through their army, and the people were perishing; and their nighttime assault, though it went unnoticed by everyone else,
Fortune, along with chance itself, caused to be discovered. About this it is perhaps not out of place to relate a little more at some length. After the great defeat of the Romans at the river Allia, some, coming down to Rome in the confusion of their flight, filled the people with panic and scattered them, only a few gathering on the Capitoline and holding out there. Others, immediately after the rout, gathered together at Veii
and chose as dictator Furius Camillus — the very man whom the people, when he was successful and held his head high, had shaken off and cast down, when he fell afoul of a public charge of embezzlement; but now, cowed and humbled, they recalled him after their defeat, placing in his hands and entrusting to him unaccountable command. So that the man might not appear to be seizing power by opportunity rather than by law, nor, as though he had given up on the city, hold his election to office by arms, relying on the scattered and wandering remnant of the army, it was necessary
that the senators on the Capitoline should ratify by vote what they learned to be the soldiers' resolve. There was, then, a certain Gaius Pontius, a good man, who undertook to be the messenger of the decision to those on the Capitoline, and took upon himself great danger; for the route lay through the midst of the enemy, who surrounded the citadel on every side with guards and palisades. So when he came to the river by night, he strapped broad pieces of cork beneath himself and, resting his body
upon the lightness of this contrivance, let himself go with the current; and finding it gentle and slowly bearing him along, he reached the opposite bank safely, and, disembarking, made his way toward the gap between the enemy's watch-fires, judging the empty space by the darkness and the silence. Then, clinging to the cliff face, and using the crevices and turns and rough places of the rock that offered footholds and handholds,
— surrendering himself to the rock and pressing against it, he made his way across to the other side, and, being taken up by the outposts, he reported to those within what had been decreed; then, taking the decree in hand, he set off back again to Camillus. But by day one of the barbarians, going around the place for some other purpose, noticed the tip-marks of feet and the places where they had slipped, and also the places where the grass sprouting on the earthy parts of the rock had been rubbed off and broken,
and the slanting drag-marks of a body, and the places where it had pressed for support, and he told the others of it. They, thinking that the path was being pointed out to them by the enemy themselves, undertook to make the attempt, and, having waited for the most deserted hour of the night, climbed up undetected — not only by the guards, but even by the men and the watchdogs stationed before the guardpost, who had been overcome by sleep. Yet the Fortune of Rome was not at a loss for a voice able to announce and proclaim so great a disaster.
Sacred geese were kept around the temple of Juno, in her service. Now by nature this creature is easily startled and quick to take fright at any sound; but at that time, because of the severe want prevailing among those inside, the geese were being neglected, and their sleep was thin and hunger-ridden, so that they perceived at once when the enemy appeared above the crest of the height, and, cackling fiercely, rushed at them, and
being still more thrown into confusion by the very sight of the weapons, filled the place with a piercing, harsh clamor. Roused by this, the Romans rose up, and, grasping what had happened, drove the enemy back and hurled them down the cliff. To this day, in memory of what happened then, a procession is held in which a dog is impaled on a stake, while a goose sits, very solemnly, upon a costly cushion carried on a litter — and the sight displays the power of Fortune, and her capacity to find resources for everything out of
the most unlikely materials, whenever she takes some matter in hand and directs it like a general, putting intelligence into creatures without reason, and courage and boldness into cowardly ones. For who would not truly be amazed and marvel, if, stirred by the feeling of it, he should take in, by some reckoning, both the despair of that time and the prosperity the city now enjoys, and look up at the splendor and wealth of its dedications and works of art, and the rivalry of cities in munificence, and
the crowns sent by kings, and all that earth and sea, islands and continents, rivers and trees, animals, plains, and mountains and mines produce — the choicest offerings of them all, vying with one another in beauty and in the grace with which they adorn the place — and reflect how all of this came within a hair's breadth of never existing, of being swallowed up by fire and fearsome darkness and gloom, by barbarian swords and murderous rage,
when everything lay in their grip; and how cheap, unreasoning, timid creatures provided the beginning of its salvation, and geese raised up, on behalf of the god of their fathers and of their homeland, those great champions and commanders — the Mallii, the Servii, the Postumii, and the Papirii, founders of houses yet to come — who had come within nothing of perishing. But if, as Polybius records in the second book of his history of the Celts who at that time captured the city of the Romans,
it is true that, when word reached them that their homes were being destroyed, since the neighboring barbarians had invaded and overrun their country, they withdrew and made peace with Camillus — then there is no dispute with Fortune that she was the cause of the city's deliverance, by drawing the enemy off, or rather by tearing them away from Rome when it was least expected. But why should one linger over matters
that have nothing clear or settled about them, since the records of the Romans were destroyed and their own chronicles thrown into confusion at that time, as Livy has recorded? For events better attested from a later period show more plainly the goodwill of Fortune. I would also set down here the death of Alexander — a man who, through great successes and brilliant achievements, driven by unconquerable daring and ambition, sped along like a star,
shooting from east to west and already casting the gleam of his weapons toward Italy — his pretext for the campaign being that Alexander of Molossia had been cut down by the Bruttians and Lucanians near Pandosia, but the thing that truly drove him was, in truth, a longing for glory beyond all other men, and an ambition for empire, and a rivalry to surpass the limits of the campaigns of Dionysus and
Heracles. And as for Italy, he was inquiring into the power and strength of the force at Rome, drawn up, as it were, like a tempered blade before him — for their name and their most illustrious reputation was being carried to him, as of athletes trained through countless contests; for I do not think the contest would have been decided without bloodshed, had unconquered arms and unenslaved spirits met in battle. For in number these were no fewer than one hundred thirty thousand, and all of them were warlike and manly,
every one of them knowing how to fight from horseback, and also, wherever need required, on foot.

======== Moralia: De Fraterno Amore ========

The Spartans call the ancient images of the Dioscuri "dokana": these are two parallel beams joined by two crossbeams, and it is thought fitting to the brotherly-loving pair of gods that the offering should be a common and undivided one. So I too now dedicate to you, Nigrinus and Quintus, this treatise on brotherly love, a gift held in common, since you are worthy of it. For by already doing the things to which it exhorts, you will seem
to be giving testimony to them rather than being urged toward them. And your delight in the things you are doing rightly will, by your judgment, make your steadfastness the more secure, as when good and beauty-loving spectators cheer on those who are succeeding. Now Aristarchus, the father of Theodectes, mocking the great number of the sophists, used to say that in the old days seven wise men were scarcely produced, but that in his own time it would not be easy to find so many ordinary people who were not wise. And I myself
observe that brotherly love among us is as rare a thing as the hatred of brothers was among the ancients—a hatred whose few recorded instances, on account of their strangeness, life handed over to tragedies and theaters. But people nowadays, whenever they meet with brothers who get on well together, marvel at them no less than at those famous Moliones, who were supposed to have grown together in their very bodies; and they regard the sharing in common of ancestral
wealth and friends and slaves as being just as incredible and monstrous as the idea of a single soul making use of the hands and feet and eyes of two bodies. And yet nature did not place the model for the proper use of brothers far away, but within the body itself, having contrived that most of the necessary parts should be double, brotherly, and twin—hands, feet, eyes, ears, nostrils—thereby teaching
that all these were separated in this way for the sake of preservation and joint action in common, not for difference and conflict. And having split the hands themselves into many unequal fingers, she furnished the most harmonious and skillful of all instruments, so that Anaxagoras of old attributed to the hands the cause of human wisdom and understanding. But it seems that the opposite of this is true: it was not because
man had hands that he became most wise, but because he was by nature rational and skillful that he came to possess such instruments by nature. This too is plain to everyone: that from one seed and a single origin nature produced two or three or more brothers, not for the sake of difference and opposition, but so that, though separate, they might all the more cooperate with one another. For those three-bodied and hundred-handed beings, if indeed they ever existed,
being grown together in all their parts, could do nothing outside themselves or apart from one another—whereas this is precisely what belongs to brothers, who are able, through one another, both to remain at home and to travel abroad at the same time, to engage in politics and to farm, so long as they preserve that principle of goodwill and harmony which nature gave them at the start. But if they do not, they will differ in no way, I think, from feet that trip one another up, or fingers that get entangled and twisted contrary to nature by one
another. Or rather, just as in the same body the moist and the dry, the cold and the hot, sharing in one nature and nourishment, produce through concord and harmony the best and most pleasant blending and attunement—without which they say there is no enjoyment or benefit either in wealth or in royal power equal to the gods—so, if greed and faction arise among them,
they most shamefully corrupt and throw the living creature into confusion. In the same way, through the like-mindedness of brothers both family and household are healthy and flourish, and friends and companions, like a well-tuned chorus, do nothing, say nothing, and think nothing that is discordant; whereas in a state of dissension even the utterly base man gets his share of honor—the slanderous house-servant, or the flatterer who has crept in from outside as though he were a fellow-citizen, or the malicious citizen. For just as diseases in bodies that do not
admit of what is proper to them produce cravings for many strange and harmful things, so hostility toward one's own kin brings on, to fill the resulting gap, base and wicked associations flowing in from outside. The Arcadian seer, according to Herodotus, was compelled to fashion himself a wooden foot, having been deprived of his own; but a brother who wages war on his brother, and instead takes up some outsider as a companion from the marketplace or the wrestling school, seems to be doing nothing other
than voluntarily cutting off a limb of flesh that belongs and grew together with him, in order to attach and fit on an alien one. For the very need that welcomes and seeks out friendship and companionship teaches us to honor, cherish, and guard what is akin to us, since we are not able to live, nor were we born to live, without friends, without human contact, and alone. This is why Menander rightly says that we do not seek out, from drinking-parties and daily luxury, the one whom
"we shall trust with the affairs of our life," as he says, father. Does not each man think he has discovered something extraordinary if he has the mere shadow of a friend? For the many friendships that exist are truly shadows and imitations and images of that first friendship which nature has implanted in children toward parents and in brothers toward brothers; and the man who does not revere and honor that friendship—what pledge of goodwill could he possibly
give to strangers? Or what sort of man is he who addresses his companion as "brother" in expressions of affection and in letters, yet does not think he must walk even the same road as his actual brother? For just as it is madness to adorn an image of one's brother while striking and mutilating his actual body, so too honoring and revering his name among others while hating and shunning the man himself is not the mark of one who is sound of mind, nor of one who has ever grasped in his understanding
that nature is the holiest and greatest of shrines. I recall, indeed, that in Rome I myself once took up lodging with two brothers, one of whom was reputed to practice philosophy. He was, as it turned out, not only a brother but also a false and falsely-named philosopher; for when I thought it right that he should treat him, as a brother and a private citizen, in a philosophic manner, he said, "That would indeed be right toward a private citizen, but I myself do not consider it
a great or solemn thing to have come from the same parts of the body." "You, at least," I replied, "are plainly one who does not consider it a great or solemn thing to have come from those parts of the body either." But all other people, even if they do not truly think this way, at any rate say and sing that nature, and the law that preserves nature, have given to parents the first and greatest honor after the gods;
and there is nothing that men do more pleasing to the gods than repaying, willingly and eagerly, to their own parents and nurturers the "old debts lent out anew." Nor again is there any greater proof of godlessness than neglect and offense toward one's parents; and this is why, while it is forbidden to do harm to others generally, toward one's own mother and father the very failure to always be doing
and saying the things that will give them joy—even where nothing actively distressing is added—is considered unholy and unlawful. What action, then, or favor, or disposition on the part of children is more able to give parents joy than a firm goodwill and friendship toward a brother? This, indeed, is easy to learn from the opposite cases. For where sons abuse a household slave whom their father or mother honors,
and, neglecting the plants and places their parents delighted in, cause them distress; where a household-born dog that is disregarded, or a horse, touches the affectionate and honor-loving feelings of old people; and where they are vexed even over the entertainers, spectacles, and athletes which their parents used to admire, mocking and despising them—can such sons possibly be moderate toward one another when they are at odds, hating each other, speaking ill of each other, always opposing each other in deeds and actions, and
being undone by one another? No one could say so. It follows, then, that brothers who love and cherish one another, and who, wherever nature has separated them in body, restore that unity in their feelings and their affairs, sharing common conversations, pursuits, and pastimes with one another, provide their parents with a sweet and blessed old age through their brotherly love. For no father has ever been so devoted to learning, or
so devoted to honor, or so devoted to money, as he is devoted to his children; and this is why they see their sons with more pleasure loving one another than being wealthy or holding office. At any rate they say that Apollonis of Cyzicus, mother of King Eumenes and of his three other sons, Attalus, Philetaerus, and Athenaeus, used always to call herself blessed and to thank the gods, not for her wealth nor for her rule,
but because she saw her three sons acting as bodyguard to the eldest, and him living unafraid in their midst even though they bore spears and swords all around him. Just the opposite happened to Artaxerxes, who, on learning that his son Ochus had plotted against his brothers, died of despair; for grievous wars between brothers, as Euripides has said, are most grievous of all to the parents themselves; for the man who hates his own brother and is burdened by him cannot
help but find fault with the father who begot him and the mother who bore him. Pisistratus, when he was giving his grown sons in marriage, said—since he considered them fine and good men—that he wished to become the father of still more such sons. Good and just children will not only, for their parents' sake, love one another the more, but also, for one another's sake, love their parents the more; always thinking and saying that
they owe their parents gratitude for many things, but owe it most of all for their brothers, since this is the most valuable and most pleasant of all possessions that they have received from them. Homer, indeed, did well in representing Telemachus as counting the lack of brothers among his misfortunes: "for thus did the son of Cronos make our line a single line." But Hesiod does not give good advice in urging that an "only-begotten son" should be heir to his father's estate—and this from a man who had been
a pupil of the Muses, whom men always called by that name together because of their mutual goodwill and sisterly love. Toward parents, then, brotherly love is of such a kind that loving one's brother is at once a proof of loving one's mother and father as well; and toward one's own children it is a lesson and model of brotherly love unlike any other; while conversely, hatred of a brother is a wicked thing that children take up, as it were, from a copy made after their father's pattern.
For the man who has grown old amid lawsuits, factions, and contests against his own brothers, and who then urges his sons to live in harmony, is like a doctor treating others while he himself is covered in sores—he weakens his own words by his own deeds. If, at any rate, the Theban Eteocles, who had said to his brother, "I would go to the risings of the stars and the sun, and beneath the earth, were I able to do these things, so as to hold"
the greatest of the gods' dominions—tyranny—yet in turn urged his own children to honor equality, "which ever binds friends to friends, cities to cities, and allies to allies, for equality is by nature the law for men"—who would not despise such a man? And what sort of man would Atreus have been, if, after serving his brother such a feast, he had gone on to moralize to his own children about it? Indeed, the use of friends outside one's own blood, when the source itself runs corrupt,
tends to be of little benefit. This is why it is fitting to purge out hatred of brothers, which makes for a bad support in old age for parents, and an even worse rearer of children. It also serves as a slanderer and accuser before one's fellow citizens: for people suppose that men could not, out of so great a shared upbringing, familiarity, and kinship, have become enemies and foes unless they were privy to much wickedness in one another. For great causes dissolve great goodwill and friendship; and for that reason such breaches are not
easily reconciled again either. For just as things that have been glued together, even if the bonding agent loosens, can be bound and joined again, but when a body that has grown together as one is broken or torn apart, it is a hard task to find any glue or means of reunion—so friendships formed out of need, even if they break apart, are easily taken up again afterward; but brothers who have fallen away from their natural bond do not come together again easily, and even if they do come together, the reconciliation drags along a foul and
suspect scar. Now every kind of hostility between one man and another, since it is bound up with the most painful of passions—rivalry, anger, envy, resentment—is painful and turbulent; but hostility toward a brother, with whom one is bound to share in sacrifices and ancestral rites, and to be buried in the same tomb, and often to be neighbor or fellow-resident of the same lands, keeps the pain ever before one's eyes, reminding one every day
of the folly and derangement on account of which the sweetest and most kindred of faces is seen at its most sullen, and the voice, familiar and beloved from childhood, has become the most frightening thing to hear. And seeing many other pairs of brothers sharing one house, one table, undivided lands and slaves, while they themselves have divided even their friends and their guest-friends, treating as hostile everything that is dear to brothers—and all
this while it lies open for all to consider, that friends and drinking-companions are "things to be won," and in-laws and acquaintances are "things to be acquired," once the first ones, like weapons or tools, have been destroyed; but there is no acquiring a brother anew, just as there is no replacing a hand once it is cut off, or an eye once it is gouged out. And rightly did the Persian woman speak, when she chose to save her brother rather than her children, saying that she could
acquire other children, but that, her parents being dead, she could never have another brother. What then should one do, someone might say, if a brother turns out to be worthless? First, one must remember that worthlessness touches every kind of friendship, and, in the words of Sophocles, in searching out most things you will find them shameful among mortals. For neither kinship, nor friendship, nor erotic love
can be found pure and free of suffering and untouched by vice. The Spartan who married a small wife said that one must choose the least of evils; but a brother might reasonably be advised to endure the evils closest to him rather than to try those that belong to strangers—for the former is blameless, as being necessary, while the latter is blameworthy, as being a matter of choice. For it is not the drinking-companion, nor the fellow ephebe, nor the guest-friend
who is "yoked by unforged fetters of reverence," but the one of the same blood, the same upbringing, the same father and mother, toward whom it is reasonable to overlook some faults, and to say, when speaking of a brother who has done wrong, "for this reason I cannot abandon you, wretched and worthless and foolish as you are"—lest, in punishing harshly and bitterly by hating you, I unwittingly punish in you some inherited disease dripped in from
a father or a mother. For with strangers, as Theophrastus used to say, one ought not to love before judging, but to judge and then love; but where nature does not grant judgment the leading role in determining goodwill, nor waits for the proverbial bushel of salt to be shared, but has itself engendered the very beginning of the friendship, there one must not be harsh or exacting in scrutinizing faults. As it stands now, what could you say,
when some people bear easily, and even take pleasure in, the wrongs done by strangers and outsiders who have become corrupted through some drinking-party, game, or wrestling-ground, and yet are difficult and implacable toward their own brothers? Where indeed many, keeping and cherishing fierce dogs and horses, and even lynxes, cats, monkeys, and lions, cannot bear the anger, ignorance, or ambition of their brothers; while others, for the sake of concubines and
...prostitutes register houses and fields in their names on account of a building lot or a boundary corner, and go to law against their brothers? Then, having given the name "hatred of wickedness" to their hatred of a brother, they go about among their brothers casting reproach and abuse at them, while toward everyone else they show no annoyance but treat them with great and habitual familiarity. Let these, then, serve as the preamble to the whole discourse. Let us take as the starting point of our teaching not the division of paternal property, as others do, but the rivalry and jealousy over faults committed against parents while they are still living.
For the ephors, when Agesilaus kept sending an ox as a prize to each of the elders who were appointed, fined him, alleging as the charge that he was making common possessions his own by currying favor and giving gifts. One might advise a son to serve his parents not by winning their goodwill for himself alone, nor by turning it toward himself, but by the goodwill he wins toward himself; many men in this way win their brothers over, having a specious but unjust pretext for this kind of self-aggrandizement. For they rob their brothers of the greatest and finest of their paternal possessions—their parents' goodwill—stealing beneath them in an illiberal and cunning way, seizing the occasion of their parents' preoccupations and ignorance, and above all presenting themselves as orderly, obedient, and prudent in precisely those matters in which they see their brothers erring, or seeming to err.
But one ought to do the opposite: where there is anger, to join in receiving it and share in undergoing it, as if by cooperating one makes it lighter, and in services and favors somehow to include the brother as a partner; and where he is lacking, to blame the occasion, or some other activity, or his nature, as being better suited and more dignified for other things. Agamemnon's words are also fitting: that he yielded neither to hesitation nor to folly of mind, but, looking to me and awaiting my impulse, entrusted this duty to me as well. Fathers also gladly accept and believe changes of names given by their sons: they call their brothers' laziness "simplicity," their awkwardness "straightforwardness," and their contentiousness "an unyielding spirit." So the one who reconciles them gains both a lessening of anger toward the brother and, at the same time, an increase of the father's goodwill toward himself.
Having thus made his defense, one must then turn to the brother himself and take him to task more sharply, pointing out his fault and shortcoming with frankness. For one must neither indulge one's brothers nor, again, trample on them when they err—the one belongs to a man who rejoices at their misfortune, the other to one who shares in the wrongdoing—but must act toward the offender as one who cares for him and grieves with him in giving admonition. The most severe accuser a brother can have is the very man who has been the most eager advocate on his behalf before the parents. But if a brother who has done no wrong comes under blame, in other matters it is fitting to serve one's parents and bear all their anger and displeasure; disputes and pleadings on behalf of a brother who is unjustly spoken ill of or mistreated, however, are blameless and honorable when directed at them.
And one need not fear to hear Sophocles' line, "O basest of sons, going to law against your father," when speaking frankly on behalf of a brother who seems to be wronged; for such a contest makes even those who are refuted find defeat sweeter than victory. And indeed, once the father has died, is it not right to cling to one's brothers with goodwill even more than before—at once sharing tears and grief in common, that affectionate feeling repelling the suspicions sown by servants and the slanders of companions who attach themselves to one side or the other, and trusting, among other things, what is told of the brotherly love of the Dioscuri: that Polydeuces struck with his fist and killed the man who was whispering slanders against his brother to him.
As for the division of the paternal estate, one must not declare war on one another as most people do, calling on "Uproar, daughter of War," and meeting each other prepared for battle, but above all must guard that particular day, since for some it becomes the beginning of irreconcilable enmity and quarrel, and for others of friendship and concord: best of all by themselves alone; but if not, in the presence of a common friend, a fair-minded witness for both, taking and giving "by the lots of Justice," as Plato says, what is fitting and appropriate, and supposing that in doing so they are managing the care and stewardship of the estate, while use and possession lie in common, undivided among all.
But some, tearing nurses away from one another and outbidding each other for foster-children and familiar household slaves in their eager pursuit, come away having gained no more than the price of a slave, having lost the greatest and most precious of their paternal possessions—a brother's friendship and trust; and some, we know, out of sheer contentiousness and to no profit, have treated their paternal goods no more decently than plunder. Among these were Charicles and Antiochus of Opus: they even sawed an ordinary silver cup in two and cut a cloak in half before departing, as though dividing the household with a whetted blade under some tragic curse. And others recount to others, boasting, that they got the better of their brothers in the division by trickery, cunning, and sophistry—when they ought rather to take pride and think highly of themselves for prevailing by fairness, goodwill, and concession.
Hence it is worth recalling Athenodorus, and indeed everyone among us does recall him. He had an older brother named Xenon, who, while managing much of the estate, squandered it; and finally, having abducted a woman and been condemned, he lost the estate, which was confiscated into Caesar's treasury. Athenodorus was still a young man, not yet bearded; and when his share of the money was given back to him, he did not overlook his brother, but put everything together in the middle and divided it with him, and though much wronged in the distribution he felt no resentment and no regret, but bore his brother's folly gently and cheerfully—a folly that became famous throughout Greece.
Now Solon, in declaring about the constitution that equality does not cause civil strife, seemed altogether too much a man of the crowd, introducing arithmetical and democratic proportion instead of the noble geometrical kind. But the man who advises brothers within a household should, above all, do as Plato advised the citizens: remove "mine" and "not mine"; failing that, he should love equality and hold to what is equal, thereby laying a fine and lasting foundation of concord and peace. Let him also make use of famous examples, such as that of Pittacus to the king of the Lydians, who asked whether he had money: "Twice as much," he said, "as I would have wished, now that my brother is dead."
Since it is not only in the acquisition and diminution of money that the lesser becomes hostile to the greater, but in general—as Plato says, that motion arises in inequality, and rest and permanence in equality—so all inequality is dangerous for discord between brothers; yet to become equal and even in all things is impossible: for nature from the outset apportions some things unequally, and later fortune, by producing envy and jealousy, brings about the ugliest of maladies, plagues destructive not to households alone but to cities as well. One must therefore guard against and treat these things too, should they arise.
To the one who has the advantage, then, one might advise, first, that in whatever respects he seems superior, he should make these common with his brothers, sharing the honor of his reputation and including his brother in his friendships; and if he is the more capable speaker, he should offer the use of his ability, as though it were no less his brother's than his own. Then, he should display no arrogance or contempt, but rather, by yielding and lowering himself in disposition, make his superiority free of envy, and equalize, so far as possible, the unevenness of fortune by the moderation of his spirit.
Lucullus, for instance, though older, did not think it right to take command before his brother, but let his own opportunity pass and waited for his. And Polydeuces, though a god, was not willing to be a god alone, but chose rather to become a demigod together with his brother and to share in the mortal portion, on condition of imparting immortality to him. To you, someone might say, O fortunate one, who lack nothing of the advantages you possess, it is open to make your brother resemble you and share in your adornment, as though he too were enjoying a ray of the reputation, virtue, or good fortune that surrounds you—just as Plato, by placing his brothers in the finest of his own writings, made them famous, Glaucon and Adeimantus in the Republic, and Antiphon, the youngest, in the Parmenides.
Furthermore, just as inequalities arise in the natures and fortunes of brothers, so it is impossible for one to be superior in all things and in every way. For they say that the elements themselves, though composed of a single matter, possess the most opposite powers; but of two brothers born of the same mother and the same father, no one has ever seen the one wise like the sage of the Stoa—at once handsome, graceful, free-spirited, honored, rich, a powerful speaker, widely learned, and humane—while the other is ugly, graceless, servile, dishonored, poor, weak, unlearned in speech, and misanthropic. Rather, there is present in some way, even in the less distinguished and humbler, some portion of grace or ability or natural aptitude for something good, just as amid hedgehog-thorn and rough rest-harrow the flowers of soft gillyflowers grow.
These qualities, then, the one who seems to have the advantage in other respects, if he does not belittle or conceal them, nor push his brother out of every prize as though in a contest, but yields in turn and declares him better and more useful in many things, will always be removing the pretext for envy, as it were extinguishing the fuel of a fire—or rather, he will not allow it to arise or take shape at all. And the man who, in matters where he himself seems superior, always makes his brother his fellow-worker and adviser—for instance, being skilled in rhetoric, in lawsuits; in office, in politics; in friendly dealings, in practical affairs—in short, who does not allow him to be left out of any notable and honor-bringing task, but shows him to be a partner in all fine things, making use of him when present and waiting for him when absent, and altogether makes it clear that, while he is no less capable of action than his brother, he is more ready to yield to him in reputation and power, takes nothing away from himself but adds greatly to his brother.
Such, then, is what one might advise the one who has the advantage. As for the one who is left behind, he in turn must reflect that his brother is not the only one, nor the sole person, richer or more learned or more brilliant in reputation than himself, but that he himself falls short of many, and is outdone ten-thousandfold by the ten-thousands of men who gather the fruit of the wide earth. Whether it is the case that he envies everyone who goes about, or whether, alone among so many fortunate men, it is his dearest and closest kinsman who grieves him, he has left no room for anyone else's misfortune to surpass his own.
Just as Metellus thought the Romans ought to be grateful to the gods that Scipio, being such a man, was not born in another city, so let each man pray above all that he himself excel in good fortune; but if not, that his brother should have the superiority and power that is envied. But some are so ill-disposed by nature toward what is honorable that, while they take pride and think highly of themselves if they have distinguished friends, powerful and wealthy strangers, they consider the distinctions of their brothers a dimming of their own; and while they are elated by the good fortunes of their fathers and the generalships of great-grandfathers of whom they are told, from which they derived no benefit and had no share, they are downcast and humbled by the inheritances, offices, and distinguished marriages of their brothers.
And yet, above all, one ought to envy no one else either; but if one must, to turn the malice outward and channel it toward others, as those do who direct their factional strife outward against enemies: "Many Trojans and famous allies are mine to be jealous of"; "and many Achaeans, in turn, are yours," naturally disposed to envy and jealousy. Toward a brother one must not, like the pan of a scale, incline in the opposite direction, sinking oneself as he rises, but rather, as with numbers, the lesser, by multiplying the greater and being multiplied by it, together increase and are increased along with the good things involved.
For the finger that cannot write or play the lyre is not thereby inferior to the one that does, but all work together and cooperate with one another in some way, as though purposely made unequal and possessing, by way of contrast, the capacity to combine with the greatest and strongest. So too Craterus, being Antigonus's brother while the latter was king, and Perilaus, Cassander's brother, set themselves respectively to command the army and to keep the household; but the Antiochi and Seleuci, and again the Grypi and Cyzicenes, not having learned to take second place to their brothers but reaching instead for the purple and the diadem, filled themselves and one another with many evils, and filled Asia with many as well.
Since envy and jealousy toward those who have the greater share of reputation and honor arise especially in ambitious characters, it is most useful for brothers, with a view to this, not to seek honors or powers from the same sources, but each from a different one. For even among wild animals there is war between those that feed on the same things, and among athletes those who compete for the same event are rivals; but boxers are friendly to pancratiasts, and long-distance runners are well-disposed to wrestlers, and are anxious for and eager on each other's behalf: hence, of the sons of Tyndareus, Polydeuces won at boxing, Castor at the footrace.
Homer, too, has fittingly made Teucer distinguished for his archery, while his brother excelled among the hoplites: "and he would hide him behind his shining shield." And among statesmen, generals do not much envy popular leaders, nor do forensic orators envy sophists among speakers, nor physicians concerned with diet envy surgeons; rather they even join together and bear witness on one another's behalf. But to seek to be renowned and admired from the same art or ability is, among ordinary people, no different from two men who love the same woman both wishing to have more of her and to be more esteemed than the other.
Those, then, who walk by different roads do one another no good at all, whereas those who follow different pursuits both avoid envy and cooperate with one another more, as did Demosthenes and Chares, and again Aeschines and Eubulus, and Hyperides and Leosthenes—the former speaking and writing in the assembly, the latter commanding armies and acting. Hence brothers who are not naturally disposed to share reputation and power without envy must direct their desires and ambitions as far as possible away from each other, so that they may gladden one another by their good fortune rather than grieve one another.
Beyond all this, one must guard against in-laws, relatives, and a wife—who sometimes, joining in with ambition, adds wicked words: "Your brother manages and controls everything, and is admired and courted, while no one comes near you, and you have nothing to be proud of." "Well, I have," a sensible man might reply, "a brother who is well esteemed, and I share in the greater part of his power." For Socrates said he would rather have Darius as a friend than the gold coin called the daric; and to a sensible brother, a ruling brother is no less a good thing than wealth or eloquence—no less a benefit than being rich or being eminent in the power of speech and reputation. But...
These inequalities, then, are most effectively soothed in that way. But other differences arise immediately, having to do with age, among brothers who have not been properly trained. For as a rule those who are older, since they always claim the right to rule over the younger, to take the lead, and to have the greater share in every kind of reputation and influence, are burdensome and disagreeable; while the younger, in turn, chafing at the bit and growing bold, practice contempt and disregard. Out of this,
some, feeling themselves envied and cut down, run away and resent all admonition; others, forever hungry for superiority, fear the growth of their brothers as though it were their own undoing. Just as in matters of gratitude people think the receivers ought to regard the favor as greater and the givers ought to regard it as smaller, so too, in advising about the passage of time, one might urge the elder not to think it a great matter and the younger not to think it a small one,
and thereby free both of them from arrogance and neglect, from being despised and from despising. But since it is fitting for the elder to show care, to take the lead, and to admonish, while it is fitting for the younger to honor, to emulate, and to follow, the elder's care ought to have more the character of a companion than of a father — persuading rather than commanding — and should take pleasure in successes
and speak well of them, while being not merely more eager but also kinder than one who finds fault and cuts down when the younger has erred; and in the younger's emulation there should be a spirit of imitation rather than of rivalry. For imitation belongs to one who admires, but rivalry to one who envies. That is why people are fond of those who wish to become like them, but oppress and are harsh toward those who wish to become their equals. And among the many honors which it is proper for the young to render
to their elders, obedience wins the greatest approval, and together with respect it produces strong goodwill and a gratitude that yields in return. It was by this means that Cato, from childhood on, cultivated the elder Caepio through compliance, gentleness, and silence, and in the end so completely won him over, even as grown men, and filled him with such reverence toward himself, that Caepio did nothing and said nothing without his knowledge. It is recorded, for instance, that once,
when Caepio had already sealed a document as a witness, Cato, arriving later, refused to add his own seal; and Caepio, on being asked for the document, removed his own seal before even inquiring what had prompted this — for the brother had not trusted the testimony, but had suspected it. And a great reverence of brothers toward Epicurus is likewise apparent, on account of their goodwill and devotion to him, both in other matters and in philosophy,
in which they shared his enthusiasm; for even if they were mistaken in their judgment, having been persuaded from childhood on and saying that no one wiser than Epicurus had ever lived, it is worth admiring both the one who instilled this conviction and those in whom it was instilled. Moreover, among the more recent philosophers, Apollonius the Peripatetic refuted the man who said that reputation could not be shared, by making his younger brother Sotion more famous than himself. As for me,
since among the many things worthy of gratitude from fortune, the goodwill of my brother Timon toward everything else, both in the past and now, is something no one who has had any dealings with us fails to know — least of all you, our intimate friends. There are, then, further feelings that brothers of the same or nearly the same age must guard against — feelings that are small but continual and numerous, and that build up a wretched habit of grieving and provoking one another
in everything, ending finally in incurable hatreds and bitterness. For beginning to quarrel over childish games, over the raising of animals and contests, such as those of quails or fighting-cocks, then over boys' wrestling matches, dogs in the hunt, and horses in races, they are no longer able, in weightier matters, to master or check their love of victory and their ambition — just as the most powerful Greeks of our own time, rising up over rival claims
about dancers and then about lyre-players, from that point on kept matching against each other, always fighting over territory, the swimming-pools and colonnades and banqueting-halls at Aedepsus, cutting off each other's water-channels and diverting them, until they grew so savage and were so ruined that, stripped of everything by the tyrant, and having become exiles and poor men — and (I nearly said) other men entirely compared to what they had been before — the only thing that remained the same in them was their hatred of one another. For this reason
it is especially necessary to fight hard against rivalry and jealousy toward one's brothers as it steals in over small and early matters, practicing instead the habit of yielding, of giving way, and of taking pleasure in doing favors for them rather than in defeating them. For the ancients called no other victory 'Cadmean' but the one fought at Thebes between the brothers, branding it as the most shameful and the worst. What then? Do not affairs bring forth many
pretexts for disputes and disagreements even to those who seem reasonable and gentle in temperament? Indeed they do; but even there one must be on guard, so that the matters themselves may be the point of contention, without attaching to them, out of rivalry or anger, any passion like a hook, but rather, as if weighing on the scale of justice, observing the balance in common, and settling the dispute as quickly as possible by arbitration and legal judgment, clearing it away before it takes root,
the way a dye or an indelible stain does, and becomes hard to wash out; and then to imitate the Pythagoreans, who, though related by no family tie but sharing only a common philosophy, if ever they were led by anger into abuse of one another, before the sun went down, would join right hands, embrace, and be reconciled. For just as, when a fever arises from a swollen gland, there is nothing alarming about it, but if it persists after the swelling has subsided, it is thought to be a disease
with a deeper root — so too, among brothers, a disagreement that ends along with the matter that caused it belongs to that matter alone, but one that lingers on shows that the matter was merely a pretext, and that the underlying cause was corrupt and festering beneath the surface. It is worth learning of a dispute between barbarian brothers, not over a small plot of land, nor over slaves or sheep, but over the sovereignty of Persia. For when Darius died, some thought
that Ariamenes ought to be king, being the eldest of the family, while others favored Xerxes, who was the son of Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, and had been born after Darius was already king. Now Ariamenes came down from Media not in a warlike manner, but quietly, as if to submit to judgment; and Xerxes, who was already present, was doing what belonged to a king to do. But when his brother arrived, Xerxes set aside his diadem, took off the upright tiara
that kings wear, went to meet him, and embraced him, and sending gifts, he ordered those who brought them to say, 'With these gifts Xerxes your brother now honors you; but if by the judgment and vote of the Persians he is proclaimed king, he grants you the place second after himself.' And Ariamenes replied, 'For my part, I accept the gifts, but I consider the kingship of Persia to belong to me. Still, the honor
of ranking after me I will reserve for my brothers, and to Xerxes first among the brothers.' When the trial took place, the Persians appointed Artabanus, the brother of Darius, as judge, since this was their decision, and Xerxes, trusting in the crowd, chose to be judged before him. But his mother Atossa rebuked him, saying, 'Why do you shrink from Artabanus, my son, who is your uncle and the best of the Persians? Why are you so afraid of this contest,
when it is a fine thing even to come in second, to be judged the brother of the king of Persia?' So Xerxes was persuaded, and when the pleadings had taken place, Artabanus declared that the kingship belonged to Xerxes; and Ariamenes at once leapt up, did obeisance to his brother, took him by the right hand, and seated him upon the royal throne. From that time on he held the highest place beside him and showed himself devoted to him, so that, fighting most bravely at
the sea-battle of Salamis, he fell for his brother's glory. Let this, then, stand as a pure and blameless model of goodwill and greatness of soul. As for Antiochus, one might indeed find fault with his love of power, but one might also marvel that his brotherly affection was not utterly extinguished by it. For he was at war with Seleucus over the kingdom, being the younger brother, and his mother sided with him in the struggle; yet at the height of the war,
when Seleucus had joined battle with the Galatians and been defeated, and was nowhere to be found, so that he was thought to be dead — almost the whole army having been cut down by the barbarians — Antiochus, on learning this, laid aside his purple robe, put on a dark garment of mourning, closed the palace, and mourned his brother. But a little later, when he heard that Seleucus had survived and was gathering another army, he offered sacrifice to the gods,
went out in public, and ordered the cities under his rule to offer sacrifice and to wear garlands. The Athenians, having oddly invented the myth of the gods' quarrel, mixed into it no small correction of its oddity: for they always leave out the second day of the month Boedromion, on the ground that it was on that day that the dispute between Poseidon and Athena took place. What, then, prevents us too, when a dispute arises with our relatives
and kinsmen, from setting that day aside in oblivion and reckoning it among the ill-omened days, rather than forgetting, for the sake of one day, the many good days in which we were raised and lived together? Either nature has given us in vain, and to no purpose, gentleness and the forbearance that springs from moderation of feeling, or these above all are what we ought to employ toward our kin and family. And no less than the giving of pardon to those who have erred,
the asking for it and the accepting of it when we ourselves have erred shows goodwill and affection. For this reason one must not neglect those who are angry, nor resist those who ask forgiveness, but must often anticipate, when we ourselves are at fault, our brothers' anger with an apology, and again, when wronged, meet their apology with forgiveness. It is well known in the schools that the Socratic Euclides, when he heard his brother say to him in an unreasonable
and savage way, 'May I perish if I do not take revenge on you,' replied, 'And may I perish if I do not persuade you to cease from your anger and to love us as you once loved us.' And the deed of King Eumenes, more than any words, has left no possibility of surpassing it in gentleness. For Perseus, king of the Macedonians, being his enemy, arranged for men to kill him; and those near Delphi
lay in ambush, having learned that he was walking up from the sea toward the god's shrine. Coming up behind him, they hurled great stones at his head and neck, by which he was stunned, fell, and was believed to be dead; and the report spread everywhere, and certain friends and attendants arrived at Pergamum believing themselves to be bringing first news of his death. So Attalus, the eldest of his brothers, a man
of decent character and, next to Eumenes himself, the best of them, not only was proclaimed king and put on the crown, but also married Eumenes' wife Stratonice and ruled jointly with her; but when it was reported that Eumenes was alive and approaching, he set aside the diadem, and taking up, as was his custom, his spears among the other spear-bearers, went out to meet him. Eumenes greeted him kindly in turn, and embraced the queen with honor
and affection; and having lived on for no small time afterward, blamelessly and without suspicion, he died, entrusting to Attalus both the kingdom and his wife. What then did Attalus do? After Eumenes' death, he was unwilling to raise even a single child by the woman, though she bore many, but instead reared and brought to manhood Eumenes' own son, and while he himself was still living, placed the diadem on him and proclaimed him king. But Cambyses, frightened by a dream
that his brother would become king of Asia, killed him without waiting for any proof or examination. From this the rule passed out of the line of Cyrus's succession when Cambyses himself died, and the family of Darius came to rule — a man who knew how to share not only with brothers but also with friends both business and power. It is further necessary to remember and observe this in disputes with one's brothers: to associate with their friends,
and to draw close to them especially at such times, but to avoid their enemies and not to receive them, imitating in this very thing the practice of the Cretans, who, though often at odds and at war with one another, when foreign enemies attacked, would set aside their quarrels and unite; and this practice was called by them 'syncretism.' For some people, like water seeping in upon those who are loosening and drawing apart, overturn ties of kinship and friendship, hating both parties
but attacking whichever one is weaker and more inclined to give way. For just as young and guileless friends share in the passion of a man in love, so, when a man is angry and at odds with his brother, the most malicious of his enemies seem to share his indignation and his anger. Just as Aesop's hen said to the cat, who was asking, as though out of goodwill, how she was faring in her illness, 'I would be well enough if you would go away,' so too
one must say to such a person, when he brings up talk about the quarrel, questions, and digs into some of one's secrets, 'But I have no quarrel at all with my brother, so long as neither I pay attention to slanderers, nor does he.' Yet now, somehow, when our eyes are inflamed we think we ought to turn them away from colors and objects that do not cause any blow or impact
on our sight, while in complaints, angers, and suspicions concerning our brothers, once we have fallen into them, we take pleasure and let ourselves be further stained by those who stir us up — though it would have been better to flee from and avoid one's enemies and ill-wishers, and instead to spend one's time, above all, with the brother's in-laws, relatives, and friends, going in to visit their wives and speaking freely and openly with them. And yet people say one ought not to take up a stone between brothers
walking along the road, and they are annoyed even when a dog runs between them, and fear many such trifles, none of which has ever actually divided the harmony of brothers — yet they do not notice that they are placing malicious and slanderous men between themselves and stumbling over them. Therefore, since the argument's continuity requires it, Theophrastus put it well when he said that 'if the possessions of friends are held in common, then above all the friends of friends ought to be held in common' — and this
advice one might give to brothers most of all. For private and separate associations and intimacies with others turn brothers away from one another and draw them apart; for loving different people is immediately followed by taking pleasure in different people, admiring different people, and being led by different people. For friendships shape character, and there is no greater sign of a difference in character than a difference in the choice of friends. For this reason, neither
eating together nor drinking together, nor playing together and spending the day together, holds brothers to harmony so firmly as loving the same people and hating the same people together, taking pleasure in being with the same people, and loathing and avoiding the same people together. For shared friendships bring neither slanders nor collisions; but even if some anger or complaint arises, it is dissolved through the mediation of mutual friends, who intervene and disperse it, provided
they are on familiar terms with both parties and incline with goodwill toward both alike. For just as tin welds together broken bronze and fuses it, becoming, by contact with both ends, sympathetically united with each, so too a friend who is well-suited and common to both brothers ought to reinforce their goodwill still further. But those who are unequal and unmixed, like discordant notes in a musical scale, produce division rather than harmony.
One might well raise the question whether Hesiod spoke rightly or, on the contrary, wrongly when he said that a companion should not be made equal to a brother. For the man who is fair-minded and generous, as has been said, will, by being blended together with both parties, become all the more a bond of brotherly affection; but Hesiod, it seems, was wary of the many worthless sort, on account of the jealousy and self-love so common among them. And it is indeed wise, while guarding against this, that even if one grants a friend equal goodwill, one should always reserve the first honors for one's brother—in offices and public affairs, in invitations and in introductions to men in power, and in whatever else is conspicuous to the multitude and conduces to reputation—rendering to nature its due dignity and prerogative. For a friend does not feel it so glorious to have the greater share in these things as a brother feels it shameful and inglorious to have the lesser. But on this point what seems right has been written elsewhere at greater length.
The saying of Menander is correct, that no one who loves himself is willingly neglected; it reminds and teaches us to care for our brothers and not, trusting to nature alone, to be careless of them. For even a horse is by nature fond of man, and a dog fond of its master, yet if they do not meet with attention and care they become estranged and alien; and the body, which is most closely akin to the soul, when neglected and overlooked by it, refuses to cooperate but instead does harm and abandons its tasks. Good care, then, is owed to one's brothers themselves, and even finer still is to show oneself always well-disposed and eager toward their fathers-in-law and sons-in-law in all things, to welcome and treat kindly their servants who are devoted to their masters, and to feel gratitude toward physicians who have healed them and toward loyal friends who have zealously and usefully shared with them a journey abroad or a military campaign.
One should regard a brother's wedded wife as the holiest of all sacred things, honoring and speaking well of her for her husband's sake; if she is neglected, one should share her indignation, and if she is angry, soothe her; and if she should err in some small matter, help reconcile her and urge her husband to be gentle. And if some private disagreement should arise between oneself and one's brother, one should lay the blame before her and resolve the grievance through her.
One should be most displeased at a brother's remaining unmarried and childless, and should urge and even chide him, driving him from every side toward marriage and binding him fast in lawful ties of kinship; and once he has acquired children, one should show more openly both one's goodwill toward him and one's honor toward his wife. Toward his children one should be affectionate as toward one's own, but gentler still and more mild, so that when they err, as the young do, they may not run away or, out of fear of father or mother, sink into base and disreputable company, but may have in one an aversion and refuge that at once admonishes them with kindness and pleads on their behalf.
In this way Plato too turned his nephew Speusippus back from great looseness and license, though he neither said nor did anything harsh toward him; rather, while his parents were forever reproaching and railing at the young man as he fled from them, Plato gave himself over to him kindly and without anger, and thereby instilled in him great reverence and emulation both of himself and of philosophy. And yet many of his friends found fault with him for not admonishing the youth; but he said he was indeed admonishing him thoroughly, by affording through his own life and manner of living a clear perception of the difference between what is base and what is noble.
Aleuas the Thessalian, when he proved arrogant and insolent, was checked and treated harshly by his father, but his uncle took him up and drew him close. When the Thessalians sent fire-signals to the god at Delphi concerning who should be king, the uncle secretly, without his brother's knowledge, cast in a lot on behalf of Aleuas; and when the Pythia declared this one chosen, the father denied having cast the lot on his own behalf, and everyone supposed some error had occurred in the recording of the names. They therefore sent again and inquired once more of the god; and the Pythia, as though confirming her earlier proclamation, said, "It is the ruddy one I mean, the child whom Archedice bore." And in this way Aleuas was declared king by the god because of his father's brother, and he himself far surpassed all who had gone before him, and brought his people to great glory and power.
But truly, when a brother's children prosper in success, honors, and offices, one ought to rejoice and take pride in it, and help further and spur them on toward noble deeds, and praise them unstintingly when they succeed; for to extol one's own son may perhaps seem burdensome, but to extol a brother's son is dignified, and not a mark of self-love but of love of the good, and truly something divine. Indeed, it seems to me that the very word for "nephew" points beautifully toward goodwill and affection for a brother's children.
One should also emulate the example of one's betters. Heracles, though he fathered sixty-eight children, loved his nephew no less than any of them; even now, in many places, Iolaus shares an altar with him, and men join in prayer to him, invoking him as Heracles' comrade-in-arms. And when his brother Iphicles fell in the battle near Lacedaemon, Heracles, overcome with grief, left the whole of the Peloponnese. Leucothea, when her sister died, raised the infant and helped make him a god as well; and for this reason the women of Rome, at the festivals of Leucothea whom they call Matuta, embrace and honor not their own children but those of their sisters and brothers.

======== Moralia: De Garrulitate ========

Philosophy takes on a difficult and stubborn cure when it treats talkativeness. For its remedy, reasoned speech, requires listeners, and the chatterers listen to no one, since they are always talking. And this is the first evil that unstoppable talk brings with it: an inability to listen. For it is a self-chosen deafness, on the part of people who, I think, find fault with nature because we have one tongue but two ears. If, then, Euripides
spoke well when he said to the unintelligent listener, "I could not fill a man who cannot hold it, pouring wise words into a man who is not wise," one might more justly say it to the chatterer: "I could not fill a man who will not receive it, pouring wise words into a man who is not wise" — or rather, pouring words all around a man who talks to those who are not listening, and does not listen to those who are talking. For
if he hears even a little, when talkativeness has, as it were, taken an ebb-tide, he immediately gives it back many times over. The portico at Olympia, which produces many echoes from a single sound, they call the "seven-voiced"; but let the slightest word touch talkativeness, and at once it re-echoes, setting in motion the unmoved strings of the mind. For it may be that in such people the sense of hearing has been pierced
through, not to the soul, but to the tongue. Hence for other people words remain lodged within, but with the chatterers they flow straight through, and then, like empty vessels, void of sense but full of noise, they go about. Well then, if it seems that no test has been left untried, let us say to the chatterer: "Boy, be silent; silence holds many good things" — and the first and greatest two are these: to listen and to be listened to. Neither of these falls to the lot of
the chatterers; rather, they grow despondent even about the very desire itself. For with the other diseases of the soul — love of money, love of glory, love of pleasure — at least the attaining of what they desire is possible; but for chatterers the hardest thing of all happens: though they desire listeners, they do not get them, but everyone flees headlong, and whether they are sitting in some half-circle or walking about, if people see the chatterer approaching them in the same place, they quickly pass the word to move off.
And just as, when a silence falls in some gathering, people say that Hermes has come in among them, so, when a talker enters a symposium or a council of acquaintances, everyone falls silent, not wishing to give him a handle; but if he himself begins to open his mouth, they rise up before the storm, as when the north wind blows off a stormy headland, foreseeing the swell and the seasickness to come. Hence it happens to them that they find neither dinner-companions
nor fellow-travelers who are eager for their company, whether on the road or at sea, but only unwilling ones; for he presses upon everyone everywhere, catching hold of their cloaks, their chins, knocking on their ribs with his hand. "Feet there are most honored," as Archilochus says — and, by Zeus, as the wise Aristotle too said. For he himself, when troubled by a chatterer and battered with strange stories, and the man kept saying repeatedly, "Isn't this amazing, Aristotle?" — replied, "No, this
is not the amazing thing," he said, "but that anyone with feet puts up with you." And to another such person, who after a long speech said, "I have talked your ear off, philosopher," he said, "No, by Zeus, for I was not paying attention." For even if chatterers force a person to listen, the soul hands over the ears to be drenched from outside, while it itself unfolds and works through other concerns within, addressed to itself; hence chatterers find no listeners who either pay attention
or trust them. For they say that the seed of those who are too easily inclined toward intercourse is unfruitful, and likewise the speech of chatterers is incomplete and fruitless. And yet nature has fenced in nothing within us so securely as the tongue, placing the teeth before it as a guard, so that, if it does not obey when reason draws in the "glossy reins" from within,
and is not held back, we may check its lack of restraint by biting it until it bleeds. For it is not of unbridled storerooms nor unbridled chambers, but of "unbridled mouths," Euripides says, that "the end is misfortune." But those who think there is no benefit to their owners in having unlocked, doorless storerooms and unfastened purses, yet who use mouths without locks or doors, flowing out continuously like the Black Sea, seem
to hold speech in the least honor of all things. Hence they also have no credibility, which every speech aims at; for this is its proper end, to produce belief in the hearers. But talkers are not believed, even when they speak the truth. For just as fire shut up in a vessel is found to be greater in quantity but worse in usefulness, so speech, falling into a talkative man, produces a great addition of falsehood,
by which it destroys credibility. Furthermore, every modest and well-ordered person would guard against drunkenness; for anger, in some people, shares a common wall with madness, but drunkenness lives in the same house with it — or rather, madness is lesser in duration but greater in cause, because the element of choice is present in it. Of drunkenness, nothing is so much condemned as the lack of restraint
and lack of limit in speech: "for wine sets loose even a very sensible man to sing, and moves him to laugh softly and to dance." And yet the most terrible thing — song, laughter, and dancing — none of this goes as far as speech. "And he uttered some word which had better been left unsaid" — this is already terrible and dangerous. And perhaps the poet, in resolving the question sought after by philosophers, has stated the difference between
being wine-flushed and being drunk: wine-flushing is relaxation, drunkenness is nonsense-talk. For "what is in the heart of the sober man is on the tongue of the drunken man," as the proverb-sayers say. Hence Bias, being silent at some drinking party and mocked for foolishness by a chatterer, said, "Who indeed could, being a fool, keep silent while drinking wine?" And a certain man in Athens who was hosting
royal ambassadors was eager to bring the philosophers together with them in the same place; and while the others engaged in conversation and contributed their share, Zeno kept quiet, and the guests, being friendly and drinking to his health, said, "And what should we say about you, Zeno, to the king?" And he said, "Nothing else than that there is an old man in Athens who can keep silent while drinking." Thus
silence has something deep and mysterious about it, and is sober, while drunkenness is talkative; for it is mindless and thoughtless, and for this reason also full of noise. And philosophers, defining drunkenness, say it is nonsense caused by wine; so drinking is not blamed, if silence attends the drinking; rather, it is foolish talk that turns wine-flushing into drunkenness. So the drunk man talks nonsense over
his wine, but the chatterer talks nonsense everywhere — in the marketplace, in the theater, on the walk, in his cups, by day, by night. He is heavier than the disease when he tries to nurse it, more unpleasant than seasickness to his fellow sailors, more burdensome when praising than another when finding fault. It is more pleasant, at any rate, to associate with clever rascals than with decent chatterers. For Sophocles' Nestor, gently soothing Ajax when he was harsh in speech, spoke this fittingly: "I do not
blame you; for though you act well, you speak ill." But we do not feel this way toward the chatterer; rather, the ill-timedness of his words spoils and destroys all the grace of his deed. Lysias composed a speech and gave it to a man who had a lawsuit; and the man, after reading it many times, came to Lysias downhearted, saying that the first time he went through it, the speech had seemed wonderful to him, but the second and
third time he took it up, it seemed altogether dull and ineffective. Lysias laughed and said, "Well then, are you not going to speak it just once, before the jurors?" And consider the persuasiveness and charm of Lysias: I too say of him that he has had good fortune with the violet-tressed Muses. And of the things said about the poet, the truest is that Homer alone has overcome the fickleness of men, always being fresh
and flourishing in charm; and yet, though he said and proclaimed of himself that famous line, "For that is hateful to me," saying things already made quite clear a second time, he avoids and fears the satiety that lies in wait for every discourse, leading the hearing from one story to another, and soothing its surfeit with novelty. But chatterers, I suppose, wear out the ears with their repetitions, defacing them like a palimpsest.
So let us first remind them of this: that just as wine, invented for the sake of pleasure and friendliness, is turned by those who force people to drink a great deal of it unmixed into a cause of unpleasantness and drunken misbehavior for some, so too speech, though it is the most pleasant and most humane of bonds, is made inhuman and unsociable by those who use it badly and carelessly, gratifying people by paining them, and being admired for things that only make them ridiculous, and
being loved for things that make them resented instead. Just as a man who repels and drives away those he consorts with, even though he wields Aphrodite's own girdle, is unlovable, so too the man who pains and alienates others with his speech is unmusical and unskilled. Of the other passions and diseases, some are dangerous, some are hateful, some are ridiculous; but talkativeness has all of these at once. For they are mocked in common conversations, they are hated because of
their reports of others' misdeeds, and they run into danger because they cannot keep secrets. Hence Anacharsis, being entertained at Solon's house and sleeping there, was seen with his left hand placed over his private parts and his right hand pressed to his mouth; for he thought that the tongue needed the stronger bridle, and rightly so. For one could not easily count as many men who have fallen through lack of restraint in matters of love as the number of cities and empires
that a secret word, once let out, has laid waste. Sulla was besieging Athens, having no leisure to spend much time there, "since another task pressed upon him" — Mithridates having seized Asia, and Marius's party again gaining power in Rome; but some old men chatting at a barber's shop said that the Heptachalcon was not being guarded and that the city was in danger of being taken at that point. His scouts, hearing this, reported it to
Sulla. And he immediately brought up his force and led his army in around midnight, and very nearly razed the city to the ground, and filled it with slaughter and corpses, so that the Ceramicus ran with blood. Yet he was harsher toward the Athenians because of their words than because of their deeds; for they spoke ill of him and of Metella, leaping up onto the walls
and jeering: "Sulla is a mulberry sprinkled with barley-meal," and babbling many such things, they brought upon themselves — for the lightest of things, words — as Plato says, "the heaviest penalty." And it was the talkativeness of a single man that prevented the city of Rome from becoming free again after it was rid of Nero. For there was one night, after which the tyrant was due to perish, everything having been prepared; but the man who was about to kill him, on his way to
the theater, saw one of the men in bonds at the doors, about to be brought before Nero, bewailing his own fortune, and came up close to him and whispered, "Pray, fellow, only that this day may pass; tomorrow you will thank me." The man, seizing on the riddle and understanding it, I suppose, that he was a fool who, leaving certainties, pursues uncertainties, chose the safer salvation over
the more just one. For he betrayed to Nero what the man had said; and the man was immediately seized, and tortures and fire and whips were brought against him, though he denied, under compulsion, what he had disclosed without compulsion. But Zeno the philosopher, so that his body, forced by torments, might not betray any of the secrets even against his will, bit through his own tongue and spat it at the tyrant. Fine too is the
prize for self-control that belongs to Leaena. She was a courtesan of the circle of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and shared in the conspiracy against the tyrants with the hopes proper to a woman; for she too had been caught up in Bacchic frenzy over that beautiful cup of love, and had been initiated by the god into the secrets. So when those men, having failed, were put to death, though she was interrogated and ordered to name those still undetected, she did not name them,
but held out, showing that the men had suffered nothing unworthy of themselves, if they had loved such a woman. And the Athenians, having made a bronze lioness without a tongue, dedicated it at the gates of the Acropolis, showing by the spirited nature of the animal her unconquerable courage, and by its tonguelessness her capacity for silence and mystery; for no speech, once spoken, ever helped as much as the many things kept silent have helped. For it is possible sometimes to speak what has been kept silent, but
it is not possible to keep silent what has once been spoken; it has already poured out and spread everywhere. Hence, I think, we have men as teachers of speaking, but the gods as teachers of keeping silent, since we receive silence in rites and mysteries. And the poet has made Odysseus, the most eloquent of men, also the most silent, and likewise his son, his wife, and his nurse; for you hear her saying, "I will hold out like tough oak or
iron." And he himself, sitting beside Penelope, pitied in his heart his wife who was weeping, yet his eyes stood as if of horn or iron, unmoving beneath his lids. So thoroughly was his body filled on every side with self-control, and reason, having everything obedient and in its power, gave orders to his eyes not to weep, to his tongue not to speak, to his heart not to tremble or bark.
"But his heart within him remained steadfast in its resolve," reason extending its rule even to the involuntary motions, and having made his breath and blood too submissive and tame to itself. Such also were most of his companions; for their being dragged along and dashed against the ground by the Cyclops, without denouncing Odysseus or revealing that fire-heated instrument prepared against
the eye, but rather being eaten raw than telling any of the secrets, has left no room for any greater degree of self-control and trust. Hence Pittacus spoke well when the king of the Egyptians sent him a sacrificial victim and bade him cut out the finest and the worst piece of meat; he sent it back having cut out the tongue, as being the instrument of good things and also the instrument of evils, the greatest of them. And the Euripidean Ino, claiming for herself the right to speak freely
about herself, says she knows both how to be silent where it is necessary and how to speak where it is safe. For those who have truly received a noble and royal education learn first to be silent, and only then to speak. King Antigonus, at any rate, when his son asked him when they intended to break camp, said, "Why are you afraid — that you alone will not hear the trumpet?" Did he not, then, refuse to entrust a secret word to the very one
to whom he was going to leave his kingdom? He was teaching him, then, to be self-controlled and guarded in such matters. Old Metellus, when asked something similar during a campaign, said, "If I thought my tunic knew this secret, I would take it off and put it on the fire." And Eumenes, on hearing that Craterus was approaching, told none of his friends, but lied that it was Neoptolemus; for it was
his soldiers despised, but they admired the man's reputation and loved his valor. No one else knew the truth; they engaged him in battle and overpowered and killed him without knowing who he was, and only recognized the corpse afterward. Thus did silence command the campaign and conceal so great an adversary — so that his friends, rather than blaming him for not warning them in advance, admired him all the more for it. And even if someone should blame him, it is better to be reproached for having saved yourself through distrust than to be accused of having been destroyed through misplaced trust.
Who, indeed, retains any right to complain against a man who kept silent? For if the report was meant to stay unknown, then it was ill spoken to anyone else at all; but if, having let it go from yourself, you keep it locked up in someone else, you have taken refuge in another person's fidelity, having thrown away your own. And if that person turns out to be like you, you are justly ruined; but if he proves better than you, you are saved beyond all expectation, having found someone more trustworthy than yourself. But, you say, "this man is my friend." Yet to this friend there is some other friend, whom he in turn will trust as I trusted him, and that man will trust another again; and so, as the intemperance winds on, the word takes on offspring and multiplies. For just as the monad does not step outside its own boundary but remains ever one — which is why it is called the "monad" — while the dyad is the unbounded starting point of division, since it immediately displaces itself through doubling and turns toward multitude, so too a word that stays with the first person is truly a secret; but once it passes to another, it has taken on the standing of a rumor.
For "winged words," as the poet says: just as it is not easy, once a bird has been let go from the hands, to catch it again, so it is not possible to seize and recapture a word once it has been released from the mouth. It flies off, circling swiftly on its wings, scattering from one person to the next. When a ship has been seized by the wind, men can still lay hold of it, blunting its speed with ropes and anchors; but once a word has, so to speak, run out of harbor, there is no roadstead or anchorage for it — carried along with a great roar and echo, it dashes the speaker against the rocks and plunges him into some great and terrible danger. From a small torch a man might set the whole peak of Ida ablaze; and having spoken to a single man, he may find that the whole town comes to know it.
The Roman senate was once deliberating some secret matter privately, over many days. Since the affair carried a good deal of obscurity and suspicion, one senator's wife — otherwise sensible, but still a woman — pressed her own husband, begging earnestly to learn the secret. Oaths and curses about her keeping silent were exchanged, along with tears, as she pleaded, since she felt she was not trusted. The Roman, wanting to expose her foolishness, said: "You win, wife — but listen to something terrible and monstrous. It has been reported to us by the priests that a lark has been seen flying about wearing a golden helmet and carrying a spear. We are considering whether the omen is favorable or bad, and we are puzzling over it together with the seers. But keep silent about it." Having said this, he went off to the forum.
She, however, immediately seized upon the first of her maidservants who came in, struck her own breast, tore her hair, and cried, "Oh, my husband, and my country! What is to become of us?" — wanting and prompting the servant to ask, "But what has happened?" And when the girl duly asked, she told her the whole story, and added the common refrain of all gossip: "Tell this to no one — keep silent." No sooner had the little servant left her mistress than she flung the story to the first of her fellow slaves she found free, and that one told it to her lover when he came to see her. In this way the tale rolled into the forum so quickly that it outran the very man who had invented it. One of his acquaintances, meeting him, said, "Are you just now coming down to the forum from home?" "Just now," he said. "Then you've heard nothing?" "Has something new happened?" "Why, a lark has been seen flying about wearing a golden helmet and carrying a spear, and the magistrates are about to hold a session of the senate over it." And he, laughing, said, "Good heavens, how fast — my own story has beaten me to the forum!"
So, having met the magistrates, he relieved them of their alarm; but to punish his wife, when he came home he said, "You have ruined me, wife — for the secret has been discovered to have leaked out of my own house and become public knowledge, so that I must now flee my country because of your incontinence." When she turned to denial, saying, "But did you not hear this together with three hundred others?" he replied, "What three hundred? Under your pressure I invented it, to test you." So this man, quite safely and with great caution, tested his wife as one might pour not wine or oil but water into a cracked vessel.
Fulvius, the companion of Caesar Augustus, when the latter was already an old man, heard him lamenting the desolation of his household — that of his two grandsons both were dead, and that Postumius, the one who still remained, was in exile on some slander, so that he was being forced to bring in his wife's son as successor to the principate, even though he pitied Postumius and was considering recalling his grandson from beyond the border. Fulvius, hearing this, reported it to his wife, she to Livia, and Livia bitterly reproached Caesar for having decided this long ago and yet not sending for his grandson, but instead setting her at enmity and war with the man chosen to succeed to power.
So when Fulvius came to him at dawn, as was his custom, and said, "Greetings, Caesar," Caesar replied, "Farewell, Fulvius." And Fulvius, understanding the meaning, went straight home, and summoning his wife, said, "Caesar has learned that I did not keep his secret — and for this reason I am about to kill myself." And his wife said, "That is only just, since after living with me for so long you did not know me, nor guard against my incontinence. But let me go first." And taking the sword, she killed herself before her husband could.
Rightly, then, did Philippides the comic poet, when King Lysimachus was being friendly toward him and said, "Which of my possessions shall I share with you?" reply, "Whatever you like, O king — except your secrets."
To garrulousness is attached an evil no less than officious curiosity, for such people want to hear many things so that they may have many things to say; and above all they go about tracking down and hunting out secret and hidden matters, laying them up as a kind of sacred kindling for their idle chatter. Then, like children with a piece of ice, they can neither hold onto it nor let it go; or rather, like men who have taken snakes into their bosom, having caught hold of secret words they cannot contain them but are eaten through by them instead. For they say that vipers burst open when giving birth; so too secret words, breaking out of those who cannot keep them, ruin and destroy them.
Seleucus Callinicus, having lost his entire army and forces in the battle against the Galatians, himself tore off his diadem and fled on horseback with three or four companions, wandering by trackless paths for a long stretch; and now, failing from want, he came to a farmhouse, and finding its master there by chance, asked for bread and water. The man gave him these, and generously offered besides whatever else the farm had to hand, and being friendly to him, recognized the king's face. Overjoyed at the chance to be of service, he did not restrain himself, nor did he go along with the king's wish to remain unknown, but escorted him all the way to the road; and as he took his leave he said, "Farewell, King Seleucus." And Seleucus, stretching out his right hand as if to draw the man close and kiss him, signaled to one of his companions to cut off the man's head with a sword — and while he was still speaking, "his head was mingled with the dust." Had he kept silent then, restraining himself for a little while, I think that once the king had later prospered and become great, he would have received far greater thanks for his silence than he ever did for his hospitality. This man, at least, had some pretext for his indiscretion — hope and goodwill. But most chatterers destroy themselves without even having a reason.
For example, in a certain barbershop, when talk turned to the tyranny of Dionysius and how adamant and unbreakable it was, the barber laughed and said, "Is this what you have to say about Dionysius, when I hold a razor to his neck every few days?" Hearing of this, Dionysius had him crucified. The barbers' trade tends to be rather talkative by nature, for the most incorrigible chatterers flock to them and sit down, so that the barbers themselves become infected with the habit. So it was that King Archelaus responded gracefully when a talkative barber, having thrown the cloth around him, asked, "How shall I cut your hair, O king?" — "In silence," he said.
A barber, too, was the one who reported the great disaster of the Athenians in Sicily, having heard it first in Piraeus from a slave who had escaped from there. He then left his shop and ran at full speed into the city, for fear that someone else might win the glory of bringing the news into the city first, and he arrive only second. When, as was to be expected, an uproar arose, the people gathered in assembly and went hunting for the source of the rumor. So the barber was brought in and questioned, though he did not even know the name of the man who had told him, but traced the story's origin back to some anonymous, unknown person. The crowd's anger and shouting rose: "Torture him, rack the accursed man — this has been made up and put together; who else heard it? who believed it?" A wheel was brought, and the man was stretched upon it. In the midst of this, those who brought the news of the actual disaster arrived, having themselves escaped from the very event. Everyone then scattered to their own private griefs, leaving the wretched man bound to the wheel. Late, toward evening, when he was finally released, he asked the public slave whether they had also heard how the general Nicias had died. So irresistible and incorrigible an evil does habit make of garrulousness.
And yet, just as those who have drunk bitter and foul-smelling medicines resent even the cups they drank from, so those who report bad news are resented and hated by the very people who hear them. Hence Sophocles neatly posed the dilemma: those who act and those who speak of it cause pain alike, and yet there is no restraining or punishing a tongue once it is flowing.
At Sparta the temple of Athena of the Bronze House was found to have been robbed, and an empty flask was discovered lying inside. Many people gathered, and there was much perplexity, until one of those present said, "If you wish, I will tell you what occurs to me about the flask. I believe that the temple-robbers, in undertaking so great a risk, first drank hemlock and then brought wine along with them, so that if they managed to escape unnoticed, they could drink the unmixed wine to quench and dissolve the poison and get away safely, but if they were caught, they could, before facing torture, die easily and painlessly from the poison." When he said this, the matter, involving as it did such an intricate and elaborate calculation, seemed to be the work not of a man who merely suspected it but of one who actually knew it. So they surrounded him and cross-examined him from every side — "Who are you?" "Who knows you?" "How do you know these things?" — until finally, thoroughly cross-examined, he confessed to being one of the temple-robbers himself.
Those who killed Ibycus were not caught in any such way. They were sitting in the theater when cranes appeared overhead, and they whispered to one another with a laugh, "Look — the avengers of Ibycus are here!" Those sitting nearby overheard this — since Ibycus had already been missing and searched for a long time — and, seizing on the remark, reported it to the magistrates. Thus convicted, the men were led off, punished not by the cranes but compelled, as if by a Fury or an avenging spirit, by the disease of their own tongues to confess the murder.
For just as in the body a flow and a drawing-together of the surrounding parts occurs toward whatever part has suffered and is in pain, so the tongue of chatterers, always inflamed and throbbing, draws and gathers to itself whatever is secret and hidden. For this reason it must be fenced in, and reasoning must be set, like a barrier, always in the tongue's path, to check its flow and its slipperiness, lest we seem more senseless than geese — which, they say, when they cross the Taurus range from Cilicia, a range full of eagles, take a sizable stone into their mouths, like a bolt or a bridle upon their own voice, and in this way pass over unnoticed by night.
If, then, one were to ask who is the very worst and most utterly ruined of men, no one, passing over the traitor, would name anyone else. Euthycrates, for instance, "roofed his house with timber from Macedonia," as Demosthenes says; Philocrates, having taken a great deal of gold, "bought whores and fish"; and to Euphorbus and Philagrus, who betrayed Eretria, the king gave land. But the chatterer is an unpaid traitor, and a self-appointed one — betraying not horses or city walls, but divulging secret matters in lawsuits, in factional strife, in the affairs of the state, with no one grateful to him for it. Indeed, if he himself is merely listened to, he counts himself the one who owes the favor. So the saying aimed at the man who pours out his own affairs at random and without discretion, doing favors no one asked for — "You are not being kind; you have a disease; you enjoy giving" — fits the babbler too: "You are no friend in telling me this, nor well-disposed toward me; you have a disease — you enjoy talking and babbling."
These things should be taken not as an accusation but as a treatment for garrulousness. For we overcome our passions through judgment and through practice, and judgment comes first. No one becomes accustomed to fleeing from and shaking off the soul what he does not already find distasteful, and we come to find our passions distasteful once we perceive, through reasoning, the harm and disgrace that follow from them — just as we are now perceiving in the case of chatterers: that wanting to be loved, they are hated; wanting to please, they are a nuisance; imagining they are admired, they are laughed at; gaining nothing, they spend themselves; they wrong their friends, benefit their enemies, and destroy themselves.
So this is the first cure and remedy for the affliction — reckoning up the shameful and painful things that result from it. A second line of reasoning should also be used, the opposite one: always hearing, remembering, and keeping ready to hand the praises of discretion, and the dignity, the sanctity, and the almost mystic quality of silence, and the fact that those who are terse and economical of speech are more admired, more loved, and thought wiser than these unbridled, headlong talkers — men in whom a great deal of sense is compressed into few words. Indeed Plato praises such men, comparing them to skilled javelin-throwers, uttering words that are compact, dense, and tightly wound. And Lycurgus, pressing his citizens toward this very skill by way of silence from childhood on, gathered and compacted them, just as the Celtiberians temper iron by burying it in the earth and purging away the great mass of earthy dross — so too Spartan speech has no husk to it, but goes straight to...
...by the removal of what is superfluous, is hardened into steel; for their gift of pithy speech, and the quickness combined with agility in meeting objections, come to them out of their long silence. It is with such men above all that these examples ought to be set before the chatterers, to show what charm and force they possess — for instance, the message "The Lacedaemonians to Philip: Dionysius at Corinth," and again, when Philip wrote to them, "If I invade Laconia, I will drive you from your homes," they wrote back: "If."
When King Demetrius was indignant and shouted, "The Spartans sent only one envoy to me," the envoy, quite unshaken, replied, "One man to one man." The men of old who spoke briefly are also admired. At the temple of Pythian Apollo the Amphictyons inscribed not the Iliad or the Odyssey, nor the paeans of Pindar, but
"know thyself" and "nothing in excess" and "a pledge, and ruin is at hand," admiring the compactness and plainness of the wording, which in brief compass held a hammered fullness of sense. The god himself is fond of conciseness and speaks briefly in his oracles, and is called Loxias because he shuns talkativeness more than obscurity. And are not those who convey what is needed symbolically, without speech, praised and admired all the more? So Heraclitus, when his fellow citizens asked him to say something about concord, mounted the platform, took a cup of cold water, sprinkled barley meal into it, stirred it with pennyroyal, drank it down, and departed — having shown them that being content with whatever is at hand, and not craving expensive things, keeps cities in peace and concord.
And Scilurus, the king of the Scythians, who left behind eighty sons, when he was dying asked for a bundle of spear-shafts, and had them take it and try to break and snap it while it was bound together in a mass; and when they gave up, he himself, drawing them out one by one, easily broke them all — thereby showing that their unity and concord made them strong and hard to overcome, but their dissolution, weak and unstable. If one were to
keep examining and calling to mind such things continually, he might perhaps cease taking pleasure in idle chatter. As for me, that household slave puts me to shame as well, when I consider how important it is to attend to what is said and to keep control of one's judgment. Pupius Piso the orator, not wishing to be bothered, instructed his slaves to speak only in answer to questions and nothing more. Then, wishing to entertain the magistrate Clodius, he ordered him to be invited,
and prepared, as was fitting, a splendid banquet. When the hour arrived, the other guests were present, but Clodius was still awaited; and Piso repeatedly sent the slave whose job it was to summon him, to see whether he was coming. When it was evening and hope was given up, he said to the slave, "Well then — did you invite him?" "I did," said the slave. "Then why hasn't he come?" And the slave said, "Because he refused." "Then why didn't you tell me at once?" "Because you didn't ask me that." 
Such is the Roman slave; but the Attic slave, while digging, will tell his master the reasons the deal fell through. So great is the power of habit in everything — and it is about this that we should now speak. For it is not possible to check the chatterer by seizing him as with a bridle; rather, one must master the disease by habituation. First, then,
accustom yourself, when your neighbors are asked questions, to remain silent yourself until everyone else has declined to answer; for the goal of deliberation is not the same as that of a race, as Sophocles says, nor is that of speech the same as that of an answer — in the race, victory belongs to the one who arrives first, but here, if another answers adequately, it is well to join in approving and confirming, thereby gaining a reputation as a kindly person;
but if not, then to teach what was not known and to fill in what was lacking is neither invidious nor untimely. But above all let us be on our guard not to anticipate the answer ourselves when someone else has been asked a question, rushing ahead of him. For it is perhaps not becoming in any other case either, when one person has been asked, to push him aside and take the request upon ourselves; for we shall seem at once to reproach the one asked, as unable to supply what is requested,
and the one asking, as not knowing from whom he could get it. But most of all such rashness and forwardness in answering carries an insult with it; for the man who anticipates the person questioned in giving the answer as good as says, "What need is there of him?" and "What does this fellow know? When I am present, no one need ask anyone else about these matters." And yet we often ask certain people questions not because we need the
information, but because we want to draw out some sound of voice and friendliness from them, and wish to draw them into conversation, as Socrates did with Theaetetus and Charmides. So it is like the man who, wanting to be loved by another, runs ahead and kisses him first, or like turning toward oneself the gaze that another is directing elsewhere — this business of anticipating answers and diverting the ears, dragging and turning the mind's attention toward oneself. Whereas,
even if the person questioned declines to answer, it is proper for the one who anticipated him to hold back and, adapting himself to the wish of the questioner, to respond as though to a call not addressed to him, with modesty and good order. For those who are questioned, if they go wrong in answering, meet with fair indulgence; but the one who volunteers and takes over the question uninvited is unpleasant even when he succeeds, and when he fails altogether
becomes an object of ridicule and mockery. A second exercise, then, concerns one's own answers, to which the chatterer must pay no less attention — first, so that he does not, without noticing, respond in earnest to questions posed only for the sake of mockery and insult. For some people, having no real need of conversation but only wanting pastime and amusement, compose certain questions and put them to such men, stirring up their
nonsense — against which one must be on guard, and not leap eagerly at speech as though grateful for the chance, but consider both the character and the purpose of the questioner. When it is apparent that he genuinely wishes to learn, one should habituate oneself to pause and make some interval between the question and the answer, during which the questioner, if he wishes to add anything, may do so, while the respondent may
himself reflect on what he is going to answer, and not run ahead of the question or bury it, often, in his eagerness, giving one answer instead of another to those still inquiring. For the Pythia is accustomed to deliver certain oracles on the spot even before the question is asked, since the god she serves both understands the mute and hears the one who does not speak. But the man who wishes to answer fittingly must wait for the intention
and carefully learn the purpose of the questioner, lest what happens in the proverb happen to him: "they asked for shovels, and the others refused them mattocks." Besides, this greedy eagerness, this keen appetite for talk, must be curbed, so that it does not seem — like a stream long pent up against the tongue — to be gladly discharged at the mere occasion of a question. Indeed Socrates used to restrain his thirst in just this way, not allowing himself
to drink after exercise until he had drawn the first bucket and poured it out, so as to accustom the irrational part of himself to wait for the proper time for drinking. Now there are three kinds of answers to questions: the necessary, the courteous, and the superfluous. For instance, if someone asks whether Socrates is within, the man who answers reluctantly and as if unwillingly says simply, "Not within"; and if
he wishes to be laconic, he will even drop the word "within" and utter only the negative — as the Spartans did when Philip wrote asking whether they would receive him into their city: they wrote back on a small piece of paper simply "No" and sent it off. The more courteous man answers, "He is not within, but at the tables"; and if he wishes to add a bit more, "waiting there for some guests." But the superfluous man, the chatterer, if he happens to
have been reading Antimachus of Colophon, will say, "He is not within, but at the tables, awaiting some Ionian guests, on whose behalf Alcibiades has written to him from near Miletus, where he is staying with Tissaphernes, the Great King's satrap, who formerly used to aid the Lacedaemonians but is now, because of Alcibiades, coming over to the Athenians; for Alcibiades, eager to return to his homeland, is winning Tissaphernes over" — and in general
he will stretch out and pour over the man the whole eighth book of Thucydides, and drown him in it, until Miletus is embroiled in war and Alcibiades exiled a second time before he finishes. It is above all in such cases that one must rein in one's talkativeness, keeping the answer, as it were, treading in the footprints of the question, and circumscribing it, as with a compass point and a fixed radius, by the need of the questioner. When Carneades, before he had yet won great fame, was disputing in the gymnasium,
the gymnasiarch sent word ordering him to lower the volume of his voice (for he had a most powerful voice); and when he said, "Give me a measure for my voice," the man cleverly retorted, "I give you the person you are conversing with as your measure." Let the wish of the questioner, then, be the measure for the one who answers. And just as Socrates used to bid people beware of those foods which persuade one to eat without hunger, and those drinks which persuade one to drink
without thirst, so the chatterer must fear and resist those subjects of talk in which he takes the greatest delight and indulges to excess, standing firm against the flow toward them. For instance, military men are given to telling stories of their wars — and the poet portrays Nestor as just such a man, often narrating his own feats of valor and exploits. In much the same way it happens to those who have had success in lawsuits, or who have unexpectedly distinguished themselves before rulers and kings —
a kind of disease befalls them and clings to them, of remembering and repeatedly recounting how they entered, were brought forward, contended, spoke, refuted certain opponents or accusers, and were praised. For joy is far more talkative than that proverbial comic sleeplessness, constantly fanning itself back to life and making itself fresh again through the telling. Hence men are prone to slip into such talk on every pretext; for it is not only true that
one puts one's hand where it hurts, but pleasure too draws the voice toward itself and turns the tongue, since it always wants to fix itself in memory. So it is that lovers spend most of their time in conversations that yield some memory of their beloveds; indeed, even if not to people, they talk about them to inanimate objects — "O dearest bed,"
"and Bacchis considered you a god" — "Happy lamp, you seem the greatest of gods to her." The chatterer, then, is quite literally the white chalk-line by which such talk is measured; nevertheless, whoever is more attached than others to particular subjects ought to guard against them, restraining and checking himself, since it is precisely such subjects that can carry one furthest away and draw things out at greatest length through the pleasure they give. The very same
thing happens to people regarding those subjects in which, through experience or some acquired skill, they believe themselves to surpass others. For being self-loving and fond of reputation, such a person devotes the greater part of his day to that in which he happens to be most accomplished — the well-read man to history, the grammarian to points of grammar, and the man who has traveled and wandered widely, to stories of foreign lands.
So these too must be guarded against; for talkativeness, lured on by them, advances like an animal toward its accustomed pastures. Cyrus is admired for this reason, that he used to compete with his companions not in the things at which he excelled, but in those at which he was less skilled than they, challenging them to these, so that he would neither cause pain by outdoing them nor fail to profit by learning. The chatterer does the opposite: if
some topic arises from which he might learn something and inquire into matters he does not know, he pushes it aside and rejects it, unable even to pay so small a price as silence; but he goes round and round, forcing into the conversation stale and well-trodden recitations. So it was that one of our acquaintances, who happened to have read two or three of Ephorus's books, wore out everyone and turned every
symposium upside down, endlessly narrating the battle of Leuctra and all that followed — from which he got his nickname, "Epaminondas." Yet this, at least, is the least of the evils, and one ought to divert one's talkativeness toward such subjects; for garrulity will be less unpleasant when it abounds in someone devoted to learning. Such people should also be trained to write something and to converse privately with themselves. For
the Stoic Antipater, it seems, being unable or unwilling to engage directly with Carneades, who was sweeping toward the Stoa with a great torrent of argument, wrote and filled his books with rebuttals against him, and so was nicknamed "Reed-Shouter." Perhaps, then, the chatterer too might be made lighter company for his associates each day by shadow-boxing in writing and warding off the shouting of the crowd — just as
dogs, venting their fury on stones and sticks, become less savage toward men. It will also suit them very well always to associate with their betters and elders; for out of shame before their reputation, they will grow accustomed to silence. And these habits must always be mixed and interwoven with that attentiveness and that inward reckoning, whenever we are about to
speak and the words are rushing to the mouth: "What is this speech that stands over me and forces its way out? To what end does the tongue quiver? What good comes to one who speaks it, or what hardship to one who keeps silent?" For it is not as though one must set down speech as a burden weighing one down, since it remains just as available even after it has been spoken; rather, people speak either because they themselves need something, or because
they are helping their hearers, or because they are providing some pleasure for one another, seasoning, as it were with salt, their pastime and whatever activity they happen to be engaged in with their words. But if what is said is neither useful to the speaker nor necessary for the hearers, and neither pleasure nor charm attends it, why is it said? For emptiness and futility are no less present in words than in
deeds. Above all, and beyond all this, one must keep ready at hand and remember the saying of Simonides, that he often regretted having spoken, but never regretted having kept silent; and one must remember that training overcomes and is stronger than everything — since even hiccups and coughs, when men forcibly restrain them by paying attention, they manage to suppress, though with effort and pain. And silence not only causes no thirst, as Hippocrates says,
but also causes no pain and no distress.

======== Moralia: De Genio Socratis ========

ARCHIDAMUS. I recall, Caphisias, a saying about a painter, not a bad one, that I once heard applied as an image to those who view painted pictures. He said that ordinary, untrained spectators greet the whole crowd of figures at once, all together, while the refined connoisseurs of the art address each of the persons they encounter individually and in turn. For the former get only a rough, imprecise general impression of the finished work, whereas those who examine it critically, part by part, let nothing that has been well or badly done escape their notice or go unremarked. I think the same holds, similarly, for actual events: the more indolent mind is satisfied with a mere report, if it learns only the headline and the outcome of the matter, but the man who loves honor and loves the beautiful takes more pleasure, as a spectator of deeds wrought like some great work of art, in the particulars — since the outcome has much in common with mere chance, while it is in the causes and in the individual struggles of virtue against circumstance, and in the intelligent daring shown in the face of danger, mingled with calculation suited to the occasion and to feeling, that the true spectacle lies. Since I take both you and us to belong to this class of spectators, go through the affair for us from the beginning, as it was actually done, together with the speeches that were likely made in your presence — for I myself would not have hesitated to come even to Thebes for this, were it not that the Athenians already think we lean too much toward Boeotia as it is.
CAPHISIAS. Well, Archidamus, I ought — "to set even business aside," as Pindar says — for the sake of coming here to this narration, out of regard for your goodwill; but since you have come on an embassy and have leisure until we receive the people's answers, to resist and be churlish toward one so fair-minded and friendly would seem to revive the old reproach against the Boeotians for hating discourse, a charge already fading thanks to your Socrates; while we, for our part, have shown ourselves so devoted to Lysis of sacred memory. But look to those present, whether they are conveniently disposed to listen to so long an account of deeds and speeches together — for the narrative is not short, since you bid me wrap the speeches in with it as well.
ARCHIDAMUS. You do not know these men, Caphisias. Indeed it is worth your knowing — they are sons of good fathers, and on close terms with you. This one here is the nephew of Thrasybulus, Lysitheides; this one is Timotheus, son of Conon; these are the sons of Archinus; and the rest all belong to our own circle of comrades — so that you will have an audience for your narrative that is friendly and akin to you.
CAPHISIAS. Well said. But what would be a fitting starting point for you, given what you already know of the events?
ARCHIDAMUS. We, Caphisias, know roughly how things stood at Thebes before the exiles' return. Indeed, how Archias and Leontidas persuaded Phoebidas to seize the Cadmea during a truce, and then, ruling themselves lawlessly and by force, banished some of the citizens and held the rest in check by fear — this we learned; and how at that time Melon and Pelopidas, as you know, became my personal guest-friends there and, throughout the time of their exile, always spent their time in my company; and again how the Lacedaemonians
fined Phoebidas for seizing the Cadmea and removed him from his command against Olynthus, and sent Lysanoridas as a third in his place instead, who kept a still tighter garrison on the citadel — this we heard; and we learned too that Ismenias met with a death that was anything but the best, straight after the trial held against him, since Gorgidas reported everything by letter to the exiles here — so that what remains for you to relate is
the return itself of your friends and the capture of the tyrants. CAPHISIAS. Well then, in those days, Archidamus, all of us who were party to the enterprise habitually gathered at the house of Simmias, who was recovering from an injury to his leg; there we would meet with one another whenever need required it, while openly we spent the time on discourse and philosophy — often
drawing in Archias and Leontidas as well, to keep suspicion away, since they were not entirely strangers to that kind of pursuit. Indeed Simmias, who had spent a long time abroad and had wandered among foreign peoples, had only shortly before arrived at Thebes, full of tales of every sort and of barbarian lore; and whenever Archias happened to have leisure, he would gladly sit down among
the young men and listen, wishing us to spend our time in talk rather than pay attention to what those others were doing. Now on that very day, on which, once darkness had fallen, the exiles were to come secretly to the wall, someone arrived from there, sent by Pherenicus — a man known to none of us except Charon; he reported that twelve of the youngest of the exiles were to arrive toward evening, hunting with dogs around
Mount Cithaeron; and that he himself had been sent ahead to announce this, and to find out about the house in which they would take shelter once they had come in — whose it would be — so that, knowing beforehand, they might go straight there. While we were at a loss and considering, Charon himself agreed to offer his own house. So the man made ready to hurry back again to the exiles. And Theocritus the seer, gripping
my hand hard and looking toward Charon as he went ahead, said, "This man, Caphisias, is no philosopher, nor has he had a share of exceptional and refined education, as your brother Epaminondas has; but you see how, led by nature toward the noble under the guidance of custom, he willingly takes on the greatest danger for his country's sake. But Epaminondas, who claims to surpass all the Boeotians in his education toward virtue,
is sluggish and unwilling, when he, of all men naturally fitted and well prepared for it, might make use of this opportunity, or some better one." And I said to him, "Most eager Theocritus, we are carrying out what has been decided; but Epaminondas, since he has not been persuaded, thinking it better not to do these things, reasonably resists what he is not naturally disposed to nor approves of when urged upon him. For you would not think it right, I imagine, to force a doctor who promises to cure the disease without knife
or cautery to cut or burn regardless. And so surely this man too, since he wishes no citizen to be put to death without trial, but is nonetheless ready to join eagerly in the struggle to free the city from kindred bloodshed and slaughter. But since he cannot persuade the majority, and we have set out upon this course, he bids himself, remaining pure and blameless of bloodshed, to stand ready for the crisis,
so as to bring himself to bear together with justice and with what is advantageous. For the deed will have no fixed limit, but while Pherenicus and Pelopidas, perhaps, will turn chiefly against those who are guilty and wicked, Eumolpidas and Samidas, men fiery in temper and hot-blooded, once they get license in the night, will not lay down their swords until they have filled the whole city with slaughter and destroyed many
of their own private enemies." While I was saying this to Theocritus, Galaxidorus — for he saw Archias and Lysanoridas the Spartan approaching, as it were, from the Cadmea, hurrying toward the very same place as ourselves — checked himself, and so did we. And Archias, calling Theocritus over and bringing him privately to Lysanoridas, talked with him a long time, having turned aside a little from the road, below the Amphion; so that
we grew anxious lest some suspicion or information had reached them, about which they were questioning Theocritus. Meanwhile Phyllidas, whom you know, Archidamus, who at that time was secretary to Archias and his fellow polemarchs and was party to the enterprise, took hold of my hand, as was his habit, and openly jested about the gymnasia and wrestling. Then, drawing me apart from the others, he asked about
the exiles, whether they were keeping watch for the day. When I said they were, he said, "Then I have done well to prepare the reception today, so as to receive Archias and make the men, in wine and drunkenness, easy to overpower." "Excellent," I said, "Phyllidas, and try to gather all, or as many as possible, of our enemies together in one place." "But that is not easy," he said, "rather impossible:
for Archias, expecting some woman of rank to come to him at that hour, does not wish Leontidas to be present; so that we must divide them between us and go to the two houses separately — for once Archias and Leontidas are both seized at the same time, I think the rest will either be out of the way in flight, or will remain quietly content, if anyone grants them safety." "So we shall do," I said. "But what business
do these men have with Theocritus, about which they are conversing?" And Phyllidas did not answer clearly, nor as one who knew; but I heard that ill-boding signs and portents troubling to Sparta were being reported. Phidolaus of Haliartus, meeting us, said, "Wait here a little, Simmias — for Leontidas is meeting privately with him about Amphitheus, pleading that he be allowed to arrange exile instead of death for the man." And Theocritus said, "That comes
at just the right time, and as if on purpose; for indeed I wished to learn what was found, and what altogether was the appearance of the tomb of Alcmene when it was opened among you, if you yourself were present when Agesilaus sent men and had the remains transferred to Sparta." And Phidolaus said, "No, I was not present, and much to my distress and indignation at my fellow citizens, I was left out by them.
There was found, at any rate — of the body nothing — a small bronze bracelet, and two earthenware jars containing earth that by long time had already turned to stone and hardened; and on the tomb a bronze tablet bearing many wonderful letters, seemingly of great antiquity — for from them nothing could be made out, even once the bronze had been washed clean and the letters exposed, but the form of the characters was of some peculiar, foreign kind, most closely resembling the Egyptian.
That is why Agesilaus, as they said, sent copies to the king, asking that they be shown to the priests, to see if they could understand them. But about these matters perhaps Simmias too could tell us something, since he was in Egypt at that time and spent much time with the priests there because of his love of philosophy." The people of Haliartus, however, believe that the great crop failure and the encroachment of the lake did not come about by chance, but that
this was the wrath of the tomb visiting them, for having endured its being dug up." And Theocritus, pausing a little, said, "But it seems the divine is not without anger even toward the Lacedaemonians themselves, as the signs show which Lysanoridas was just now telling us about; and now he is going off to Haliartus, to heap up the grave-mound again and to pour libations to Alcmene and to Aleus in accordance with some oracle, not knowing who this Aleus
even was; and once he returns from there he means to search for the tomb of Dirce, which is unknown to the Thebans except to those who have held the office of hipparch. For the man giving up that office shows it, alone, to the man taking it over, alone, by night, and after performing certain rites over it without fire, whose signs they confuse and obliterate, they depart, separating in the darkness. As for these men, Phidolaus, I think they will
find it out well enough. For most of those who have held the office of hipparch are now in exile as the law requires — indeed all of them except Gorgidas and Plato, whom they would not even dare to question, fearing the men; while the present rulers on the Cadmea are taking over the spear and the seal knowing nothing, neither..." While Theocritus was saying this, Leontidas went out with his friends; and we went in and greeted
Simmias, who was sitting on his couch — not having succeeded, I imagine, in his request, for he was very thoughtful and troubled; and looking at all of us, he said, "By Heracles, what savage and barbarous manners! Was it not superbly said by Thales of old, when he returned home after a long absence, and his friends asked what strangest thing he had learned of, that he answered, 'An old tyrant'? For even a man to whom nothing personally has happened by way of wrong,
resenting the very weight and harshness of such dealings, is an enemy to lawless and unaccountable powers. But these things, perhaps, will be the god's concern. Do you know who the stranger is who has arrived among you, Caphisias?" "I do not know," I said, "whom you mean." "Why," he said, "Leontidas says a man was seen at the tomb of Lysis, rising in the night,
imposing in the size and equipment of his retinue, and found to have been lodging there upon beds of straw; for there appeared to be pallets of chaste-tree and tamarisk, and moreover remains of fireless offerings and libations of milk; and that at dawn he was asking those he met whether he would find the sons of Polymnis at home." "And who," I said, "could the stranger be? From what you say he seems to be someone out of the ordinary, and no common man." "No indeed," said
Phidolaus, "but him, whenever he comes to us, we shall receive; for now, Simmias, tell us, if you know anything further about the matter of the letters we were just now puzzling over — for the priests in Egypt are said to have deciphered the writing on the tablet which Agesilaus took from us when he removed the tomb of Alcmene." And Simmias, remembering at once, said, "I do not know of this tablet,
Phidolaus; but Agetoridas the Spartan, bringing many letters from Agesilaus, came to Memphis to Chonuphis the prophet, with whom I, and Plato, and Ellopion of Peparethus, once spent time together studying philosophy. He came because the king had sent him and had ordered Chonuphis, if he could make out anything of what was written, to translate it quickly and send it to him; and Chonuphis, after spending three days poring over ancient books of every sort of
character, wrote back to the king and told us that the writing commanded that a contest be held in honor of the Muses, and that the characters were forms of the script used in the time of the reign of Proteus, which Heracles the son of Amphitryon had learned; and moreover that the god was instructing and exhorting the Greeks, through the letters, to devote themselves to leisure and peace, always contending through philosophy, and settling their disputes about justice
by the Muses and by reasoned speech, laying aside their weapons. We at the time thought Chonuphis spoke well, and thought so even more when, as we were returning from Egypt, near Caria some Delians met us, asking Plato, as a geometer, to solve for them an oracle that had been put forward by the god, and seemed strange. The oracle was that there would be an end of their present troubles, for the Delians and the rest of the Greeks, if they doubled the altar at Delos.
But they, unable to grasp the meaning, and meeting with absurd results in their construction of the altar — for when each of the four sides was doubled, they unwittingly, by this increase, produced a solid figure eight times the original, through ignorance of the proportion which gives a double result in length — called upon Plato to help them out of their difficulty. And he, recalling the Egyptian, said the god was making sport of the Greeks for their neglect of learning, mocking them, as it were,
...our ignorance, and bidding us take up geometry — not superficially. For it is not the task of a dull or slow understanding, but of one perfectly trained in the study of lines, to find two mean proportionals; only by this method is a cubic figure doubled, increasing equally in every dimension. This, then, Eudoxus of Cnidus or Helicon of Cyzicus would accomplish for them; but they must not suppose that the god desired this, but rather that he was ordering all the Greeks to give up war and its evils and to devote themselves to the Muses, and by calming their passions through reasoned discourse and mathematical study, to live together in harmless and beneficial intercourse.
While Simmias was still speaking, our father Polymnis came in, and sitting down beside Simmias said, "Epaminondas invites you and all these gentlemen, unless some more pressing business detains you, to wait here a little, as he wishes you to meet the stranger — a man of noble character himself, who has come on a noble and honorable errand from Italy, one of the Pythagoreans. He has arrived to pour libations at the tomb of old Lysis, prompted by certain dreams, so he says, and clear visions. He is bringing a considerable sum of gold, and thinks he ought to repay Epaminondas for his care of Lysis' old age, and he is most eager to help us in our poverty, though we neither ask for nor want it."
Simmias, pleased, said, "That is truly a remarkable man you describe, and worthy of philosophy. But what is the reason he does not come to us at once?" "It seems to me," he said, "that Epaminondas, after he had spent the night at the tomb of Lysis, is taking him to the Ismenus to bathe, and then they will come here to us; but before he met us he had spent the night at the tomb, intending to take up the remains of the body and carry them to Italy, unless some divine sign should oppose it by night."
When our father had said this, he fell silent. And Galaxidorus said, "By Heracles, how hard it is to find a man free from vanity and superstition! Some are caught unwillingly by these feelings through inexperience or weakness; others, wishing to appear god-beloved and out of the ordinary, invest their actions with an air of divinity, putting forward dreams and apparitions and other such pretensions to screen what really came into their minds. This may perhaps not be useless for statesmen who are forced to live among a headstrong and unruly populace — like using superstition as a bridle to draw the masses toward what is advantageous and turn them aside. But for philosophy such posturing seems not only unbecoming but contrary to its very profession, if, while promising to teach by reason alone what is good and advantageous, it then retreats to the gods for the source of action, as though despising reasoned proof, and, seeming to think demonstration beneath it, turns instead to oracles and the visions of dreams, in which even the most worthless of men often succeeds no less than the best.
For this reason your Socrates, Simmias, seems to me to have put on a more philosophical character of education and reasoning, choosing this plain and unaffected manner as befitting a free man and a lover of truth above all, and scattering that vanity — like a kind of smoke of philosophy — onto the sophists."
Theocritus took this up and said, "What then, Galaxidorus? Has Meletus persuaded you too, that Socrates despised the divine? For this is what he charged him with before the Athenians." "By no means," he said, "the divine things themselves — no. But having received from Pythagoras and Empedocles a philosophy full of apparitions and myths and superstition, thoroughly intoxicated with it, he accustomed it, as it were, to sober attention to realities and to pursue truth with a clear-headed reasoning." "Well then," said Theocritus, "and the divine sign — the daimonion of Socrates — what shall we say to that? To me, of all that is told about Pythagoras, nothing seemed so great and divine as what concerns divination. Just as Homer represented Athena as standing by Odysseus 'in all his trials,' so it seems that some such guiding vision from the beginning attached the daimonion to Socrates as a guide for his life, one which alone 'went before him and gave him light' in matters unclear and beyond human calculation to resolve — matters in which the daimonion often spoke along with him, sanctioning his own choices as divine.
The greater and more important matters one must inquire of Simmias and the other companions of Socrates; but as for myself, when I was present — do you remember, Simmias, when we went to Euthyphron the seer? It happened that Socrates was walking up toward the Symbolon and the house of Andocides, questioning Euthyphron the while and teasing him in play. Suddenly he stopped and, falling silent, fixed his attention on himself for a long time; then, turning back, he went by the street of the coffin-makers, and called back those of his companions who had already gone ahead, saying that his daimonion had come upon him. Most of us turned back with him, myself among them, keeping close to Euthyphron; but some young men, walking straight on as if to put the daimonion of Socrates to the test, dragged along with them Charillus the flute-player, who had come with me to Athens to see Cebes. As they went through the street of the image-carvers past the law-courts, they met a drove of pigs, thick with mud and jostling one another for numbers; and since there was no way to turn aside, some of them were knocked down by the pigs charging in, and others were smeared with filth. So Charillus came home with his legs and cloak covered in mud, so that ever after, whenever the daimonion of Socrates was mentioned, they would remember it with laughter, marveling that it never abandoned the man, and that the divine never neglected him."
And Galaxidorus said, "Do you suppose then, Theocritus, that the daimonion of Socrates possessed some private and extraordinary power, and not that the man, through experience, had confirmed for himself some portion of the common art of divination, one able, in matters obscure and beyond calculation, to add its weight to reasoning? For just as a single weight by itself does not move the scale, but added to an already balanced weight tips the whole toward itself, so too a sneeze, or a chance utterance, or some other such slight and trivial sign, can draw a mind already weighty with deliberation toward action: when two opposing calculations are in balance, that to which such a sign is added dissolves the difficulty by upsetting the equality, so that motion and impulse result."
Our father took this up and said, "But indeed, Galaxidorus, I too once heard from a certain Megarian — who had it from Terpsion — that the daimonion of Socrates was a sneeze, both his own and that of others: if someone else sneezed on his right, whether behind him or before him, he would set out on the action; but if on his left, he would turn away from it. And of his own sneezes, one, occurring while he was still deliberating, would confirm the action, but another, occurring while he was already acting, would check and prevent the impulse. But this seems strange to me — that, though he made use of a sneeze, he did not say this to his companions, but instead said that it was a daimonion that hindered or urged him on; for that would be a mark of a certain empty vanity and pretension, my friend, not of the truthfulness and simplicity for which we think the man became truly great and different from the many — to be thrown into confusion in his actions by an outside sound or a chance sneeze, and to abandon what he had resolved. But the impulses of Socrates, on the contrary, show firmness and vigor in everything, as proceeding from a right and strong judgment and principle. For to remain in poverty willingly all his life, when he could have had wealth with the goodwill of those who offered it; and not to abandon philosophy despite so many hindrances; and finally, when his friends had made every zealous and resourceful preparation for his safety and escape, neither to be bent by their entreaties nor to yield as death drew near, but to face the terror with unshaken reasoning — this is not the mark of a man whose judgment is changed, as chance would have it, by omens or sneezes, but of one led toward the good by a greater guiding authority and principle. I hear, too, that he foretold to some of his friends the destruction of the Athenian force in Sicily. And even before that, Pyrilampes son of Antiphon, who was captured in the pursuit near Delium, wounded by our spear, when he heard from those who had come from Athens for the truce that Socrates, along with Alcibiades and Laches, had returned safely by way of Regista, called down many curses on that road, and many too on certain friends and comrades of his who, in fleeing with him past Parnes, had been killed by our cavalry, for having disregarded the daimonion of Socrates and taken another road, not the one he led them by, away from the battle. I think Simmias too has heard this." "Often," said Simmias, "and from many; for the daimonion of Socrates in these matters was much talked of at Athens."
"Well then," said Pheidolaus, "Simmias, shall we let Galaxidorus in jest reduce so great a work of divination to sneezes and chance words, which even ordinary people use, and that only in trivial matters and in play? But when heavier dangers and greater undertakings overtake them, then comes to pass that saying of Euripides: 'No one is such a fool as to trifle with these things when the sword is near.'"
And Galaxidorus said, "As for what Simmias himself heard Socrates say on these matters, Pheidolaus, I am ready to listen and to be persuaded along with the rest of you; but what has been said by you and by Polymnis is not hard to refute. For just as in medicine a pulse or a small blister is a small thing but a sign of something not small, and for a helmsman at sea the cry of a bird or the slight rippling course of a light breeze signals wind and a rougher stirring of the sea, so too for a prophetic soul a sneeze or a chance word is not in itself a great thing, but a sign of a great event; for no art is despised for foretelling much through small and few indications. It is as if someone unfamiliar with the power of letters, seeing a few of them, small in number and mean in shape, should disbelieve that a man skilled in letters could read off from them great wars that befell men of old, and foundings of cities, and the deeds and sufferings of kings, and then, when told that these sounds, or something like them, signify and set forth each of these things to that reader of histories, should burst into hearty laughter at the man's ignorance — consider then, my friend, whether we too, not understanding the power of each kind of divination, are not foolishly indignant if a man of sense declares something about the unclear future from such signs, and moreover says that it is not a sneeze nor a voice but a daimonion that guides him in his actions.
For I now come to you, Polymnis, who wonder that Socrates — a man who, more than anyone, by his freedom from vanity and his simplicity, humanized philosophy — should, if the sign was not a sneeze or a chance word, name it, quite tragically, a 'daimonion.' For my part, I should on the contrary be surprised that a man so supreme in discourse and so masterly in the use of words as Socrates should say that it was not the daimonion but the sneeze that signified to him — just as if someone struck by an arrow should say he was wounded by the arrow rather than by the one who shot it, or that a weight was measured by the balance rather than by the one who set it up. For the work belongs not to the instrument, but to him who also uses the instrument for the work; and the sign, too, is a kind of instrument which the one who signifies employs. But as I said, if Simmias has anything to say, it should be heard, as from one who knows more precisely."
And Theocritus said, "First, though, let us find out who these newcomers are" — indicating rather the stranger whom Epaminondas seemed to be bringing with him. So we looked toward the doors, and saw Epaminondas leading the way, with his friends Ismenodorus, Bacchylidas, and Melissus the flute-player gathered about him, and following behind, the stranger — of no ignoble appearance, but showing in his manner gentleness and kindliness, and gravely dressed. When he had sat down beside Simmias, and his brother beside me, and the rest as each found a place, and silence had fallen, Simmias, addressing our brother, said, "Well, Epaminondas, how, and by what name, and from where ought we to address the stranger? For this, by custom, is the beginning of acquaintance and knowledge." And Epaminondas said, "His name, Simmias, is Theanor, and by birth he is a Crotoniate, of the philosophers there, who does no discredit to the great fame of Pythagoras; and indeed he has now come here, a long journey from Italy, confirming noble doctrines by noble deeds."
The stranger took this up and said, "Why then, Epaminondas, you are hindering the noblest of deeds. For if it is noble to do good to friends, is it not shameful to refuse to receive good from friends? For a favor, needing no less the one who receives than the one who gives, is brought to completion, toward what is noble, from both together; but he who does not accept it, like a ball well thrown, disgraces it by letting it fall short of its mark. For what target is it so pleasant to hit and so painful to miss as a man worthy of kindness, when one is eager through gratitude to reach him? But whereas the man who fails while the target stands still is undone through his own fault, here it is the one who declines and evades who does wrong to the favor, by not letting it reach its intended end.
To you, then, I have already gone through the reasons for which I sailed here; but I wish, having gone through them also to these gentlemen, to use them as judges before you. For when the Pythagorean fellowships in the various cities were broken up, overpowered by factional strife, and while those who still held together at Metapontum were sitting in council in a house, the followers of Cylon piled fire around it and destroyed them all together except Philolaus and Lysis, who, being still young, forced their way through the fire by their strength and agility. Philolaus, fleeing to the Lucanians, was saved and made his way from there back to the other friends, who were now gathering again and gaining the upper hand over the Cylonians; but where Lysis had gone remained unknown for a long time — until Gorgias of Leontini, sailing back from Greece to Sicily, reported to Arcesus and his circle that he had reliably learned Lysis was living at Thebes. Arcesus, in his longing for the man, was eager to sail there himself, just as he was; but being quite unable, through old age and weakness, he charged his friends above all to bring Lysis back to Italy alive, or, if he had died, to bring back his remains. But the wars and factions and tyrannies that intervened prevented his friends from accomplishing this task for him while he still lived.
And since the daimonion of Lysis, now that he is dead, has already given us clear signs of his end, and those who knew well reported to us the care and manner of life he had among you, Polymnis — that, having found rich provision for his old age in a poor household, and having been enrolled as father of your sons, he departed blessed — I was sent, young as I am, and alone, by many older men, who did not...
—who do not lack money to give, and who in return receive much gratitude and friendship. And Lysis indeed lies honorably buried by you, and a finer recompense than a splendid tomb is being paid out to him—a debt of friends to friends and kinsmen.”
When the stranger had said this, the father wept for a long time at the memory of Lysis, while the brother, smiling slightly as was his habit toward me, said, “What shall we do, Caphisias? Shall we let poverty go for the sake of money, and say nothing?” “By no means,” I said. “Do not betray our dear and good nurse—but you must defend her, for the argument is yours.” “Well then, father,” he said, “I myself feared that our household could be captured by wealth on this one point only—on account of Caphisias’s person, which needs fine clothing so that he may adorn himself before so many admirers, and needs abundant, plentiful food so as to hold out against the exercises and the contests in the wrestling schools. But since he does not betray his poverty, nor let go, like a dye, the poverty of his fathers, but, young man though he is, prides himself on frugality and is content with what he has, what disposition and use of money would there be for us? Shall we gild our weapons, no doubt, and inlay our shield with gold mixed with purple, like Nicias the Athenian? And shall we buy for you, father, a cloak of Milesian wool, and for mother a gown fringed with purple? Surely we shall not squander the gift on the belly, feasting ourselves more extravagantly, as though we had welcomed wealth as a heavier guest than we could bear.” “Away with that,” said the father, “my son—may I never live to see such a transformation of our way of life!”
“And yet,” he said, “we shall not sit idle at home guarding our wealth either; for in that case the favor would be graceless and the possession dishonorable.” “What then?” said the father. “Well,” said Epaminondas, “when Jason, the ruler of the Thessalians, recently sent much gold here to us and asked us to accept it, I appeared rather boorish in replying that he was beginning an unjust act, since, being a lover of monarchy, he was trying through money to win over a man of the people from a free and self-governing city. As for your zeal, stranger—for it is noble and philosophical—I receive it and welcome it especially; but you have come bringing remedies to friends who are not sick. Just as, if you had heard that we were at war and had sailed here to help us with weapons and missiles, and then found instead friendship and peace, you would not think it right to give those things and leave them with people who have no need of them—so you have arrived as an ally against poverty, as though we were troubled by it, when in fact it is very easy for us to bear, and a dear housemate. There is therefore no need of money or of weapons against it, since it causes us no distress at all. Rather, report to our friends there that they themselves make the noblest use of wealth, but that they also have friends here who make good use of poverty, and that Lysis himself has repaid us, on his own behalf, for his rearing and his burial—having taught us, among other things, not to be troubled by poverty.”
Then Theanor took up the argument and said, “Is it, then, ignoble to be troubled by poverty, but not strange to fear and flee wealth?” “It is strange,” he said, “unless one rejects it not on principle but out of affectation, or through boorishness, or a certain vanity.” “And what principle,” he said, “would exclude an acquisition gained from honorable and just means, Epaminondas? Or rather—for you should yield yourself to my questions more gently than you did to the Thessalian—tell me: do you think there is a right way of giving money but no right way at all of receiving it, or that both givers and receivers are always at fault?” “By no means,” said Epaminondas, “but just as with anything else, I think there is a shameful and a decent form of the giving and acquiring of wealth.” “Is it not so, then,” said Theanor, “that one who gives willingly and readily what he owes gives well?” He agreed. “And does one who receives what another gives well not receive well? Or could there be a more just acquisition of money than one from a person who gives justly?” “There could not,” he said. “Then of two friends,” he said, “Epaminondas, if the one ought to give, surely the other ought to receive. For in battle one ought to avoid the enemy who strikes well, but in matters of kindness it is not just either to flee or to reject the friend who gives well—if indeed poverty is not a hardship, then neither, in turn, is wealth so dishonorable and to be cast away.”
“No indeed,” said Epaminondas, “but there are cases in which, for one who does not accept it, what is generously offered becomes more honorable and more admirable to have declined. Consider it with me this way. There are, of course, many desires of many kinds—some called innate, springing up around the body in pursuit of necessary pleasures, and others acquired, arising for the sake of empty opinions, which, gaining strength and force through time and habit amid a corrupt upbringing, often drag down and debase the soul more violently than the necessary ones do. By habit and practice, reason has already managed to draw off a good deal even of the innate passions; but the whole power of discipline, my friend, must be directed against the incidental and superfluous desires, to work them out and cut them off by restraints and controls, chastened under the rule of reason. For if the resistance of reason to eating and drinking can overpower thirst and hunger, then surely it is far easier to check love of wealth and love of reputation, and to dissolve them utterly by abstaining from and restraining what they crave—or do you not think so?” The stranger agreed. “Do you see, then,” he said, “the difference between the discipline and the task toward which the discipline is aimed—just as in athletics you would call the contest for the crown against one’s rival the ‘task,’ and the preparation of the body for this through exercises the ‘discipline’? So too you agree that of virtue, one part is the task and another the discipline?” When the stranger had agreed, “Come then,” he said, “tell me first whether you think that abstaining from shameful and unlawful pleasures is discipline, or rather the task and proof of discipline.”
“I think it is the task,” he said, “and the proof; while the discipline and practice of self-control is something you are all still drawn to even now—whenever, after exercising and stirring your appetites like animals, you stand for a long time before splendid tables laden with rich dishes, and then hand these over to your household slaves to feast on, while you yourselves partake of plain and simple fare, your desires already tamed. For abstinence from pleasures where it is permitted is discipline for the soul in view of what is forbidden.” “Quite so,” he said. “There is, then, my friend, a certain discipline for justice as well, directed against love of wealth and love of money—not the refusal to go by night and steal one’s neighbors’ property, nor to rob passersby, nor even the refusal to betray one’s country and friends for silver; for in that case, perhaps, it is the law and fear that restrain the impulse to wrongdoing. Rather, it is the man who often willingly holds himself back from just and lawful gains, permitted though they are by the law, who practices and accustoms himself to keep far from every unjust and unlawful profit. For it is not possible for the mind to remain untroubled amid pleasures that are great but improper and harmful, unless it has often, when free to enjoy them, learned to disdain them; nor is it easy for one to pass over base gains and great opportunities for advantage, when they come within reach, unless love of profit has long since been bound and chastened within him. Rather, one who has been reared without restraint in the pursuit of gain surges toward injustice, and abstains from taking more than his share only with great reluctance and difficulty. But for a man who has given himself over neither to the favors of friends nor to the gifts of kings, but has even refused a legacy of fortune, and has turned away love of wealth even when a treasure appeared before him leaping into his path—for such a man there arises no impulse toward injustice, nor does it trouble his mind, but he deals easily with what is honorable, taking great pride in himself and conscious within his soul of the noblest things. It is of such men that Caphisias and I are lovers, dear Simmias, and we beg the stranger to allow us to train ourselves sufficiently in poverty toward that virtue.”
When his brother had finished saying this, Simmias, nodding his head two or three times, said, “Epaminondas is a great man; and the cause of this is Polymnis here, who from the beginning provided his sons with the finest upbringing in philosophy. But as for these matters, settle them yourselves between you, stranger. As for Lysis—if it is permitted for us to hear—do you mean to move him from his tomb and remove him to Italy, or will you allow him to remain here with us, to have us as kindly and friendly housemates when we too come to be there?”
And Theanor, smiling, said, “It seems, Simmias, that Lysis is fond of this place, having lacked none of the honors due him because of Epaminondas. For there is a certain rite performed privately concerning the burials of the Pythagoreans, and if we fail to obtain it, we do not consider that we have attained the blessed and proper end. So when we learned from dreams of Lysis’s death—for we recognize it by a certain sign appearing in sleep, whether it is the image of one dead or of one living—the thought occurred to many of us that Lysis had somehow been buried improperly in a foreign land, and that he must be moved by us so that he might there share in the customary rites. With this thought in mind, I came here, and was at once guided to the tomb by the local people; in the evening I was already pouring libations, calling upon the soul of Lysis to come down and declare by oracle how these things ought to be done. As the night went on, I saw nothing, but I seemed to hear a voice saying not to move what should not be moved: for the body of Lysis had been piously buried by his friends, and his soul, already judged, had been released to another birth, allotted to another guardian spirit. And indeed, meeting Epaminondas at dawn and hearing the manner in which he had buried Lysis, I recognized that he had been well instructed by that man even in the secret teachings, and that he uses the same guardian spirit for his life—if I am not a poor judge of the helmsman by his course. For broad are the paths of human lives, but few are those along which guardian spirits lead men.”
So Theanor, having said this, looked intently at Epaminondas, as though examining his nature and character afresh from the beginning. Meanwhile the physician came forward and undid the bandage of Simmias, intending to treat his wound; and Phyllidas, entering with Hippostheneidas and bidding me and Charon and Theocritus rise, led us into a corner of the peristyle, greatly agitated, as was plain upon his face. When I said, “Is there something new, Phyllidas, that has happened?” he replied, “Nothing new to me, Caphisias; for I had foreseen it and had warned you beforehand of Hippostheneidas’s cowardice, begging you not to share our plans with him or bring him into the enterprise.” When we were struck with astonishment at his words, Hippostheneidas said, “For the gods’ sake, Phyllidas, do not say this, nor let your rashness, mistaking it for courage, overturn both us and the city; rather, allow the men, if it is fated, to come down safely.”
And Phyllidas, growing exasperated, said, “Tell me, Hippostheneidas, how many do you think share in our secret plan for the enterprise?” “I myself,” he said, “know of no fewer than thirty.” “Why then,” he said, “when there are so many, have you alone undone and thwarted what was resolved by all, by sending out a horseman to the men who are already on the road, bidding them turn back and not press on today, when fortune itself has conspired to provide them with most of what is needed for their return?” When Phyllidas had said this, we were all thrown into confusion; and Charon, fixing his gaze very harshly upon Hippostheneidas, said, “Wretched man, what have you done to us?” “Nothing terrible,” said Hippostheneidas, “if you will drop the harshness of your tone and share in the reasoning of a man your own age, with hair as gray as yours. For if we had resolved to display to our fellow citizens a reckless courage and a spirit that thinks little of life, Phyllidas, there is still much of the day left—let us not wait for evening, but go now against the tyrants, swords in hand: let us kill, let us die, let us spare ourselves nothing.
But if it is neither hard to do nor to suffer these things, while to free Thebes of arms, surrounded as it is by so many enemies, and to drive out the Spartan garrison with two or three corpses, is not easy—for Phyllidas has not prepared so much unmixed wine for the banquets and receptions as to make the fifteen hundred bodyguards of Archias drunk, but even if we do away with him, Herippidas and Arcesus lie in wait that same night, sober—why then do we hasten to bring down our friends and kinsmen to obvious destruction, and this when our enemies are by no means altogether unaware of their return? For why has it been ordered that the Thespians remain under arms these three days, ready to attend whenever the Spartan commanders call them? And Amphitheus, as I learn, they intend to interrogate today and put to death as soon as Archias returns. Are these not great signs that our enterprise has not gone unnoticed? Is it not best to wait a while—not long, but only long enough to make our peace with the gods? For the seers, in sacrificing the ox to Demeter, say that the burnt offerings portend great public disturbance and danger. And what requires the greatest caution from you, Charon—yesterday, as Hypatodorus son of Erianthes, an honest and friendly man but one privy to nothing of our doings, was walking with me from the country, he said, ‘Hippostheneidas, you have Charon as a comrade, though he is not very familiar to me; if you think fit, then, tell him to guard against some danger arising from a very distressing and strange dream. For last night I dreamed that his house was in labor, as though pregnant, and that he himself and his friends, sharing in the anguish, were praying and standing round about it; and that it bellowed and uttered certain inarticulate cries, and at last a great and terrible fire blazed out from within it, so that most of the city was ablaze, while the Cadmea was surrounded only by smoke, and the fire did not spread up to it.’
“Such, then, Charon, was the vision which the man related to me; and I was terrified at once, and much more so on hearing today that the exiles intend to land at your house—I am in anguish lest we fill ourselves with great disasters, without accomplishing anything worthy against our enemies, but only stirring them up. For I count the city on our side, but the Cadmea, as indeed it is, on theirs.” Theocritus then took up the argument, and restraining Charon, who wished to say something in reply—
“But for my part,” he said to Hipposthenidas, “I have never felt so confident about our undertaking, Hipposthenidas—though I have always had good omens on behalf of the exiles—as I do from this vision you describe: if indeed a great, bright light rose in the city from a friendly house, while the enemy’s quarters were blackened with smoke, then nothing ever brought more relief than that, more than tears and turmoil could. And the voices that came from us were inarticulate, so that even if someone should try to bring an accusation, the affair, having received only an obscure report and a blind suspicion, will at the same moment both come to light and prevail. As for the sacrifices going wrong, that is only to be expected: the beginning and the victim do not belong to the people but to those in power.”
While Theocritus was still speaking, I said to Hipposthenidas, “Whom did you send to the men? For if you have not gotten far ahead of us, we will go after them.” And Hipposthenidas said, “I do not know, Caphisias—for I must tell you the truth—whether you would overtake the man, since he is using the best horse in Thebes. You know the man; he is the overseer of Melon’s chariot-teams, and through Melon he has known of the affair from the beginning.”
And I, recognizing the man, said, “Isn’t this Chlidon you mean, Hipposthenidas, the one who won the horse race at the Heraea last year?” “The very same,” he said. “Then who is this,” I said, “standing by the courtyard doors and looking at us for a while now?” Hipposthenidas turned and said, “Chlidon, by Heracles! Alas, has something worse happened?” And that man, when he saw us paying attention to him, came forward quietly from the door.
When Hipposthenidas nodded to him and told him to speak before everyone, he said: “I know the men well, Hipposthenidas, and since I found you neither at home nor in the marketplace, I guessed you had come here to these men, and I hurried straight here so that you should not be ignorant of what has happened. For as you ordered me to go with all speed to meet the men on the mountain, I went home to get my horse; but when I asked for the bridle, my wife did not have it to give, and she delayed a long time in the storeroom, searching and rummaging through things inside, giving me a thorough runaround, until at last she admitted she had lent the bridle to a neighbor that evening, at his wife’s request. I grew angry and spoke harshly to her,
and she turned to dreadful curses, praying for evil journeys and evil returns—which, by Zeus, may the gods turn back upon her alone. In the end, driven by anger, I went so far as to strike her, and then, when a crowd of neighbors and women came running together, I did and suffered the most shameful things, and have scarcely managed to reach you, so that you may send someone else to the men, since I am at present altogether beside myself and in a bad state.”
A strange shift of feeling came over us at this. For a little before, we had been vexed at being delayed; but now, because of the urgency and speed of the moment, as though there were no time to spare, we were thrown into anguish and fear. Nevertheless I addressed Hipposthenidas, took his hand, and encouraged him, saying that the gods too were summoning us to the deed. After this Phyllidas went off to attend to the reception of the guests and to draw Archias at once into the drinking party; Charon went to his house; and Theocritus and I went back again to Simmias, so that we might find an opportunity to speak with Epaminondas.
They were engaged in an inquiry that was not ignoble, by Zeus, but one that Galaxidorus and Pheidolaus had touched on a little before, puzzling over what the substance and power of Socrates’ so-called “daimonion” might be. What Simmias said in reply to Galaxidorus’ argument we did not hear; but he himself said that he had once asked Socrates about these matters and failed to get an answer, and so did not ask again; but that he had often been present when Socrates declared that those who claimed to have encountered something divine by way of sight he considered impostors, while to those who said they had heard a certain voice,
he paid close attention, and questioned them eagerly about where the impression had come from; and that we ourselves, considering the matter privately among ourselves, came to suspect that Socrates’ daimonion was perhaps not a vision but rather the perception of a voice, or the apprehension of an utterance, which made contact with him in some strange manner—just as in sleep there is no actual voice, yet people receive impressions and thoughts of certain words and believe they hear people speaking. But to some
this kind of awareness truly comes as in a dream, because of the stillness and calm of the body, when, as they sleep, their soul is barely able to hear the words of higher beings; whereas those choked by the tumult of the passions and the distraction of daily needs are unable to listen and give their attention to what is being revealed to them. But Socrates’ mind was pure and free from passion, mingling with the body only a little, for necessity’s sake,
so that it was sensitive and delicate, quick to change under whatever fell upon it; and what fell upon it one might liken not to spoken sound but to the meaning of a daimon, touching, without a voice, the very thing signified in the mind of the one perceiving it. For a spoken voice is like a blow to the soul, which is forced to receive the meaning violently through the ears, whenever we converse with one another; but the mind of the higher power guides
a well-endowed soul by simply touching it with the thought conceived, a soul that has no need of a blow; and the soul yields to it, relaxing and tightening its impulses—not violently, as when opposing passions resist, but pliably and gently, like reins that are given slack. And we should not be amazed at this when we see, on the one hand, small rudders turning great merchant ships, and on the other, the spinning of potters’ wheels made to revolve smoothly by the mere brush of a fingertip, even though they are lifeless things;
yet, because of the smoothness of their construction, they nonetheless yield readily to what moves them, once an impulse is given. Now the soul of a human being, strung with countless impulses like starting-cords, is by far the most easily turned of all instruments, if one takes hold of it rationally, once it has received an impulse to move toward what is conceived; for it is here, in the governing faculty, that the origins of the passions and impulses converge, and when this is shaken, they draw and pull
the person along with them. And it is precisely from this that one can best learn how great a force a single thought has: for bones, being without sensation, and sinews and flesh full of fluids, form a heavy mass that lies still and quiet—yet the moment the soul sets something in motion by way of intention and stirs an impulse toward it, the whole body rises up, becomes taut, and, as if in every part grown wings,
is carried toward the deed. And if the manner of this motion and tensing and readiness is difficult, or altogether impossible, to observe clearly—the manner by which the soul, having conceived a thought, draws the body along by its impulses—still, since a thought, conceived quite apart from any spoken voice, moves it without difficulty, so too, I think, we should not find it hard to believe that a lesser mind and a less divine soul could be guided from outside
by contact with a more divine mind and soul, which by nature has the capacity to make contact, reason with reason, as light makes contact with its reflection. For in truth, we recognize one another’s thoughts only as if groping in the dark, by means of speech; but the thoughts of daimons, possessing their own light, shine upon those able to perceive them, and have no need of words or names, which men, in dealing with one another, use as symbols, seeing only images and likenesses of what is thought, without knowing
the things themselves—except for those who possess some special and divine light, as has been said. And yet what occurs with regard to spoken voice can offer some comfort to those who are skeptical: for the air, once shaped by articulate sounds and made wholly into speech, and voice, accomplishes the act of understanding in the soul of the listener; so it should not seem astonishing if, in the same way, what is conceived by higher beings
sets the air in motion through its own susceptibility and impresses upon divine and exceptional men the very thought of the one who conceived it. For just as blows struck against bronze shields are detected because of the resonance, when they strike after rising up from a great depth, while other blows pass through unnoticed and go undetected among other things, so too the words of daimons, though carried through all things, resound only in those who possess a calm character and a soul unruffled,
the very ones we call sacred and daimonic men. But most people suppose that the divine only inspires men when they are asleep; and if it moves them in the same way while they are awake and in full possession of their senses, they consider it astonishing and incredible—just as if someone were to think that a musician, using a lyre that is slack, does not touch or make use of it once it is strung to pitch or tuned.
For they fail to see the true cause: the discord and disturbance within themselves, from which our companion Socrates was free—just as the oracle given to his father while Socrates was still a boy had foretold. For it bade his father to let him do whatever came into his mind, and not to force or redirect him, but to give free rein to the boy’s impulse, praying on his behalf to Zeus of the Marketplace
and to the Muses, but otherwise not to meddle in Socrates’ affairs, since he clearly had within himself, in place of countless teachers and guides, something better to lead him through life. “As for us, Pheidolaus, both while Socrates was alive and since his death, this is how we have come to think about his daimonion, despising those who explain it by omens or sneezes or something of that sort. But what we heard from Timarchus of Chaeronea concerning this matter, I do not know whether it is not more like a myth than an account, and better left unsaid.” “By no means,” said Theocritus, “but tell it through: for even if it is not entirely precise, still there is a point at which even the mythical touches upon the truth. But first tell us who this Timarchus was, for I did not know the man.” “Naturally,” said Simmias, “Theocritus,
for he was quite young when he died. He had asked Socrates that he be buried beside Lamprocles, Socrates’ son, who had died a few days before him, having become his friend and companion in age. This Timarchus, then, longing to learn the nature of the power of Socrates’ daimonion, being a young man of no mean spirit who had just tasted philosophy, shared his plan only with Cebes and me, and went down into the shrine of Trophonius, having performed the customary rites
at the oracle. He remained below for two nights and one day, and when most people had already given him up for lost and his family was in mourning, he came up early in the morning looking very radiant; and after bowing before the god, as soon as he had made his way through the crowd, he told us many wonderful things, both seen and heard.
He said that when he had gone down into the oracle, he first encountered a great darkness; then, after praying, he lay for a long time not clearly aware whether he was awake or dreaming, except that he seemed to feel a blow to his head, accompanied by a sound, and the sutures parted and released his soul. And as it withdrew and mingled, gladly, with air that was clear and pure, it seemed to him that he was breathing for the first time in a long while, after having been constricted before, and that he grew larger than he had been before, like a sail spreading out. Then he heard faintly
a kind of whirring sound circling above his head, giving off a sweet voice. Looking up, he could no longer see the earth anywhere, but islands shining with a soft fire, exchanging one color for another as they alternated, as though the light were dyed and varied by these changes. They appeared countless in number and immense in size, not all equal, but alike in being circular; and he imagined that the aether made a faint whirring sound as they moved in their circuit,
for the softness of that sound was in keeping with the smoothness of their motion, being harmonized out of all of them together. Between them a sea or lake was spread out, gleaming through its own blue-green color as the colors of the islands mingled into it; and a few of the islands sailed out along a channel and were carried across the current, while many others were drawn along, borne gently by the stream. And in some parts
the sea had great depth toward the south, but for the most part it was shallow water and shoals, and in many places it overflowed and then receded again, without producing great outflows; and its color in some places was pure and open-sea blue, in others not clear but murky and marsh-like. And the surging of the waves did not carry the islands back around so as to rejoin the point where they began,
nor did it complete a circle, but their courses shifted gently, tracing a single spiral as they revolved. Of these, the sea was inclined most toward the middle and greatest part of the surrounding whole, by a little less than an eighth of the total, as it appeared to him; and it had two openings through which it received rivers of fire pouring in from opposite directions, so that, being pushed back to the fullest extent, it seethed and turned white,
losing its blue-green color. He gazed on these things, delighting in the spectacle; but looking down he saw a great round chasm, as though a sphere had been cut away, terribly frightening and deep, full of great darkness that was not still but constantly stirred up and surging; from which countless howls and groans of animals could be heard, and countless wailings of infants mixed with the laments of men and women, and sounds of every kind
and disturbances sent up faintly from far below in the depths, which struck him with no small terror. After some time had passed, someone he could not see said to him, “Timarchus, what do you wish to learn?” And he answered, “Everything, for what is not wondrous here?” “But we,” the voice said, “have only a small share in the realms above; those belong to other gods. But the portion of Persephone, which we administer, being one of the
four into which the Styx marks a boundary, is available for you to examine, if you wish.” When he asked what the Styx was, the voice said, “It is the road to Hades, and it runs directly opposite, splitting the light with its very summit; and rising up, as you see, from Hades below, where in its circling it touches the light, it marks off the outermost portion of the whole. There are four
first principles of all things: of life, the first; of motion, the second; of generation, the third; and of decay, the last. The first is joined to the second by the Monad, in the realm of the invisible; the second to the third by Mind, by way of the sun; and the third to the fourth by Nature, by way of the moon. And presiding over each of these junctions sits a Fate, daughter of
Necessity: over the first, Atropos; over the second, Clotho; and over the one nearest the moon, Lachesis, around whom the turning-point of generation revolves. For the other islands have gods, but the moon belongs to the daimons; being close to the earth, it barely rises above and escapes the Styx, and is caught once every hundred and seventy-seven secondary measures; and as the Styx presses upon it, the souls cry out in terror.”
"For Hades snatches away many souls as they slip past, while others the moon draws back up from below as they swim toward her — those for whom the moment of their death has coincided with the moment of their coming-to-be — except for those that are polluted and impure. These the moon, flashing lightning and bellowing terribly, does not allow to draw near, but they, lamenting their own fate, fall away and are carried back down again to another birth, as you see." "But I see nothing," Timarchus said, "except many stars quivering around the chasm, others sinking down into it, and still others darting up again from below." "Then you are looking at the daimons themselves," he said, "without knowing it. For this is how it stands: every soul has a share of intellect; none is without reason or without mind. But whatever part of it is mixed with flesh and with the passions is altered and turns, under pleasures and pains, toward the irrational.
Not every soul mixes in the same way: some sink wholly into the body, and being thoroughly disturbed throughout their whole being by the passions, are carried along by them through the whole of their life; others are blended in part, but leave outside the purest part of themselves — not drawn in, but riding, as it were, on the surface, touching only from the crown of the man's head, like a mooring-line attached to one who has sunk in the depths — while the soul, being kept upright around it, supports as much as obeys and is not mastered by the passions. Now the part that is submerged, carried along within the body, is called the soul; but the part left free of corruption the many, calling it 'mind,' suppose to be within themselves — just as images appear in mirrors by reflection — but those who understand rightly call it, since it is outside them, a daimon.
"So then, Timarchus, the stars you see seeming to be extinguished you should understand to be the whole souls sinking down into a body, and those that seem, as it were, to kindle again and reappear from below, shaking off some mist and gloom like mud, to be the souls rising up out of bodies after death; while the ones moving about above are the daimons of those who are said to possess understanding. Try to make out the tether by which each is joined to its soul."
On hearing this, he himself, he said, gave closer attention and observed among the stars some tossing about less, others more, just as we see the corks that mark out the nets in the sea being carried along; some he saw dragging a motion that was confused and irregular, like spindles being twisted, unable to bring their movement to a straight course. And the voice told him that those whose motion was straight and orderly made use of docile souls, on account of good upbringing and education, souls that did not render the irrational part too harsh and wild; but those who swayed up and down, often unevenly and in confusion, as though wrenched as if from a tether, wrestled against their stubborn and unmanageable dispositions because of a lack of education — sometimes mastering them and turning them to the right, sometimes being bent by the passions and dragged along with their errors,
and then again resisting and struggling against them. For the tether, like a bridle cast upon the irrational part of the soul, whenever it pulls back hard, brings on what is called repentance for sins, and, for those pleasures that are lawless and uncontrolled, shame — a pain and a stinging of the soul from this source, as it is checked by the ruling and governing power — until, chastened in this way, it becomes obedient and, like a tame creature,
grows accustomed, without blow or pain, to perceive the daimon's wishes swiftly, through signs and tokens alone. "These souls, then, are brought and settled toward what is fitting only late and slowly. But from those docile and obedient ones, from the very beginning and birth of their own daimon, comes also the prophetic and god-inspired class of men — of whom you have surely heard of the soul of Hermodorus of Clazomenae,
how it would leave the body altogether by night and by day and wander far and wide, and then return again, having encountered and been present at many things said and done far away — until, his wife having betrayed him, his enemies seized his body, empty of its soul, and burned it at home. This story, however, is not true: for the soul did not leave the body; rather, always yielding and loosening the tether to the daimon, it gave it a circuit and a range of roaming,
so that, seeing and hearing much of what was outside, it reported it back. But those who destroyed the body while it slept are, even now, paying the penalty for it in Tartarus. "These things you will know more clearly, young man, in the third month; for now, go." When the voice had ceased, Timarchus said he wished to turn and see who the speaker was;
but he felt his head ache severely again, as though violently compressed, and could no longer perceive or be aware of anything around him. Then, after a little while, coming to himself, he saw that he was lying in the shrine of Trophonius near the entrance, where he had lain down at the start." "Such, then, is the tale of Timarchus. And since, on coming to Athens, he died in the third month after the voice had occurred to him,
we, in amazement, reported it to Socrates, and Socrates reproached us for not having told it to him while Timarchus was still alive; for he would gladly have questioned him further and examined him more closely about it. You now have, Theocritus, both the argument and the tale together; but see whether we ought also to summon our guest here to join in the inquiry, for it belongs to men of divine nature and is very much their concern." "But why," he said, "does Epaminondas not contribute his own view, drawing on the same considerations as we?" And my father, smiling, said, "Such, stranger, is his character: silent, and guarded in speech, yet insatiable in learning and listening. That is why Spintharus of Tarentum, who spent no little time with him here, always says, I believe, that he has met no man
who knew more and said less. So you, then, tell us yourself what you think about what has been said." "Well then," he said, "I hold that the story of Timarchus ought to be set aside as sacred and inviolate, dedicated to the god; but I am amazed if some are going to disbelieve what Simmias has said about it, when they name swans and serpents and dogs and horses as sacred, yet refuse to believe that men can be divine and beloved of the gods — and this while holding that the god loves not birds but mankind. Just as a lover of horses does not care equally for all of that kind, but always singling out and setting apart some one that is best, trains and rears and loves it above the rest — so too those above us,
marking out the best of us as if from a herd, deem them worthy of a special and superior guidance, directing them not by bit and rein but by reason, through signs — signs of which the many, the common herd, are altogether ignorant. For the many dogs do not understand the signals of the hunt, nor the many horses those of horsemanship, but only those that have been trained, perceiving at once, from some chance hiss or click of the tongue, what is commanded, and readily settling into what is
required. Homer too appears to recognize the very distinction we are speaking of: for among the seers he calls some 'interpreters of birds' and 'priests,' while others, who understand and are attuned when the gods themselves converse, he supposes declare the future, as in the line where he says, 'And Helenus, dear son of Priam, took to heart a counsel that pleased the gods in their deliberation, for thus I heard the voice
of the gods who live forever.' For just as some perceive and know the intention of kings and generals from outside, by certain beacon-fires and proclamations and trumpet-calls, while to their trusted intimates they declare it themselves — so too the divine encounters few, and rarely, by itself directly, but to the many it gives signs, out of which the so-called art of divination is constituted.
For the gods order the life of only a few men — those whom they wish to render supremely blessed and truly divine; but souls that have been released from birth and are now at leisure from the body, set entirely free, as it were, are daimons who care for mankind, according to Hesiod. For just as retired athletes, given up to old age, are not wholly abandoned by their love of honor and of bodily exercise, but take delight in watching others train, and encourage them and run alongside them,
so too those who have ceased from the contests of life, having become daimons through the virtue of their soul, do not entirely disdain the affairs and words and pursuits of this world, but, being kindly disposed to those who strive for the same goal and sharing their ambition for virtue, they urge them on and join in the effort, whenever they see them already near their hope, straining and just touching it. For it is not to whoever chances to be there that the divine
lends its aid: rather, just as, among swimmers in the sea, those still far out and heading further from the shore are watched in silence by those standing on land, while those already close by are run alongside and even waded out to, helped by both hand and voice, and so brought to safety — in just this way is the manner of the divine toward us, who are being swamped by our circumstances and taking on many bodies
as though changing vehicles: it lets us struggle and hold out ourselves, trying through our own virtue to be saved and to reach harbor. But whatever soul has already, through countless births, contended long and hard, striving well and eagerly, and, as its cycle is being brought to completion, is in danger and, straining ambitiously toward its escape, comes up drenched in sweat — to that soul god does not begrudge its own daimon's help, but lets it go to whoever is eager for it,
and each daimon is eager, in turn, to save a different soul that calls upon it; and the soul hearkens, because of its nearness, and is saved — but if it does not obey, the daimon abandons it, and it does not fare well." When this had been said, Epaminondas, looking at me, said, "For you, Caphisias, it is nearly time to go to the gymnasium and not to be absent from your companions; we will look after Theanor ourselves, once we have broken up
this gathering, whenever it seems best." And I said, "Let us do so; but I think this man Theocritus here wishes to have a brief word with me and with Galaxidorus." "Good fortune attend it," he said, "let him speak"; and rising, he went ahead to the bend of the colonnade. And we, gathering around him, tried to urge him toward the undertaking. He said he knew quite clearly the day of the exiles' return, and that he had arranged with
Gorgidas and their friends for the occasion; that they would put no citizen to death without trial, unless great necessity should arise; and that, besides, it suited their purpose with the mass of the Thebans that there should be some who were blameless and clear of what was done, who would therefore be able to advise the people without suspicion, as speaking from the best motives. This seemed good to us. And he withdrew again to Simmias and his companions,
while we went down to the gymnasium and met with our friends, and each of us, drawing another aside as we wrestled together, partly inquired and partly informed and made arrangements for the undertaking. We also saw Archias and Philip, freshly anointed, on their way to dinner. For Phyllidas, fearing they might do away with Amphitheus beforehand, had gone straight from escorting Lysanoridas to receive Archias,
and, raising his hopes about the woman he happened to desire, as if she would come to the drinking-party, persuaded him to turn to ease and relaxation with those accustomed to share his dissipation. It was already late, and the cold grew sharper as a wind came up, and because of this most people had withdrawn more quickly into their houses; so we met with Damocleidas and Pelopidas and Theopompus
and brought them in, and others brought in others still; for they had split up as soon as they crossed Cithaeron, and the storm allowed them, with their faces muffled, to pass through the city unnoticed. To some there flashed lightning on the right, without thunder, as they entered through the gates, and the sign seemed favorable, pointing to safety and glory, as though the enterprise would be brilliant but without danger. So when we were all inside — forty-eight
in number — with Theocritus already by himself sacrificing in a little chamber, there came a great pounding at the door; and after a moment someone arrived reporting that two servants of Archias had been sent in haste to knock at Charon's outer door, to summon Charon, and were ordering it to be opened and growing angry that no one answered quickly. Charon, thrown into confusion, at once ordered it opened for them, while he himself went out to meet them wearing a garland, as though
he had been sacrificing and drinking, and asked the servants what they wanted. One of them said, "Archias and Philip sent us to order you to come to them as quickly as possible." When Charon asked what the urgency was for such a summons at that hour, and whether there was anything unusual, "We know nothing more," the servant said, "but what shall we tell them?" "Why, by Zeus," said Charon, "tell them that as soon as I have set aside
my garland and taken up my cloak, I will follow you; for if I go walking with you at this hour, I would alarm some people, as if I were being led off under arrest." "Do just that," they said, "for we too must carry an order from the magistrates to the garrison guards in the city." So they departed. But when Charon had come in to us and told us this, terror seized us all, thinking we had been betrayed, and
most of us suspected Hipposthenidas, who had tried to stop the return through Chlidon, and, since he had failed and the danger was now bound up with the moment, was thought likely, out of fear, to have divulged the plan; for he had not come with the others to the house, and altogether seemed to have turned base and unreliable. Nevertheless, we all thought Charon must go and
obey when summoned by the magistrates. He then bade his son come forward — the finest of the Theban boys, Archidamus, and the most devoted to the gymnasium, about fifteen years old but far surpassing his contemporaries in strength and stature — and said, "Men, this boy is my only son and my beloved, as you know; I entrust him to you, calling on all the gods and all the daimons to witness: if I should show myself
base toward you, kill him, spare us not at all; but for the rest, good men, set yourselves against whatever befalls, and do not let your bodies be destroyed shamefully and ignobly at the hands of the basest men, but defend yourselves, keeping your souls unconquered for your fatherland." As Charon said this, we admired his spirit and his nobility, but were indignant at the suspicion, and urged that the boy
“...for it is not honorable that he too should fall into the hands of our enemies. No, dare beyond your years, my boy, and taste of necessary trials, and face danger together with many good citizens on behalf of freedom and virtue. Much hope still remains, and surely one of the gods looks down upon us as we contend for justice.” Many of us, Archidamus, were moved to tears by these words of the man; but Charon himself, without a tear, unmoved, put his son into Pelopidas's hands and went out through the door, greeting each of us and giving encouragement. And you would have admired still more the boy's own brightness and fearlessness in the face of danger — like Neoptolemus, he neither paled nor was struck with terror, but drew Pelopidas's sword and examined it closely.
At this point Cephisodorus, son of Diotonus, one of our friends, came to us carrying a sword and wearing an iron breastplate underneath his clothes; and learning of Charon's summons by Archias, he blamed us for our delay and at once urged us to march on the houses of the tyrants, saying that it was better to strike first before they could fall upon us, or else, if not that, better to go out and grapple with them in the open, scattered and unformed against each other, than to remain shut up in a small house like a swarm of bees waiting to be smoked out by the enemy. The seer Theocritus also urged us on, saying that the sacrificial signs had proved favorable and safe and reliable for us.
While we were arming and forming up, Charon arrived again, his face cheerful, smiling, and looking at us he bade us take courage, since nothing terrible was afoot, but the business was proceeding on its course. “For Archias,” he said, “and Philip, when they heard that I had come as summoned, were already heavy with drink and their souls as relaxed as their bodies; they barely got up and came out to the doors.” And when Archias said, “We hear, Charon, that exiles have slipped into the city and are hiding here,” I was greatly disturbed and said, “Where are they said to be, and who are they?” “We do not know,” said Archias, “and that is why we sent for you, in case you happen to have heard something more definite.”
And I, recovering my wits a little as if from a blow, reasoned that the report was not a reliable one, and that the plot had not been betrayed by any of those in on it; for surely they would not be ignorant of the house, if someone with exact knowledge had informed on us. Rather, some vague suspicion or rumor circulating in the city had reached them by other means. So I said to him: “While Androcleidas was alive, I know that such rumors often circulated for nothing, and false reports troubled us; but now,” I said, “I have heard nothing of the kind, Archias. Still, I will look into the matter, if you order it, and if I learn anything worth attention, it will not escape you.” “Indeed,” said Phyllidas, “leave nothing, Charon, unexamined or uninquired concerning this. For what is to prevent us from despising nothing, but being on guard and attentive to everything? Foresight and security are fine things.” And at the same time he took hold of Archias and led him back into the room where they happened to be drinking. “But let us not delay, gentlemen,” he said; “let us pray to the gods and go out.” When Charon had said this, we prayed to the gods and encouraged one another.
It was now the hour at which people are mostly occupied with dinner, and the wind, growing stronger, was already stirring up snow mixed with a fine drizzle, so that there was great emptiness as we made our way through the narrow streets. Those assigned against Leontiades and Hypates, who lived near one another, went out in cloaks, carrying no weapon but a dagger each — among them were Pelopidas, Damoclidas, and Cephisodorus. Charon and Melon and those with them, who were about to attack Archias's group, put on light corselets and wore thick wreaths, some of fir, some of pine, and some even wrapped themselves in women's tunics, imitating drunken men engaged in a revel with women.
But Fortune, Archidamus — a harsher power, evening out the softness and ignorance of our enemies against our own daring and preparation, and, as if embroidering our action from the start like a drama with episodes of danger — ran together into the very deed itself, bringing on a sharp and terrible struggle of unexpected reversal. For after Charon, having reassured Archias and Philip, had withdrawn home and was preparing us for the action, a letter arrived here from you, from Archias the hierophant, to that other Archias, who was, it seems, his friend and guest-friend, announcing the return and the plot of the exiles, and the house into which they had come, and their fellow-conspirators.
Archias, already flooded with drink and excited with expectation of the women, received the letter, but when the letter-carrier said it concerned serious matters, he said, “Serious matters, then, till tomorrow,” and put the letter under his pillow; then, calling for a cup, he ordered it filled, and kept sending Phyllidas out repeatedly to the door to see whether the women were approaching. While such hope was managing the drinking-party in this way, we approached, and pushing our way at once past the servants toward the men's hall, we stood a moment at the doors, surveying each of those reclining there.
The sight of the wreaths and the clothing, mistaking our appearance for a group visiting on other business, produced silence; but when Melon first rushed through the middle with his hand laid on the hilt of his sword, Cabirichus, the archon chosen by lot, seizing him by the arm as he passed, cried out, “Is this not Melon, Phyllidas?” Melon at once struck down this attempt with his sword as he drew it, and running at Archias, who was struggling to rise, did not stop striking until he had killed him. Philip, Charon wounded in the neck; and as he defended himself with the cups lying near him, Lysitheus threw him from the couch to the ground and finished him off. As for Cabirichus, we tried to calm him, urging him not to help the tyrants but to help liberate his fatherland along with us — for he held a sacred office and was consecrated to the gods on her behalf.
But since, on account of the wine, he was not easily brought round by reasoning to what was advantageous, but rose up agitated and confused, and leveled his spear point-forward — the spear which our archons by custom always carry — I, seizing the spear in the middle and raising it above his head, shouted at him to let go and save himself, or else be struck; and Theopompus, standing at his right and striking him with his sword, said, “Lie there now with those you flattered; may you never be crowned in a free Thebes, nor ever again sacrifice to the gods against whom you so often invoked curses on your fatherland on behalf of our enemies.” When Cabirichus had fallen, Theocritus, who was present, snatched up the sacred spear out of the slaughter; and of the servants, we killed the few who dared to resist, but those who kept quiet we shut up in the men's hall, not wishing them to slip away and report what had been done before we knew whether our companions' business had also gone well.
That other business was carried out in this manner: Pelopidas and his men came quietly up to Leontiades's courtyard door and knocked, and told the servant who answered that they had come bringing a letter from Callistratus at Athens for Leontiades. When he had reported this and, being ordered, drew back the bolt and opened the door a little, they burst in all together, knocked the man down, and rushed at a run through the courtyard toward the bedroom. Leontiades, at once grasping the truth from his suspicion and drawing his dagger, rushed to defend himself — an unjust man and tyrannical, but strong in spirit and vigorous of hand. He did not, however, think to knock over the lamp and mix with his attackers in the dark, but, seen in the light by them just as the door was being opened, struck Cephisodorus in the flank, and then, closing with Pelopidas second, shouted loudly and called for his servants.
But these were held back by Samidas and his men, who did not dare to come to close quarters with the most distinguished of the citizens, men who far excelled them in strength. Pelopidas fought hand to hand with Leontiades, a sword-fight at the narrow doors of the bedroom, and with Cephisodorus fallen in the very doorway and dying, the rest could not come to their aid. At last our man, taking a wound to the head that was not severe, dealt many blows and brought Leontiades down, and slew him over the still-warm body of Cephisodorus. For the man saw his enemy falling and gave his right hand to Pelopidas, and, embracing the others with a smile, breathed his last content. From there they turned to Hypates, and when the doors were opened for them in the same way, they caught Hypates fleeing over a roof into the neighbors' house and killed him.
From there they hurried to join us, and met us outside near the Colonnade of Many Pillars. Greeting one another and conferring together, we went on to the prison. Phyllidas called out the man in charge of the jail and said, “Archias and Philip order you to bring Amphitheus to them at once.” But the jailer, seeing how strange the hour was and that Phyllidas was not speaking in his usual manner, but was excited and agitated by the struggle, suspected the trick, and said, “At this hour, Phyllidas, did the polemarchs send for a prisoner? And through you? And what token do you bring?” And as he spoke, Phyllidas, holding a cavalry lance, drove it through his side and struck down the wretched man — whom, even by day, not a few women trampled and spat upon.
We then broke down the doors of the jail and called out by name first Amphitheus, then each of the others as each of us had a particular attachment. Those who recognized the voice leapt up gladly from their pallets, dragging their chains behind them; others, whose feet were bound in the stocks, stretched out their hands and cried out, begging not to be left behind. As these were being freed, many of those living nearby, perceiving what was happening and rejoicing, now came flocking to us. And the women, as each heard about her own kinsman, no longer keeping to the customs of Boeotian women, ran out to one another and asked those they met for news; and those who found their fathers or husbands followed along, and no one prevented them, for the pity, tears, and entreaties of virtuous women weighed heavily on those they met.
While this was happening, learning that Epaminondas and Gorgidas were already gathering with their friends around the temple of Athena, I went to join them; and many good citizens came together there, with ever more streaming in continually. When I reported to them everything that had been done, point by point, and urged them to come and help in the marketplace, all at once began proclaiming freedom to the citizens. And weapons were supplied to the crowds then assembling by the colonnades, which were full of spoils of every kind, and by the workshops of the knife-makers who lived nearby. Hipposthenidas too arrived with his friends and servants, gathering up trumpeters who happened to be in town for the festival of Heracles.
At once some sounded their trumpets in the marketplace, others in different places, throwing our opponents into confusion from every side, as though the whole city had risen; so that some, even setting fire to the Cadmea, fled, dragging along with them even those said to be their superiors, who were accustomed to spend the night below near the citadel. Those above, meanwhile, seeing this disordered and panicked flow of men below, and looking out toward us in the marketplace — no part of the city being quiet, but noise and uproar rising from every direction — did not resolve to come down, although they numbered about five thousand; struck with fear at the danger, they made excuses of another kind, pretending they were waiting for Lysanoridas, since he was expected that very day. For this reason, as we later learned, the Spartan elders fined him heavily; but Herippidas and Arcesus they put to death at once, seizing them at Corinth, and they handed over the Cadmea to us under truce and departed with their soldiers.

======== Moralia: De Gloria Atheniensium ========

That was rightly said by him to the generals who came after him, to whom he gave the opportunity for their later achievements once he had driven out the barbarian and freed Greece; and it will be rightly said also against those who pride themselves greatly on their speeches. For if you take away the men of action, will you have the men who write about them? Take away Pericles's statesmanship, and Phormio's naval trophies off Rhium,
and the brave deeds of Nicias around Cythera, Megara, and Corinth, and Demosthenes's Pylos, and Cleon's four hundred captives, and Tolmides sailing around the Peloponnese, and Myronides defeating the Boeotians at Oenophyta — and Thucydides has been erased for you too. Take away Alcibiades's youthful exploits around the Hellespont, and Thrasyllus's actions at Lesbos, and the overthrow of the oligarchy by Theramenes, and Thrasybulus and
Archinus and the seventy men from Phyle who rose up against Spartan domination, and Conon who again launched Athens onto the sea — and Cratippus too has been erased. As for Xenophon, he became his own historian, writing what campaigns he led and what successes he won, and he ascribed the composition of these events to Themistogenes of Syracuse, so that he might seem more trustworthy by narrating himself as though he were someone else, granting to another the glory of his own words.
But all the other historians — the Cleinodemi, the Diyli, Philochorus, Phylarchus — have become actors performing works that belong to others, arranging the deeds of generals and kings and slipping into their memory, so that they might share, as it were, in some ray of their light. For the reflection bends back from those who act to those who write, and there flashes up an image of a glory not their own, the deed shining through their words as though in
a mirror. This city has been the mother and kindly nurse of many other arts as well, having been the first to discover and reveal some of them, and having added power, honor, and growth to others. Not least among these has painting been advanced and adorned by her. For indeed Apollodorus the painter, the first of men to discover the gradation and blending of shading, was an Athenian; and upon his works
was inscribed, "someone will find fault rather than imitate." And Euphranor and Nicias and Asclepiodorus and Pleistaenetus, the brother of Phidias — some of these painted victorious generals, others battles, others heroes; as when Euphranor compared his own Theseus with that of Parrhasius, saying that the latter's Theseus had fed on roses, but his own on beef. For in truth Parrhasius's Theseus is painted
with delicacy and finish, and has a certain resemblance to life; but of Euphranor's Theseus someone, on seeing it, said not unaptly that it resembled "the people of great-hearted Erechtheus, whom Athena, daughter of Zeus, once nurtured." Euphranor also painted the cavalry battle at Mantinea against Epaminondas, not without a certain inspiration. The event unfolded as follows: Epaminondas the Theban, after the battle at Leuctra, was lifted up in pride and resolved to trample upon fallen Sparta and to tread down the
pride and dignity of the city. And he set about it. First, invading with seventy thousand troops, he ravaged the countryside and caused the outlying peoples to revolt from the Spartans; then, around Mantinea, he challenged those drawn up for battle. But when they were unwilling and did not dare to fight, waiting instead for the reinforcement from Athens, he rose by night, and, eluding everyone, marched down into Laconia, and very nearly succeeded in seizing and occupying the undefended city
by a sudden assault. But when the allies perceived it and reinforcements came swiftly to the city, he made a show of turning again to plunder and lay waste the countryside; and having thus deceived and lulled the enemy to sleep, he broke camp by night from Laconia, and, hurrying through the intervening country, appeared before the Mantineans unexpectedly, while they were still deliberating about sending
aid to Lacedaemon, and he immediately ordered the Thebans to arm themselves. So the Thebans, full of confidence, advanced under arms and surrounded the walls on every side. Among the Mantineans there was panic, shouting, and running about, since they were unable to withstand the enemy's force falling upon them like a flood, nor could they think of any way to help themselves. At that critical moment, by a stroke of fortune, the Athenians were coming down from the
heights into the territory of Mantinea, not knowing the turning point or the sharpness of the struggle, but proceeding along the road at their leisure. But when one of them ran ahead and reported the danger, though they were few in comparison to the number of the enemy, and were weary from the march, and none of the other allies was present, still most of them at once fell into formation. And the cavalry,
having equipped themselves and ridden out ahead, fought a fierce cavalry battle right under the gates and the wall itself, and, prevailing, snatched Mantinea out of the hands of Epaminondas. This is the deed that Euphranor painted, and one can see in the picture of the battle the clash and the resistance, full of strength, spirit, and passion. But I do not think you would set the painter in judgment against
the general, nor would you tolerate those who prefer the painted panel to the trophy, and the imitation to the reality. Yet Simonides calls painting silent poetry, and poetry speaking painting. For the deeds that painters display as happening, these words narrate and record as having happened. And if the one group makes the same things clear with colors and shapes, the other with names and
words, they differ in the material and manner of imitation, but the end set before both is one and the same; and the best of historians is the one who, like a painter, has made his narrative vivid with emotions and characters. Thucydides, at any rate, always strives with his prose for this vividness, wishing to make the listener a spectator, as it were, and to produce in his readers the same feelings of astonishment and disturbance that were felt by those who actually witnessed the events,
eagerly pursuing this effect. For there is Demosthenes drawing up the Athenians right along the surf itself at Pylos, and Brasidas urging on the helmsman to run the ship aground and pressing forward to the gangway, being wounded and fainting and sinking back toward the oar-passage; and the Lacedaemonians fighting a land battle from the sea, and the Athenians fighting a sea battle from the land. And again, in the Sicilian narrative, "the infantry
of both sides, while the naval battle hung in the balance, sustaining an unforgettable struggle and a straining of spirit" because of the close formations, so that "the continuous rivalry, and their very bodies swaying together in fear to match the fortunes of the fight," through the arrangement and shaping of the events, produces a vividness proper to painting. So that if it is not fitting to compare painters with generals, then let us not compare historians with them either. Now then, the
battle of Marathon — the man who announced it, as Heraclides of Pontus records, was Thersippus of Erchia; but most say it was Eucles, who ran still hot from the battle, weapons in hand, and, bursting in at the doors of the leading citizens, said only this much, "Rejoice, we have won," and then immediately expired. Yet this man came as his own messenger of the battle, having himself been a combatant in it. But suppose someone, standing above
some hill or lookout point of goatherds or shepherds, had watched the struggle from a distance, and, having observed that great deed, greater than any account of it, had come into the city as an unwounded, bloodless messenger, and then had claimed to receive the honors that Cynegeirus received, that Callimachus received, that Polyzelus received, simply because he had reported these men's feats of valor, wounds, and deaths — would this not seem to surpass all shamelessness? After all, they say the Spartans sent the man who brought word of the victory at Mantinea — the one Thucydides has recorded — nothing more than a piece of meat from the common mess as his reward for good news.
And indeed the writers of history are a kind of messengers of deeds, messengers with fine voices, who reach us through the beauty and power of their language; and to them a reward for good news is owed by those who first encounter their accounts and learn from them what happened. They are praised, of course, and they are remembered and read — but on account of the men who succeeded. For the words do not create the deeds; it is because of the deeds that the words are judged worth hearing at all.
Poetry, too, won its charm and its honor by saying things that resemble what was actually done, as Homer put it: "he told many falsehoods, making them like the truth." There is also a story that one of Menander's intimates said to him, "The Dionysia is almost here, Menander, and you haven't composed your comedy?" And he replied, "By the gods, I certainly have composed the comedy: the plot is fully worked out; I only have to fit the little verses to it." For even the poets themselves consider the matter more essential and more authoritative than the words.
And Corinna admonished Pindar, when he was still young and making a swaggering display of his eloquence, telling him he was no true poet because he did not compose myths, which is the proper business of poetry, whereas rare words, strained usages, paraphrases, melodies, and rhythms are mere seasonings added to the matter. Taking her words very much to heart, Pindar composed that famous song: "Ismenus, or Melia of the golden distaff, or Cadmus, or the holy race of the Sown Men, or the mighty strength of Heracles, or the gladdening honor of Dionysus..." When he showed it to Corinna, she laughed and said that one should sow with the hand, not with the whole sack. For Pindar really had mixed together and heaped up a whole seed-jumble of myths and poured it into the song.
But that poetry is concerned with myth-making, Plato too has said. And a myth aims to be an account that is false but resembles a true one; hence it stands at a great remove from actual deeds, if an account is an image and phantom of a deed, and a myth an image and phantom of an account. And those who invent deeds fall as far short of those who record them as those who merely speak lag behind those who act.
In epic poetry, then, the city has had no famous practitioner, nor in lyric; for Cinesias seems to have been a wretched composer of dithyrambs, and he himself proved barren and without renown, while by being mocked and jeered at by the comic poets he came into a fame that was hardly a happy one. As for the dramatists, the Athenians considered comedy so undignified and vulgar that there was a law forbidding any member of the Areopagus to write comedies. But tragedy flowered and won renown, becoming a marvelous thing for the people of that age to hear and to see, and offering through its myths and its passions a deception, as Gorgias says, in which the one who deceives is more honest than the one who does not, and the one who is deceived is wiser than the one who is not. For the deceiver is more honest, because he has done what he promised; and the deceived is wiser, because anything not utterly insensible is easily captivated by the pleasure of words.
What benefit, then, did the fine tragedies bring to Athens comparable to the way Themistocles' shrewdness walled the city, or Pericles' diligence adorned the acropolis, or Miltiades set her free, or Cimon led her forward to supremacy? If the wisdom of Euripides, the eloquence of Sophocles, and the mouth of Aeschylus in the same way rid the city of any of its troubles or won her any brilliant success, then it is indeed fair to set the dramas alongside the trophies, to raise up the theater against the generals' headquarters, and to weigh the poets' production records against the commanders' feats of valor.
Shall we, then, bring in the men themselves, carrying the tokens and emblems of their works, and give each company its own entrance? From one side let the poets come forward, to the sound of pipes and lyres, speaking and singing: "Keep holy silence, and stand aside from our choruses, whoever is untried in such words, or is not pure in mind, or has never sung or danced the rites of the noble Muses, nor been initiated into the Bacchic mysteries of the tongue of Cratinus the bull-eater" — carrying costumes and masks and altars and stage machinery and revolving scenery and victory tripods. And with them let the tragic actors join the procession — the Nicostratuses and Callippideses and Mynniscuses, the Theodoruses and Poluses — like the beauticians and litter-bearers of tragedy as of some extravagant woman, or rather like the encaustic painters and gilders and dyers who attend upon statues. And let there be furnished a costly choregia (the sponsor's outlay for a production) and an unmanageable crowd of props and masks and purple trailing robes and stage machinery and chorus-trainers and spear-bearers.
Looking at all this, a Laconian said, not badly, that the Athenians were greatly at fault in squandering their seriousness on play — that is, in lavishing on the theater the costs of great naval expeditions and the provisioning of armies. For if what each drama cost is reckoned up, the Athenian people will be found to have spent more on Bacchaes and Phoenician Women and Oedipuses and Antigone and the woes of Medea and Electra than on the wars they fought against the barbarians for supremacy and for freedom. For the generals often ordered their men to bring rations that needed no cooking, and so led them out to battle; and the trierarchs, by Zeus, supplied their rowers with barley meal, with onions and cheese for relish, and so put them aboard the triremes; but the choregoi set eels and lettuces and hams and marrow before their choristers, and feasted them lavishly over a long stretch of time while they trained their voices and lived in luxury. And the upshot of all this, for the losers, was to be insulted into the bargain and made objects of ridicule; while the winners got the tripod — which is not a votive offering for victory, as Demetrius says, but a last libation over livelihoods poured out, an empty tomb of bankrupted estates. Such are the returns of the poetic art, and nothing more splendid ever comes of them.
Now let us watch the generals as they come in from the other side. As they pass, truly "keep holy silence and stand aside" — you who are men of no action, who have never held office or borne arms — "whoever lacks daring for such deeds and is not pure in mind, and has never been initiated into the Bacchic mysteries of the hand of Miltiades the Mede-slayer or of Themistocles the Persian-killer." This is the revel-procession of Ares, weighed down with phalanxes from the land and fleets from the sea and with mingled spoils and trophies. "Hear, Alala, daughter of War, prelude of spears, to whom men are offered up in death as a holy sacrifice," as Epaminondas the Theban said — men who give themselves, for fatherland and tombs and temples, to the noblest and most brilliant of contests.
And their Victories, it seems to me, come forward dragging no ox or goat as a prize, nor wreathed with ivy and reeking of Dionysiac wine-lees. No: whole cities belong to them, and islands and continents, temples costing a thousand talents and colonies of ten thousand settlers; and they are crowned with trophies of every kind and with spoils. Their images and emblems are hundred-foot Parthenons, southern walls, ship-sheds, Propylaea, the Chersonese, Amphipolis. Marathon escorts the Victory of Miltiades, and Salamis that of Themistocles, standing upon the wreckage of a thousand hulls. The Victory of Cimon brings a hundred Phoenician triremes from the Eurymedon; that of Demosthenes and Cleon brings from Sphacteria the captured shield of Brasidas and Spartans in chains. The Victory of Conon walls the city; that of Thrasybulus brings the people home free from Phyle; those of Alcibiades raise the city up again after her stumble in Sicily. And from the contests of Neileus and Androclus around Lydia and Caria, Hellas beheld Ionia rising up.
But if you ask each of the other cities what good has come to it from itself, one will say Lesbos, another Samos, another Cyprus, another the Euxine Sea, another five hundred triremes, another ten thousand talents — a mere dowry compared to Athens's glory and trophies.
These are the things this city celebrates, and for these it sacrifices to the gods — not for the victories of Aeschylus or Sophocles, nor for the times when Carcinus staged his Aerope or Astydamas his Hector, but on the sixth of Boedromion, even now, the city celebrates the victory at Marathon; on the sixteenth of the month wine is poured in celebration of Chabrias's naval victory off Naxos; and on the twelfth they used to offer thank-offerings
for freedom — for on that day the men from Phyle came down into the city. On the third of the month they commemorated their victory in the battle at Plataea. The sixteenth of Munichion they consecrated to Artemis, since it was when the Greeks were winning at Salamis that the goddess shone forth as a full moon. And the twelfth of Scirophorion was made still more sacred by the battle of Mantinea, in which, when the rest of the allies were driven back and put to flight, the Athenians alone,
fighting on their own, won the day and set up a trophy over the very enemies who had been winning. These are the things that raised the city to glory, these to greatness. For these Pindar called Athens “the bulwark of Hellas” — not because they steadied the Greeks with the tragedies of Phrynichus and Thespis, but because, as he himself says, first at Artemisium “the sons of the Athenians laid the shining foundation of freedom”; and at Salamis and
Mycale and Plataea, standing firm like adamant, they secured the freedom of Greece and handed it down to the rest of mankind. But, by Zeus, these are only the playthings of poets. The orators, however, have something worth setting beside the generals — which is why Aeschines, mocking Demosthenes, quite plausibly says he is threatening to bring a lawsuit from the speaker's platform against the general's headquarters. Is it, then, worth ranking Hyperides's Plataicus above
Aristides's victory at Plataea? Or Lysias's speech against the Thirty above the tyrant-slaying of Thrasybulus and Archinus? Or Aeschines's speech against Timarchus for prostitution above Phocion's relief expedition to Byzantium, by which he kept the sons of the allies from becoming an object of outrage and drunken abuse to the Macedonians? Or shall we set Demosthenes's speech On the Crown beside the public crowns which Phocion received for liberating Greece — a speech in which
the orator made his most brilliant and eloquent stroke by swearing by the ancestors who risked their lives first at Marathon, not by the men who taught boys their lessons in the schools. It was these men — not Isocrates, Antiphon, or Isaeus — whom the city buried at public expense, receiving back the remains of their bodies, and it was these men the orator all but deified with his oath, swearing by men he did not imitate. As for Isocrates,
though he said that the men who first risked their lives at Marathon fought as if with souls not their own, and though he sang the praises of their daring and their contempt for life, he himself, when he had already grown old, is said to have answered someone who asked how he was faring: “As a man past ninety years old, who counts death the worst of evils.” For it was not by sharpening a sword, or engraving a spear-shaft, or polishing
a helmet, nor by serving as a soldier or rowing in the fleet, but by welding together antitheses, balanced clauses, and matching cadences — all but smoothing and shaping his periods with chisel and file — that he grew old. How, then, could such a man fail to fear the clash of weapons and the crash of the battle line, when he was afraid even to let one vowel collide with another, or to produce a clause falling short by a single syllable of matching its counterpart? Miltiades, for his part, set out for Marathon, joined
battle the next day, and returned to the city with his army victorious; and Pericles, having subdued the Samians in nine months, thought more of himself than Agamemnon, who took Troy only in the tenth year. Isocrates, meanwhile, spent nearly three Olympiads composing his Panegyricus, without in all that time serving as a soldier, going on an embassy, founding a city, or being sent out as an admiral — even though that period brought countless wars
in its train. No, in the very years when Timotheus was liberating Euboea, Chabrias was fighting a sea battle off Naxos, Iphicrates near Lechaeum was cutting the Spartan regiment to pieces, and the Athenian people, having freed every city, made all of Greece their equal in the vote, Isocrates sat at home reshaping a book with fine phrases — for as long a time as it took Pericles to raise the Propylaea and the hundred-foot temples. And yet even Pericles, for working so slowly on his projects, was mocked
by Cratinus, who says something like this about the middle wall: “For Pericles advances it in words, but does not so much as move it in deeds.” Consider, then, the pettiness of the sophist's mind, spending a ninth of his life on a single speech. But, by Zeus, is it really worth comparing the speeches of Demosthenes the orator to the deeds of a general — his speech Against Conon for Assault to that man's trophies at Pylos?
Or his speech Against Arethusius concerning slaves to the Spartans that man reduced to slavery? Or the fact that he drafted the decree about the settlers, when it was Alcibiades who, winning over the Mantineans and Eleans, brought this alliance to bear against Lacedaemon? And indeed the public speeches have this remarkable feature: in the Philippics he urges men on to action, and he praises the measure of Leptines.

======== Moralia: De Herodoti Malignitate ========

Herodotus's style, Alexander, has deceived many people because it is so plain and effortless and glides so easily over its subject matter; but more people have been affected this way by his character. For it is not only, as Plato says, the extreme of injustice to seem just without being so; it is also a mark of the utmost malice to imitate good nature and simplicity in a way that is hard to detect. Above all he has behaved this way toward the Boeotians and the Corinthians, having spared none of the other Greeks either, and I think it is fitting for us, defending our ancestors and the truth at the same time, to take up this part of his writing, since to go after all his other lies and fabrications would require many books. But, as Sophocles says, the face of Persuasion is a terrible thing, especially
whenever it arises in a discourse that has such charm and power, concealing its other absurdities along with the author's character. Philip used to say to the Greeks who were deserting him and going over to Titus that they were merely exchanging a smoother but longer collar; and Herodotus's malice is, to be sure, smoother and softer than Theopompus's, but it takes hold
and hurts all the more, like winds that blow secretly through a narrow passage compared with those that are diffused abroad. It seems better to me to take, in a general outline, all the marks that are common to a narrative that is not pure and kindly but malicious — traces and signs, as it were — and to set each of the points under examination into these categories, wherever it fits. First, then, the writer who uses the harshest names and words for events, when milder ones are available, in
telling what has happened — as, when he might simply have called Nicias a man overly devoted to divination, instead calls him possessed by a god, or calls Cleon's boldness and madness rather than mere talkativeness — is not kindly, but seems to take a certain pleasure, through cleverness in narrating, in the affair itself. Second, when some evil attaches to a matter otherwise, but does not belong to the history, and the writer seizes on it and inserts it into the narrative
where it is not at all needed, but draws out and circles the narrative around in order to include someone's misfortune or some strange and disreputable act, he is clearly delighting in speaking ill of people. This is why Thucydides, although Cleon's errors were not lacking, did not make his narrative of them explicit; he touched on Hyperbolus the demagogue with a single word, calling him a worthless man, and let it go. Philistus, too, passed over all the wrongs Dionysius committed against
the barbarians that were not entangled with Greek affairs. For digressions and departures from the main history are given above all to myths and to antiquarian lore, and further to expressions of praise; but the writer who makes an insertion into his discourse for the purpose of slander and blame seems to fall into the tragic curse of picking out the misfortunes of mortals. And indeed the opposite of all this
is clearly this: the omission of something fine and good — a thing that seems to be an act for which one need not answer, yet becomes malicious whenever the thing omitted would fall in a place appropriate to the history. For to praise reluctantly while delighting in blame is not more reasonable, but in addition to being no more reasonable, is perhaps even worse. Fourth, then, I set down as a sign of an unkindly disposition in history the practice, when there are two or more accounts about the same matter,
of siding with the worse one. For sophists are permitted, for the sake of practice or reputation, sometimes to adorn the weaker of two arguments when they take it up; for they do not thereby produce strong conviction about the matter, nor do they often refuse to argue, against expectation, on behalf of things that are not believable. But the one who writes history is obliged to tell as true the things he knows, while of the things that are unclear
he ought to prefer to represent the better version as truly reported rather than the worse. Many writers omit the worse version altogether, as, for instance, Ephorus concerning Themistocles: after saying that he knew of Pausanias's treachery and of his dealings with the King's generals, Ephorus says, "But he was not persuaded," nor did he "accept it when Pausanias shared it with him and urged him toward the same hopes." Thucydides, on the other hand, left out this story
altogether, as though he had judged it unworthy of mention. Furthermore, in cases where the deeds are agreed upon as having been done, but the motive from which they were done, and the intention behind them, are unclear, the man who conjectures toward the worse is hostile and malicious — as the comic poets did when they declared that the war was kindled by Pericles on account of Aspasia or on account of Pheidias, rather than out of a certain love of honor and rivalry, to humble the pride of the Peloponnesians,
when none of the Lacedaemonians was willing to yield anything. For if someone attaches a base motive to deeds that are well regarded and actions that are praised, and drags them down through slanders into strange suspicions about the person's hidden purpose in acting — being unable openly to find fault with the deed itself — he is like those who attribute the murder of Alexander the tyrant of Pherae, carried out under Thebe, not to greatness of soul or hatred of wickedness, but to a certain jealousy and
a womanish passion; or those who say that Cato killed himself out of fear of a death accompanied by torture at Caesar's hands — it is clear that such people have left no excess of envy and malice unused. Historical narrative also admits malice with regard to the manner of an achievement, if it claims that some act was accomplished not through virtue but through money — as some say of Philip, that he achieved things without any toil and easily, as they say of Alexander
that he achieved things not through good judgment but through good fortune — as Timotheus's enemies did, drawing on tablets cities themselves creeping into a fish-trap while he slept. For it is clear that those who take away the nobility and toil, the virtue and the personal agency from deeds, thereby diminish the greatness and beauty of the deeds. Now, those who speak ill of the people they wish to attack directly can be charged with
ill temper, rashness, and madness, if they do not show moderation; but those who use slanders obliquely, as it were shooting arrows from concealment, and then circle back and retreat, denying — by claiming not to believe — the very things they very much want to be believed, thereby add servility to their malice. Close to these are those who attach some praise to their blame, as Aristoxenus did concerning Socrates: having called him uneducated, ignorant, and
undisciplined, he added, "but injustice was not in him." For just as flatterers who employ a certain skill and cunning sometimes mix light criticisms into many long stretches of praise, throwing in frankness as a kind of seasoning for their flattery, so malice, in order to gain credit for what it censures, sets its praise out in front beforehand. There would be still more categories to enumerate; but these suffice to provide an understanding of the man's
purpose and character. To begin, then, first of all, as though from the hearth, with Io the daughter of Inachus, whom all the Greeks believe to have been deified and honored by the barbarians, and to have left her name to many seas and to the greatest of straits because of her fame, and to have provided the origin and source of the most illustrious and most royal families — this noble
man says that she gave herself to Phoenician merchants, being seduced willingly by the ship's captain and fearing that she might be found to be pregnant. And he slanders the Phoenicians as though they were the ones saying this about her. Having said that the learned men of the Persians testify that the Phoenicians seized Io along with other women, he immediately declares his opinion that the finest and greatest achievement of Greece — the Trojan War — came about through foolishness, on account of
a worthless woman. "For it is clear," he says, "that if the women themselves had not been willing, they would not have been carried off." And so, by this reasoning, let us say that the gods too act foolishly, being angry at the Lacedaemonians on behalf of the daughters of Leucippus who were ravished, and punishing Ajax for the outrage against Cassandra: for it is clear, according to Herodotus, that if the women themselves had not been willing, they would not have been outraged. And yet he himself says that Aristomenes
was seized alive by the Lacedaemonians, and that Philopoemen, the general of the Achaeans, later suffered this same thing, and that the Carthaginians got Regulus, the Roman consul, into their power — men whom it would be hard to find more warlike and more skilled in war. But this should come as no surprise, since men also seize living leopards and tigers. Yet Herodotus accuses the women who were raped, while making an apology on behalf of those who seized them. So fond of barbarians is he that he acquits Busiris
of the human sacrifice and murder of strangers attributed to him, and testifies to great piety and justice on the part of all Egyptians, yet turns this same pollution and bloodguilt back upon the Greeks. For in the second book he says that Menelaus, having recovered Helen from Proteus and having been honored with great gifts, became the most unjust and worst of men; for, being held back by contrary winds, he devised an unholy scheme, and taking two children
of local men, made a sacrifice of them; and being hated for this and pursued, he fled away by ship to Libya. Now I do not know which Egyptian told this story; but on the contrary, many honors to Helen and many to Menelaus are still preserved among them. The writer goes on, moreover, to say that the Persians "learned from the Greeks to have intercourse with boys" — and yet how could the Persians owe the Greeks any lessons
in this kind of licentiousness, when among the Persians it is agreed by almost everyone that boys are castrated before they have ever seen the Greek sea? He says that the Greeks learned processions and festivals from the Egyptians, and that they learned to worship these twelve gods from them; that Melampus learned even the name of Dionysus from the Egyptians and taught it to the other Greeks; and that the mysteries and the rites concerning Demeter were brought from Egypt by the daughters of Danaus,
and he says that the Egyptians beat themselves and mourn, though he himself is unwilling to name whom, but keeps a discreet silence about matters of religion; yet in the case of Heracles and Dionysus, whom the Egyptians declare to be gods, while the Greeks regard them as men who lived to old age, he nowhere applies this same caution — even though he himself says that the Egyptian Heracles belongs to the second rank of gods, and
Dionysus to the third, as beings who had a beginning of their generation and are not eternal; yet all the same he declares those to be gods, while thinking that these Greek figures ought to receive offerings as to the dead and to heroes, but not sacrifices as to gods. He has said the same things about Pan, overturning the most solemn and sacred of Greek rites in favor of the boastful fables and mythologies of the Egyptians. And this is not the worst of it: but having
traced the lineage of Heracles up to Perseus, he says that Perseus was Assyrian according to the account of the Persians; "and the leaders of the Dorians," he says, "would appear to be native-born Egyptians, if one traces their ancestors upward from Danae the daughter of Acrisius." For he entirely leaves out Epaphus and Io and Iasus and Argus, being eager not only to make other Heracleses into Egyptians and Phoenicians,
but even to make this Heracles — the one he himself says was the third — a foreigner banished from Greece into the land of the barbarians. And yet, of the ancient and learned men, neither Homer nor Hesiod nor Archilochus nor Peisander nor Stesichorus nor Alcman nor Pindar held any account of an Egyptian or Phoenician Heracles; rather, all of them know this one single Heracles, the Boeotian who is at the same time Argive. And indeed, of the seven
sages, whom he himself calls sophists, he declares that Thales was originally, by descent, a Phoenician and thus a barbarian; and, railing against the gods under the mask of Solon, he has him say these words: "O Croesus, since you ask me about human affairs, knowing well that the divine is altogether jealous and prone to trouble." For the opinions he himself held about the gods he foists upon Solon, adding malice to his blasphemy
besides. As for Pittacus, though he uses him in connection with small matters not worth mentioning, the greatest and finest of that man's deeds — which occurred among his actions — he passed over. For when the Athenians and Mytilenaeans were at war over Sigeum, and Phrynon the Athenian general challenged anyone willing to single combat, Pittacus went out to meet him, and, casting a net over the man — who was strong and large — killed him. When
the Mytilenaeans offered him great gifts, he threw his spear and asked for only that much land as the spearhead covered, and it is called to this day the Pittaceion. What then did Herodotus do, when he came to this very place? Instead of Pittacus's feat of valor, he told the story of the poet Alcaeus's flight from battle, when he threw away his weapons — testifying, by not writing the honorable things and not omitting the shameful ones, to those who say that envy and
malicious pleasure at others' misfortunes spring from the same vice. After this, having cast the accusation of treachery upon the Alcmaeonids — men who had proved themselves and had freed their fatherland from tyranny — he says that they welcomed Peisistratus back from exile and helped restore him, on condition of his marriage to Megacles's daughter; and that the girl told her own
mother, "Mother dear, do you see? Peisistratus does not have intercourse with me in the customary way." And he says that the Alcmaeonids, indignant at this transgression, drove out the tyrant on account of it. Now, so that the Lacedaemonians should not fall short of the Athenians in malice either, see how he has defamed the man most admired and honored among them, Othryades: "the one man," he says, "who survived out of the three hundred,
ashamed to return to Sparta since his messmates had been killed, killed himself right there at Thyreae." For earlier he says the victory was disputed between both sides, but here, through Othryades's shame, he testifies to the defeat of the Lacedaemonians; for it would have been shameful to live having been defeated, but most honorable to survive as the victor. I pass over the fact that, having called Croesus ignorant and boastful and ridiculous
in every respect, he says that Cyrus — who was taken prisoner by him — was schooled and admonished by him, though Cyrus seems, in judgment and virtue and greatness of mind, to have far surpassed all other kings; and having testified that Croesus had no other good quality except honoring the gods with many great offerings, he shows this very act to be the most impious of all deeds. For, he says, Croesus had a brother, Pantaleon, who quarreled with him over the kingship
while their father was still alive; and so Croesus, once he had established himself in the kingship, destroyed one of Pantaleon's companions and friends, a man of his acquaintance, on a carding-comb, tearing him to pieces, and then, from that man's property, made offerings to the gods and sent them off. As for Deioces the Mede, who acquired his rule through virtue and justice, he says that he was not naturally such a man, but that, desiring tyranny, he set about it
under the pretense of justice. But I let go the matters concerning the barbarians, since Herodotus himself has provided abundant material regarding the Greeks. To begin, then: the Athenians and most of the other Ionians are ashamed of this name, not wishing but rather avoiding being called Ionians, while those who consider themselves the noblest among them, and who set out from the Athenian prytaneum, fathered children by barbarian women — their fathers and husbands and children
...having them killed, for which reason the women established a law and imposed oaths upon it and handed it down to their daughters: never to share a meal with their husbands, nor to call one's own husband by name — and that the Milesians of today are descended from those women. Having thus insinuated that only those who celebrate the festival of the Apatouria are purely Ionian — "and all celebrate it," he says, "except the Ephesians and the Colophonians" — he has in this way
excluded these two from noble birth. "He says that when Pactyes revolted from Cyrus, the Cymaeans and Mytilenaeans were preparing to hand the man over for a certain fee — for I cannot say exactly how much" — it is well done not to state definitely how large the fee was, and yet to fasten so great a reproach on a Greek city, as though he knew for certain. As for the Chians, however, he says that they did hand over Pactyes, once he had been brought to them from the sanctuary of Athena Poliouchos,
and that they did this after receiving Atarneus as their fee. And yet Charon of Lampsacus, an older man who dealt with the story of Pactyes, has fastened no such pollution on either the Mytilenaeans or the Chians. He has written the following, verbatim: "When Pactyes learned that the Persian army was advancing upon him, he fled, first to Mytilene, then to Chios; and
Cyrus got possession of him." And in the third of his books, narrating the Lacedaemonian expedition against Polycrates the tyrant, he says that the Samians themselves suppose and say that the Spartans made the expedition as a return of favor for the Samians' aid against the Messenians, both restoring the exiled citizens and making war on the tyrant; but that the Lacedaemonians deny this motive and say that they made the expedition against the Samians not to help them or
to free them, but to avenge themselves — because the Samians had taken from them a certain bowl that was being sent to Croesus, and a breastplate that was being brought back to them from Amasis. And yet we know of no city in those times so honor-loving or so hostile to tyrants as that of the Lacedaemonians. For what breastplate's sake, or what other bowl's, did they expel the Cypselids from Corinth and from Ambracia, and Lygdamis from Naxos, and
the sons of Pisistratus from Athens, and Aeschines from Sicyon, and Symmachus from Thasos, and Aulis from among the Phocians, and Aristogenes from Miletus, and put an end to the dynasty among the Thessalians, deposing Aristomedes and Angelus through King Leotychides? Of these matters a more exact account has been written elsewhere. But according to Herodotus, the Lacedaemonians have left no excess of either wickedness or foolishness unmatched, if, in denying the noblest and most just
pretext for the expedition, they were admitting instead that out of resentment and pettiness they were attacking men who were unfortunate and faring badly. Nevertheless, he has somehow, in painting the Lacedaemonians, given them at least a touch of color to soften his portrait; but the city of the Corinthians, though it lay outside the scope of his narrative at this point, he nonetheless drags in, as a mere digression along the way, so they say, and fills it with a dreadful charge and the most vicious slander. "For the Corinthians too," he says, "eagerly joined in the expedition against
Samos, an outrage having earlier been committed against them by the Samians. It was this: Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, was sending three hundred boys, sons of the leading Corcyraeans, to Alyattes to be castrated. The Samians, when these boys put in at their island, taught them to sit as suppliants in the temple of Artemis, and by setting out treats of sesame and honey for them day after day, saved them." This
outrage of the Samians against the Corinthians is what the writer calls it, and he says that it was for this reason that the Corinthians incited the Lacedaemonians against them, not a few years later, making it their accusation that the Samians had preserved three hundred boys of the Greeks as men. But the man who lays this reproach on the Corinthians thereby shows the city to have been more depraved than the tyrant himself: for Periander sought vengeance on the Corcyraeans because they had killed his son, whereas the Corinthians — what had they suffered — that they took vengeance on the Samians, who had merely stood in the way
of such great cruelty and lawlessness, and that too three generations later, still nursing anger and resentment on behalf of a tyranny which, once overthrown, they never ceased to erase and obliterate every memorial and every trace of, so harsh and burdensome had it been to them? But such, then, was the outrage of the Samians against the Corinthians: and what sort of vengeance was that of the Corinthians against the Samians? If
they were truly angry at the Samians, it would have been fitting for them not to incite but rather to dissuade the Lacedaemonians from making their expedition against Polycrates, so that the Samians would not become free once the tyrant was overthrown and cease being enslaved. But what is most telling: why in the world were the Corinthians angry at the Samians, who had wished to save the sons of the Corcyraeans and were unable to, while they brought no charge against the Cnidians, who did save them and give them back? And yet the Corcyraeans
have not much to say about the Samians on this account, but they do remember the Cnidians, and the Cnidians have honors and exemptions and decrees among them: for it was the Cnidians who sailed in and drove out Periander's guards from the temple, and themselves took up the boys and conveyed them to Corcyra, as Antenor has recorded in his Cretan History, and Dionysius of Chalcis in his Foundations. That the Lacedaemonians made their expedition not
to punish the Samians but to free them from the tyrant and to save them, one can use the Samians themselves as witnesses. For it is said that there is a tomb, built at public expense, for Archias, a Spartiate who fought brilliantly on that occasion and fell, and that it is honored by them in Samos; and that for this reason his descendants continue always to treat the Samians in a friendly and kindly manner, as Herodotus himself, at any rate,
has attested. In the fifth book, he says that Cleisthenes, of the best and foremost men at Athens, persuaded the Pythia to become a false prophet, always urging the Lacedaemonians to free Athens from the tyrants — thus attaching to the noblest and most just of deeds the slander of so great an impiety and trickery, and robbing the god of a prophecy that was fine and good and worthy of the goddess Themis, said to prophesy jointly with him. Isagoras
— he says — yielded up his wife to Cleomenes, who used to visit her; and, as is his habit, mixing praise with blame to secure credence, he says: "Isagoras, son of Tisander, was of a distinguished house, but I cannot speak to its origins further back; his kinsmen sacrifice to Zeus Carios." A well-tuned and politic sneer this is from our historian, banishing Isagoras
off to the Carians as one might banish something to the crows. Aristogeiton, however, he no longer sends off indirectly and disparagingly, but drives him straight out the gate into Phoenicia, saying that he was originally a Gephyraean, and that the Gephyraeans were not, as some suppose, from Euboea or Eretrians, but were Phoenicians — so he himself has learned. And so, unable to take from the Lacedaemonians the credit for freeing the Athenians from the tyrants, he manages, by the most shameful device, to obliterate and disgrace
the noblest of deeds. For he says that they quickly repented, on the ground that they had not acted rightly, because, being persuaded by false oracles, they had driven out from their homeland men who were their guest-friends and had promised to make Athens subject to them, and had handed the city over to an ungrateful populace. Then, he says, they sent for Hippias from Sigeum, to bring him back to Athens; but the Corinthians opposed them and dissuaded them, Socles having recounted
all the evils that Cypselus and Periander, as tyrants, had inflicted on the city of the Corinthians." And yet no deed of Periander's is recorded as more cruel or more savage than his sending away of those three hundred boys — for whose rescue and preservation from such a fate he says the Samians earned the anger and resentment of the Corinthians, as though the Corinthians had themselves been outraged. So great is the confusion and inconsistency with which his malice fills his narrative, sneaking in under every possible pretext as the story unfolds. In
what follows, narrating the affair of Sardis, he does everything in his power to dissolve and spoil the achievement. The ships that the Athenians sent to help the Ionians who had revolted from the king, he has dared to call the "beginners of evils," though they undertook to free so many and so great Greek cities from the barbarians; whereas of the Eretrians he makes only the barest mention in passing, passing over in silence a great and celebrated achievement. For already, with Ionia
in confusion, and a royal fleet sailing up, they met the Cyprians outside and defeated them in a sea-battle in the Pamphylian sea; then, turning back and leaving their ships at Ephesus, they attacked Sardis and besieged Artaphernes, who had fled to the acropolis, wishing to relieve the siege of Miletus; and this they accomplished, and drove the enemy out from there, who had fallen into a remarkable panic; but when a great multitude poured in upon them, they withdrew. These events
have been told by others, and among them Lysanias of Mallos, in his work on Eretria; and it would have been fitting, if for no other reason, at least on account of the city's capture and destruction, to add mention of this brave deed and act of valor. But Herodotus says that they were even defeated by the barbarians and driven back to their ships in flight — though Charon of Lampsacus records nothing of the kind, but writes
the following, word for word: "The Athenians sailed with twenty triremes to help the Ionians, and marched against Sardis and took it — everything around Sardis except the royal wall; and having done this they withdrew to Miletus." In the sixth book, narrating about the Plataeans, how "they offered themselves to the Spartans, who instead bade them turn to the Athenians, since they were their near neighbors
and not bad men to help defend them" — he adds, not as mere conjecture or opinion but as though he knew it precisely, that "the Lacedaemonians gave this advice not out of goodwill toward the Plataeans, but wishing the Athenians to have trouble, being entangled with the Boeotians." So then, if Herodotus is not malicious, the Lacedaemonians are scheming and malicious, the Athenians are senseless dupes taken in, and the Plataeans were, not out of goodwill or honor, but
cast out into the midst simply as a pretext for war. Moreover, he has now clearly been proven false in his account of the Lacedaemonians and the full moon, which he says they were waiting for at Marathon, and so did not go to help the Athenians. For not only have they undertaken countless other expeditions and battles at the beginning of the month, without waiting for the full moon, but even in the case of this very battle, which took place on the sixth of Boedromion, they arrived only a little late, so that they even saw the corpses
when they came upon the place. And yet this is what he has written about the full moon: "It was impossible for them to do this at once, since they did not wish to break the law; for it was the ninth day of the rising month, and on the ninth, they said, they would not march out, since the circle of the moon was not yet full. These men, then, waited for the full moon." But you transfer the full moon to the beginning of the month, which is the mid-month day,
and thereby throw into confusion the heavens themselves, together with the days and all the facts — and this while professing to write the history of Greece, and claiming to be particularly devoted to Athens! You have not even recorded the procession to Agrae, which they still send to this day to Hecate in thanksgiving for the victory, celebrating the festival. But this omission at least helps Herodotus against that other charge leveled at him, that he flattered the Athenians
in order to get a great deal of silver from them. For if he had read this account to the Athenians, they would not have allowed it, nor would they have overlooked, on the ninth day, Pheidippides urging the Lacedaemonians to the battle, when he had just come from the battle itself — and this, arriving in Sparta from Athens on the second day, as he himself says — unless it was after defeating the enemy that the Athenians sent for their allies. That he received ten talents as a gift
from Athens, on the proposal of Anytus, is stated by Dyillus, an Athenian man not among the negligible in matters of history. Having reported the battle at Marathon, Herodotus, as most say, diminished the achievement by his count of the dead. For they say that the Athenians had vowed to Agrotera to sacrifice as many she-goats as they should kill of the barbarians, and then, after the battle, when the number of the dead proved uncountable,
they petitioned the goddess by decree that they might instead sacrifice five hundred she-goats each year. But let us set this aside and look at what came after the battle. "As for the rest," he says, "the barbarians backed off and, taking on board from the island where they had left the slaves from Eretria, sailed around Sunium, wishing to arrive at the city before the Athenians. And blame
was cast upon the Athenians, that this was contrived by a scheme of the Alcmaeonids: for these men, it is said, had come to an agreement with the Persians and displayed a shield as a signal, while the Persians were already aboard their ships. These, then, sailed around Sunium." Here, as for his calling the Eretrians "slaves," though they had shown themselves inferior to no Greeks in courage or ambition, and had suffered a fate unworthy of their valor — let that pass; but as for the slander cast on the Alcmaeonids, among whom were
the greatest of houses and the most esteemed of men, it is a lesser matter to speak of; but the magnitude of the victory is overturned, and its outcome amounts to nothing of the celebrated achievement — there seems to have been no contest, no deed of such greatness at all, but merely a brief brush with the barbarians as they disembarked, as the detractors and slanderers say, if after the battle they do not flee, cutting the cables
of their ships, and giving themselves over to the wind carrying them farthest from Attica; but instead a shield is raised as a signal of treachery, and as they sail toward Athens, hoping to take it, and having rounded Sunium at their leisure, they hover off Phalerum, while the first and most esteemed of the men betray the city, having despaired of it. And indeed, later, when acquitting the Alcmaeonids, he attributes the treachery to others: "for a shield was indeed displayed,
and this cannot be denied," he says, having seen it himself. But this was impossible to have happened, since the Athenians had won decisively; and even if it had happened, it could not have been seen by the barbarians together, driven in flight and with much toil, wounds, and missiles toward their ships, and abandoning the place, each as fast as he could. But when, again, on behalf
of the Alcmaeonids, pretending to defend them against the very charges he himself was the first of all men to bring, he says: "I marvel, and I cannot accept the account, that the Alcmaeonids would ever have displayed a shield to the Persians by agreement, wishing the Athenians to be under Hippias" — I am reminded of a certain proverbial saying: "Stay, crab, and I will let you go" — for why did you bother to seize hold of something, if, having seized it, you mean to let it go? You accuse, and then you defend;
and you write slanders against illustrious men, which you then retract, evidently distrusting yourself — for you have heard yourself say that the Alcmaeonids raised a shield for the defeated and fleeing barbarians. And indeed, in the passage where you defend the Alcmaeonids, you show yourself to be a false accuser: for if, as you write here, the Alcmaeonids "show themselves to have been haters of tyrants, more than or as much as Callias son of Phaenippus, father of Hipponicus" — where
will you put that conspiracy of theirs which you wrote of in the earlier passage — how, hoping to make a marriage alliance, they brought Pisistratus back from exile to the tyranny, and would not have driven him out again, had he not been slandered for having unlawful relations with his wife? These things, then, contain such confusions: he makes use of the slander and suspicion against the Alcmaeonids, while employing praise of Callias son of Phaenippus, and attaching to him his son
...Hipponicus, who according to Herodotus was among the richest men in Athens, has as much as admitted that, though nothing in the facts called for it, he dragged Callias in only to curry favor and win the goodwill of Hipponicus.
Since everyone knows that the Argives did not refuse the alliance with the Greeks, but merely asked not to be forced always to obey the orders of the Lacedaemonians, their bitterest enemies, and that this was their sole condition, he insinuates a most malicious charge, writing: "Since the Argives knew well that the Lacedaemonians would not share the command with them, they made this demand so as to have a pretext for staying out of the war." He goes on to say that afterward, when Argive envoys went up to Susa, they reminded Artaxerxes of this, and that he told them he considered no city more friendly to him than Argos. Then, hedging as usual and drawing back from his own words, he adds: "I cannot say for certain whether this is so, but I do know that all men have their faults, and the Argives have not committed the most shameful ones. I am obliged to report what is said, but not at all obliged to believe it, and let this rule hold for the whole of my account." And again: "Since this too is said, that it was the Argives who called in the Persian against Greece, because their war with the Lacedaemonians was going badly and they wanted, whatever the cost, to be free of their present distress."
Is this not exactly what he himself says the Ethiopian remarked of Persian perfumes and purple robes — that as deceitful were the words, so deceitful were the garments of the Persians? One might say the same of him: that as deceitful are his words, so deceitful are the twists and turns of Herodotus's own phrases, and nothing in them sound, but all evasion and circling round — just as painters make bright colors stand out more sharply by shadow, so he sharpens his slanders through his denials and deepens his insinuations through his ambiguities.
That the Argives, by refusing to join with the Greeks — giving way to the Lacedaemonians over the question of command rather than over valor — disgraced Heracles and their noble birth, cannot be denied; it would have been better for them to rank below Siphnos and Cythnos in the liberation of Greece than, quarreling with the Spartans over supremacy, to abandon so many and so great a struggle. But if they themselves had actually summoned the Persian against Greece because their war against the Lacedaemonians was going badly, why did they not openly side with the Medes once he arrived? Why, if they were unwilling to campaign with the King, did they at least not ravage Laconia, or seize Thyrea again, or in some other way lay hold of and harass the Lacedaemonians — men quite capable of doing great damage to the Greek cause — instead of letting the Spartans march out to Plataea unhindered with so large a force of hoplites?
Here, at least, his narrative makes the Athenians great and proclaims them saviors of Greece — rightly and justly, if only so much slander had not been mixed in with the praise. For when he says that the Lacedaemonians would have been betrayed by the rest of the Greeks, and, left alone, though performing great deeds, would have died nobly — or else, seeing the other Greeks medizing before that happened, would have come to terms with Xerxes — he plainly does not say this to honor the Athenians, but praises the Athenians only so as to slander everyone else.
For what could anyone object to, when he bitterly and relentlessly reproaches the Thebans and Phocians at every turn, and yet, even against men who actually risked their lives for Greece, passes a verdict of treason not for anything that happened but for something that — as he himself merely conjectures — might have happened? As for the Spartans themselves, he leaves the matter deliberately in doubt, raising the question whether they would have died fighting the enemy or surrendered — casting suspicion, by Zeus, on slight evidence indeed, given what actually happened at Thermopylae.
And in describing the wreck that overtook the King's fleet, he tells how, when much treasure was washed ashore, Ameinocles son of Cretines, a man of Magnesia, profited greatly, gathering untold gold and riches for himself — yet even this man he will not leave without his bite, adding: "Though not fortunate in other respects through his finds, he became very rich; for a grievous misfortune also befell him, one that grieved him through the murder of his child." It is plain to everyone that he brought in the golden treasure, the finds, and the wealth cast up by the sea only to make room for the place where he would set down Ameinocles's child-murder.
As for Aristophanes the Boeotian's claim that Herodotus, having asked the Thebans for money and been refused, and then, when he tried to converse and spend his leisure with their young men, was prevented by the magistrates on account of their boorishness and dislike of learning — this in itself proves nothing. But Herodotus corroborates Aristophanes' account by the very way he levels his charges against the Thebans, some falsely, some out of spite, and some as a man who hates them and is at odds with them. He declares that the Thessalians medized at first under compulsion, and in this he speaks the truth; and, prophesying about the rest of the Greeks — that they would have betrayed the Lacedaemonians — he adds the qualification that they would have done so "not willingly, but under compulsion, as their cities were captured one by one."
Yet to the Thebans he grants no such pardon for the very same compulsion, even though they sent five hundred men and the general Mnamias to Tempe, and to Thermopylae as many men as Leonidas requested — men who, alone with the Thespians, stayed with him even after the others left once the pass was surrounded. This was after the barbarian, having gained the passes, was already on their borders, and after the Spartan Demaratus, out of guest-friendship, had arranged for Attaginus, the leader of the oligarchic faction, to become a friend and guest of the King, while the Greeks were still on their ships and no one advanced by land to help. Only then, overwhelmed by dire necessity, did the Thebans accept terms.
For they had neither sea nor ships at their disposal as the Athenians did, nor did they live as far off as the Spartans, tucked away in the recesses of Greece; rather, with the Mede only a day and a half's march away, they took their stand at the pass and, fighting alongside only the Spartans and Thespians, met with misfortune. Yet the historian is so even-handed that of the Lacedaemonians — left alone, bereft of allies — he merely says they might well have come to terms with Xerxes, while he heaps abuse on the Thebans for suffering exactly the same fate under exactly the same compulsion.
Unable to deny outright the greatest and noblest deed of the war, since he could not claim it never happened, he set about defacing it with base insinuation, writing this: "Now the allies who were sent away departed and obeyed Leonidas — all except the Thespians and Thebans. Of these, the Thebans stayed against their will, unwillingly, for Leonidas kept them, treating them as hostages; the Thespians, by contrast, stayed entirely of their own accord, declaring that they would never abandon Leonidas and those with him."
Is it not obvious that he bears some personal grudge and hostility toward the Thebans, under whose influence he not only slandered the city falsely and unjustly, but did not even trouble to make the slander plausible, nor to avoid contradicting himself in a way that only a few careful readers would notice? For having first said that Leonidas, on perceiving his allies to be reluctant and unwilling to share the danger, ordered them to leave, he then says, only a little later, that he kept the Thebans there against their will — men whom, on the contrary, he ought to have driven off even had they wished to stay, if they were under suspicion of medizing.
Where he had no need of unwilling men, what use could there be in mixing suspect persons among those about to fight? Surely the king of the Spartans and leader of Greece was not so foolish as to keep four hundred armed men as "hostages" alongside his three hundred, with the enemy already pressing him from front and rear at once. Even if he had earlier been leading them along as hostages, at that final, desperate moment it was to be expected that they, paying no heed to Leonidas, would have simply made their escape, and that Leonidas himself would have feared being surrounded by them more than by the barbarians.
Quite apart from all this, how is Leonidas not absurd — telling the other Greeks to leave because he was about to die at any moment, yet holding back the Thebans, as though he, on the point of dying for the Greeks, were somehow standing guard over them? If he really had been leading these men about as hostages — or rather as slaves — he ought not to have kept them there to perish with the doomed, but should have handed them over to the departing Greeks. The one remaining explanation available to his accusers — that he kept them there meaning them to die along with him — the historian has himself ruled out, by stating in so many words, concerning Leonidas's ambition for glory: "Leonidas, reflecting on all this and wishing the glory to belong to the Spartans alone, sent the allies away — not because they had quarreled in their opinions." It would be an extreme of folly for him to drive his allies away from a glory he then kept back the suspect Thebans to share.
That Leonidas, then, bore no grudge against the Thebans, but in fact counted them steadfast friends, is clear from what he actually did. He marched his army to Thebes and, by his request, obtained an honor granted to no one else — to sleep the night in the sanctuary of Heracles — and he reported to the Thebans the vision he saw there in his dream: he dreamed that, on a sea heaving with great, rough waves, the most illustrious and greatest cities of Greece were tossing about unevenly and pitching, while the city of Thebes rose above them all, was lifted high into the sky, and then suddenly vanished — a dream resembling what befell that city long afterward.
But Herodotus, in his account of the battle, has obscured Leonidas's greatest achievement, saying that all his men fell where they stood, in the pass near the hill called Colonus; in fact it happened otherwise. For when in the night they learned of the enemy's outflanking march, they rose and advanced on the camp, making for the very tent of the King, intending to kill him or die around him; and so, cutting down whoever stood in their way and routing the rest, they pressed on almost to his tent. But since they could not find Xerxes, and went searching and wandering through his vast and boundless army, they were at last, with difficulty, surrounded on every side by the barbarians and cut down. The other bold deeds and sayings of the Spartans that he has left out will be told in my Life of Leonidas; but it does no harm to go through a few of them here as well.
Before marching out, they held funeral games in their own honor, and their fathers and mothers watched. Leonidas himself, to the man who remarked that he was leading out far too few men for the battle, replied, "Yet enough to die." And to his wife, who as he set out asked whether he had any word for her, he turned and said, "Marry good men, and bear good children." At Thermopylae, after the encirclement, wishing to save two of his kinsmen, he tried to send one of them off with a letter; the man refused it, saying angrily, "I followed you as a fighter, not as a messenger." The other he ordered to carry some word to the Spartan magistrates; this man answered with his deed alone, taking up his shield and taking his place in the line.
No one could fault him had he simply passed these things over, as another writer might. But a man who has troubled himself to collect and record Amasis breaking wind, the thief's approach with his donkeys, and the swelling of the wineskins, and much else of that sort, cannot plausibly be thought to have let noble deeds and noble words slip merely through carelessness or disdain — but rather because he is neither well disposed nor fair toward some of his subjects.
Of the Thebans he says, first, that "they were present with the Greeks and fought under compulsion" — as if not only Xerxes but Leonidas too kept whip-bearers at hand, by whom the Thebans, against their own will, were forced under the lash to fight. And who could be a crueler slanderer than a man who says that men free to leave and flee fought only under compulsion, yet that they medized willingly, though no one at all came to their aid?
Immediately after this he writes: "While the others hurried toward the hill of Colonus, the Thebans broke away and, stretching out their hands, drew near the barbarians, telling them the plain truth — that they had medized and had given earth and water to the King, that they had come to Thermopylae only under compulsion, and were guiltless of the harm done to the King. By saying this they saved themselves, for they had the Thessalians as witnesses to it." Consider: amid such uproar of barbarian shouting, chaotic tumult, flight and pursuit, a legal plea is heard and witnesses cross-examined, with the Thessalians — in the very midst of men being slaughtered and trampled underfoot at the pass — testifying on the Thebans' behalf, because, forsooth, the Thebans had lately routed and driven them out as far as Thespiae when the Thessalians held mastery over Greece, and had killed their commander Lattamyas! Such was the relationship between Boeotians and Thessalians at the time — nothing of decency or goodwill in it at all.
But even granting the Thessalians' testimony, how exactly did the Thebans save themselves? "The barbarians killed some of them as they approached," as he himself says; "but most of them, on Xerxes' order, they branded with the royal marks, beginning with their general Leontiades." Yet Leontiades was not the general at Thermopylae — it was Anaxandros, as Aristophanes established from the official archon-lists, and as Nicander of Colophon likewise reports. Nor does anyone before Herodotus know of Thebans branded by Xerxes — although this would have been the strongest possible refutation of the slander, and it would have suited the city well to take pride in those very brand-marks, as proof that Xerxes had judged Leonidas and Leontiades his bitterest enemies: the one's body he mutilated after he had fallen, the other he branded while still alive.
But while presenting his cruelty toward Leonidas as proof that the barbarian was angrier at him, while he lived, than at any other man, Herodotus also says that the Thebans, though medizing, were branded at Thermopylae, and that, having been branded, they went on to medize enthusiastically again at Plataea. It seems to me that here, like Hippocleides gesturing away his marriage with his legs on the table, he might as well say, dancing away the truth as he goes, "Herodotus does not care."
In the eighth book he says that the Greeks, panic-stricken, resolved to flee from Artemisium back into the interior of Greece, and that when the Euboeans begged them to remain a little longer so that they might get their families and servants to safety, the Greeks paid no heed — until Themistocles, having taken money, shared it with Eurybiades and with Adeimantus, the Corinthian general, and only then did they agree to stay and fight the barbarians by sea. Pindar, though his city was not an ally but was actually under suspicion of medizing, nevertheless recalled Artemisium and proclaimed: "where the sons of the Athenians laid the shining foundation-stone of freedom." But Herodotus, by whom some claim Greece has been adorned and honored, represents that very victory as the fruit of bribery and theft, and the Greeks as men who fought against their will, deceived by generals who had taken money for themselves. And even this comes to no...
his malice does not stop there. Almost everyone agrees that although the Greeks were victorious in the sea-battles fought off Artemisium, they nevertheless withdrew from Artemisium and yielded to the barbarians once they heard the news from Thermopylae; for there was no advantage in sitting there guarding the sea once the war had moved inside the Gates and Xerxes had gained control of the passes. But Herodotus, before he even reports the death of Leonidas, already represents the Greeks
as deliberating a flight. He writes it this way: "having been roughly handled, and the Athenians not least, since half their ships had been disabled, they were planning a flight into Greece." And yet the withdrawal that took place before the battle might fairly have been called that, or rather reproached as such—but he had already used the word "flight" once, and now he calls it "flight" again, and a little later he will call it "flight" once more. So bitterly does he cling
to the word. "Immediately after this a man of Histiaea came by boat to the barbarians, announcing the flight of the Greeks from Artemisium; but they, distrusting him, kept the messenger under guard and sent out fast ships to reconnoiter first." What are you saying? That men were running away as though defeated, when their enemies, after the battle, refuse to believe they are fleeing, since they think them decisively victorious? Then is it worth trusting
this man when he writes about a single man or a single city—he who with a single word strips Greece of her victory, tears down the trophy, and effaces the inscriptions they set up beside the shrine of Artemis of the Dawn, calling them mere boasting and bragging? The inscription runs as follows: "Sons of the Athenians, once upon this sea in battle overthrew the tribes of every race that Asia bred, when the army of the Medes had perished,
and set up these tokens for the maiden Artemis." Now in the actual battles he does not even array the Greeks in order, nor does he show which region each city held as it fought at sea; but as regards the withdrawal, which he himself calls a flight, he says the Corinthians sailed first and the Athenians last. Even so, he ought not to have trampled so heavily even on those Greeks who did medize—especially since Herodotus is himself generally reckoned a man of Thurii,
but is claimed by the Halicarnassians, who, though Dorians, campaigned against the Greeks together with their women's quarters in tow. Yet he is so far from softening the compulsion that drove the medizers that, in narrating about the Thessalians—that they sent word to the Phocians, their enemies and foes, promising to keep their land unharmed if they received fifty talents as payment—he writes this about the Phocians in these very words: "For the
Phocians alone among the peoples of that region did not medize, for no other reason, as I reckon by inference, than their hatred of the Thessalians; and if the Thessalians had been promoting the Greek cause, as I believe, the Phocians would have medized." And yet shortly afterward he himself will say that thirteen Phocian cities were burned by the barbarian, their land ravaged, the temple at Abae set on fire,
men and women destroyed, except those who managed to escape in time to Parnassus. Yet all the same, he assigns those who endured the worst sufferings rather than abandon what was honorable to the same category of baseness as those who medized most eagerly—and being unable to fault their actual deeds, he sat composing shabby accusations and insinuations at his writing-desk against them, judging their intention not by
what they actually did but by what they would have done, he claims, if the Thessalians had not opposed it—as though, once their land had been seized by others, they were thereby cut off from any chance of treachery. Now if someone should try to excuse the Thessalians of medism by saying that this was not what they wanted, but that seeing themselves siding with the Phocians in the quarrel against the Greeks, they medized against their own judgment out of spite, would that not seem
a most shameful piece of flattery, twisting the truth by manufacturing respectable motives for base actions merely to please others? I think it would. How then can it fail to seem the most blatant slander, when this man declares that the Phocians chose the best course not out of virtue, but simply because they knew the Thessalians held the opposite view? For he does not even trace the calumny to others, as is his usual habit, saying he heard it from someone; instead he says he found it himself by inference. He ought therefore
to have stated the evidence by which he was persuaded that men acting like the noblest of men had, in fact, the same intentions as the basest. For the argument from hatred is absurd: the quarrel with the Athenians did not prevent the Aeginetans, nor the quarrel with the Eretrians the Chalcidians, nor the quarrel with the Megarians the Corinthians, from allying with Greece; nor again did the Macedonians, the bitterest enemies of the Thessalians, turn away from friendship with the barbarian because the Thessalians medized.
They set aside their private hostilities, for the common danger overshadowed them, so that, casting off their other passions, they aligned their judgment either with what was honorable, out of virtue, or with what was expedient, out of necessity. And indeed, even after that compulsion under which they were caught and forced to side with the Medes, the Thessalians changed sides again toward the Greeks, and Lacrates the Spartan himself bore direct witness to this on their behalf. Herodotus
himself, as though forced to it, admits in his account of Plataea that the Phocians too joined the Greeks. And it is no wonder that he presses so bitterly on the unfortunate, when he even transfers those who were present and shared the danger into the ranks of the enemy and of traitors. "For the Naxians sent three triremes as allies to the barbarians, but one of the trierarchs, Democritus, persuaded the others to choose the side of
the Greeks" — does he say it this way? He cannot even praise without blaming; in order that a single man be praised, an entire city and people must be spoken of ill. Against him stand as witnesses, among the older writers, Hellanicus, and among the more recent, Ephorus, one recording that the Naxians came to help the Greeks with six ships, the other with five. Herodotus himself, moreover, refutes his own fabrication
entirely. For the Naxian local historians say that even earlier they repelled Megabates, who sailed against the island with two hundred ships, and again drove off the general Datis when he sailed in with a hundred ships; and if, as Herodotus says elsewhere, they burned and destroyed their city while the people escaped to the mountains and were saved, surely they had good reason to send aid to those who had destroyed their homeland,
rather than to help those who were defending the common freedom! As for the fact that he did not compose this falsehood in order to praise Democritus, but to disgrace the Naxians, that is clear from his passing over entirely and suppressing Democritus's own achievement and feat of valor, which Simonides made known in an epigram: "Democritus was the third to begin the battle, when at Salamis the Greeks joined the Medes in combat on the sea; five enemy ships he captured,
and with his own hand he rescued a sixth, a Dorian ship, from the barbarians as it was about to be taken." But why should anyone be indignant on behalf of the Naxians? For if there are antipodes to us, as some say, dwelling around the underside of the earth, I do not suppose even they are ignorant of Themistocles and of the plan of Themistocles—the plan by which he persuaded Greece to fight at sea before Salamis—and set up a temple to Artemis of Good Counsel in Melite, after the barbarian
had been defeated in war. This achievement of Themistocles our charming historian, so far as it lies in his power, strips away and transfers the credit to another, writing the following, word for word: "At that point, when Themistocles had come to his ship, Mnesiphilus, an Athenian, asked him what had been decided; and on learning from him that it had been resolved to sail the ships to the Isthmus and fight
the sea-battle before the Peloponnese, he said: 'Then, if they take the ships away from Salamis, you will no longer be fighting for a single fatherland at all; for each contingent will scatter to its own city.'" And shortly after: "But if there is any way, go and try to undo what has been decided, and see if you can somehow persuade Eurybiades to change his mind and stay here." Then, adding that "the suggestion pleased Themistocles very much,
and without answering anything in reply he went to Eurybiades," he writes again, in the very same words: "There Themistocles, sitting beside him, related all that he had heard from Mnesiphilus, presenting it as his own, and adding other points besides." You see how he pins the reputation for malice on the man, by saying that he passed off Mnesiphilus's plan as his own? And going still further, mocking the Greeks, he says that Themistocles neither
perceived the advantage nor understood it, but overlooked it—the very man who was nicknamed Odysseus for his shrewdness—while Artemisia, Herodotus's own fellow-citizen, with no one to instruct her, conceived entirely on her own the idea of telling Xerxes in advance that "the Greeks will not be able to hold out against you for long, but you will scatter them, and each contingent will flee to its own city; and it is not likely that they, if you march your infantry
against the Peloponnese, will stay still, nor will they care to fight at sea in defense of Athens; but if you press to fight at sea at once, I fear that the naval force, if it suffers harm, will also damage the land force." These words lack only meter, Herodotus, to make Artemisia out to be a Sibyl, foretelling the future with such precision! That is why Xerxes entrusted her with taking his own children to Ephesus—for he had apparently forgotten, coming as he did from Susa,
that one takes women along, if the children needed a woman's escort. But as for what he simply invented, we have nothing to say here; we are examining only the things in which he actually lied. He says, then, that the Athenians claim that Adeimantus, the Corinthian general, when the enemy came to close quarters, was overcome with terror and fled in fear—not by quietly backing water or slipping away unobtrusively through the combatants, but by conspicuously hoisting
his sails and turning all his ships about; and then, as he was being rowed off, a small boat happened to meet him near the far end of Salamis, and from the boat someone called out: "You, Adeimantus, are fleeing and betraying the Greeks—but they are actually winning, just as they prayed to overcome their enemies." Now this boat was, it seems, dropped straight from the machinery of a tragedy—for why else should we need
a stage-device of tragedy, when in everything else he outdoes the tragedians in sheer effrontery? So Adeimantus, believing this, "returned to the camp, the deed already accomplished; this at least is the story told by the Athenians. The Corinthians, however, do not agree, but consider themselves to have been among the foremost in the sea-battle, and the rest of Greece bears them out." Such is the man in many matters: he heaps up one slander against one people
and one accusation against another, so as never to fail to make someone appear altogether wicked—just as here he manages it both ways: if the slander is disbelieved, the Corinthians lose their good name; if it is believed, the Athenians do. I suppose that neither the Corinthians against the Athenians, nor the Athenians against the Corinthians, but this man against both together, is lying. Thucydides, at any rate, when he has the Athenian at Sparta answering the Corinthian, and speaking at length in praise of the achievements of the Persian Wars, and of
the sea-battle at Salamis, brings no charge of treachery or desertion against the Corinthians; nor was it likely that the Athenians would slander the city of the Corinthians in this way, a city which they saw ranked third after the Spartans and after themselves, inscribed upon the dedications made from the spoils of the barbarians; and at Salamis, right beside their own city, they granted the Corinthians the right to bury their dead as men who had proved themselves brave, and to inscribe this
elegy: "Stranger, once we dwelt in the well-watered city of Corinth; but now the island of Salamis, Ajax's isle, holds us. Here we captured Phoenician ships and Persians and Medes, and saved sacred Greece." And the empty tomb at the Isthmus bears this inscription: "When all Greece stood balanced on a razor's edge, we lie here, having saved her with our own lives." And on the dedications of a certain Diodorus, one of the Corinthian trierarchs, set up in the temple of Leto,
this too is inscribed: "These arms, taken from the hostile Medes, the sailors of Diodorus dedicated to Leto, memorials of the sea-battle." As for Adeimantus himself, whom Herodotus never stops reviling, he even says he "alone among the generals was struggling to flee from Artemisium and would not wait"—consider, then, what reputation this man actually had: the tomb of that same Adeimantus, around which all Greece wound a crown of freedom. For it was not likely that
such an honor would be given, after his death, to a cowardly and treacherous man, nor would he have dared to name his daughters Nausinike, and Acrothinion, and Alexibia, or to call his son Aristeas, unless there had been some brilliance and distinction attached to him from those very deeds. And indeed, that the Corinthian women alone among Greek women prayed that famous
and marvelous prayer—that the goddess would cast into their husbands' hearts a passion for the fight against the barbarians—it is not only implausible that Herodotus and his circle should be ignorant of this, but not even the lowliest of the Carians could be; for the matter became widely known, and Simonides composed an epigram, when bronze statues were set up in the temple of Aphrodite, which they say Medea founded—some say when she ceased to love her husband, others
that it was to make the goddess stop Jason from loving Thetis. The epigram runs thus: "These women stood here on behalf of the Greeks and their fellow citizens who fought at close quarters, praying to divine Aphrodite; for divine Aphrodite did not wish the bow-bearing Medes to hand over the citadel of the Greeks." These are the things he ought to have written and remembered rather more than the child-murder of Ameinocles that he drags in. Now, gorging himself unrestrainedly on the accusations against Themistocles,
among which he says that Themistocles never stopped secretly stealing and enriching himself at the expense of the other generals around the islands—in the end he strips the Athenians themselves of the crown of victory and awards it to the Aeginetans, writing as follows: "Having sent the first-fruits of the spoils, the Greeks asked the god at Delphi in common whether he had received the first-fruits full and satisfactory; and he said that he had received them from the other Greeks, but not
from the Aeginetans; instead he demanded from them the prize of valor for the sea-battle at Salamis." No longer does he attribute his own inventions to Scythians or Persians or Egyptians, fabricating as Aesop did with crows and monkeys; instead, using the mask of the Pythian god himself, he strips Athens of the first prize at Salamis. And as for Themistocles, once the second prize had gone at the Isthmus—because each of the generals
awarded the first prize to himself and the second to Themistocles, and the judgment reached no conclusion—though he ought to have blamed the rivalry of the generals for that, he says instead that all the Greeks sailed away because out of envy they refused to proclaim the man first. And in the ninth and final book, hastening to pour out whatever was still left of his personal grudge against the Spartans,
he strips away the celebrated victory and the famous achievement of the city at Plataea; for he writes that "at first they were afraid of the Athenians, lest, persuaded by Mardonius, they should abandon the Greek cause; but once the Isthmus had been walled off and they had placed the Peloponnese in safety, they no longer cared about the rest and looked the other way, feasting at home and toying with the Athenian envoys, and dragging things out." How then did they set out to
five thousand Spartiates go out to Plataea, each man with seven helots attending him? Or how, having taken on so great a danger, did they prevail and cut down so many tens of thousands? Listen to his plausible explanation: “It happened,” he says, “that a man from Tegea named Chileos was staying in Sparta, who had certain friends and guest-friends among the ephors. This man, then, persuaded them to send out the army, saying that the wall across the Isthmus would be of no use to the Peloponnesians if the Athenians should join Mardonius.” This is what led Pausanias out to Plataea with his forces; and if some private business at Tegea had detained that Chileos, Greece, it seems, would never have survived.
Again, unable to decide what to make of the Athenians, he now exalts and now disparages the city, shifting it up and down: he says that at one point they were set to contend with the Tegeans for second place, invoking the memory of the Heraclidae and their deeds against the Amazons, and the burials of the Peloponnesians who fell beneath the Cadmeia; and finally, coming down in his account to Marathon, they were eager and content to obtain command of the left wing. Yet a little later, he says, Pausanias and the Spartiates yielded the command to them and urged them to take up position against the Persians, receiving the right wing themselves and handing over the left wing to the Athenians, on the ground that, from inexperience, they were declining battle with the barbarians.
And yet it is absurd, if they were used to the enemy, to suppose they should be unwilling to fight. But as for the rest of the Greeks, led off to the other generals' camp, he says, “when the cavalry moved, they gladly fled toward the city of the Plataeans; and in their flight they arrived at the Heraeum”—in which passage he accuses them, virtually all of them together, of insubordination, desertion, and treachery. In the end he says that only the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans fought it out against the barbarians, and only the Athenians against the Thebans, while he strips all the other cities alike of any share in the success: “no one else took part in the struggle, but all sat still, laid down their arms, and betrayed those who were fighting on their behalf; and it was only late that the Phliasians and
Megarians, on learning that Pausanias was winning, advanced and fell in with the Theban cavalry, and were destroyed for no good reason; while the Corinthians were not present at the battle at all, but after the victory, hurrying through the hills, chanced not to encounter the Theban horsemen.” For the Thebans, once the rout had occurred, rode ahead of the barbarians and eagerly came to the aid of them as they fled—clearly repaying the marks branded on them at Thermopylae.
But as for the Corinthians, one may learn from Simonides both the position in which they fought against the barbarians and how great an outcome they won from the struggle at Plataea, where he writes as follows: “And in the middle were those who dwell in Ephyra of many springs, skilled in every excellence in war, and those who occupy the city of Glaucus, the town of Corinth, who set as the fairest witness of their toils gold in the sky honored, and it increases the wide renown both of themselves and of their fathers.” For these lines Simonides recorded not while training a chorus at Corinth, nor composing a song for the city, but simply as history of those deeds, writing them in elegiac verse. Herodotus, anticipating the refutation of his falsehood by those who would ask, “Whence, then, the mass graves and so many tombs and memorials of the dead, at which the Plataeans down to this day offer sacrifice in the presence of the assembled Greeks?”—
has, I think, made an accusation more shameful than the very charge of treachery he brings against these families, in the following words: “As for the rest, whatever tombs are also to be seen at Plataea, these, as I learn, were heaped up by each of the cities as empty mounds, out of shame at their absence from the battle, for the sake of those who should come after.” This absence from the battle, which amounts to treachery, Herodotus alone of all men has ever heard of; it escaped the notice of Pausanias and Aristides and the Lacedaemonians
and Athenians that the Greeks had abandoned them in the danger; and neither did the Athenians, though at odds with the Aeginetans, bar them from the inscription, nor did they expose the Corinthians, whom they had earlier defeated and put to flight from Salamis, though all Greece bore witness against them. And yet it was Cleadas the Plataean who, ten years after the Persian Wars, currying favor with the Aeginetans, as Herodotus himself says, inscribed the mass grave with their name. What, then, made the Athenians and Lacedaemonians,
who at that very time nearly came to blows with one another over the trophy of the victory, refrain from driving out those Greeks who had shown cowardice and run away from the prizes of valor? Instead they inscribed them on the trophies and on the colossal monuments, and gave them a share of the spoils; and in the end they engraved on the altar this inscription: “When the Greeks by the might of Victory, by the work of Ares, trusting in bold courage of soul,
had driven out the Persians, they set up in common, for a free Greece, an altar of Zeus the Liberator.” Was this too, Herodotus, inscribed by Cleadas or someone else flattering the cities? Why, then, did they need to dig up the earth for nothing, to trouble themselves and idly heap up mounds and build memorials for the sake of those to come, when they could see their glory consecrated among the most conspicuous and greatest dedications?
And indeed Pausanias, as they say, already harboring tyrannical ambitions, had inscribed at Delphi: “When as leader of the Greeks he destroyed the army of the Medes, Pausanias dedicated this memorial to Phoebus”—thereby, in a way, making the Greeks share the glory of what he had proclaimed himself sole commander of. But when the Greeks would not tolerate this, and brought charges, the Lacedaemonians sent men to Delphi and had this inscription chiseled out, and in its place engraved the names of the cities, as was just.
And yet how is it likely either that the Greeks who had no share in the inscription would be indignant, if they were themselves conscious of having deserted the battle, or that the Lacedaemonians, after erasing the name of their own leader and general, would inscribe those who had abandoned them and looked on at the danger? How utterly monstrous it would be if Sophanes and Aeimnestus and all those who fought with distinction in that battle were not vexed even when the Cythnians and
the Melians were inscribed on the trophies—yet Herodotus was. He, having assigned the struggle to three cities alone, chisels all the rest out from the trophies and the sacred dedications. Of the four engagements that then took place against the barbarians, he says the Greeks fled from Artemisium; and at Thermopylae, while their general and the King himself risked their lives in the vanguard, he has them sitting idle and neglecting the fight to celebrate the Olympic and Carnean festivals; and in his account of Salamis he has written so much
about Artemisia that he has not reported the whole sea battle in as many words. Finally, sitting at Plataea, he has the Greeks ignorant to the very end of how the battle went, as though it were some Battle of the Frogs and Mice—the sort of thing Pigres, Artemisia's kinsman, wrote for sport and nonsense in verse—agreeing to fight it out in silence so as to escape the notice of the rest; and he has the Lacedaemonians themselves prove no better in courage than the barbarians, but win only because they fought armed and armored
against men naked and unarmed. For while Xerxes himself was present, the barbarians were driven forward against the Greeks scarcely by whips at their backs; but at Plataea, it seems, they took on other souls: “in spirit and strength they were not inferior; but their clothing, being bare of armor, did them the greatest harm, for being light-armed they fought a battle against hoplites.” What, then, remains glorious or great for the
Greeks from those struggles, if the Lacedaemonians fought against unarmed men, and the rest were absent from the battle without anyone's notice, and the mass graves honored for each are empty, and the tripods and altars beside the gods stand full of false inscriptions, while Herodotus alone has known the truth, and all the rest of mankind, as many as have any repute among the Greeks, have been deceived by the report of those exploits of that time, as though they had
been something extraordinary? What then? The man is a vivid writer, his style is pleasing, and his narratives have charm and cleverness and a certain bloom; and like a bard telling a tale, though not with full understanding, he has spoken clearly and gracefully. To be sure, these qualities charm and win everyone over; but, as one must beware of the blister-beetle hidden among roses, so one must beware of his slander and malicious speech, concealed beneath a smooth and gentle style, lest unawares we come away holding absurd and false opinions about the best and greatest of the cities and men of Greece.

======== Moralia: De Invidia Et Odio ========

So then envy seems to differ in no way from hatred, but to be the same thing. For in general, like a many-hooked evil, wickedness, as it moves this way and that through the passions attached to it, produces many connections and interweavings among them; and these, like diseases, share in one another's inflammations. For a man who prospers grieves alike both the one who hates him and the one who envies him. That is why
we think good will is opposed to both, being the wish for good things for one's neighbor; and we think hating and envying are the same, because both hold the opposite disposition to loving. But since resemblances do not make things as identical as differences make them distinct, let us investigate along the lines of these differences, beginning from the origin of the passions. Hatred, then, is generated from the perception
that the person hated is wicked, either in general or toward oneself; for those who believe themselves wronged are by nature inclined to hate, and they thrust forward and are vexed at those who are unjust or wicked in other ways, whereas they simply envy those who seem to fare well. Hence envy appears to be indefinite, like an inflammation of the eye that is disturbed by anything bright at all, while hatred is always fixed upon certain particular
objects, bearing down upon them. Second, hatred also arises toward irrational animals: for some people hate weasels and beetles, toads and snakes; Germanicus could not endure either the voice or the sight of a cock; and the Magi of the Persians used to kill mice, both because they themselves hated them and because they held the animal to be displeasing to their god — indeed almost all Arabs and Ethiopians
loathe them. Envy, however, arises only between man and man. Even among wild animals it is not likely that envy arises toward one another, for they do not form any conception of one another's faring well or ill, nor does reputation or disrepute touch them — the very things by which envy is chiefly provoked. But they do hate one another, and are estranged, and wage what might be called truceless wars, as eagles and
serpents do, crows and owls, tits and goldfinches — so much so that people say that even the blood of these creatures, when they are slaughtered, will not mix together, but even if you blend it, it separates again and flows apart on its own. And it is reasonable that fear should have generated a strong hatred in the lion toward the cock and in the elephant toward the pig: for what creatures fear, they are also by nature inclined to hate — so that in this respect too hatred appears to differ from
envy, in that the nature of wild animals admits the one but not the other. Furthermore, envy toward no one arises justly, for no one does wrong by faring well, yet it is for this very thing that men are envied; hatred, on the other hand, is often felt justly toward many — those we call deserving of hatred — unless one avoids and abhors and is vexed at such people. A great proof of this is that men
openly admit to hating many people, but none says he envies anyone. Indeed hatred of wickedness is among the things praised: and when some were praising Charillus, Lycurgus's nephew, who reigned in Sparta and was mild and gentle, his co-ruler said, "How can Charillus be good, when he is not even harsh to the wicked?" And the poet, in describing Thersites' bodily ugliness, fashioned it
in many details and at great length, but expressed the baseness of his character most concisely, in a single line: "and he was most hateful to Achilles and to Odysseus above all" — for it is a kind of extreme of vileness to be hateful to the best men. But men deny that they envy, even when they are caught in the act, and they put forward countless pretexts, saying they are angry, or afraid of the man, or that they hate him, or whatever else they happen upon, throwing a cloak over their envy
and hiding it under some other name for the feeling, as though this alone among the diseases of the soul must not be spoken of. It is necessary, then, that these passions, like plants, both feed on and grow from and give rise to one another in those who harbor them. We hate more those who advance further into wickedness, but we envy more those who seem to advance further in virtue. That is why Themistocles, while still a youth, said he had
done nothing splendid yet, for he was not yet envied. For just as beetles fasten most upon grain in its prime and upon roses in full bloom, so envy takes hold most of characters and persons that are good and increasing toward virtue and reputation. And conversely, unmixed wickedness rather intensifies hatred. At any rate, the citizens hated those who had brought false charges against Socrates, as men who had gone to the utmost extreme of vice, so
much so that they turned away from them, refusing to kindle fire for them or answer their questions or share water with them when they bathed, but forced the attendants to pour out the water as polluted, until they hanged themselves, unable to bear the hatred. But the superiorities and splendors of good fortune often quench envy. For it is not likely that anyone envies Alexander or Cyrus, once they had conquered and become masters of all things. But
just as the sun, wherever it comes to stand overhead, pouring down its light either removes the shadow altogether or makes it small, so too, of those who have attained great height and come to stand above envy, envy itself contracts and withdraws, being outshone. Hatred, however, is not relaxed by the superiority and power of one's enemies. Alexander, at any rate, had no one who envied him, but he had many who hated him,
by whom he was in the end plotted against and killed. Likewise, then, misfortunes stop those who envy, but they do not remove enmities: for men hate their enemies even when they have become humbled, but no one envies a man in misfortune. Indeed what was said by one of the sophists of our own day is true, that those who envy take the greatest pleasure in pitying — so that in this respect too there is a great
difference between the passions: hatred is not naturally inclined to withdraw either from those who prosper or from those who suffer misfortune, whereas envy gives up in the face of an excess of either. Let us, then, examine the same matter still further from the opposite side. Men give up enmities and hatred either by being persuaded that they were not wronged at all, or by forming a good opinion of those whom they had hated as wicked, or, third, by receiving some benefit from them: "for the last
favor," as Thucydides says, "even if it is smaller, because it comes at the right moment, can outweigh a greater grievance." Of these, the first does not dissolve envy: for those who are persuaded from the start that they were not wronged nevertheless envy; and the remaining causes actually provoke it further, for men feel malice more toward those who seem good, on the grounds that they possess virtue, the greatest good of all, and even if they are treated well by those who prosper,
they are pained, envying them both their moral purpose and their power — for the one belongs to virtue, the other to good fortune, and both are goods. Hence envy is an altogether different passion from hatred, if the very things by which hatred is soothed are the things by which envy is pained and provoked. Let us now, then, also examine the very moral purpose of each passion. The purpose of one who hates is to do harm according
to his power; and thus they define it, as a certain disposition and purpose that watches for the chance to do harm. But this at least is absent from envy: for many who envy their familiars and kin would not wish them to perish or to suffer misfortune, yet they are burdened by their prospering; and they hinder, if they can, their reputation and splendor, but they would not inflict irreparable disasters upon them — rather, like men living beside
a house that overshadows them, they are content merely to tear down whatever blocks their light.

======== Moralia: De Iside Et Osiride ========

All good things, Clea, must be asked of the gods by people of sense, but above all we should pray to obtain from the gods themselves, as far as is attainable for human beings, knowledge of them; for there is nothing greater that a person can receive, nor anything more solemn that he can grant to a god, than truth. God gives men everything else that they need, but of mind and understanding he grants a share, since these are his own possessions and the very things he uses.
For the divine is blessed not through silver and gold, nor made strong through thunders and thunderbolts, but through knowledge and understanding. And of all that Homer has said about the gods, this he expressed most beautifully: when he had Zeus declare, "Truly the two of us are of one stock and one lineage, but Zeus was born first and knows more," he thereby represented the sovereignty of Zeus as the more venerable one, being older in knowledge and wisdom. I think, too, that the eternal life which god has been allotted is a happy one precisely because it never falls behind events in its knowledge of them; and if the knowing and understanding of what exists were taken away, immortality would not be life but mere duration. That is why the longing for divinity is a longing for the truth, above all the truth about the gods — a study and a search that is a kind of recovery of sacred things,
more sacred a task than any purity of life or temple service, and one especially pleasing to this goddess whom you serve, who is preeminently wise and philosophical, as indeed her name seems to indicate: for knowledge and understanding belong to her more than to anyone. "Isis" is a Greek name, as is "Typhon," who is an enemy to the goddess, being through ignorance and deception
puffed up with delusion, and who tears apart and scatters the sacred discourse, which the goddess in turn gathers and puts together and hands down to those being initiated into deification — through a life of continual self-control, through abstinence from many foods and from sexual pleasure, curbing licentiousness and love of pleasure, and habituating people to endure austere and rigorous service in the temples, the goal of which is the knowledge of the First and the Sovereign and the Intelligible, whom
the goddess bids us seek, since he is with her and beside her. And the very name of her temple both clearly and plainly promises knowledge and understanding of that which is. For it is called the Iseion, as though it were a place of "knowing that which is," if we enter the sanctuaries of the goddess in a reasonable and pious manner. Furthermore, many have recorded her as the daughter of Hermes, and many as the daughter of Prometheus,
the latter of whom they consider the discoverer of wisdom and forethought, and Hermes the discoverer of grammar and music. That is why, among the Muses at Hermopolis, they call the first one Isis, and also Justice, since she is wise, as has been said, and reveals divine things to those who are truly and rightly called "bearers of the sacred" and "wearers of the sacred robe." These are the ones who carry the sacred discourse about the gods, purified of all superstition and
needless curiosity, in their soul as though in a chest, and who cloak it, showing forth partly what is dark and shadowy and partly what is plain and bright about their conception of the gods, such as they also display concerning the sacred vestment. That is why it is a symbol that the dead who have been initiates of Isis are adorned with these garments — that this discourse is with them, and that having this and nothing else
they go on their way there. For it is not the wearing of beards, Clea, or the carrying of the philosopher's cloak that makes philosophers, nor is it linen garments and shaven heads that make initiates of Isis; rather, one who is truly an initiate of Isis is the person who, when he has lawfully received what is displayed and enacted concerning these gods, seeks by reason and philosophizes about the truth contained in them. Most people, indeed, fail to notice even this, the most common and smallest point:
the reason why the priests remove their hair and wear linen garments. Some do not concern themselves at all with knowing about these matters; others say that the priests abstain from wool, as they abstain from meat, out of reverence for the sheep, and that they shave their heads because of mourning, and wear linen because of the color which flax, when in bloom, gives off, resembling the ethereal, bright-blue color that surrounds the world.
But the true reason for all of this is a single one: "for it is not lawful," says Plato, "for the impure to touch the pure"; and no excess or residue of nourishment is holy or pure — and it is out of excess matter that wool, hair, fleece, and nails grow and sprout. It would therefore be absurd that, while shaving off their own hair during their purifications and making their whole body smooth,
they should nevertheless wrap themselves in and wear the hair of animals. Indeed, we ought to think that Hesiod too, when he says, "do not cut the dry from the green with bright iron at the joyous feast of the gods, from the five-branched thing," is teaching that one must become pure of such things before celebrating a festival, not that one should employ purification and the removal of superfluities during the rites themselves. As for flax,
it grows out of the immortal earth and yields an edible fruit, and it provides a simple and pure garment that does not weigh heavily on the one who wears it for covering, one well suited to every season and, they say, least likely to breed lice — though that is a separate discussion. The priests are so averse to the nature of excess matter that they not only avoid most legumes and the meats
of sheep and pigs, which produce a great deal of residue, but even remove salt from their food during their purifications, for several reasons, among them that salt makes them thirstier and hungrier by sharpening the appetite. As for the notion, which Aristagoras mentioned, that salt is considered impure because many small creatures die trapped inside it as it solidifies — that is a foolish idea. It is also said that
they water the Apis bull from a well of his own, keeping him altogether away from the Nile — not because they consider the water polluted on account of the crocodile, as some suppose (for nothing is so highly valued by the Egyptians as the Nile), but because drinking Nile water seems to be fattening and especially to produce excess flesh. And they do not want the Apis to be in that condition, nor do they wish it for themselves, but rather that their
bodies should sit lightly and easily upon their souls, and not weigh down and oppress the divine element with a mortal burden that is too strong and heavy. As for wine, those who serve the god at Heliopolis do not bring it into the temple at all, on the ground that it is not fitting to drink during the day while the lord and king looks on; the others use it, but sparingly. And they have many wineless periods of purification,
during which they spend their time in philosophizing, and in learning and teaching sacred matters. And the kings, being themselves priests, used to drink only a measured amount, as prescribed in the sacred writings, according to Hecataeus; they began to drink wine only from the time of Psammetichus, whereas before that they neither drank wine nor poured it in libation as something friendly to the gods, but rather as the blood of those who had once made war upon the gods, from whose fallen bodies, mingled with the earth,
they believe the vines sprang up — which is why becoming drunk makes people frenzied and deranged, since they are, as it were, filling themselves with the blood of their ancestors. This, at any rate, is what Eudoxus, in the second book of his Voyage, says was told by the priests. As for sea fish, not all the priests abstain from all of them, but from some; the people of Oxyrhynchus, for instance, abstain from fish caught by hook, since, out of reverence for the oxyrhynchus fish, they fear
that the hook might not be pure if an oxyrhynchus has ever come into contact with it. The people of Syene abstain from the phagrus fish, since it appears to show itself alongside the rising Nile and, being seen, seems of its own accord to announce gladly the coming flood. The priests abstain from all fish; and on the ninth day of the first month, when every other Egyptian eats a broiled fish before his outer door, the priests do not taste it but burn
their fish before their doors, having two accounts for this practice, one sacred and elaborate, which I will take up again later, in harmony with what is piously philosophized concerning Osiris and Typhon; the other plain and ready at hand, showing that fish is not a necessary or refined dish, and citing Homer as a witness, since he represents neither the luxurious Phaeacians nor the islanders of Ithaca as eating fish, nor even the companions of Odysseus, for all their long voyage
upon the sea, until they came to the direst extremity. In general, they consider the sea to have come from fire and to be set apart from the rest of nature, being neither a part nor an element but a foreign, corrupted, and diseased residue. For nothing is irrational or mythical, nor was anything, as some suppose, built into the sacred rites out of mere superstition; rather, some things have moral and practical explanations, and others are not without a certain refinement
of a historical or a natural kind, as, for example, in the case of the onion. For the story that Dictys, the nurse of Isis, fell into the river and perished while clutching at onions is utterly implausible; but the priests avoid and abhor the onion, taking care to note that it alone thrives and flourishes precisely when the moon is waning. It is unsuitable for those who are either purifying themselves or keeping festival, in the one case because it causes thirst,
in the other because it makes those who partake of it weep. Likewise they consider the pig an unholy animal, since it appears to be mounted for mating chiefly when the moon is waning, and the bodies of those who drink its milk break out in leprosy and scabby roughness. As for the story which they tell when they sacrifice a pig once, at the full moon, and eat it — that Typhon, while pursuing a pig toward the
full moon, found the wooden chest in which lay the body of Osiris, and scattered it — not everyone accepts this, regarding it, like many other such tales, as an idle bit of gossip. Rather, they say the ancients meant by this to reject luxury, extravagance, and self-indulgence, so much so that they even claim there stood a pillar in a temple at Thebes inscribed with curses against King Meinis, who was the first to release the Egyptians from
their poor, unmonied, and simple way of life. It is also said that Technactis, the father of Bocchoris, while on campaign against the Arabs, when his baggage train was delayed, gladly made do with whatever food was at hand, and then, having slept a deep sleep upon a pallet, came to embrace frugality; and that from this experience he cursed Meinis, and that the priests, approving, inscribed the curse upon the pillar. The kings were appointed from among the priests
or from the warrior class, since the one class had standing and honor through courage and the other through wisdom. And whoever was appointed from the warriors immediately became one of the priests and shared in their philosophy, which for the most part is concealed in myths and in accounts that contain dim glimmerings and reflections of the truth, as indeed they themselves suggest when they set up sphinxes, quite fittingly, before their temples, implying that
their theology contains a riddling kind of wisdom. And the seated image of Athena at Sais, whom they also identify with Isis, bore the inscription: "I am all that has been, and is, and shall be, and no mortal has yet uncovered my robe." Further, though most people think that Amoun is the proper Egyptian name for Zeus, a name which we, altering it, call Ammon,
Manetho of Sebennytus thinks that the word signifies "the hidden" and "concealment"; while Hecataeus of Abdera says that the Egyptians use this very word among themselves when they call someone to them, since it is a word of summoning. That is why they call the first god — whom they hold to be the same as the universe — by the name Amoun, as being invisible and hidden, when they call upon him and
summon him to become visible and manifest to them. Such, then, was the reverence of the Egyptians' wisdom concerning divine matters. And the wisest of the Greeks bear witness to it too — Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and, as some say, even Lycurgus — who came to Egypt and associated with the priests. Eudoxus, they say, was a pupil of Chonuphis of Memphis, Solon of Sonchis
of Sais, and Pythagoras of Oenuphis of Heliopolis. Pythagoras above all, it seems, was admired by these men and admired them in turn, and so he imitated their symbolic and mysterious manner, weaving his doctrines into riddles; for most of the so-called Pythagorean precepts fall little short of what is written in the hieroglyphic characters — precepts such as "do not eat while seated on a stool," "do not sit on a bushel measure," "do not plant a palm tree," and "do not stir fire with a knife
in the house." I myself think that the men's practice of calling the monad Apollo, the dyad Artemis, the number seven Athena, and the first cube Poseidon, corresponds closely to what is established, enacted — yes, and written — in the temples. For they represent the king and lord Osiris by an eye and a scepter, and some even interpret the name to mean "many-eyed,"
since os in the Egyptian tongue signifies "many" and iri signifies "eye," and heaven, being ageless because of its eternity, they depict with a heart and a brazier set beneath it. In Thebes there stood dedicated images of judges without hands, and the image of the chief justice had its eyes closed, to signify that justice is incorruptible by gifts and inaccessible to influence. For the warrior class, the scarab beetle was engraved as their seal, for
there is no female scarab; they are all male. They deposit their seed into a ball of matter which they shape, providing thereby a place not so much for nourishment as for generation. So then, whenever you hear the myths that the Egyptians tell about the gods — their wanderings, dismemberments, and many such sufferings — you must bear in mind what has already been said, and think that none of these things is spoken of as having actually happened or been done in that way. For they do not properly
call the dog Hermes, but they associate the watchful, wakeful, and philosophical quality of the animal, which distinguishes friend from enemy by knowledge and ignorance, as Plato says, with the most rational of the gods. Nor do they suppose that the sun rises as a newborn infant out of a lotus, but rather they depict the sunrise in this way to hint at the kindling of the sun that arises out of moisture. And indeed, when the
most savage and terrifying of the Persian kings, Ochus, who had killed many, and who at last also slaughtered the Apis and dined upon it with his friends, they called him "the Knife," and to this day they still so name him in the list of kings — not, of course, signifying his real nature by this, but likening the harshness and wickedness of his character to a murderous instrument. In just this way, then, one who hears about the gods and
receives such things from those who interpret the myth in a pious and philosophical manner, and who always performs and preserves the established rites of the temples, while believing that having a true opinion about the gods will please them no less than sacrificing or performing any rite, will thereby escape an evil no less than atheism — namely, superstition. Now this myth is told in the briefest form possible, setting aside what is most useless
...once the superfluous elements have been removed. They say that Rhea had intercourse secretly with Cronus, and that Helios, perceiving it, called down a curse upon her, that she should bear no child in any month or year; but that Hermes, being in love with the goddess, lay with her, and afterward, playing at draughts with the Moon, won from her the seventieth part of each of her lights, and out of all these portions composed five days, which he added to the three hundred and sixty. These are the days the Egyptians now call the "added" days, and they celebrate them as the birthdays of the gods.
On the first of these days Osiris was born, and a voice went forth together with him at his birth, declaring that the lord of all things was coming into the light. But some say that a certain Pamyles, drawing water at Thebes from the shrine of Zeus, heard a voice commanding him to proclaim with a shout that the great king and benefactor Osiris had been born; and that for this reason he reared Osiris, Cronus having entrusted the child to him, and that the festival of the Pamylia, resembling the Phallephoria, is celebrated in his honor.
On the second day Arueris was born, whom some call Apollo, and others the elder Horus; on the third, Typhon, not at the proper time nor in the proper place, but bursting through with a blow, he leapt out through his mother's side; on the fourth, Isis was born amid all moisture; and on the fifth, Nephthys, whom some name also Teleute and Aphrodite, and others Nike. Osiris and Arueris, they say, were sons of Helios, Isis was the daughter of Hermes, and Typhon and Nephthys were children of Cronus. For this reason the kings, regarding the third of the added days as ill-omened, conducted no business on it and did not attend to their own affairs until nightfall. Nephthys was married to Typhon.
Isis and Osiris, being in love with each other, had intercourse in the darkness even before they were born, while still in the womb. Some say that Arueris too was born in this way, and that he is called the elder Horus by the Egyptians, and Apollo by the Greeks. When Osiris became king, he immediately delivered the Egyptians from their destitute and beast-like way of life, by showing them crops, establishing laws for them, and teaching them to honor the gods. Afterward he traveled over the whole earth, civilizing it, having very little need of weapons, but winning over most people by persuasion and reason, charming them with song and every kind of music; hence the Greeks came to believe that he was the same as Dionysus.
While Osiris was away, Typhon attempted nothing new, because Isis, who held power, guarded herself and watched closely; but when Osiris returned, Typhon contrived a plot, having formed seventy-two conspirators, and having as an accomplice a queen from Ethiopia who happened to be present, whom they name Aso. Having secretly measured Osiris's body, and having had a chest made, beautiful and elaborately adorned, fitted exactly to that measurement, he brought it into the banqueting hall. When the guests were delighted at the sight and admired it, Typhon promised, as a jest, that whoever, lying down in it, fit it exactly, should be given the chest as a gift.
When each of them in turn tried it and none fit, Osiris got in and lay down. The conspirators then rushed up and slammed the lid shut, and, some nailing it fast from outside and others pouring molten lead over it, carried it out to the river and released it into the sea through the Tanitic mouth — which for this reason the Egyptians even now call hateful and execrable. This is said to have happened on the seventeenth day of the month Athyr, when the sun passes through Scorpio, in the twenty-eighth year of Osiris's reign. Some, however, say that he had lived, not reigned, that length of time.
The Pans and Satyrs who lived around the region of Chemmis were the first to perceive what had happened and to spread word of it; and for this reason sudden disturbances and frights among crowds are still called "panics" to this day. Isis, on learning of it, cut off a lock of her hair there and put on mourning garb, in the place that is still to this day called Coptos. Others think the name signifies deprivation, for they say the Egyptians call "depriving" kopto.
Wandering everywhere in her distress, she passed no one without speaking to them; and when she met with small children, she asked them about the chest, and they, as it happened, had seen it and told her the mouth of the river through which the friends of Typhon had pushed the vessel into the sea. For this reason the Egyptians believe that children possess a prophetic power, and they especially take omens from the chance utterances of children playing in sacred places and saying whatever they happen to say.
Isis learned that Osiris, in ignorance, had had intercourse with her sister Nephthys, taking her for Isis herself, and she saw as proof of it the garland of melilot which he had left with Nephthys; so she sought for the child — for Nephthys, immediately after giving birth, had exposed it out of fear of Typhon. It was found, with difficulty and effort, by Isis, who was guided by dogs, and it was reared and became her guardian and attendant, called Anubis, who is said to guard the gods just as dogs guard men.
From this she learned about the chest: that it had been carried by the waves to the region of Byblos, and the swell had gently brought it to rest against a tamarisk bush; and the tamarisk, growing in a short time into a most beautiful and enormous shoot, enfolded it, grew around it, and hid it within itself. The king, marveling at the size of the plant, cut off the trunk that enclosed the coffin, invisible within it, and set it up as a support for the roof of his palace.
They say that Isis, learning of this by a report carried on some divine inspiration, came to Byblos, and, sitting by a spring, humble and in tears, spoke to no one else, but greeted and befriended the queen's handmaidens, plaiting their hair and breathing upon their skin a wonderful fragrance from herself. When the queen saw her handmaidens, a longing seized her for the stranger, whose hair and skin breathed a fragrance as of ambrosia; so Isis was sent for, and, having become intimate with the queen, was made nurse of her child.
The king's name, they say, was Malcandrus; the queen's name is given by some as Astarte, by others as Saosis, and by others as Nemanous, which the Greeks would call Athenais. Isis nursed the child, giving it her finger to suck instead of her breast, and at night she would burn away the mortal parts of its body, while she herself, having become a swallow, flew around the pillar and lamented — until the queen, watching closely, cried out when she saw her baby being burned, and thereby deprived it of immortality.
Then the goddess, revealing herself, asked for the pillar of the roof, and, removing it with the greatest ease, cut away the tamarisk; then, having wrapped it in linen and poured perfume over it, she gave it into the hands of the king and queen; and to this day the people of Byblos still venerate the wood, which lies in the temple of Isis. She then fell upon the coffin and wailed so loudly that the younger of the king's sons died of it; and taking the elder son with her, and placing the coffin in a boat, she put out to sea.
When the river Phaedrus sent forth a rather harsh wind toward dawn, she grew angry and dried up its stream. At the first place where she found solitude, being alone by herself, she opened the chest, and, laying her face upon his face, embraced it and wept. When the child came up silently from behind and watched her, she, perceiving it, turned around and looked at it terribly in anger. The child could not bear the fright, and died. Others say it was not so, but that, as has been said before, he fell into the sea.
He receives honors on account of the goddess; for the one whom the Egyptians sing of at their banquets as Maneros is this very child. Some say that the boy was called Palaestinus or Pelusius, and that the city founded by the goddess was named after him; but they relate that the Maneros who is sung of was the first discoverer of music.
Others say it is not the name of any person at all, but rather a phrase suited to men who are drinking and feasting, meaning "may such things be fitting"; for this, expressed as "to Maneros," is what the Egyptians cry out on each such occasion. Just so, indeed, the image of a dead man that is carried around in a small box and displayed to the guests is not, as some suppose, a reminder of the suffering of Osiris, but rather they bring it in as an unwelcome addition to the revelry, urging themselves, now that they are in their cups, to make use of and enjoy what is present, since they will soon be just such as it.
When Isis had gone to her son Horus, who was being reared at Buto, and had set the chest aside out of the way, Typhon, hunting by night in the light of the moon, came upon it, and, recognizing the body, tore it into fourteen pieces and scattered them about. When Isis learned of this, she searched for the pieces, sailing through the marshes in a papyrus boat; for this reason those who sail in papyrus skiffs are not harmed by crocodiles, which either fear or revere the goddess.
For this reason many tombs of Osiris are said to exist in Egypt, because, whenever she came upon a piece, she performed burial rites for it. But others deny this, and say instead that she made images and gave one to each city, as though giving the body itself, so that Osiris might be honored by more people, and so that, if Typhon should overpower Horus and go searching for the true tomb, he would give up in despair when many tombs were spoken of and shown to him.
Of all the parts of Osiris, the only one Isis did not find was the genital member; for it had been thrown into the river at once, and the lepidotus, the phagrus, and the oxyrhynchus fish had tasted of it — fish which the Egyptians for this reason especially abstain from eating. Isis, making a likeness of it in its place, consecrated the phallus, and the Egyptians even now hold a festival in its honor.
Afterward, Osiris came from Hades to Horus and trained and exercised him for battle, and then asked him what he considered the finest thing. When Horus answered, "To avenge one's father and mother for the wrongs they have suffered," Osiris asked him a second question: what animal he thought most useful to those going out to battle. When Horus said "a horse," Osiris was surprised, and puzzled why he had not said a lion instead. Horus replied that a lion is useful to one who is in need of help, but a horse serves to pursue and destroy an enemy in flight. Hearing this, Osiris was pleased, feeling that Horus was now adequately prepared.
It is said that, as many were continually going over to the side of Horus, even Typhon's concubine Thoueris came over to him. A serpent that pursued her was cut to pieces by Horus's followers; and even now, for this reason, they throw a rope into their midst and cut it up. The battle, then, lasted many days, and Horus prevailed; but when Isis took Typhon prisoner in bonds, she did not kill him, but loosed him and let him go.
Horus did not take this well, but laid hands on his mother and tore the royal crown from her head; and Hermes put a helmet shaped like an ox's head on her instead. When Typhon brought a suit against Horus for illegitimacy, Hermes came to his aid, and Horus was judged by the gods to be legitimate; and Typhon was defeated in two further battles. Isis, having conceived by Osiris after his death, gave birth to Harpocrates, born prematurely and weak in his lower limbs.
These, then, are more or less the main points of the myth, with the most ill-omened details removed, such as the account of Horus's dismemberment and Isis's beheading.
Now, that if these things are believed and asserted to have truly happened and occurred, concerning that blessed and imperishable nature by which the divine is above all conceived, then, in the words of Aeschylus, "one must spit them out and purify one's mouth" — there is no need to say this to you, for you yourself are displeased with those who hold such lawless and barbarous opinions about the gods.
But that these things do not seem to be entirely thin and empty fabrications of the sort that poets and prose-writers, like spiders spinning from themselves out of an unfounded beginning, weave and stretch out, but that they contain certain accounts of events and narratives of sufferings — this you know yourself. Just as the mathematicians say that the rainbow is a reflection of the sun, given its varied colors by the turning back of our vision toward a cloud, so here the myth is a reflection of some account that turns the mind toward other things, as is suggested both by the sacrifices, which display mourning and a gloomy character, and by the arrangement of the temples, which in some parts open out into wings and open, unroofed colonnades exposed to the sky, while in other parts have hidden and dark underground chambers resembling burial vaults and shrines.
Not least significant is the belief concerning the tombs of Osiris, his body being said to lie in many places; for they say the small town called Diochita is named as the one that alone possesses the true tomb, and at Abydos the most fortunate and powerful of the Egyptians are chiefly buried, competing with each other for the honor of sharing a grave with the body of Osiris, while at Memphis the Apis bull is reared, being an image of Osiris's soul, in the place where his body also is said to lie; and the name of the city is interpreted by some as "haven of good things," and by others, specifically, as "tomb of Osiris."
The islet near Philae is at other times inaccessible and unapproachable by anyone, and not even birds land on it nor fish come near it; but at one appointed time the priests cross over and offer sacrifices and wreathe the tomb, shaded by a plant called methide, which surpasses in size any olive tree. Eudoxus says that, of the many tombs spoken of in Egypt, it is at Busiris that the body actually lies, since this was in fact the birthplace of Osiris; Taphosiris, on the other hand, needs no explanation, for the name itself declares "the burial of Osiris."
I pass over in silence the cutting of wood, the splitting of linen, and the libations that are poured, because many of the mystic rites are mixed up with these matters.
The priests say this not only of Osiris, but also of the other gods, all those who are neither unbegotten nor imperishable: that their bodies, having grown weary, lie among them and receive rites of care, while their souls shine as stars in heaven — the star of Isis being called the Dog-star by the Greeks, and Sothis by the Egyptians, Orion being the star of Horus, and the Bear that of Typhon. And as regards the burial rites for the sacred animals, all other Egyptians perform the prescribed contributions, but the inhabitants of the Thebaid alone do not contribute, since they hold that no god is mortal, but only the one whom they themselves call Kneph, who is unbegotten and immortal.
Since many such things are said and shown, some, believing that these are the deeds of kings and rulers who, on account of surpassing virtue or power, claimed for themselves the dignity of divine repute and then met with fortunes such that their terrible and great deeds and sufferings are still remembered, resort to the easiest escape from the difficulty, and not without some skill transfer the ill-omened elements from the gods to human beings, finding support for this in what is recorded in the histories. For the Egyptians relate that Hermes, with his...
...in body, that Hermes was bandy-legged, Typhon reddish in complexion, Horus white, and Osiris dark, as though they had been born men by nature. They also call Osiris a general, and Canobus a helmsman, after whom, they say, the star is named; and the ship which the Greeks call the Argo is a starry image, set among the stars in his honor, of Osiris's own vessel, and it moves not far from Orion and the Dog Star, of which the one the Egyptians hold sacred to Horus, the other to Isis.
I am reluctant to disturb what should not be disturbed, and to "war," not merely, as Simonides says, "with the long march of time," but with many nations of men and races held fast by their piety toward these gods — reducing to nothing and dragging down from heaven to earth names and honors so great, and a faith almost woven into everyone from his very birth, thereby throwing open great gates to a godless rabble and turning the divine into the merely human, and giving free rein to the impostures of Euhemerus of Messene, who himself composed a fictitious record of an incredible and nonexistent mythology and has poured out atheism over the whole inhabited world by leveling all the gods men believe in into names of generals, admirals, and kings who supposedly lived long ago and are recorded in golden letters at Panchaia — letters which no barbarian and no Greek, but only Euhemerus himself, it seems, ever saw, having sailed to visit the Panchaeans and Triphyllians, who exist nowhere on earth and never existed. And yet great deeds are celebrated in song among the Assyrians as belonging to Semiramis, and great ones among the Egyptians as belonging to Sesostris; the Phrygians to this day call brilliant and marvelous achievements "Manic," after a certain Manes, a good and powerful king of old among them, whom some call Masdes; Cyrus led the Persians and Alexander the Macedonians to conquer very nearly the ends of the earth — yet these have only the name and memory of good kings. "But if certain men, puffed up by vainglory," as Plato says, "their souls ablaze with youth and folly together with insolence," accepted divine titles and the founding of temples in their honor, their glory flowered only briefly, and then, along with impiety and lawlessness, they incurred a reputation for emptiness and imposture. Short-lived, they were borne up like smoke and vanished, and now, like runaway slaves dragged back in chains, torn away from their shrines and altars, they possess nothing but their monuments and their tombs.
Hence Antigonus the Elder, when a certain Hermodotus in his verses proclaimed him son of Helios and a god, said: "My chamber-pot bearer knows nothing of the kind about me." And Lysippus the sculptor rightly rebuked Apelles the painter, because in painting a portrait of Alexander he had put a thunderbolt in his hand, whereas he himself had given him a spear, the glory of which no length of time will ever take away, since it is true and truly his own. Better, then, are those
who hold that the things told of Typhon, Osiris, and Isis are the sufferings neither of gods nor of men, but of great daemons — beings whom Plato, Pythagoras, Xenocrates, and Chrysippus, following the ancient theologians, say came into being stronger than men and far surpassing us in the power of their nature, yet not possessing the divine element unmixed or pure, but sharing also in the nature of soul and of body, allotted a share in sensation, receiving pleasure and pain, and whatever affections attend these changes disturb some more, some less. For, as among men, so among daemons there are differences of virtue and vice. Indeed the tales of the Giants and Titans sung among the Greeks, certain lawless deeds of Cronus, the resistance of Python against Apollo, the flights
and wanderings of Dionysus, and those of Demeter, fall short in nothing of the Osiriac and Typhonic stories, nor do the other tales which anyone is free to hear recounted without restraint; and whatever is kept hidden under the veil of mystic rites and secret ceremonies, unspoken and unseen to the multitude, admits of a similar account. We hear too that Homer variously calls the good "godlike" on each occasion, and "godlike-opposing," and "having thoughts from the gods," while he uses the term "daemon" indiscriminately of both the good and the bad — "come near, O daemonic one; why do you so fear the Argives?"; and again, "but when for the fourth time he rushed on like a daemon"; and "daemonic one, what harm have Priam and the sons of Priam done you, that you rage so relentlessly to sack the well-built citadel of Ilium?" — as though daemons possessed a mixed and uneven nature
and moral character. Whence Plato assigns to the Olympian gods the things on the right hand and the odd numbers, and to the daemons their opposites. And Xenocrates holds that the inauspicious days, and those festivals which involve blows, beatings of the breast, fasts, curses, or foul language, belong to the honor neither of good gods nor of good daemons, but that there exist in the surrounding air natures great and powerful, yet perverse and gloomy, who delight in such things, and, obtaining them, turn to nothing worse. The good and virtuous ones, on the other hand, Hesiod calls "holy daemons" and "guardians of men," "givers of wealth, possessing this kingly privilege too." Plato likewise calls this class of being interpretive and ministering, situated between gods and
men, carrying up to the gods the prayers and petitions of men, and bringing back down from them oracles and gifts of good things. Empedocles says that the daemons pay a penalty for whatever they sin and transgress: "for the might of the aether pursues them into the sea, the sea spits them out onto the floor of the earth, the earth casts them into the rays of the unwearied sun, and he in turn flings them into the eddies of the aether; one receives them from another," and all of these abhor them, until, thus chastened and purified, they at last recover their proper place and rank according to nature. Of these and similar beings they say kindred things are told concerning Typhon — how out of envy and ill will he wrought terrible deeds, and having thrown everything into confusion, filled almost the whole earth and sea alike with evils, and afterward paid the penalty. And she
who avenged Osiris, his sister and wife, having quenched and put an end to Typhon's madness and fury, did not disregard the labors and struggles she had endured, nor her own wanderings; and having consecrated many deeds of wisdom and many of courage, adopting a policy of forgetfulness and silence, yet weaving into her most sacred rites images, hints, and reenactments of the sufferings then endured, she made them into a lesson of piety and a consolation at once for men and women caught in similar misfortunes. She herself and Osiris, having changed from good daemons into gods on account of their virtue — as later did Heracles and Dionysus — hold, not inappropriately, honors that combine those of gods and of daemons together, being most powerful everywhere, but especially in the regions above and below the earth. For they say Sarapis is none other than Pluto, and Isis is Persephone, as Archemachus of Euboea has said, and Heraclides of Pontus holds that the oracle at Canopus belongs to Pluto.
Ptolemy Soter saw in a dream the colossal statue of Pluto at Sinope, without knowing or ever having seen before what its form was like, commanding him to bring it to Alexandria as quickly as possible. Not knowing where it stood, and being at a loss, and while he was describing the vision to his friends, there was found a much-traveled man named Sosibius, who said he had seen at Sinope just such a colossus as the king seemed to have seen. Ptolemy therefore sent Soteles and Dionysius, who after a long time and with much difficulty — yet not without divine providence — brought it away by stealth. When it had been carried off and was seen, Timotheus the expounder of sacred rites and Manetho the Sebennyte, comparing notes, concluded from the Cerberus and the serpent
that it was an image of Pluto, and persuaded Ptolemy that it belonged to no other god but Sarapis. For it did not come from there already bearing that name; rather, once brought to Alexandria it acquired, under the Egyptian name for Pluto, the title Sarapis. And indeed, since Heraclitus the natural philosopher says, "Hades and Dionysus are the same, for whom men rave and hold their Lenaean revels," they subscribe to this same opinion. But those who suppose that Hades means the body, in which the soul is as it were deranged and drunk, allegorize too feebly. It is better to identify Osiris with Dionysus, and Sarapis with Osiris once he had changed his nature and taken on this new name. That is why Sarapis belongs equally to all, just as those who have been initiated into the sacred rites know Osiris to belong to all.
For it is not worth paying attention to the Phrygian writings, in which it is said that Isis was born the daughter of Charops, son of Heracles, and Typhon the son of Aeacus, son of Heracles; nor should one dismiss Phylarchus's account, that Dionysus was the first to bring two oxen from India into Egypt, one of which was named Apis, the other Osiris; and that Sarapis is the name of the one who orders the universe, derived from "sairein," a word some say means to beautify and adorn. These claims of Phylarchus are absurd enough, but far more absurd are those of the people who say that Sarapis is not a god at all, but that this is simply the name given to the coffin of Apis, and that certain bronze gates at Memphis, called the "gates of forgetfulness and wailing," are opened whenever they bury an Apis bull, making a heavy, harsh sound — which is why we clap our hands on any resounding piece of bronze whenever we hear it.
More moderate are those who say the name derives from "seuesthai" and "sousthai," words expressing the motion of the universe as a whole. Most of the priests, however, say that Osiris and Apis are woven together into one, explaining and teaching us that we ought to regard Apis as the embodied image of Osiris's soul. For my part, if the name Sarapis is indeed Egyptian, I think it signifies cheerfulness and joy, inferring this from the fact that the Egyptians call the festival of joy "sairei." And indeed Plato says that Hades was named as a gracious and kindly god to those who come to dwell with him; and among the Egyptians there are explanations for many other names as well, and they call the subterranean place to which they believe souls depart after death "Amenthes," the name signifying "the one who receives and gives." Whether this too is one of the names carried off long ago from Greece and later brought back, we shall examine later; for now let us go through the rest of the current line of opinion.
Osiris and Isis, then, passed from good daemons into gods; but Typhon's power, dimmed and worn down, though still gasping and struggling, they at times appease and soothe with sacrifices, and at other times again humble and abuse in certain festivals — insulting men of ruddy complexion and hurling a donkey off a cliff, as the people of Coptus do, because Typhon was reddish and ass-like in color. The people of Busiris and Lycopolis make no use of trumpets at all, because their sound resembles the braying of a donkey. And in general they consider the donkey not a pure but a daemonic animal, on account of its resemblance to Typhon, and in the sacrifices of the months of Payni and Phaophi they make cakes stamped with the image of a bound donkey. And in the sacrifice to the Sun they instruct those who worship the god not to wear gold ornaments on their bodies, nor
to give food to a donkey. Even the Pythagoreans appear to consider Typhon a daemonic power: for they say that, reckoned in the even number, Typhon belongs to the fifty-sixth; and again that the triangle belongs to Hades, Dionysus, and Ares; the square to Rhea, Aphrodite, Demeter, Hestia, and Hera; the twelve-sided figure to Zeus; and the fifty-six-sided figure to Typhon, as Eudoxus has recorded. The Egyptians, believing Typhon to have been reddish in color, also consecrate red oxen for sacrifice, and conduct so exacting an examination that if the animal has even a single black or white hair, they consider it unfit for the offering. For what is fit for sacrifice ought not to be dear to the gods, but on the contrary must be the sort of thing that has caught up the souls of unholy and unjust men transformed into other bodies. Therefore they curse the victim's head and, having cut it off,
used formerly to throw it into the river, though now they sell it to foreigners. The bull that is about to be sacrificed is marked by those of the priests called "sealers," whose seal, as Castor records, bears the engraving of a man kneeling with his hands bound behind him and a sword laid at his throat. And they think the donkey shares in this same likeness, they suppose, no less because of its stupidity and violent temper than because of its color. For this reason too, hating Ochus most of all the Persian kings, as accursed and polluted, they nicknamed him "the donkey." And he, when he said, "well, this donkey of yours will feast on the ox," had the Apis bull slaughtered, as Deinon has recorded. As for those who say that Typhon fled the battle on a donkey's back for seven days, and, having been saved, fathered sons named Hierosolymus and Judaeus, they are plainly dragging Jewish matters into the myth by their own admission.
These accounts, then, offer such hints and conjectures. But let us first examine, starting from a different point, the simplest of those who seem to speak somewhat more philosophically. These are the ones who say that, just as the Greeks allegorize Cronus as time, Hera as air, and the birth of Hephaestus as the change of air into fire, so among the Egyptians the Nile is Osiris consorting with Isis, who is the earth, while Typhon is the sea, into which the Nile falls and is scattered and disappears, except for the portion which the earth, taking up and receiving, is made fertile by. And there is a sacred lament sung over Osiris, and it laments
him as born in the left-hand regions and as perishing in the right-hand regions. For the Egyptians think that the eastern parts of the world form its face, the northern parts its right side, and the southern parts its left side. The Nile, then, flowing from the southern regions and being consumed by the sea in the northern regions, is reasonably said to have its birth in the left-hand parts and its destruction in the right-hand parts. For this reason the priests hold the sea in religious aversion and call salt "the foam of Typhon"; and among the things forbidden to them is the setting out of salt at table. Nor do they address pilots with honor, because they make their living from the sea and depend on it for their livelihood; and it is not least for this same reason that they also reject the fish,
and they write "hate" with a fish. At any rate, in Sais, in the forecourt of the temple of Athena, there was carved an infant, then an old man, and after him a hawk, then next a fish, and last of all a hippopotamus. This symbolically signified: "O you who are coming into being and passing out of being, god hates shamelessness" — for the infant is a symbol of coming-to-be, and the old man of passing-away. By the hawk they indicate the god, by the fish, as has been said, hatred, on account of the sea; by the hippopotamus, shamelessness, for it is said that after killing his father he forces himself on his mother.
The saying of the Pythagoreans, that the sea is a tear of Cronus, would also seem to hint at the impurity of the sea and its being of alien kindred. Let this much, then, be said from outside sources, containing the common tradition. But the wiser of the priests call not only the Nile Osiris and the sea Typhon, but they simply regard Osiris as the whole moisture-producing principle and power, taking it to be the cause of generation and the substance of seed; and Typhon as everything parched and fiery and utterly desiccating, and hostile to moisture. Hence, believing that he was born ruddy in body and sallow of complexion, they are not at all eager to meet
nor pleased to associate with men of such an appearance. Osiris, on the other hand, they tell in myth was born black-skinned, because water blackens everything it mixes with — earth, and clothing, and clouds — and the moisture present in young people gives their hair its black color; whereas graying, a kind of pallor, comes upon those past their prime through dryness. And spring is luxuriant and fruitful and mild,
while autumn, through lack of moisture, is hostile to plants and unhealthy for animals. The bull kept at Heliopolis, which they call Mnevis and hold sacred to Osiris (some think it the father of Apis as well), is black and holds second honors after Apis. And since Egypt, being among the most black-earthed of lands, just as the black part of the eye, they call "Chemia,"
and they liken it to a heart, for it is warm and moist and, in relation to the southern parts of the inhabited world, is enclosed and situated much as the heart is on the left side of a man. They say that the Sun and Moon do not use chariots but sail about in boats as their vehicles, hinting at their nourishment and generation from moisture. They also think that Homer, like Thales, learned from the Egyptians to set down water
as the origin and generation of all things — for Ocean, they say, is Osiris, and Tethys is Isis, since she nurses and rears all things jointly with him. And indeed the Greeks call the emission of seed "apousia" (absence) and intercourse "synousia" (togetherness), and they derive the word for "son," huios, from hudōr (water) and from husai (to rain); and they call Dionysus "Hyēs," as lord of the moist nature, he being none other than Osiris.
Indeed Hellanicus too seems to have heard the god called "Osiris" (not "Hysiris") by the priests, for he consistently names the god this way — reasonably, from his nature and from the discovery. That he is the same as Dionysus, who could know better than you, Clea, since it is fitting that you should — you being head of the Thyiades at Delphi, and consecrated to the Osirian rites by your father
and mother? And if for the sake of others one ought to produce testimony, let the secret rites remain in their place, but consider what the priests openly do when they bury Apis: as they convey the body on a raft, it falls nothing short of Bacchic revelry. For they fasten on fawnskins and carry thyrsus-wands, and use cries and movements just like those possessed in the orgiastic rites of Dionysus.
That is why many of the Greeks make images of Dionysus in the form of a bull; and the women of Elis actually invoke him in prayer, calling on him to come to them "with the foot of a bull." And among the Argives, Dionysus bears the epithet "Bull-born"; they call him up out of the water with trumpets, casting a lamb into the abyss for the Keeper of the Gate, while they hide the trumpets inside thyrsus-wands, as Socrates has said in his work On Holy Things.
And the Titanic and Nyctelian rites agree with what is said of the dismemberment of Osiris, his returns to life, and his rebirths, and likewise with what concerns his burials. For the Egyptians point out tombs of Osiris in many places, as has been said, and the Delphians believe that the remains of Dionysus are deposited among them beside the oracle; and the Holy Ones offer a secret sacrifice in the temple
of Apollo whenever the Thyiades awaken the Liknites. And that the Greeks consider Dionysus lord and author not only of wine but of all moist nature, it is enough that Pindar bears witness, saying: "may Dionysus, rich in joy, increase the grove of trees, the holy radiance of harvest-time." For this reason those who revere Osiris are forbidden to destroy a cultivated tree or to stop up a spring of water. Not only
do they call the Nile an effluence of Osiris, but simply all moisture; and in processions of the sacred rites, the water-vessel is always carried in front, in honor of the god. And they represent the king by a reed, and the southern quarter of the world as well, and the word "reed," when translated, means "watering" and "the conception of all things," and it is thought to resemble in its nature the generative organ. And when they celebrate the festival of the Pamylia, which is, as has been said,
a phallic festival, they set out and carry around an image whose member is three times its natural size — for the god is a first principle, and every first principle multiplies from itself by its generative power what proceeds from it. And we are accustomed to say "often" also as "thrice," as in "thrice-blessed," and "bonds three times as many, without limit." Unless, by Zeus, the ancients strictly meant the number three itself —
for the moist nature, being the origin and generation of all things, made from the beginning the first three bodies: earth, air, and fire. And indeed the explanation added to the myth, that Typhon threw the genital member of Osiris into the river and Isis did not find it, but fashioned and set up a likeness of it in its place and ordained that it be honored and carried in procession, comes round to teaching this very point: that the generative
and seminal power of the god had moisture as its first material, and through moisture was blended into things so as to enable them to share in generation. There is another account among the Egyptians, that Apophis, being a brother of Helios, made war on Zeus, and that Zeus, having taken Osiris as his ally and, together with him, having overthrown the enemy, adopted him as his son and named him Dionysus. And the mythical character of this account too can be shown
to touch upon the truth concerning nature. For the Egyptians call Zeus "pneuma" (breath/spirit), to which the parched and fiery element is hostile; this element is not the sun, but has a certain kinship with the sun; while moisture, by quenching the excess of dryness, increases and strengthens the exhalations by which the breath is nourished and flourishes. Further, the Greeks
consecrate ivy to Dionysus, and among the Egyptians it is said to be called "chenosiris," the name signifying, so they say, "plant of Osiris." Ariston, then, who wrote the History of the Colonies of the Athenians, came across a certain letter of Alexarchus, in which it is recorded that Dionysus, being the son of Zeus and Isis, is called by the Egyptians not Osiris but "Arsaphes," with the letter alpha, signifying the manliness of the name. This is also indicated
by Hermaeus in the first book of his work On the Egyptians: for he says that, when translated, Osiris means "vigorous" or "strong." I pass over Mnaseas, who identifies Dionysus, Osiris, and Sarapis with Epaphus; and I pass over Anticleides, who says that Isis, being the daughter of Prometheus, cohabits with Dionysus — for the affinities already mentioned, concerning the festivals and the sacrifices, carry
a more evident conviction than any witnesses. Among the stars, they consider Sirius to belong to Isis, since it draws up water; and they honor the lion, and adorn the doorways of their temples with lion-mouth gargoyles, because the Nile floods "when first the sun comes together with the Lion." And just as they hold the Nile to be an effluence of Osiris, so they hold that the earth is the body of Isis — not all of it, but that part which the Nile covers, fertilizing it and mingling with it; and from
this union they say Horus is born. Now Horus is the season and blending of the surrounding air that preserves and nourishes all things, which they say was reared by Leto in the marshes around Buto — for the watery and drenched earth chiefly nurtures the exhalations that quench and relax dryness and drought. They call Nephthys the
extremities and borderlands of the earth, touching upon the sea; hence they also name Nephthys "the End," and say that she cohabits with Typhon. And whenever the Nile, overflowing and increasing beyond measure, draws near to the outermost regions, they call this the union of Osiris with Nephthys, which is betrayed by the plants that spring up there — among which is the melilot; and the myth says that when this dropped and was left behind, Typhon became aware
of the wrong done concerning the marriage. Hence Isis bore Horus legitimately, but Nephthys bore Anubis in secret. Yet in the king-lists they record that Nephthys, when given in marriage to Typhon, was at first barren; and if this is said not of a woman but of the goddess, they are hinting at the utter unproductiveness and barrenness of the earth through sterility. The
plot and tyranny of Typhon was the power of drought, which prevailed and dispersed the very moisture that generates and increases the Nile; and his accomplice, the queen of the Ethiopians, hints at the south winds from Ethiopia — for whenever these prevail over the Etesian winds, driving the clouds toward Ethiopia and preventing the rains that swell the Nile from bursting forth, Typhon, holding sway, scorches everything; and then,
having wholly overpowered the Nile and driven it, shrunk by weakness and flowing hollow and low, back into himself, he thrusts it into the sea. For the so-called imprisonment of Osiris in the coffin seems to hint at nothing other than the hiding and disappearance of water; hence they say that Osiris disappears in the month Athyr, when, with the Etesian winds having wholly ceased, the Nile recedes and the land is laid bare;
and as the night lengthens, the darkness increases, and the power of light is weakened and overcome, the priests perform other rites of mourning, and they cover a gilded cow with a black linen garment and display her in mourning for the goddess (for they consider the cow an image of Isis, and of the earth) for four days, from the seventeenth, in succession, up to the twelfth. For indeed the things mourned are four:
first, the Nile receding and failing; second, the north winds being wholly quenched as the south winds prevail; third, the day becoming shorter than the night; and on top of all these, the stripping bare of the earth together with the bareness of the plants, which at that time shed their leaves. On the nineteenth day of the night they go down to the sea, and the sacred chest
the stolists and the priests carry out, containing within it a golden box, into which they pour fresh water they have taken, and a shout goes up from those present as though Osiris were found; then they knead fertile earth with the water, and mixing in spices and costly incense, they mold a small crescent-shaped image, and this they dress and adorn, signifying that they consider these gods to be the substance of earth and water. And as
Isis in turn recovers Osiris and increases Horus, strengthened by exhalations and mists and clouds, Typhon was overpowered, but not destroyed. For the goddess who is mistress of the earth did not allow the nature opposed to moisture to be wholly destroyed, but relaxed and let it go, wishing the blending to remain; for it would not be possible for the world to be complete if the fiery element
were to fail and disappear entirely. And if these things are not said contrary to what is likely, one might reasonably not reject that other account either — that Typhon once held sway over the portion belonging to Osiris, for Egypt was a sea; hence to this day many shells are found in the mines and on the mountains, and all the springs and wells, of which there are many, contain
salty and bitter water, as though it were a remnant of the ancient sea that had settled and grown stale there. But in time Horus prevailed over Typhon — that is to say, when there came a timely abundance of rains, the Nile drove back the sea, revealed the plain, and filled it up again with its deposits. And this account has the evidence of perception to confirm it: for we still see even now the river bringing fresh silt and advancing the land,
as the deep sea gradually withdraws, and the sea, as the depths rise up because of the deposits, is flowing away; and Pharos, which Homer knew to be a day's sail distant from Egypt, is now a part of it — not because it moved forward or came up closer, but because the intervening sea was pushed back by the river, which builds up and nourishes the mainland. But these explanations are similar to those given in the theology
of the Stoics: for they too say that the generative and nourishing breath is Dionysus, the striking and dividing force Heracles, the receptive principle Ammon, that which pervades the earth and its fruits Demeter and Kore, and that which pervades the sea Poseidon. And others, mixing in with these physical explanations some elements
from astrological mathematics, hold that Typhon is called the solar system, and Osiris the lunar. For the moon, having a generative and moisture-producing light, is kindly and conducive to the offspring of animals and the growth of plants; whereas the sun, with its unmixed and harsh fire, scorches and dries up the things that are growing and flourishing, and renders the greater part of the earth entirely uninhabitable through its blaze,
and in many places even overpowers the moon. Hence the Egyptians always call Typhon "Seth," which means "overpowering" or "forcibly constraining." And they tell in myth that Heracles is established in the sun and revolves with it, and Hermes with the moon; for the works of the moon resemble those of reason and of surpassing wisdom, whereas those of the sun resemble blows carried out by force and strength. The
Stoics say that the sun is kindled and nourished from the sea, while to the moon the springs and lake-waters send up a sweet and gentle exhalation. The Egyptians tell in myth that the death of Osiris occurred on the seventeenth, on which day the full moon is most plainly seen to be complete. Hence the Pythagoreans call this day "obstruction," and in general hold this number in aversion.
For of sixteen, a square number, and eighteen, an oblong number, which alone among plane numbers happen to have their perimeters equal to the areas they enclose, seventeen falls between them, obstructs them, and separates them from one another, cutting the ratio of nine to eight into unequal intervals. As for the number of years, some say that Osiris lived, others that he reigned, twenty-eight years; for that is the number of the moon's lights, and in that many days it completes its own cycle.
The wood which they cut in the rites called the burial of Osiris they fashion into a crescent-shaped coffin, because the moon, when it draws near the sun, becomes crescent-shaped and disappears from view. And by the tearing of Osiris's body into fourteen pieces they hint at the number of days from full moon to new moon, during which the star wanes.
The day on which the moon first appears, escaping the sun's rays and passing beyond the sun, they call "imperfect good." For Osiris is a benefactor, and his name expresses much, not least an effective and beneficent power, as they say. The other name of the god, Omphis, the priest of Hermes says signifies "benefactor" when translated. They also think that the risings of the Nile bear some relation to the lights of the moon.
For the greatest rise, near Elephantine, comes to twenty-eight cubits, matching the number of lights and measures of each monthly cycle; the smallest, near Mendes and Xois, is six cubits, corresponding to the half-moon; and the middle rise, near Memphis, when it is regular, is fourteen cubits, corresponding to the full moon.
The Apis, they say, is a living image of Osiris, and comes into being when a fertilizing light from the moon strikes and touches a cow in heat. Hence many features of Apis resemble the moon's phases, its bright parts being darkened by shaded ones. Moreover, on the new moon of the month Phamenoth they hold a festival which they call the Entry of Osiris into the Moon, this being the beginning of spring.
Thus, placing the power of Osiris in the moon, they say that Isis, being his generative source, unites with him. That is why they also call the moon the mother of the universe, and think it has a nature that is both male and female, being filled and made pregnant by the sun, while it in turn casts forth into the air generative principles and sows them; for destruction, the power of Typhon, does not always prevail, but is often mastered by generation,
and being bound is again dissolved, and continues its struggle against Horus. Now Horus is this world around the earth, which is delivered neither wholly from destruction nor wholly from generation. Some make the myth a riddle about eclipses as well. For the moon is eclipsed when it is full, the sun standing opposite to it, and it falls into the shadow of the earth, just as they say Osiris falls into
the coffin. And the moon in turn hides and makes the sun disappear at the times of conjunction, yet does not utterly destroy it, just as Isis does not destroy Typhon. When Nephthys bore Anubis, Isis substituted the child as her own; for Nephthys is that which is under the earth and unseen, while Isis is that which is above the earth and visible. And the circle that touches both of these and is called the horizon, being common to both,
is named Anubis, and is likened in form to a dog, for the dog uses its sight equally by night and by day; and among the Egyptians Anubis seems to have this same power that Hecate has among the Greeks, being both of the underworld and of Olympus. To some, Anubis seems to be Cronus; hence, since he begets all things from himself and "dog" is contained within himself,
he acquired the epithet of the dog. There is, then, a certain secret doctrine among those who revere Anubis; and in ancient times the dog received the highest honors in Egypt, but when Cambyses killed Apis and threw the body away, and no creature approached or tasted it except the dog alone, it lost its place as first and most honored among the other animals.
There are also some who call Typhon the shadow of the earth, into which they believe the moon slips and is eclipsed. Hence it would not be amiss to say that no one of them individually is right, but that all together they are right. For it is not drought, nor wind, nor sea, nor darkness, but everything harmful and destructive that nature contains, that is a portion of Typhon.
For neither should the first principles of the universe be located in lifeless bodies, as Democritus and Epicurus hold, nor should a single reason and a single providence, prevailing over and mastering all things, be posited as the maker of formless matter, as the Stoics hold. For it is impossible that anything, whether base, where God is the cause of all, or good, where he is the cause of nothing, should come into being. "The harmony of the world," says Heraclitus, "bends back on itself like that of the bow and the lyre." And according to
Euripides, good and evil cannot exist apart, but there is a certain blending that makes things right. That is why this most ancient opinion, descending from theologians and lawgivers to poets and philosophers, has its origin untraceable, yet its conviction is strong and hard to erase, current not only in words and rumors but also in rites and sacrifices among both
barbarians and Greeks in many places: that the universe is not borne along automatically, without mind or reason or guide, nor is there a single reason that rules and steers it as with a rudder or obedient reins, but rather many things, mingled from both good and evil; or rather, speaking simply, nature here bears nothing unmixed, and it is not as though one steward, like one who apportions
wares from two casks in a tavern, mixes and dispenses things to us; rather, from two opposing principles and two rival powers, one leading toward the right and along a straight path, the other turning back and bending in the reverse direction, both life and the world -- if not the whole world, at least this one around the earth and beneath the moon -- have become uneven and varied and undergo
every kind of change. For if nothing comes to be without a cause, and the good could not supply a cause for evil, then, just like good, evil must have its own origin and principle in nature. And this is the view of most people, and of the wisest. For some believe there are two gods, as it were rival craftsmen, one the maker of good things, the other of bad; while others call the better one
"god" and the other a "daemon," as does Zoroaster the magus, whom they record as having lived five thousand years before the Trojan War. He called the one Oromazes and the other Areimanius, and declared further that the one most resembles light among perceptible things, the other, conversely, darkness and ignorance, while Mithras is between the two; hence the Persians call Mithras the mediator.
He taught that offerings of prayer and thanksgiving should be made to the one, and offerings of aversion and gloom to the other. For pounding a certain plant called moly in a mortar, they invoke Hades and darkness; then, mixing it with the blood of a slaughtered wolf, they carry it out to a sunless place and cast it away. For they also believe that some plants belong to the good god, others to the evil daemon, and likewise
among animals, dogs and birds and land hedgehogs belong to the good, while water-rats belong to the bad; hence they consider whoever kills the most of these to be fortunate. But indeed those people too tell many mythical things about the gods, of which these are examples: Oromazes, born from the purest light, and Areimanius, born from darkness, wage war on one another; and
the one made six gods, the first of goodwill, the second of truth, the third of good order; and of the rest, one of wisdom, one of wealth, and one the maker of pleasure in noble things; the other made an equal number as their rivals in each craft. Then Oromazes enlarged himself threefold and removed himself from the sun by as great a distance as
the sun is removed from the earth, and adorned the heavens with stars; and he set one star before all the others as a guardian and watchman, the Dog Star. He made twenty-four other gods and placed them in an egg; but those from Areimanius, being equal in number, pierced through the egg, whence evil has been mixed together with good ever since. And a fated time is coming, in
which Areimanius, bringing on plague and famine, must by their agency be utterly destroyed and vanish, and when the earth has become flat and level, there will be one life and one government for all mankind, blessed and speaking a single tongue. Theopompus says that according to the magi, in alternation, for three thousand years one of the gods prevails and the other is subdued, and for another three thousand years they fight and
war and undo each other's works; but in the end Hades will fail, and men will be happy, needing no food and casting no shadow; and the god who has contrived these things will rest and repose for a period -- not long, as befits a god, but moderate, as befits a sleeping man. Such, then, is the character of the magi's mythology. As for the Chaldaeans,
they declare that of the planets, whom they call the gods of birth, two are beneficent, two maleficent, and the remaining three are middling and common to both. As for the Greeks, it is plain to everyone that they assign the good portion to Olympian Zeus and the averting portion to Hades. And they tell in myth that from Aphrodite and Ares was born Harmonia, of whom the one is harsh and contentious, the other gentle and connected with birth.
Consider now how the philosophers agree with these views. Heraclitus outright calls war "the father and king and lord of all," and says that Homer, in praying that "strife might perish from among gods and men," "fails to notice" that he is cursing the origin of all things, since all things arise from conflict and opposition; and that the sun will not overstep its appointed bounds, or else the Furies,
handmaids of Justice, will find him out. Empedocles calls the beneficent principle "love" and "friendship," and often "harmony of gentle countenance," while he calls the worse principle "destructive strife" and "bloody discord." The Pythagoreans denote the good by many names -- the one, the limited, the abiding, the straight, the odd, the square, the equal, the right, the bright -- while
they denote evil by the dyad, the unlimited, the moving, the curved, the even, the oblong, the unequal, the left, the dark, on the ground that such are the underlying principles of generation. Anaxagoras posits Mind and the Unlimited; Aristotle posits Form and Privation. Plato, in many places, as though veiling and concealing himself, names one of the opposing principles "the Same" and the other
"the Different"; but in the Laws, being now older, he speaks no longer in riddles or symbols but in plain terms, saying that the world is moved not by one soul but by several, perhaps, though certainly not fewer than two -- of which one is beneficent, and the other opposed to it and the maker of things opposite. He also leaves room for a certain third nature, in between, not soulless nor irrational
nor unmoved of itself, as some suppose, but subordinate to both of the others, ever desiring, longing for, and pursuing the better, as the following part of the discussion will show, since he closely aligns Egyptian theology with this very philosophy. For the origin and constitution of this world is a mixture of opposing powers, not equal in strength, but with the mastery belonging to the
better one; yet it is impossible for the inferior power to be utterly destroyed, since much of it is inborn in the body, and much in the soul of the universe, ever contending fiercely against the better. Now in the soul, mind and reason, the guide and lord of all that is best, is Osiris; and in earth and wind and water and heaven and stars, that which is ordered and
established and healthy, appearing through the seasons and blendings and cycles, is an outflow and image of Osiris; but Typhon is the passionate, titanic, irrational, and impulsive element in the soul, and in the bodily element, that which is perishable, diseased, and disturbing through untimely conditions and bad mixtures, and through the concealments of the sun and the disappearances of the moon -- like the outbreaks and disappearances of Typhon. And the very name Seth, by which they
call Typhon, points to this: for it means "that which overpowers and does violence," and it also signifies frequent reversal and again a leaping over bounds. Some say that Bebon was one of Typhon's companions, but Manetho says that Typhon himself was also called Bebon; the name signifies restraint or hindrance, as though the power of Typhon opposed things that proceed along their course and move toward
their proper end. Hence, among tame animals they assign to him the most stupid, the ass; and among wild ones, the most beastly, the crocodile and the river-horse. Now we have already spoken of the ass. In the city of Hermes they show an image of Typhon as a river-horse, upon which stands a hawk fighting with a serpent, indicating Typhon by the horse, and by the hawk his
power and rule, which Typhon, seizing by force, often does not relinquish, being disturbed by his own vice and disturbing others. That is why, when they sacrifice on the seventh day of the month Tybi, which they call the Arrival of Isis from Phoenicia, they stamp upon the cakes the image of a bound river-horse. And in the city of Apollo it is customary for everyone without exception to eat crocodile; and on one day they hunt as many as they can
and, having killed them, cast them down opposite the temple, saying that Typhon fled from Horus by becoming a crocodile, thereby making all animals and plants and evil and harmful states into the works, parts, and movements of Typhon. Osiris, on the other hand, they represent by an eye and a scepter, of which the one signifies providence, the other power, just as Homer, calling the ruler and king of
all things "Zeus most high and counselor," seems by "most high" to signify his power, and by "counselor" his good judgment and wisdom. They also often depict this god as a hawk; for the hawk excels in keenness of sight and swiftness of flight, and is naturally able to sustain itself on very little food. It is said, moreover, that flying over the bodies of the unburied dead, it casts earth upon them; and when it goes to drink,
...on the river, it raises its wing upright; and when it has drunk it lowers it again — a sign that it is safe and has escaped the crocodile; but if it is caught, its wing remains fixed as it stood. Everywhere they also display an image of Osiris in human form, with the phallus erect, because of his generative and nourishing power. And they clothe his statues in a flame-colored robe, holding that the sun is the body
of the power of the good, as the visible image of an intelligible essence. For this reason it is right to despise those who assign the sun's orb to Typhon, to whom nothing bright or life-preserving belongs, nor order, nor generation, nor motion that has measure and reason, but rather the opposites of these; and drought, which destroys many living things and growing plants, should not be reckoned the work of the sun, but of the
winds and waters on earth and in the air not blended in due season, whenever the disordered and indeterminate power gains ill-timed ascendancy and quenches the exhalations. In the sacred hymns of Osiris they invoke him as the one hidden in the arms of the sun, and on the thirtieth of the month Epiphi they celebrate the birthday of the Eyes of Horus, when the moon and the sun come to be on one straight line, since they hold not
only the moon but also the sun to be the eye and light of Horus. On the eighth day of the waning of Phaophi, after the autumnal equinox, they celebrate the birthday of the Staff of the Sun, signifying that it then needs, as it were, a support and a strengthening, since it is becoming deficient in heat and in light, sinking and moving obliquely away from us. Further, at the winter solstice they carry the cow around the
temple seven times, and this circuit is called the Seeking of Osiris, the goddess longing in winter for the water of the sun; and they go round that many times because the sun completes its passage from the winter solstice to the summer solstice in the seventh month. It is said that Horus, son of Isis, was the very first of all to sacrifice to the sun, on the fourth day of the waxing month, as is written in the books entitled The Birthdays of Horus. Moreover, every
day they burn incense to the sun three times: resin at sunrise, myrrh at midday, and what is called kyphi around sunset; the reasoning behind each of these I shall explain later. They believe that by all these offerings they are propitiating and serving the sun. But why should I gather many such instances? For there are those who say outright that Osiris is the sun and is called Sirius by the Greeks,
even though among the Egyptians the prefixed article has made the name ambiguous; and they declare Isis to be none other than the moon — whence some of her statues have horns, in imitation of the crescent, while the black-robed ones represent her concealments and eclipses, in which, in longing, she pursues the sun. For this reason too people invoke the moon in matters of love, and
Eudoxus says that Isis presides over love affairs. Now these views have some measure of plausibility; but those who make the sun Typhon are not even worth listening to. Let us instead return to our own proper account. Isis is the female principle of nature, and receptive of every kind of generation, in accordance with which she is called by Plato the nurse and the all-receiving, while by most people she has been given countless names,
because, being transformed by reason, she takes on all shapes and forms. She has an innate love for the first and most sovereign of all things, which is identical with the good, and that she desires and pursues; but the portion that comes from evil she flees and repels, being herself the region and matter for both, yet inclining always of her own accord toward the better and offering herself to it to beget
and to sow into herself effluxes and likenesses, in which she rejoices and delights, becoming pregnant and filled with generative processes. For becoming is an image of being set in matter, and that which comes to be is an imitation of that which is. Hence it is not without reason that they tell the myth that the soul of Osiris is eternal and imperishable, but that his body Typhon often tears apart and makes to disappear, while Isis
wanders about seeking it and fitting it together again. For that which truly is, and is intelligible and good, is superior to destruction and change; but the images which the sensible and corporeal world stamps from it, and the accounts, forms, and likenesses it takes on, are like seal impressions in wax that do not always remain, but are overtaken by the disorder and turbulence that here, in this world driven far from the region above,
contends against Horus, whom Isis, as the image of the intelligible world made sensible, brings to birth. For this reason it is said that he is prosecuted by Typhon on a charge of illegitimacy, as not being pure and unmixed like his father — reason itself by itself unmingled and unaffected — but rather adulterated by matter because of its corporeal nature. Yet he prevails and is victorious, with Hermes — that is, reason —
bearing witness and showing that nature, being transformed toward the intelligible, renders the world complete. For while the gods were still in the womb of Rhea, the birth of Apollo that came from Isis and Osiris hints darkly that, before this world became manifest and matter was brought to completion by reason, nature, tested on its own, produced its first offspring imperfect.
For this reason they say that that god was born maimed in the darkness, and they call him the elder Horus; for there was as yet no ordered world, but only a kind of image and phantasm of the world to come. But this later Horus is himself defined and perfect, not having utterly destroyed Typhon, but having stripped away his active and forceful power; whence at Coptus they say the statue of Horus
holds in one hand the genitals of Typhon. And they tell the myth that Hermes, having removed the sinews of Typhon, used them as harp-strings, teaching thereby that reason, having fitted the universe together, made a harmony out of unharmonious parts, and did not destroy the destructive power but only disabled it. Hence it is weak and powerless there, but here it is mingled and entangled with the passible and changeable parts, producer
of earthquakes and tremors in the earth, of droughts in the air and of unnatural winds, and again of thunderbolts and lightning. It also poisons waters and winds with pestilences, and it rises even as far as the moon, and turns it back, confusing and often darkening its brightness, as the Egyptians believe and say — that Typhon at one time strikes the eye of Horus, at another tears it out and swallows it
and then gives it back again to the sun: by the blow they hint at the monthly waning of the moon, and by the mutilation, its eclipse, which the sun heals by shining forth again as soon as the moon escapes the shadow of the earth. The higher and more divine nature is composed of three things: the intelligible, matter, and that which comes from these two, which the Greeks call the world. Now
Plato is accustomed to call the intelligible the Form and the Pattern and the Father, matter the Mother and the Nurse and the seat and place of generation, and that which comes from both the Offspring and the generated thing. One might conjecture that the Egyptians likened the nature of the universe especially to the most beautiful of triangles, as indeed Plato too seems in the Republic
to have made use of that same figure in constructing his nuptial diagram. That triangle has a vertical side of three units, a base of four, and a hypotenuse of five, equal in square to the sides containing it. We must therefore liken the vertical side to the male, the base to the female, and the hypotenuse to the offspring of both; and Osiris is to be likened to the origin, Isis to the
receptacle, and Horus to the result. For three is the first perfect odd number; four is a square, from the side of the even number two; and five in some respects resembles the father, in others the mother, being composed of three and two. And people derive from five their word for 'all,' and say 'to five' for 'to count.'
Five multiplied by itself produces a number equal to the number of letters among the Egyptians, and to the number of years that Apis lived. Horus they are accustomed to call also Min, which means 'the visible'; for the world is a thing of sense and sight. Isis is sometimes called also Muth, and again Athyri and Methyer; by the first of these names they signify
'mother,' by the second 'the orderly house of Horus,' as Plato too calls it 'the region and receptacle of generation'; the third is a compound of 'fullness' and 'cause'; for the matter of the world is full, and is joined with the good and the pure and the ordered. One might suppose that Hesiod too, in making Chaos and Earth and Tartarus
and Eros the first of all things, takes no other principles than these — if indeed, transposing the names somewhat, we assign to Isis the part of Earth, to Osiris that of Eros, and to Typhon that of Tartarus. For Chaos seems to posit a kind of region or place for the universe. This myth also somehow invites comparison with the myth Plato tells,
which Socrates in the Symposium relates concerning the birth of Eros — how Penia, in want of children, lay down beside Poros as he slept, and, having conceived by him, bore Eros, who is by nature mixed and manifold, since he was begotten of a father who is good and wise and self-sufficient in all things, but of a mother who is helpless and resourceless and, through want, always craving something else and clinging
to something else. For Poros is none other than the first object of desire and longing, the perfect and self-sufficient; and by Penia he meant matter, which of itself lacks the good but is filled by it, and forever longs for it and partakes of it. And the world that comes to be from these, and Horus, is neither eternal nor unaffected nor imperishable, but, being ever-generated,
contrives, through the changes and cycles of its affections, to remain forever young and never to be destroyed. We must use the myths not as accounts that are wholly rational in themselves, but taking from each what is fitting according to its likeness to the truth. When we speak of matter, then, we must not, in line with the opinions of some philosophers, think of it as a soulless body without quality, inert and inactive of itself; for
we call oil the matter of perfume, and gold the matter of a statue, though these are not devoid of all quality; and we ourselves make the very soul and mind of man to be, as it were, the matter of knowledge and virtue, which reason adorns and orders; and some have declared the mind to be a place of forms and, as it were, an impression-tablet of intelligible things; and some hold that the seed of the woman is not a power or a principle,
but matter and nourishment for generation. Following these views, we must think of this goddess likewise in this way: that she always shares in the first god and is united with him in love of the good and beautiful things about him, not as one opposed to him, but as we say that a lawful and just man loves justly, and a good wife, though she lives with her husband, still longs for him — so she is forever craving
and clinging to him and filled with his most sovereign and purest parts. But wherever Typhon breaks in and lays hold of the outermost parts, there she is said to grow downcast and to mourn, and to seek out and gather up certain remnants and fragments of Osiris, receiving into herself the things that perish and hiding them away, just as she brings to light again the things that come to be and sends them forth from herself. For the accounts and forms and effluxes of the god that are in heaven and
among the stars remain, but those that are scattered among the passible things — earth, sea, plants, and animals — being dissolved and destroyed and buried, often shine forth again and reappear in new generations. For this reason the myth says that Typhon dwells with Nephthys, but that Osiris consorts with her in secret. For the outermost parts of matter, which they call Nephthys
and 'the End,' are held chiefly by the destructive power; but the generative and preserving power sends into these a weak and dim seed, which is destroyed by Typhon, except insofar as Isis, taking it up, saves and nourishes and holds it together. In general this power is the better one, as both Plato and Aristotle suggest. Of nature, the generative and preserving part moves toward
itself and toward being, while the destructive and dissolving part moves away from itself and toward not-being. For this reason they call the one Isis, from her 'going' with knowledge and being carried along, since she is a motion that is animate and intelligent — for the name is not foreign, but just as all the gods have a name common to them derived from two words, 'that which is seen' and 'that which runs,'
so we call this goddess Isis from knowledge together with motion, and the Egyptians too call her Isis. So too Plato says that the ancients signified holiness by calling it 'hosia,' as though from motion; and likewise understanding and prudence, as being a movement and motion of mind that goes and is carried along, and applied the terms for comprehension and for the good in general and for virtue
to things that flow and run; just as, conversely, they abused with contrary names that which is evil — that which hinders and binds and holds fast nature and stops it from going and moving — calling it wickedness, helplessness, cowardice, distress. But the name Osiris is a composite formed from 'hosion' (holy) and 'hieron' (sacred); for he is the common principle of the things in heaven and the things in Hades, of which
the ancients were accustomed to call some 'sacred' and others 'holy.' The account that reveals the heavenly things and the things borne aloft is called Anubis, and sometimes also Hermanubis, the one name belonging to the things above, the other to the things below. For this reason they sacrifice to him a white cock and a saffron-colored one, considering the one pure and radiant,
the other mixed and variegated. One must not be surprised at the reshaping of these names into Greek forms; for countless other words too, carried off along with those who migrated from Greece, remain in use to this day and are naturalized among foreigners — some of which those who reproach the so-called poetic vocabulary as barbarous, calling such words strange tongues, denounce. In the books called the Books of Hermes it is recorded that
Concerning the sacred names, they say it is written in the books called the books of Hermes that the power set over the revolution of the sun the Egyptians call Horus, while the Greeks call him Apollo; and the power set over the wind some call Osiris, others Sarapis, and others, in Egyptian, Sothis, which signifies pregnancy or conception. For this reason, by a shift of the name, the star is called in Greek "the Dog," which they consider to belong especially to Isis.
Now one ought not to be overly zealous about names; nevertheless I would concede to the Egyptians the name Sarapis rather than Osiris, since the former is a foreign word and the latter Greek, though I hold both to belong to one god and one power. The Egyptian usage resembles this: they often call Isis by the name of Athena, expressing a meaning such as "I have come of myself," which signifies self-moved motion. Typhon, as has been said, is called Seth, Bebon, and Smy, names meant to express a violent and obstructive restraint, opposition, or overturning. Further, they call the loadstone "the bone of Horus," and iron "the bone of Typhon," as Manetho records; for just as iron often behaves like something drawn along and following after the stone, and often turns away and is repelled in the opposite direction, so too the saving and good and rational motion of the universe turns back and draws near and makes gentler that hard and Typhonian element, persuading it, and then again, once raised up, turns back upon itself and sinks down into the boundless.
Further, Eudoxus says that the Egyptians tell a myth about Zeus: that because his legs had grown together, he was unable to walk, and out of shame he spent his time in solitude; but Isis, by cutting apart and separating these parts of his body, gave him a gait sound of foot. This myth hints, among other things, that the mind and reason of the god, moving by itself in the invisible and unseen, advanced into generation through motion.
The sistrum also signifies this: that existing things must be shaken and never cease from motion, but must, as it were, be roused and shaken out of their slumbering and withering. For they say that Typhon is turned away and driven back by the sistra, showing that when destruction binds and brings things to a stop, generation again dissolves and raises up nature through motion. Since the sistrum is round at the top, its arch encloses the four things that are shaken; for the portion of the world that comes into being and perishes is enclosed by the lunar sphere, and within it all things move and change through the four elements — fire, earth, water, and air. On the arch of the sistrum, at the very top, they carve a cat with a human face, and below, beneath the things that are shaken,
they carve, on one side, the face of Isis, and on the other, that of Nephthys, hinting by these faces at generation and dissolution — for these are the changes and motions of the elements — and by the cat at the moon, on account of the variegated, night-working, and prolific nature of the creature. For it is said to bear one offspring, then two and three and four and five, and so on one by one up to seven,
so that it bears twenty-eight in all — the same number as the days of light of the moon. This, indeed, may be somewhat more fabulous; but the pupils of its eyes seem to fill and widen at the full moon, and to grow thin and dim during the moon's waning. In the human-shaped form of the cat is expressed the intelligent and rational element in the changes that occur around the moon. To sum up: it is not right to think that Osiris or Isis is water, or sun, or earth, or heaven, nor again that Typhon is fire, or drought, or sea, but simply whatever in these is immoderate and disordered, through excess or deficiency, is to be assigned to Typhon; while the ordered, good, and beneficial we should
revere and honor as a work of Isis, and as the image, likeness, and reason of Osiris — in this we would not be mistaken. And we shall also put an end to the doubt and perplexity of Eudoxus as to how it is that Demeter has no part in the care of erotic matters, but Isis does, and how Dionysus can neither cause the Nile to rise nor rule over the dead. For in a single, common account we hold that these gods have been set over the whole portion of the good, and that
whatever is beautiful and good in nature exists through them — the one supplying the first principles, the other receiving and distributing them. In this same way we shall also undertake to deal with the popular and vulgar practices, whether people associate with these gods the seasonal changes of the surrounding atmosphere, or the birth of crops, the sowing, and the plowing, saying that Osiris is buried
when the crop, sown, is hidden in the earth, and comes to life again and reappears when growth begins. Hence it is also said that Isis, perceiving that she was pregnant, fastened on an amulet on the sixth day of the month Phaophi; and that Harpocrates was born around the winter solstice, unfinished and young, among the plants that bloom and sprout early. That is why they bring him first-offerings of budding lentils, and celebrate
the days of her lying-in after the spring equinox. For hearing these things, people are content and believe them, drawing what is plausible straight from what is familiar and at hand. And there is nothing terrible in this, provided, first, that they keep the gods common to all of us and do not make them the private property of the Egyptians, and do not appropriate the Nile — which waters only their own land — under these names, nor the marshes, nor the lotus,
claiming these as a divine creation peculiar to themselves, thereby depriving other peoples, who have no Nile, no Buto, no Memphis, of great gods — for all peoples possess and recognize Isis and the gods associated with her, even though some have only recently learned to call them by their Egyptian names, while knowing and honoring the power of each from the beginning. Second — and this is more important — that they take great care
and are on guard lest they unwittingly, in describing winds and streams and sowings and plowings and the changes of the earth and of the seasons, dissolve and explain away the divine — as do those who take Dionysus for wine and Hephaestus for flame; or as Cleanthes says somewhere that Persephone is the breath that is carried through the crops and slain. There is even a poet who, speaking of reapers, says: "At the time when vigorous men cut down Demeter's
limbs" — for such people are no different from those who take sails, ropes, and anchor to be the helmsman, or thread and weft to be the weaver, or a libation, honeyed drink, or barley gruel to be the physician. These give terrible and godless names to natures and things by attaching to them the names of gods; for it is not possible to conceive of these things themselves as gods. For such people are no different from those who take sail and rope and weft to be the weaver, and
libation and honeyed drink to be opinions — attributing them to senseless, soulless things, necessarily perishing, used and needed by men. For god is not mindless, nor soulless, nor subject to man; rather, from these very things which men use and need, we have come to regard as gods those who give them to us and provide them everlastingly and abidingly — not different gods among different peoples, nor barbarian and Greek, nor southern and northern gods, but just as
the sun and moon and heaven and earth and sea are common to all, though called by different names by different peoples, so too, of the one reason that orders these things and the one providence that governs them and the subordinate powers appointed over everything, different honors and titles have arisen among different peoples according to their customs; and they use consecrated symbols, some dimmer, some clearer, guiding the understanding toward divine things — though not without danger.
For some, straying entirely, have slipped into superstition, while others, fleeing superstition as though it were a marsh, have unwittingly fallen, as it were, off a cliff into atheism. For this reason one must, above all, in approaching these matters, take reason from philosophy as a guide through the mysteries, and reflect reverently on each of the things said and done; so that, as Theodorus said of those who, when he offered his arguments with his right hand, received them
with their left — some of his hearers doing so — we too may not go astray by wrongly construing what the laws have rightly ordained concerning sacrifices and festivals. That everything is to be referred back to reason can be seen even from these very practices themselves. On the nineteenth day of the first month, when they hold festival to Hermes, they eat honey and figs, saying as they do so, "Sweet is truth";
and the amulet of Isis, which they tell in myth she wore, is interpreted to mean "a true voice." Harpocrates, moreover, must not be thought of as an incomplete and infant god, nor as some kind of pulse or legume, but rather as the patron and corrector of the young, unfinished, and inarticulate reasoning about the gods that exists among men; that is why he holds his finger pressed to his mouth, a symbol of discreet silence. And in the month of Mesore,
when they offer pulses, they say, "The tongue is fortune, the tongue is a spirit." Of the plants in Egypt, they say the persea is especially sacred to the goddess, because its fruit resembles a heart and its leaf a tongue. For nothing that a human being naturally possesses is more divine than reason — especially reason concerning the gods — nor does anything have a greater bearing on happiness. That is why, to one
descending here to the oracle, we enjoin: think holy thoughts, speak words of good omen. Yet most people act absurdly in their processions and festivals, first proclaiming reverent speech, and then saying and thinking the most irreverent things about the gods themselves. How, then, are we to make use of the gloomy, joyless, and mournful sacrifices, if it is neither right to omit what has been rightly established by custom, nor to confound and disturb people's opinions about the gods
with strange suspicions? Among the Greeks too, many similar things happen at about the same time of year as what the Egyptians do in their sacred rites. For at Athens the women fast, sitting on the ground, at the Thesmophoria; and the Boeotians move the sacred chests of Achaea, calling that festival "the Sorrowful," on the ground that, because of the descent of Kore, Demeter is in grief.
This month falls around the setting of the Pleiades, sowing time, which the Egyptians call Athyr, the Athenians Pyanepsion, and the Boeotians Damatrios. Theopompus records that the peoples of the West believe and call winter Cronus, summer Aphrodite, and spring Persephone, and that from Cronus and Aphrodite all things are born. The Phrygians, believing that the god sleeps in winter
and is awake in summer, celebrate rites of Bacchic revelry for him — at one time "lullings to sleep," at another "awakenings." The Paphlagonians say that he is bound and shut up in winter, and set free and moves about in spring. And the season itself gives rise to the suspicion that this gloom arose from the hiding away of the crops, which the ancients did not regard as gods, but as gifts of the gods, necessary and great for not living
savagely and like wild beasts. For at that season they saw some crops vanishing altogether from the trees and disappearing, while others, which they themselves had sown, still weak and scanty, they buried in the earth with their own hands and covered over again, uncertain whether they would ever be brought to completion and fulfillment — and in this uncertainty they performed many acts resembling burial and mourning. Then, just as we say that the one who buys the books
of Plato is "buying Plato," and that the one who performs the plays of Menander is "acting Menander," so those people were not scrupulous about calling the gifts and works of the gods by the gods' own names, honoring and dignifying them out of need. But those who came later, receiving this uneducated and interpreting it ignorantly, turned back upon the gods themselves the experiences of the crops, and spoke of the appearances of necessary things and their disappearances not merely as
the presence and hiding of the gods, but actually believed them to be the gods' births and deaths, and so filled themselves with absurd, unlawful, and confused opinions, even though they had the absurdity of this irrationality right before their eyes. Xenophanes of Colophon rightly demanded that the Egyptians, if they believe these to be gods, should not mourn them, and if they mourn them, should not believe them to be gods; for it is ridiculous, while mourning, at the same time to pray that the crops
reappear and come to completion for them, so that they may again be consumed and again mourned. But that is not really how it is; rather, they mourn the crops themselves, while they pray to the gods who are the causes and givers that they may again make new ones grow and spring up in place of those that perish. Hence it is well said among the philosophers that those who do not learn to understand names correctly misuse the things themselves as well — just as among the Greeks
those who have not learned or become accustomed to call the bronze, painted, and stone images and honors of the gods by their proper names, but instead call them the gods themselves, then dare to say things such as that Athena was stripped by Lachares, or that Dionysius shore off the golden locks of Apollo, or that Capitoline Zeus was burned and destroyed during the civil war — without realizing that, along with the names, they are drawing in and accepting base opinions that follow upon them.
This is a fault the Egyptians have fallen into no less, regarding the animals they honor. For the Greeks, at least in this matter, speak and think correctly, holding the dove to be a sacred animal of Aphrodite, the serpent of Athena, the raven of Apollo, and the dog of Artemis, as Euripides says, "you shall become a dog, the image of light-bearing Hecate." But most of the Egyptians, in tending
these very animals and treating them as gods, have brought their sacred rites into disrepute — not merely into laughter and mockery, though this is the least of the harm from their folly. A terrible opinion grows up in its place: it drives the weak and simple headlong into unmixed superstition, while in the sharper and bolder it collapses into godless and beastly reasoning. And it is not out of place to go through what is plausible concerning these matters.
The notion that the gods, in fear of Typhon, changed themselves into these animals, hiding themselves, as it were, in the bodies of ibises, dogs, and hawks, surpasses every kind of monstrous tale and myth; and equally incredible is the notion that the souls of the dead that survive are reborn only into these creatures. Of those who wish to give some political explanation, some say that Osiris, in his great campaign,
having divided his forces into many parts — which they call in Greek companies and divisions — gave to each an animal-shaped standard, and that each of these became sacred and honored to the tribe assigned to it; others say that later kings, in order to terrify their enemies when they appeared in battle, put on gilded and silvered animal-head masks; and others report that some clever and unscrupulous kings among the Egyptians
having observed that they were by nature fickle and quick to change and revolt, but possessed of an invincible and hard-to-restrain power once they combined and acted together, sowed in them an everlasting superstition as a pretext for unceasing strife. For since the animals which he had ordered different groups to honor and worship were hostile and warred with one another, and each was naturally disposed to eat a different food from the others, the people, always defending their own animals and taking it hard when they were wronged, were unknowingly drawn along and dragged into war against one another by the enmities of the animals.
For only the Lycopolitans among the Egyptians still today eat sheep, since the wolf too, which they hold to be a god, does the same; while the Oxyrhynchites, in our own time, when the Cynopolitans were eating the oxyrhynchus fish, caught a dog, sacrificed it as a victim, and ate it. As a result of this they fell into war and treated one another badly, and afterward, being punished by the Romans, were treated badly again. Since many say that the very soul of Typhon flew off into these animals, the myth would seem to hint that every irrational and beast-like nature has fallen to the portion of the evil daemon, and that in propitiating and appeasing him people attend to and serve these creatures. But whenever a great and harsh drought comes upon them, bringing excessive dryness, or deadly diseases, or other strange and unaccountable calamities, the priests lead away some of the honored animals in darkness, in silence and quiet, and at first threaten and try to frighten them; and if the trouble continues, they consecrate and slaughter them, as though this were some punishment of the daemon, or else a great purification performed for the greatest of reasons. Indeed, in the city of Eileithyia they used to burn living
men, as Manetho has recorded, calling them "Typhonians," and, winnowing their ashes, they scattered and made them disappear. But this was done openly and at one fixed time, during the dog-days; whereas the consecrations of the honored animals are secret and occur at irregular times, as circumstances arise, escaping the notice of most people, except when they hold funerals for them, and, displaying some of the remains of the others
who are present, throw them in together, thinking thereby to vex Typhon and cut short his pleasure. For Apis, along with a few others, is thought to be sacred to Osiris; to him they assign the greatest share of honors. And if this account is true, I think what we are seeking holds for those animals that are agreed upon and hold their honors in common, such as the ibis, the hawk, and the cynocephalus; but Apis himself
is called by the same name as the goat kept at Mendes. There remains, then, the useful and the symbolic explanation, of which some animals partake of one, but many of both. The ox, the sheep, and the ichneumon, it is clear, they honored for use and benefit, as the Lemnians honor larks, because they find and destroy the eggs of locusts; and the Thessalians honor storks, because when the earth once sent up many snakes,
the storks appeared and destroyed them all; wherefore they also made a law that whoever kills a stork should go into exile. The asp, the weasel, and the beetle they honored because they discerned in them certain faint images, as it were in drops of sunlight, of the power of the gods. For many still believe and say of the weasel that it conceives through the ear and gives birth through the mouth, a likeness of the generation of reason (logos);
and that the race of beetles has no female, but that all the males discharge their seed into the ball-shaped matter, which they roll along by pushing it in the direction opposite to themselves, just as the sun seems to turn the heavens the contrary way, while itself moving from west to east. The asp they likened to a star, as being ageless and employing unaided movements with ease and suppleness. Nor, indeed, has
the crocodile lacked a plausible reason for the honor it has received, but is said to have become an image of god, since it alone is without a tongue. For the divine word has no need of voice, and, "walking a soundless path, by justice guides all mortal things." They say that of all creatures living in water it alone has its eyes covered by a smooth, transparent membrane that descends from the forehead, so that it sees without being seen, which
is also true of the first god. And wherever the female lays her eggs on land, she thereby knows this to be the limit the Nile's flood will reach. For since they cannot lay in the water, yet are afraid to lay too far from it, they foresee the future with such precision that they make use of the river as it advances, both for laying and for warming their eggs, while keeping them dry and unwetted. They lay sixty eggs and hatch them in the same number of days,
and those that live longest live that same number of years — a number which is the first unit of measure for those who study the heavens. But among the animals honored for both reasons, concerning the dog it has already been said; and the ibis, by killing the deadly kinds of reptiles, was the first to teach the usefulness of a medicinal purge, when people observed it thus flushing and cleansing itself; and the most scrupulous of the priests
take their purifying water, for the rites of consecration, from a place where an ibis has drunk; for it does not drink water that is diseased or tainted, nor does it even approach such water. By the spacing of its feet from one another and its beak it forms an equilateral triangle; and further, the mingling and variegation of its black feathers with the white displays the moon in its gibbous phase. One need not be surprised that the Egyptians cherished such slight resemblances, for
the Greeks too, in both painted and sculpted images of the gods, made use of many such things. In Crete, for instance, there was a statue of Zeus that had no ears, since it is not fitting for the ruler and lord of all to listen to anyone. Pheidias placed the serpent beside his statue of Athena, and the tortoise beside his statue of Aphrodite at Elis, signifying that maidens need guarding, while
wives need to keep to the house and observe becoming silence. The trident of Poseidon is a symbol of the third region, which the sea occupies, ranked after heaven and air; hence they also gave Amphitrite and the Tritons their names accordingly. The Pythagoreans, too, adorned numbers and figures with the names of gods. The equilateral triangle they called Athena, "born from the head" and "Tritogeneia,"
because it is divided by three perpendiculars drawn from its three angles. The number one they called Apollo, by denial of plurality and because of the simplicity of the monad; the dyad they called strife and daring; the triad, justice — for since wrongdoing and being wronged consist in deficiency and excess, justice has come to occupy the middle position, in equality. And the so-called tetraktys, the number thirty-six, was
the greatest oath, as has often been said, and was named "the cosmos," being made up from the first four even numbers and the first four odd numbers added together. If, then, the most respected philosophers, discerning a riddle of the divine even in things lifeless and bodiless, thought it right to neglect and dishonor nothing, I think it far more fitting to cherish the distinctive properties found in natures that have perception, that possess soul, feeling, and character —
and to hold these dear, not honoring the creatures themselves, but through them the divine, as clearer mirrors formed by nature, regarding them always as instruments or works of the god who orders all things; and, in general, to maintain that nothing lifeless is better than something living, nor anything without perception better than something that perceives, not even if one heaped together all the gold and emerald in the world. For it is not in colors,
nor in shapes, nor in smoothness that the divine comes to be, but whatever has no share, and by nature cannot share, in life has a lot more dishonorable than that of the dead. But the nature that lives and sees and has within itself the source of its own motion, and knowledge of what belongs to it and what is foreign, has drawn an outflow of beauty and a portion from that intelligence "by which the universe is steered," as Heraclitus says.
Hence the divine is represented no worse in these creatures than in works of bronze and stone, which likewise suffer decay and discoloration, but by nature are deprived of all perception and understanding. Concerning the honored animals, then, these are the explanations I most approve of among those given. As for their robes: those of Isis are variegated in their dyes, since her power has to do with matter, which becomes and receives all things —
light and darkness, day and night, fire and water, life and death, beginning and end; but that of Osiris has no shadow or variegation, but one single, simple color of light, for the first principle is unmixed and the primary, intelligible reality is unblended. Hence, once they have taken up this robe, they put it away and guard it, unseen and untouched. But they use the robes of Isis often, for perceptible things, being in use and
close at hand, offer many unfoldings and views of themselves as they change now one way, now another. But the understanding of the intelligible, pure, and simple allows the soul only once, like a flash of lightning, to touch and glimpse it. This is why both Plato and Aristotle call this part of philosophy the "epoptic" part, since those who by reasoning pass beyond these opinable, mixed, and variegated things
leap toward that first reality, simple and immaterial, and, having simply touched the pure truth concerning it, consider that they possess philosophy's complete end. And this is what the priests of today, with reverent caution and veiled language, hint at when they suggest that this god rules and reigns over the dead, being none other than the one called Hades and Pluto among the Greeks — since it is not understood
how this is true, it disturbs most people, who suspect that the holy and truly sacred Osiris dwells in the earth and beneath the earth, where the bodies of those thought to have reached their end are hidden. But he himself is in fact very far removed from the earth, unstained, undefiled, and pure of all substance that admits of decay and death. For the souls of men here,
enclosed as they are by bodies and passions, have no participation in god, except so far as they may attain, through philosophy, to a dim, dreamlike touch of him by understanding; but when they are released and pass over into the formless, invisible, passionless, and pure, then this god becomes their leader and king, since they now depend on him and gaze insatiably and long for that beauty which cannot be told or spoken by men — the beauty of
which ancient tradition declares that Isis, ever loving and pursuing and consorting with him, fills this world with all things fair and good, so far as they partake of generation. These things, then, stand thus, in the account most fitting for the gods. But if I am also to speak of the incense burned each day, as I promised, one should first consider this: that men are always most earnestly concerned
with practices conducive to health, and especially in their sacred rites, purifications, and ways of life the wholesome is regarded no less than the holy. For they did not think it right to serve what is pure and wholly unharmed and undefiled with bodies or souls that were themselves unsound and diseased. Since, then, the air, which we use the most and live constantly amid, does not always
keep the same condition and mixture, but at night grows dense and presses upon the body and draws the soul together into despondency and a kind of murky, anxious heaviness, they rise at once and burn resin as incense, treating and purifying the air through this separation and fanning back to life the innate breath in the body when it has grown faint, since the scent has something forceful and startling about it. Again, at midday,
perceiving that the sun forcibly draws up a great, heavy exhalation from the earth and mixes it with the air, they burn myrrh as incense; for heat dissolves and disperses whatever murky, muddy matter has gathered in the surrounding air. And indeed physicians too seem to help against pestilential diseases by kindling a great fire, since it thins the air; and it thins the air better if they burn fragrant
woods, such as cypress, juniper, and pine. Acron the physician, at any rate, is said to have won renown at Athens during the great plague by ordering a fire to be kept burning beside the sick, for it benefited not a few. Aristotle says that the fragrant exhalations of perfumes, flowers, and meadows contribute no less to health than to pleasure, since with their warmth and smoothness they gently dissolve the brain, which is by nature cold and frosty.
And if indeed the Egyptians call myrrh "bal," which when translated means chiefly "the scattering away of foolish talk," this too lends the argument some support for its cause. Kyphi is a compound made of sixteen ingredients combined: honey, wine, raisins, cyperus grass, resin, myrrh, and
aspalathus and seseli, and further mastic, asphalt, rush, and dock, and besides these two kinds of juniper berries — of which they call one the greater and the other the lesser — and cardamom and sweet flag. These are not compounded just as it happens, but while sacred writings are read aloud to the perfume-makers as they mix them. As for the number of ingredients, even though it seems altogether
a square derived from a square, and is alone among numbers of equal factors multiplied by equal factors in having its perimeter equal to its area, one should say this contributes very little to the purpose; rather, most of the ingredients that are gathered together, having aromatic properties, give off a sweet breath and a wholesome exhalation, by which the air is transformed, and the body, stirred through the breathing of it, is gently and mildly lulled to sleep and acquires an inviting temper,
and loosens and dissolves, without any intoxication, the painful, tight knots, as it were, of the day's cares; and it polishes, like a mirror, the imaginative part of the soul that receives dreams, and makes it clearer — no less than the strains of the lyre which the Pythagoreans used before sleep, charming away and healing the passionate and irrational part of the soul. For scents
often recall a failing sense of perception, and often again dull and calm it, as their particles are diffused through the body by their smoothness; just as some physicians say that sleep comes about when the exhalation of food, creeping gently, as it were, around the internal organs and touching them, produces a kind of tickling. Kyphi is used both as a drink and as a mixture, for when drunk it seems
to purge the inward parts, being a gentle laxative. Apart from these ingredients, resin is the product of the sun, and myrrh comes from the sun's heat as the plants weep it forth. Of those who compound kyphi, some prefer it made at night, like those substances that by nature are nourished by cold winds, shadows, dew, and moisture, since the light of day is one thing, simple, and the
...the sun, as Pindar says, is seen "coursing solitary through the upper air." The night air, on the other hand, is a blend and mixture of many lights and powers, as though the seeds streaming down from every star flowed together into one. It is reasonable, then, that those substances which are simple and derive their origin from the sun should be burned as incense by day, while those that are mixed and of varied qualities should be desired for burning at the coming on of night.

======== Moralia: De Liberis Educandis ========

Let us consider what one might say about the upbringing of freeborn children, and by what practices they might turn out to be virtuous in character. Perhaps it is better to begin first from their birth. To fathers, then, who desire to have children of good repute, I would advise that they not cohabit with women of just any sort — I mean, for instance, courtesans or concubines. For those who are not well-born on their mother's or their father's side carry with them, ineradicably, the reproach of low birth for their whole life, a reproach ready at hand for anyone wishing to expose and revile them. The poet, then, was wise who says: "When the foundation of a family is not rightly laid, its offspring must of necessity be unfortunate." Noble birth is indeed a fine treasury of frank speech, and those who long for lawful procreation of children must take the greatest account of it. And indeed the spirits of those whose lineage is adulterated and counterfeit are by nature apt to falter and be humbled, and quite rightly the poet who says: "For it enslaves a man, however bold-hearted he may be, whenever he is conscious of the faults of his mother or his father." So too, as one might expect, the children of distinguished parents are filled with pride and arrogance. At any rate they say that Diophantus, the son of Themistocles, often declared to many people that whatever he himself wished, this the Athenian people also resolved; for what he himself wanted, his mother wanted too, and what his mother wanted, Themistocles wanted, and what Themistocles wanted, all the Athenians wanted. It is quite fitting also to praise the Spartans for their magnanimity, in that they fined their king Archidamus with money because he had ventured to marry a wife who was small in stature, adding the remark that he intended to furnish them not kings but "kinglets."
Next in order it would be fitting to say something that even those before us had overlooked. What is that? That men who approach their wives for the sake of begetting children ought to have intercourse either altogether without wine, or at least when only moderately drunk. For those tend to become fond of wine and given to drunkenness whose fathers, it happens, made the beginning of their conception while drunk. And Diogenes, seeing a young man out of his wits and deranged, said: "Young man, your father begot you while drunk." Let this much be said by me concerning birth; now the subject of upbringing must be discussed.
To speak generally, what we are accustomed to say about the arts and sciences must be said also about virtue: that three things must come together for the complete practice of righteousness — nature, reason, and habit. By reason I mean learning, and by habit, practice. The beginnings come from nature, the advances from learning, the applications from practice, and the highest perfection from all three together. Whichever of these is lacking, in that respect virtue is bound to be lame. For nature without learning is blind; learning apart from nature is deficient; and practice without both is incomplete. Just as in farming the soil must first be good, then the farmer skilled, and then the seeds sound, so in the same way nature corresponds to the soil, the one who educates to the farmer, and the precepts and instructions of reasoned discourse to the seed. Insisting on all this, I would say that these three came together and breathed as one into the souls of those celebrated by everyone — Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and all who have attained undying fame. Happy indeed and beloved of the gods is anyone to whom some god has granted all these together. But if anyone supposes that those who are not well endowed by nature, once they obtain right learning and practice toward virtue, cannot make up, as far as possible, for the deficiency of their nature, let him know that he is greatly mistaken — indeed, entirely so. For laziness ruins the virtue of a good nature, while teaching corrects a poor one; easy things escape the careless, while difficult things are captured by diligence. And one may learn how effective and accomplishing a thing diligence and toil are by observing many things that happen.
Drops of water hollow out rocks; iron and bronze are worn away by the constant touch of hands; the wheels of chariots, once bent by strain, could never, whatever happened, recover their original straightness; and the curved staffs of actors are impossible to straighten out again — rather, what is contrary to nature becomes, through toil, stronger than what is according to nature. And are these the only things that demonstrate the power of diligence? Not at all — there are countless others besides. Land is naturally good, but if neglected it turns to waste, and the better it is by nature, the more, if left idle through neglect, it is utterly ruined through carelessness. And there is land that is harsh and rougher than it should be, but once cultivated it soon brings forth noble crops. What trees, if neglected, do not grow crooked and become fruitless, but if they receive proper tending become fruitful and productive? What bodily strength does not waste away and decline through neglect, luxury, and poor condition? What weak nature has not, through exercise and rigorous training, gained the most toward strength? What horses, well broken in, have not become tractable to their riders, while those left untamed have become stiff-necked and disobedient? And what need is there to marvel at other things, when we see that many of even the most savage beasts become tame and gentle to the hand through labor? Well spoken too was the Thessalian who, when asked who were the gentlest of the Thessalians, said, "Those who have stopped making war." And what need is there to say much more? For character (ethos) is habit (ethos) of long standing, and if one were to call the moral virtues "habitual" virtues, one would not seem to be mistaken.
Let me employ one further example concerning these matters and then be free of dwelling on them any longer. Lycurgus, the lawgiver of the Spartans, took two puppies of the same parents and raised them in wholly different ways, making the one gluttonous and worthless, but the other capable of tracking and hunting. Then once, when the Spartans had gathered together in the same place, he said: "Great indeed, men of Sparta, is the influence upon the growth of virtue exercised by habits, upbringing, teachings, and ways of life, and I shall now make this clear to you at once." Then, bringing forward the two puppies, he released them, having placed in the middle a dish of food and a hare, right in front of the puppies. And the one rushed at the hare, while the other made straight for the dish. While the Spartans were still unable to grasp what this meant and what he intended by displaying the puppies, he said: "These two are of the same parents, but having received different upbringing, the one has turned out gluttonous, the other a hunter." Let this suffice concerning habits and ways of life.
Next in order it would be fitting to speak about nurture. I would say that mothers themselves ought to nurse their children and offer them the breast, for they will nurture them with more sympathy and greater care, as loving their children, so to speak, "from the fingertips" — that is, from the very depths of their being. Wet nurses and nannies, on the other hand, have a spurious and counterfeit affection, since they love only for pay. Nature herself shows that mothers ought to nurse and rear the children they have borne; for this reason she has provided every creature that gives birth with nourishment from milk. Indeed providence was wise in this too: it placed two breasts on women, so that even if they should bear twins, they would have two sources of nourishment. Apart from this, mothers who nurse their own children become more affectionate and more loving toward them. And this is not unreasonable, by Zeus — for being reared together is, as it were, a bond that draws affection tight. Even wild animals, when torn away from those they have been raised with, are visibly seen to long for them.
So, above all, as I have said, mothers should endeavor to nurse their own children themselves; but if they are unable to do so, either through bodily weakness — for such a thing might indeed occur — or because they are hastening toward the birth of other children, then at least the wet nurses and nannies chosen must not be just anyone, but as far as possible the most respectable available, and first of all Greek in character. For just as it is necessary to shape the limbs of children straight from birth so that they may grow up straight and without deformity, in the same way it is fitting to mold the characters of children right from the start. For youth is impressionable and pliant, and it is while their souls are still tender that learning becomes ingrained in them; whereas everything hardened is difficult to soften. For just as seals are impressed upon soft wax, so are lessons stamped upon the souls of children while they are still young. And it seems to me that the godlike Plato gives fitting advice in urging nurses not to tell children just any stories, so that their souls may not be filled from the start with folly and corruption. It seems likely too that the poet Phocylides gives good advice when he says: "One must teach a child, while still a child, noble deeds."
Nor, indeed, should this be passed over: that the slave children who are destined to serve the young masters and to be raised together with them must be sought out as being, first and foremost, sound in character, but also, moreover, able to speak Greek clearly and correctly, so that by close association with barbarians of corrupt character they may not carry away with them something of that baseness. And those who speak in proverbs say, not without reason, "If you dwell beside a lame man, you will learn to limp." Then, once the children have reached the appropriate age to be placed under the charge of tutors, great care must be taken at that point regarding the character of these men, so that parents do not unwittingly hand over their children to slaves, or barbarians, or fickle men. For as things now stand, the practice followed by many people is utterly ridiculous. Among their respectable slaves, they appoint some as farmers, others as ship-captains, others as merchants, others as stewards, others as moneylenders; but whatever slave they find given to wine and gluttony, useless for any serious business — to this man they hand over their sons. The proper tutor ought to be, by nature, such a man as Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, was.
But now I come to say the greatest and most decisive point of all that I have mentioned. Teachers must be sought for children who are irreproachable in their lives, blameless in character, and most accomplished in experience; for the fountain and root of nobility of character is to obtain a proper education. And just as farmers set stakes beside their plants, so lawful and orderly teachers plant beside the young their fitting counsels and exhortations, so that their characters may grow up straight. As things stand now, one might well spit in contempt on some fathers, who, before testing those who are to teach their children, out of ignorance — and sometimes even out of inexperience — entrust their sons to men of no repute and dubious credentials. And this is not yet the most ridiculous part, if they do it through inexperience; but the following is utterly absurd. What is that? Sometimes, though they know it, and though others have told them of it, of the inexperience and even the depravity of certain teachers, they nevertheless entrust their children to them all the same — some overcome by the flatteries of those who curry favor, others doing a favor to friends who ask it of them, acting in a manner comparable to someone who, being ill in body, passes over the physician who, with his skill, could have saved him, and, doing a favor to a friend, chooses instead the one who through inexperience would destroy him; or like someone who, to please a friend who requests it, passes over the best ship's captain and approves instead the worst. By Zeus and all the gods, does a man called a father give more weight to the gratitude of those who make requests of him than to the education of his children?
So it was not unreasonable that Socrates of old often used to say that, if it were possible, he would climb to the highest point of the city and cry aloud: "Men, where are you being carried, you who take every care about the acquisition of wealth, but give little thought to the sons to whom you will leave it?" To this I myself would add that such fathers do something comparable to a man who takes care of his shoe but pays no regard to his foot. Many fathers advance to such a degree of love of money combined with hatred of their own children that, in order not to pay a higher fee, they choose as teachers for their children men worth nothing at all, hunting after cheap ignorance. It was for this reason that Aristippus, not without wit but indeed quite cleverly, mocked in speech a father empty of sense and understanding. For when someone asked him how much fee he would charge for the education of his son, he said, "A thousand drachmas." And when the man said, "Heracles! What an excessive demand — for that sum I could buy a slave," Aristippus replied, "Well then, you will have two slaves — both your son and whichever one you buy." And on the whole, how is it not absurd to accustom children to receive their food with the right hand, and to rebuke them if they offer the left, but to take no forethought at all that they should hear discourse that is skillful and lawful?
What, then, happens to these admirable fathers, when they have reared their sons badly and educated them badly? I will tell you. When, having been enrolled among men, they neglect a healthy and well-ordered life and hurl themselves headlong into disorderly and slavish pleasures, then indeed they repent of having betrayed the education of their children — when it is of no use — being distressed at their children's wrongdoings. For some of them take up flatterers and parasites, men of no repute, accursed, corrupters and destroyers of youth; others ransom haughty and expensive courtesans and prostitutes; others gorge themselves on delicacies; others run headlong into dice and revelry; and some of the more reckless even lay hold of graver evils, committing adultery and ruining households, and prizing a single pleasure above death itself. Had these men associated with philosophy, they would perhaps not have made themselves so submissive to such conduct, and they would have learned the precept of Diogenes, who, coarsely in his words but truly in substance, advises and says: "Go into a brothel, boy, so that you may learn that there is no difference between what is honored and what is worthless."
To sum up, then, I say — and I would seem to be uttering an oracle rather than giving advice — that the first, the middle, and the last point in all this is a serious upbringing and a lawful education, and that these are contributions and aids toward virtue and toward happiness. As for the rest of what people call good, it is merely human, small, and not...
...are not worthy of serious pursuit. Good birth is a fine thing, but it is a good that belongs to one's ancestors. Wealth is valuable, but it is a possession of fortune, since fortune has often taken it away from those who had it and brought it, beyond their hope, to those who did not expect it; and great wealth stands as a target set up for those who wish to shoot at purses—wicked slaves and false accusers—and, worst of all, even the most depraved men have a share in it. Reputation, again, is impressive, but insecure.
Beauty is a prize worth fighting for, but short-lived. Health is precious, but easily overturned. Strength is enviable, but liable to sickness and old age. And in general, if anyone prides himself on bodily strength, let him learn that he is mistaken in his judgment: for how small a portion is human strength of the power possessed by other animals—I mean, for instance, elephants and bulls and lions!
Education alone, of all the things that are in us, is immortal and divine. And there are two things that are most sovereign of all in human nature, mind and reason. The mind rules over reason, and reason serves the mind; it cannot be taken away by fortune, cannot be removed by false accusation, cannot be corrupted by illness, cannot be ruined by old age. For the mind alone grows young again as it grows old, and while time takes away everything else, it adds knowledge to old age. As for war, which like a torrent sweeps and carries away everything, it alone is unable to take away education. Stilpo the Megarian philosopher, I think, gave a memorable answer when Demetrius, having enslaved the city, razed it to the ground and asked Stilpo whether he had lost anything. "No indeed," he said, "for war does not plunder virtue."
The answer of Socrates seems to me to be in tune and harmony with this. For when Gorgias asked him what opinion he held of the Great King, and whether he thought him happy, Socrates said, "I do not know how he stands with respect to virtue and education," implying that happiness lies in these things, not in the goods of fortune.
Just as I urge that nothing be made of greater importance than the education of children, so again I say that one must hold fast to that which is uncorrupted and sound, and lead one's sons as far as possible away from the nonsense of public displays. For to please the many is to displease the wise. Euripides bears witness to my point when he says, "I am unpolished at addressing a crowd, but wiser when speaking to a few of my own age." And there is truth in this too: "For those who are inferior among the wise are more skilled speakers before a crowd." I myself observe that those who practice speaking so as to please and gratify disorderly crowds generally turn out, in their manner of life as well, to be dissolute and pleasure-loving.
And this is reasonable enough: for if, in providing pleasures for others, they neglect what is honorable, they will hardly place what is right and sound above their own self-indulgence and luxury, or pursue what is prudent rather than what is pleasant. Besides this, what benefit would children get—for it is a fine thing to say and do nothing at random, and as the proverb has it, "fine things are difficult." Extemporaneous speeches are full of much carelessness and slovenliness, since those who speak them know neither where to begin nor where to stop.
Apart from their other faults, those who speak on the spur of the moment fall into a terrible lack of proportion and wordiness, whereas forethought does not allow speech to fall short of the proper measure. Pericles, as tradition has it, when often called on by the people, did not respond, saying that he was not prepared. In the same way Demosthenes, becoming an emulator of his statesmanship, when the Athenians called on him for advice, resisted, saying, "I have not prepared."
This story, perhaps, is of uncertain authorship and may be a fabrication; but in the speech Against Meidias he clearly demonstrates the benefit of forethought. He says, at any rate, "I confess, men of Athens, that I have thought this through, and I would not deny it, and that I have practiced as much as I was able; for I would have been wretched if, after suffering what I suffered and am suffering, I had neglected what I was going to say to you about these things."
I would not say that one must altogether reject readiness of speech, or again that one should not practice it for worthy occasions, but that it should be used as a kind of medicine. Up to the age of manhood I do not think one should speak on any chance occasion; but when someone has rooted his ability firmly, then, when circumstances call for it, it is fitting for him to speak with freedom.
For just as those who have been bound for a long time, even if they are later released, are unable to walk because of their long habituation to bonds, and stumble, in the same way those who have kept their speech under restraint for a long time, even if at some point they need to speak extemporaneously, nonetheless preserve the same character of expression. But to allow children, while still children, to speak on the spur of the moment on any occasion is a cause of the worst kind of idle talk.
They say a wretched painter once showed Apelles a picture and said, "I have just now painted this," and Apelles replied, "Even if you did not say so, I would know it was painted quickly; I am only amazed that you have not painted more such pictures."
So then, just as I return to the original subject of my discourse, I urge avoiding and fleeing the theatrical and overwrought style of speech, so again I urge guarding against and avoiding meanness and lowliness of diction: the one is unstatesmanlike in its bombast, the other, being too thin, fails to impress. Just as the body must be not only healthy but also vigorous, so speech likewise must be not only free of disease but also robust.
For what is merely safe is only praised, but what is also daring is admired as well. I happen to hold the same opinion about the disposition of the soul. For one ought to be neither rash nor cowardly and timid: the one tends toward shamelessness, the other toward servility. It is a matter of skill to cut the middle course in all things and to be well-tempered.
I wish, while I still remember the subject of education, to say what opinion I hold about it: that I consider a speech confined to a single register to be no small proof of a lack of taste, and moreover I believe it to be, with respect to practice, quickly wearisome and altogether unable to hold one's interest. For monotony in everything is cloying and irksome, whereas variety is delightful, just as it is in all other things, such as things heard or things seen.
One must therefore not allow the freeborn child to be unacquainted with, or a stranger to, any of the other so-called subjects of general education, but should let him learn these by the way, so to speak, as a mere taste of them—for perfection in all subjects is impossible—while giving philosophy the place of honor. I can illustrate my own opinion by an image: just as it is a fine thing to sail around many cities, but useful to settle in the best one, so also, as Bion the philosopher wittily said, just as the suitors, unable to approach Penelope, consorted with her serving-maids, so also those who are unable to attain philosophy wear themselves to the bone on other studies that are worth nothing.
For this reason one ought to make philosophy, as it were, the crown of one's other education. For with regard to the care of the body, men have discovered two sciences, medicine and gymnastics, of which the one instills health, the other physical fitness; but for the sicknesses and afflictions of the soul, philosophy alone is the remedy. For through philosophy, and with its help, one can come to know what is honorable,
what is shameful, what is just, what is unjust, what, in a word, is to be chosen, and what is to be avoided; how one should behave toward the gods, toward parents, toward one's elders, toward the laws, toward strangers, toward those in authority, toward friends, toward women, toward children, toward slaves—namely, that one must revere the gods, honor one's parents, respect one's elders, obey the laws, submit to those in authority, love one's friends,
be chaste toward women, be affectionate toward one's children, and not treat slaves with excessive harshness; and, most important of all, that one must be neither overjoyed in good fortune nor overly distressed in misfortune, neither dissolute in pleasures nor savage and beast-like in fits of anger. These I judge to be the most venerable of all the goods that come from philosophy. For to prosper nobly belongs to a great man; to bear one's good fortune without arousing envy belongs to a well-governed man;
to master one's pleasures by reason of a wise man; and to overcome anger belongs to no ordinary man, but to a man of exceptional character. I regard as complete those men who are able to mix and blend political power with philosophy, and I take them to have laid hold of the two greatest goods: living a life of public service, and living a life free from turbulence and calm, spent in the pursuit of philosophy. For of three kinds of life—
of which one is the practical, another the contemplative, and another the life devoted to enjoyment—the life given over to pleasure and enslaved to it is bestial and mean; the contemplative life, if it neglects the practical, is useless; and the practical life, if it has no share in philosophy, is graceless and faulty. One must therefore try, so far as possible, both to take part in public affairs and to lay hold of philosophy, to the extent that circumstances allow.
So Pericles conducted his public life, so Archytas of Tarentum, so Dion of Syracuse, so Epaminondas the Theban, one of whom was a companion of Plato. And concerning education I do not know that it is necessary to spend more words; but in addition to what has been said, it is useful, indeed necessary, not to be careless about acquiring the writings of the ancients, but to make a collection of them,
after the manner of a farmer. For in the same way that the use of books is an instrument of education, so it happens that knowledge is preserved as if drawn from a spring. Nor, indeed, is it right to neglect the exercise of the body; rather, one should send children to the trainer's school and have them work sufficiently hard at this, partly for the sake of good bodily proportion, and partly also for strength; for the foundation of a fine old age
in children is bodily fitness. Just as it is fitting, in fair weather, to make preparations for winter, so in youth one should lay up good order and self-control as provision for old age. But one must manage the labor of the body so carefully that children, worn out, do not give up their attention to education; for according to Plato, sleep and fatigue are enemies to learning.
But why dwell on this? Let me hasten to say what is the most important point of all that has been mentioned. Children must be trained for military contests by exercising themselves in javelin-throwing, archery, and hunting. For "the goods of the defeated in battle lie set out as prizes for the victors"; and war does not accept a body pampered by a sheltered upbringing, but a lean soldier accustomed to warlike contests routs even the ranks of trained athletes
and enemy phalanxes as well. What then might someone say? "You, having promised to give precepts about the upbringing of the freeborn, then appear to neglect the upbringing of the poor and common people, and to offer your instructions in agreement only with the wealthy." It is not difficult to answer such people. For I myself would wish, above all, that this system of education be useful to all in common; but if
some, being in straitened circumstances in their private affairs, are unable to make use of my precepts, let them blame fortune, not the one who gives this advice. One must try, then, so far as possible, to provide the best upbringing for children even among the poor; but if that is not possible, one must make use of whatever is possible. I have loaded my discourse with these remarks so that I might next join to them the other matters bearing on
the right upbringing of the young. And I say this too: that children must be led to honorable pursuits by exhortations and reasoning, and certainly not by blows or ill-treatment; for such things, I think, seem more fitting for slaves than for the freeborn. For they grow numb and shudder at their labors, partly because of the pain of the blows, and partly also because of the
insults. Praise and blame are more beneficial to the freeborn than any kind of ill-treatment, the one spurring them on toward what is honorable, the other holding them back from what is shameful. One must use rebukes and praises alternately and in varied ways, and whenever children become overconfident, one must shame them with rebukes, and then again call them back with praise, imitating nurses, who, whenever their infants
start crying, offer the breast again to comfort them. Yet one must not puff children up and inflate them with excessive praise either, for they become vain and spoiled by extravagant praise. I have already seen some fathers whose excessive fondness became the cause of their children's not being loved at all. What, then, is the point I wish to make, so that I may make my argument clearer by an example? Fathers, in their eagerness
to have their children excel quickly in everything, lay upon them tasks beyond their measure, under which, growing discouraged, they fail, and, being otherwise weighed down by hardships, do not readily accept instruction. For just as plants are nourished by moderate amounts of water but drowned by too much, in the same way the soul grows through tasks that are proportionate, but is submerged by those that are excessive. One must therefore give children a respite
from continuous labors, bearing in mind that our whole life is divided between relaxation and exertion. And for this reason not only waking but also sleep was devised, not only war but also peace, not only storm but also fair weather, and not only active pursuits but also festivals. In short, rest is the seasoning of labor. And one may see this happening not only among living creatures,
but also among lifeless things; for we relax bows and lyres, so that we may be able to draw them taut again. Generally speaking, the body is preserved by deprivation and by fullness, and the soul by relaxation and by exertion. It is right to censure those fathers who, having entrusted their sons to tutors and teachers, do not themselves become either eyewitnesses
or listeners at all to their sons' instruction, thereby erring most gravely in what is required of them. For they themselves ought to take stock of their children's progress every few days, rather than resting their hopes on the disposition of a hired man; for those men too will take greater care of the children when they know they must render an account each time. And here the saying of the groom is fitting, that nothing so fattens a horse as
...the king's eye. But above all one must train and habituate children's memory, for this is, as it were, the storehouse of education; and it is for this reason that the ancients told the myth that Memory (Mnemosyne) is the mother of the Muses, hinting and signifying by this that nothing so engenders and nurtures learning as memory does. This faculty, then, must be exercised on both counts, whether children are naturally gifted with memory or, on the contrary, forgetful: for we shall strengthen nature's abundance in the one case, and make up its deficiency in the other; and the one sort of children will surpass others, the other sort will surpass their former selves. For Hesiod's saying is well put: "If you lay up even a little upon a little, and do this often, soon that little will become great."
Let fathers, then, not fail to notice this too: that the mnemonic part of learning contributes no small share not only to education but also to the business of life. For the memory of past actions becomes a pattern for good counsel about the future. And moreover, sons must be kept away from foul talk, for "speech is the shadow of the deed," as Democritus says. Furthermore, they must be trained to be sociable and given to friendly address, for nothing is so deserving of hatred as an unsociable character. Again, children will become free of hatred toward those with whom they associate if they are not utterly intransigent in disputes; for it is noble to know how to be defeated as well as to win, in cases where winning is harmful. Indeed there truly is such a thing as a Cadmean victory.
As a witness to this I can call the wise Euripides, who says that when two men are speaking and one of them grows angry, the one who does not resist his words in turn is the wiser. Now the things I have next to say are, if anything, even more to be practiced by the young than what has already been mentioned. These are: to keep one's life free of pretension, to hold one's tongue in check, to rise above anger, and to master one's hands. How great a matter each of these is one must consider; it will become clearer through examples.
To begin, for example, from the last of these first: some men, by stretching out their hands for unjust gain, have poured away the reputation of their past lives — as Gylippus the Spartan, who broke open the sacks of money, was driven into exile from Sparta. As for freedom from anger, that belongs to a wise man. Socrates, when a bold and disgusting young fellow kicked him, and those around him were indignant and roused enough to want to chase the youth down, said, "If a donkey had kicked me, would you have thought it right to kick it back?" That young man, however, did not entirely escape unpunished, for when everyone reproached him and called him "the kicker," he hanged himself. And when Aristophanes brought out the Clouds and poured every kind of abuse upon him in every way, and one of those present said, "Are you not angry, Socrates, that he mocks you like this in his comedy?" Socrates said, "No, by Zeus, I am not; for I am being teased as if at a great banquet — the theater."
Kindred and comparable to these will be found the actions of Archytas of Tarentum and Plato. The former, on returning from a campaign in which he had happened to be general, found his land grown wild with neglect; he called his steward and said, "I would have punished you, were I not so angry." Plato, angered at a greedy and disgusting slave, called his sister's son Speusippus and said, "Go and beat this fellow, for I myself am too angry." These things, someone might say, are difficult and hard to imitate. I know it too. One must nevertheless try, using these examples as far as possible, to remove the greater part of unrestrained and raging anger; for we are not rivals of those men in other respects either, neither in experience nor in nobility of character. But nonetheless, no less than they — being, as it were, hierophants and torchbearers of wisdom before the gods — we attempt to imitate and approach, as far as is in our power, all that they achieved.
Now as to mastering the tongue — for it remains to speak of this, as I proposed — if anyone has supposed it a small and trivial matter, he is very far from the truth. Timely silence is wise, and better than any speech. And it is for this reason, I think, that the ancients instituted the mystic rites of initiation, so that, being accustomed in them to keep silence, we might transfer to matters concerning the gods the fear we learn in trusting human mysteries. For indeed no one ever regretted having kept silent, while countless people have regretted having spoken. And what has been kept silent is easy to speak out, but what has been spoken cannot be taken back. I myself know of countless people who have fallen into the greatest misfortunes through incontinence of the tongue. Passing over the rest, I shall mention one or two as examples of the type.
When Philadelphus married his sister Arsinoe, Sotades said, "Into an unholy hole you are thrusting your goad," and for this he rotted away for many long years in prison, paying no trifling penalty for his ill-timed talk; and in order to provide laughter for others, he himself wept for a long time. Comparable and akin to this, and in fact far more terrible, is what the sophist Theocritus said and suffered. When Alexander ordered the Greeks to provide purple garments, so that on his return he might sacrifice the victory offerings for the war against the barbarians, and the nations were contributing silver by head-count, Theocritus said, "Before I was in doubt, but now I clearly perceive that this is Homer's 'purple death.'" By this he made an enemy of Alexander. And by taunting Antigonus, the king of the Macedonians, who had lost one eye, with his disfigurement, he provoked him to no ordinary anger. For Antigonus sent his chief cook, Eutropion, who had been made a general, to meet with him and to exchange words with him; and when Eutropion kept reporting this to him and approaching him repeatedly, Theocritus said, "I know well that you want to serve me up raw to the Cyclops," taunting the one for being one-eyed and the other for having been a cook. And Eutropion replied, "Then indeed you will not keep your head, but you will pay the penalty for this loose talk and madness," and he reported what had been said to the king, who sent men and killed Theocritus.
Beyond all these things — and this is the most sacred point of all — one must habituate children to speak the truth; for lying is slavish and deserves to be hated by all men, and is not even to be forgiven in decent slaves. Now these matters I have discussed without hesitation or delay, concerning the good order and self-control of children; but about what I am about to say, I am of two minds and undecided, and swaying now this way, now that, as if on a balance scale, I am unable to incline to either side. Great hesitation holds me back both from proposing and from discouraging the matter. Nevertheless I must venture to state it. What, then, is this matter? Whether one should allow those who are in love with boys to associate and spend time with them, or, on the contrary, one ought to keep them away and drive them off from company with such men.
For when I look to those fathers who are blunt and harsh in character, sour and severe, who consider the company of lovers an intolerable outrage upon their children, I am wary of becoming a proposer and advocate of it. But when, on the other hand, I call to mind Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Aeschines, Cebes, and the whole chorus of those men who approved of love between males and led young men on toward education and leadership of the people and excellence of character, again I become a different man and am swayed toward emulation of those men. Euripides bears witness to this when he says: "But there is indeed another kind of love among mortals, the love for a soul that is just, self-controlled, and good." And what Plato says, mixed with both earnestness and playfulness, must not be passed over: he says that it should be permitted to those who have distinguished themselves to kiss whichever of the beautiful youths they wish.
Those, then, who desire only the bloom of youth should be driven away, while those who are lovers of the soul should be admitted without qualification. And the kinds of love practiced at Thebes and at Elis are to be shunned, as is the so-called "abduction" practiced in Crete; but those practiced at Athens and at Sparta are to be emulated. As for these matters, however, let each person judge for himself according to his own persuasion.
For my part, since I have spoken about the good order and discipline of children, I shall now move on to the age of youths, and I shall say only a very little; for I have often found fault with those who introduce corrupt habits, who set tutors and teachers over their sons as children but let the impulses of their youths range free and unchecked, when in fact the opposite ought to be done — greater caution and watchfulness ought to be exercised over youths than over children. For who does not know that the offenses of children are small and altogether curable — perhaps the negligence of tutors, or the misleading and disobedience of teachers — whereas the wrongdoings of those who are already growing into young men are often monstrous and outrageous: excess of the belly, thefts of their fathers' money, dice, revels, drinking bouts, love affairs with maidens, and the ruin of the households of married women. One ought, then, to bind and restrain the impulses of such young men through careful attention, for the prime of pleasures at this age is unmanaged, prone to leap about, and in need of a bridle; so that those who do not vigorously take hold of this age hand over, through their own folly, license to commit wrongdoing. Sensible fathers, therefore, ought especially at this critical time to keep watch, staying alert
to bring their young sons to their senses, by teaching, threatening, entreating, and showing them examples of those who through love of pleasure have fallen into misfortunes, and of those who through self-restraint have won praise and a good reputation. For these two things are, as it were, the elements of virtue: hope of honor and fear of punishment; for the one makes men more eager for the noblest pursuits, the other makes them reluctant toward base deeds.
In general it is fitting to keep children away from association with wicked men, for they carry away some part of the wickedness of such men. This too Pythagoras enjoined, in riddling sayings which I shall set out and explain, for these too contribute no small weight toward the acquisition of virtue. For instance: "Do not taste blacktails" — that is, do not spend time with black-hearted men out of ill nature. "Do not step over the balance beam" — that is, one must set the highest value on justice and not overstep it.
"Do not sit upon a grain-measure" — that is, avoid idleness and take forethought to provide the necessary sustenance. "Do not offer your right hand to everyone" — meaning that one should not enter into agreements rashly. "Do not wear a tight ring" — meaning that one should conduct one's life so as not to be constrained by it. "Do not stir the fire with a knife" — meaning that one should not provoke a man who is already angry,
for that is not fitting, but rather one should yield to those who are angry. "Do not eat the heart" — that is, do not harm your own soul by wearing it down with worries. "Abstain from beans" — meaning that one should not engage in politics, for in former times votes were cast by beans, by which magistracies were determined. "Do not put food into a chamber pot" — this signifies that it is not fitting to put fine speech into a wicked soul; for speech is the food of thought, and wickedness of character makes that food impure.
"Do not turn back when you have come to the boundaries" — that is, those who are about to die and who see the boundary of life drawing near should bear it easily and not lose heart. But I shall return to the subject I set out with at the beginning: from all wicked men, as I said, children must be kept away, and above all from flatterers. What I often say, and keep saying, to many fathers, I would say now as well: there is no class more utterly destructive, none that more readily and more quickly derails youth, than flatterers, who utterly ruin both fathers and sons together, making the old age of the one grievous and the youth of the other corrupted, holding out pleasure as an unguarded bait for their counsels.
To the sons of the rich, one father urges sobriety, but flatterers urge drunkenness; one urges self-control, they urge licentiousness; one urges thrift, they urge extravagance; one urges hard work, they urge idleness, saying, "Life is but a moment of time. One ought to live, not merely to exist alongside life. Why should we worry about our father's threats? He is a doting old fool ready for the grave, and we shall soon lift him up and carry him out as fast as we can."
Another such youth has taken up with a common prostitute and made a wife of a kept woman, and has plundered and stripped away his father's provisions for old age. A vile breed, hypocrites of friendship, strangers to frank speech, flatterers of the rich and despisers of the poor, drawn to the young as if by a musician's craft, grinning broadly whenever those who feed them laugh, and being spurious and illegitimate parts of a soul and of a life, living wholly at the beck and nod of the rich — free by fortune, but slaves by choice; and when they are not being abused, they think themselves abused, because they are being kept for nothing. So then, if any father cares about the good conduct of his children, he must drive out these vile creatures; and he must drive out no less the depravity of their schoolfellows, for these too are capable of corrupting the most decent natures.
These matters, then, are honorable and advantageous; but what I am about to say next belongs to human weakness. For I do not, on the other hand, require fathers to be utterly harsh and hard by nature, but in many respects to make allowance for some of the errors of the young, and to remind themselves that they too were once young. And just as physicians, by mixing the bitterness of their medicines with sweet flavors, find a pleasant way through to what is beneficial, so too fathers ought to mix the harshness of their reproofs with gentleness, and at one time give free rein to their children's desires and loosen the reins, and at another time again pull them tight; and above all bear their errors with good humor, but if that is not possible, then, having grown angry for the occasion, to let the anger quickly burn out. For it is better for a father to be quick-tempered than sullen and slow to anger,
since implacability and difficulty in reconciling are no small proof of hatred toward one's children. It is also good sometimes to appear not even to know of certain of their errors, but to apply the dimness and deafness of old age to what happens, so as, seeing some of what is done, not to see it, and hearing, not to hear it. We put up with the faults of friends; why is it strange to do so with those of children? We often fail to reproach even our slaves for their drunken revelry.
"You once spared a slave — well then, give him provisions too. You were once angry — well, forgive as well. He once deceived you through a household servant — restrain your anger. He once took a yoke of oxen from the field — [overlook it]. He once came home reeking of yesterday's drunkenness — pretend not to notice. He smells of perfume — say nothing." It is thus that untamed youth is broken in, like a colt. One must also try to yoke in marriage those who are the slaves of pleasures and are hard of hearing toward reproofs, for this bond is
...of youth, the safest of all. Fathers should betroth to their sons wives who are neither of much higher birth nor much wealthier than themselves, for the saying "drive the one that matches you" is wise. For those who take wives far superior to themselves, without realizing it, become not husbands of their wives but slaves of their dowries.
Having added a few brief points, I shall now bring these precepts to a close. For above all, fathers must, by doing nothing wrong themselves, but rather doing everything they ought, offer themselves as a clear example to their children, so that the children, looking to their fathers' lives as to a mirror, may be turned away from shameful deeds and words. For those who rebuke their sons when they go wrong, and yet fall into the same errors themselves, become, under cover of their sons' names, unwitting accusers of themselves; and living altogether basely, they do not even have the boldness to reprove their own slaves, let alone their sons.
Apart from this, they would become counselors and teachers of wrongdoing to their sons. For where the old are shameless, there the young too must of necessity be most shameless. One must therefore strive to practice everything fitting for the moral training of children, emulating Eurydice, who, though an Illyrian and thrice a barbarian, nevertheless late in life took up education for the sake of her children's learning.
Her love for her children is sufficiently shown by the epigram which Eurydice of Hierapolis dedicated to the Muses: "This gift Eurydice of Hierapolis dedicated to the Muses, having conceived in her soul a joyous longing. For letters, memorials of speech, though she was already mother of grown sons, she toiled hard to learn."
Now to embrace all the precepts mentioned above is perhaps a matter for prayer or exhortation; but to emulate the greater part of them, while itself requiring good fortune and much diligence, is nevertheless attainable by human nature.

======== Moralia: De Primo Frigido ========

Is there, then, some primary power and substance of cold, Favorinus, just as fire is of heat, by presence and participation in which each of the other things becomes cold? Or rather, is coldness a privation of heat, just as they say darkness is of light and rest of motion? For indeed the cold seems to be a thing at rest, while the hot is a thing that moves.
The coolings of hot things, moreover, do not come about through the presence of any power, but through the departure of heat; for at the very moment when a large amount of it is seen going off, what remains behind grows cold. The vapor that boiling water gives off escapes along with the heat as it departs; and this is why the surrounding cooling, by drawing off the heat, reduces the bulk of the water, with nothing else coming in to replace it. But, in the first place, one might suspect of this argument
that it does away with many manifest powers, treating them not as qualities or states but as privations of states and qualities—heaviness as a privation of lightness, hardness as a privation of softness, black as a privation of white, and bitter as a privation of sweet, and so with each pair whose members are by nature opposed to one another in power, not related as a state to its privation. And then, too, every privation is inactive
and inoperative, like blindness, deafness, silence, and death; for these are the departures of forms and the destructions of substances, not distinct natures or substances in their own right. But coldness, arising in bodies, produces effects and changes no less than heat does; for many things are frozen by cold, and drawn together, and made dense; and its being at rest and hard to move
is not a mark of inactivity, but of firmness and stability, possessing from its strength a power that compacts and holds things together. Hence privation is a mere failing and withdrawal of the opposing power, whereas many things are cooled while still retaining much of the heat that was in them; and in some cases the coldness, when it takes hold of things that are hotter, actually freezes and contracts them, just as iron is hardened when it is quenched. The Stoics, moreover, say that even the breath
in the bodies of infants is tempered by the surrounding cold and, changing from its original nature, becomes soul. But this point is disputable; still, it is not right to regard the coldness that is plainly the maker of many other things as a mere privation. Further, no privation admits of degree, of more and less; nor would anyone say that one blind person is more blind than another among those who cannot see, or that one silent person is more silent than another among those not speaking,
or that one dead person is more dead than another among those not living. But among cold things there is a great deal of more and less, of too much and not too much, and in general intensifications and relaxations, just as among hot things, because matter, being affected now strongly and now gently by the opposing powers, produces some things hotter and others colder than others
of its own accord. For indeed there is no mixture of a state with its privation, nor does any power admit into itself the privation opposed to it when it approaches, nor make it a partner, but rises up against it instead; whereas hot things, up to a point, tolerate being blended with cold ones, just as black tolerates white, and sharp tastes tolerate sweet, and astringent tolerates mild, and by this partnership and blending they produce many pleasing and agreeable combinations of colors, sounds, medicines, and
dishes, and give rise to many kindly generations. For the opposition according to privation and state is warlike and irreconcilable, since the existence of the one consists in the destruction of the other; but the opposition according to contrary powers, when it meets its proper occasion, is much used by the arts, and most of all by nature, both in her other processes of generation and in the changes she works in the air, and in all the things which the god, as he orders and directs the world,
is called harmonious and musical for doing—not by fitting together low and high pitches, nor by making black and white consort harmoniously with one another, but by bringing about the partnership and the difference of heat and cold within the order of the world, so that they may combine in due measure and again separate, governing them and removing the excess of each, and settling both within due bounds. And indeed there is
a perception of cold, just as there is of hot; but a privation is neither visible nor audible nor tangible nor knowable by any of the other senses. For perception was of some substance; and where no substance appears, a privation is conceived, being a denial of substance, just as blindness is of sight, silence of voice, and emptiness and void of body. For there is no perception of the void by touch, but rather where
no contact with a body occurs, there arises a conception of void; nor do we hear silence, but rather, even when we hear nothing, we conceive of silence; and likewise there is no perception of blind, naked, and unarmed people as such, but rather a conception by denial of perception. It would follow, then, that there should be no perception of cold things, but rather that wherever heat is lacking, cold should merely be conceived, if indeed it were a privation of heat. But if, just as heat
is perceptible through warming and the loosening of the flesh, so cold is perceptible through compressing and condensing it, then it is clear that coldness too has its own proper origin and source, just as heat does. Further, the privation belonging to any given form is one thing and simple, whereas substances have many differences and powers; for silence is uniform, but voice is varied, now
troubling and now delighting the sense. Colors and shapes likewise have such differences, by which they affect whoever encounters them in one way at one time and another way at another; but what is untouchable and colorless and altogether without quality has no such difference, but is uniform. Does cold, then, resemble these privative things, so as to produce no difference in the affections it causes—or is the contrary true, that there are
great and beneficial pleasures for the body arising from cold things, and again vigorous harms and pains and heavinesses, under which the heat does not always flee and withdraw, but often, being overtaken, resists and fights; and the name for their fight is shivering and trembling; and when the heat is defeated, freezing and numbness follow, but when it prevails over the cold, it produces a diffusion
and a warmth in the body accompanied by pleasure, which Homer has called being "warmed." But these things, at any rate, are plain to everyone; and it is not least by these very affections that cold shows that it stands opposed to heat as substance to substance, or affection to affection, not as a denial and privation, nor is it some destruction and removal of heat, but a destructive nature and power in its own right.
Or else let us also strike winter from the seasons, and the north winds from among the winds, on the ground that they are privations of hot and southerly ones and have no principle of their own. And indeed, since there are four primary bodies in the universe, which most people, because of their abundance, simplicity, and power, set down as the elements and first principles of everything else—fire, water, air,
and earth—it is necessary that there be just as many primary and simple qualities. What, then, are these, apart from heat and cold and dryness and wetness, by which the elements are naturally suited both to be acted upon and to act? And just as among the elements of grammar there are short and long sounds, and among those of music low and high pitches, with neither being a privation of the other, so too
in physical bodies we must suppose a correspondence of wet things to dry and cold things to hot, preserving both what is rational and what appears to the senses—or else, as the ancient Anaximenes supposed, we should leave neither cold nor hot as a substance, but treat them as common affections of matter that arise upon its changes; for he says that what is contracted and condensed in matter is cold, while
what is rarefied and loosened—naming it in this way with this very word—is hot. Hence it is said, not unreasonably, that a person breathes out both hot and cold from the mouth; for the breath is cooled when it is compressed and made dense by the lips, but when the mouth is relaxed, it escapes and becomes hot through being rarefied. This, however, Aristotle treats as a mistake on the man's part; for when the mouth is relaxed,
the heat is breathed out of us ourselves, but when we purse our lips together and blow, it is not the air from within us but the air in front of the mouth, being cold, that is pushed along and driven against us. But if we must allow that cold and hot are substances, let us carry the argument further and inquire what is the substance and origin and nature of coldness. Some,
then, holding that jagged and triangular shapes are present in bodies, say that shivering and trembling and shuddering, and whatever is akin to these affections, arise from roughness; and even if they go wrong in particular details, they at least take hold of the principle from which the inquiry ought to begin, for the search must begin, as it were, from the hearth of the substance of the whole. And it is by this above all
that the philosopher would seem to differ from the physician, the farmer, and the flute-player. For it is enough for them to consider the ultimate causes—for if the cause nearest to the affection is grasped, the intensification of a fever or an intervening chill, sun-scorched days followed by rain in the case of blight, or the slanting and coming-together of the pipes in the case of low pitch, this is sufficient for the craftsman for his own particular work. But for the
natural philosopher who pursues the truth for the sake of understanding, the knowledge of the ultimate causes is not an end but a beginning of the journey toward the first and highest principles. This is why Plato rightly, and Democritus too, in seeking the cause of heat and heaviness, did not stop their reasoning at earth and fire, but, carrying sensible things back to intelligible principles, advanced all the way to the smallest things, as it were to seeds. Nevertheless,
it is better to stir up first these very perceptible things, in which Empedocles and Strato and the Stoics locate the substances of the powers—the Stoics assigning primary coldness to air, Empedocles and Strato to water; though someone else might perhaps show earth to be the cause of coldness. Let us first examine their views. Since
fire is at once hot and bright, the nature opposed to fire must be both cold and dark; for as the murky is opposed to the bright, so cold is opposed to hot: for as darkness confounds sight, so cold confounds touch, while heat diffuses the sensation of the one who touches it, just as brightness diffuses that of the one who sees. Therefore,
what is primarily dark in nature is also primarily cold. And that air is what is primarily dark has not escaped even the poets; for they call darkness "air": "air lay thick beside the ships, nor did the moon shine forth from heaven"; and again, "clothing themselves all in air, they roam over every land"; and again, "at once the sun scattered the air and drove away the mist,
and shone forth"; "and the whole battle grew visible." And indeed they call the unlit air "gloom," it being, it seems, empty of light; and "cloud" is what they call air that has come together and grown dense, named by the denial of light; it is also called mist and fog; and whatever does not offer the sense of sight a passage for light are differences of air; and its formlessness and colorlessness have earned it the names Hades and
Acheron. So then, just as air is dark when light is lacking, so, when heat has departed, what remains is cold air, and nothing else; and this is why Tartarus too has been named from its coldness—Hesiod makes this clear when he speaks of "misty Tartarus"—and shivering and trembling with cold is called "tartarizing." This, then, is the reasoning on these points. And since destruction is a certain change
of things destroyed into their opposite, let us consider whether it has been well said that "the death of fire is the birth of air"; for fire too dies, like a living creature, either extinguished by force or wasting away of itself. Now its extinguishing makes the change of fire into air more evident; for smoke too is a form of air, as is, in Pindar's words, "the soot that kicks up with reeking smoke,"
and the fumes and exhalation. And indeed one may also see, in a flame dying from want of fuel, as with lamps, its tip pouring away into air, dark and gloomy. And sufficiently, too, the cold vapor that rises from those who have poured water over themselves after a bath or a steam-bath shows the change of heat, as it perishes, into air, as if by nature opposed to fire;
and from this it followed that air is primarily dark and cold. And indeed, of all the things that come about through coldness in bodies, the most violent and forceful is freezing, which is an affection of water but a work of air; for water by itself is easily poured, formless, and lacks cohesion, but it is stretched taut and drawn together when it is gripped by air
under the influence of coldness. Hence it has been said, "but if the south wind should summon the north wind, it will at once produce rain" — for while the south wind prepares the moisture as it were for matter, the north air takes hold of it and freezes it. And this is especially clear in the case of snow; for the flakes, releasing air and breathing it out beforehand, thin and cold, thus flow down. Aristotle also says that whetstones of lead melt and flow under frost
and winter, when only water comes near them; and the air, it seems, by compressing the particles with its coldness, shatters and breaks them apart. Furthermore, water drawn off from its spring freezes more readily; for the air more easily overpowers the smaller quantity. And if someone takes cold water from a well in a vessel and lowers it again into the well so that the vessel does not touch
the water but hangs in the air, and waits not very long, the water will become colder; and this shows most clearly that the primary cause of coldness belongs not to water but to air. Yet none of the great rivers freezes to its depth; for the air does not penetrate the whole of it, but only
whatever it grips and comes near with its coldness, that it brings to a stop; hence barbarians cross on foot, sending foxes ahead of them; for if the ice is not thick but only superficial, the foxes, sensing by the sound of the water flowing beneath, turn back; and some also hunt fish, loosening and relaxing the ice with hot water, at least enough to receive the fishing line. Thus nothing at depth is affected by the cold. And yet, of the things above,
Such a great change occurs through freezing that the water, forcing itself inward and compacting, shatters ships — as those who wintered with Caesar on the Ister report. And indeed what happens in our own case gives sufficient testimony: after baths and heavy sweating we feel colder, since our bodies, relaxed and loosened, take in a great deal of cold along with the air. Water undergoes this very same thing: it grows colder if it has first been heated, becoming more receptive to the air — which is just what people are doing, no doubt, when they ladle up boiling water and toss it into the air: nothing else than mixing it thoroughly with a great deal of air. This, then, Favorinus, is the sort of plausible ground on which the argument assigning to air the primary power of coldness rests.
The one who assigns that power to water likewise takes his starting points in a similar way — more or less as Empedocles says: 'Behold the sun, bright and hot everywhere, but rain in all things dark and chill.' By setting the cold over against the hot, as the dark against the bright, he has given us grounds to infer that darkness and cold belong to the same substance, just as brightness and heat belong to the same substance. And that darkness belongs not to air but to water, sense-perception itself bears witness: by air, one might simply say, nothing is blackened, but by water everything is. If you dip the whitest wool or cloak into water, it turns black and remains so until the moisture is dried out of it by heat, or squeezed out by some wringing or weighting. And when the ground is sprinkled with water, the spots caught by the drops turn black while the rest, being otherwise the same, remain as they were. Of water itself, the deepest part appears darkest because of its sheer volume, while the parts that air comes close to are lit up all around and sparkle. Of the other liquids, oil is the most transparent, since it contains the most air — the evidence for this being its lightness, on account of which it floats on the surface of everything, being carried upward by the air within it. Oil also produces calm on the sea when sprinkled on the waves, not because of the smoothness that makes the winds slip off, as Aristotle held, but because, though every liquid, when struck, has its wave dispersed, oil peculiarly furnishes brightness and visibility into the depths, since the liquid is parted apart by the air within it. For it is not only on the surface that it gives light to those who spend the night at sea, but also below, to sponge-divers, when blown out from the mouth it gives off a glow in the sea.
Air, then, has no greater share of darkness than water does, and a lesser share of cold. At any rate, oil, which of all liquids contains the most air, is the least cold and freezes only feebly, since the air mixed into it does not allow the freezing to become hard. Needles, iron clasps, and fine work are dipped not in water but in oil, out of fear that the excessive cold of water would warp them. It is fairer to examine the argument from evidence of this kind than from colors, since snow, hail, and ice are at once the brightest and the coldest of things, while, conversely, pitch is warmer than honey and darker as well.
Still, I am amazed at those who claim air is cold because it is also dark, if they fail to notice that others claim it is hot because it is also light. Darkness is not so proper and akin to cold as heaviness and stillness are: many things that have no share in heat nonetheless partake of brightness, whereas nothing light and buoyant and upward-tending belongs to the cold things. Even the clouds, as long as they belong more to the nature of air, rise aloft; but once they change into liquid, they immediately slip down, casting off lightness no less than heat as coldness sets in; and conversely, when heat comes upon them again, their motion reverses, their substance being carried upward at the same moment it changes back into air.
And indeed the claim about destruction is not true either: for each perishing thing is destroyed not into its opposite but by its opposite, as fire perishes by water into air. Water — as Aeschylus said, tragically perhaps, but truly — 'checks the outrage' that is fire's due; and Homer set Hephaestus against the river, and Apollo against Poseidon, in accordance with this battle, more in a natural than in a mythical sense. And Archilochus, speaking of a woman of contrary purpose, put it well: 'in one hand, with treacherous mind, she carried water, in the other, fire.' Among the Persians, the greatest and most irresistible form of supplication was when a suppliant, taking fire in hand and standing in a river, would threaten, if he did not obtain his request, to throw the fire into the water; for he would indeed get what he asked — but having obtained it, he was punished for the threat, as having acted against law and against nature. And this saying, ready on everyone's lips, 'to mix fire with water' — proverbial for things impossible — seems to bear witness that water is hostile to fire, and that fire is destroyed and chastised by it, being quenched, not by air, as the other view supposes, in taking on air's substance and receiving it as it changes.
For if the cause is that whatever the perishing thing changes into is its opposite, why should fire appear more opposite to air than to water? Air, when condensed, changes into water, and when separated out, into fire; just as, again, water is destroyed by separation into air and by combination into earth — on account, as I think, of the kinship it has toward both, not as being opposite and hostile to each. But those others, however they put it, ruin their own argument. To say that water freezes because of air is quite unreasonable, when one sees that air itself never freezes anywhere. Clouds, mists, and haze are not freezings but condensations and thickenings of moist, vaporous air, whereas air that is dry and free of moisture does not even admit chilling to the point of that change. Indeed there are mountain peaks that receive no cloud, no dew, no mist at all, reaching up into pure air that has no share of moisture — which makes it especially clear that the condensations and gatherings lower down are produced by moisture mixed in with the air, which imparts coldness.
The lower reaches of great rivers, by contrast, do not freeze — reasonably so. For once the upper part has frozen, it does not let the vapor escape; instead the vapor, shut in and turned back, provides warmth to the waters in the depths. The proof of this is that, when the ice breaks up, a great deal of vapor rises again from the water. This is also why the bodies of animals are warmer in winter, since they hold the heat within themselves, driven inward by the cold from outside. Ladling and lifting water up likewise removes not only its heat but also its coldness; hence those who need water that is intensely cold disturb the snow and the liquid pressed out from it as little as possible, since motion drives both out of their proper state. That this power belongs not to air but to water, one might establish afresh as follows.
In the first place, it is not plausible that air — bordering on the aether, touching its revolving motion, and being touched by a fiery substance — should possess the opposite power to it; for it is not possible for two bodies that are in contact and continuous at their boundaries not to be affected by one another, and if affected, for the weaker not to be filled with something of the stronger's power. Nor does it accord with nature that air, next in order to the destroying element, should be ranked as the thing destroyed — as though nature were not a maker of fellowship and harmony but of war and battle. Nature does employ opposites for the sake of the whole, but not unmixed and unmediated ones; rather, they occupy, in alternation, a position and arrangement that is not destructive but cooperative, woven together through intermediaries that share and work together in between — and this is the place air has taken, poured out beneath the fire and before the water, transmitting to both and bringing them together, being itself neither hot nor cold but a blending and a sharing of cold and hot, in which the two extremes are mixed in a mixture that does no harm, relaxes gently, and admits the opposite extremities.
Moreover, air is everywhere the same, but winter and cold are not everywhere alike. Rather, some regions of the inhabited world are cold and waterlogged, and others dry and hot, not by chance, but because coldness and moisture are one and the same substance. Much of Libya, for instance, is hot and waterless, while those who have traveled through Scythia, Thrace, and Pontus report that these lands have great lakes and are crossed by many deep rivers, and that, among the regions between them, the marshy and lake-bordering places have the most cold, on account of the vapors rising from the waters. Posidonius, in saying that the cause of the cold is that marsh air is 'fresh' and moist, did not dissolve the plausibility of our view but made it more plausible still; for freshly-risen air would not always appear colder unless coldness had its origin in moisture. Better, then, is Homer, when he says: 'a breeze blows cold from the river before dawn' — thereby pointing to the source of coldness.
Furthermore, our sense-perception often deceives us: when we touch cold garments or wool, we think we are touching something moist, because the two share a common substance and their natures are close and akin to one another. In regions with harsh winters, the cold shatters many vessels, both bronze and earthenware ones — none of them empty, but all of them full, as the water forces its way outward with its coldness. Theophrastus, indeed, says that air shatters the vessels, using the moisture as if it were a nail; but consider whether this is said more cleverly than truly. For then vessels full of pitch, or of milk, ought to shatter even more readily from the air within them. It seems, rather, that water is cold in and of itself, and primarily so: for it stands opposed in coldness to the heat of fire, just as it stands opposed in moistness to dryness and in heaviness to lightness. In general, fire is a thing that separates and divides, while water is a thing that binds and holds together, uniting and consolidating by its moistness — which is also why Empedocles gave grounds for the notion that fire is 'baneful Strife,' while he calls the moist, in each case, 'binding Love.'
For the food of fire is that which changes into fire, and it is the kindred and proper substance that changes, while the opposite is hard to change; so water is itself, one might almost say, unburnable, and it renders timber, moist grass, and soaked wood hard to burn, producing a flame that is dim and blunted through its greenness, the cold in it fighting against the heat as its natural enemy.
Consider these points too, weighing them against the others. Now, since Chrysippus, believing that air is primarily cold because it is also dark, mentioned only those who say that water is farther removed from the aether than air is, and, wishing to say something against them, said: 'in that case one might as well say that earth too is primarily cold, because it is the farthest removed of all from the aether' — dismissing this as an argument altogether disreputable and absurd — I myself think that earth is not without a share of reasonable and plausible grounds either, taking as my starting point the very thing Chrysippus most relied on concerning air. And what is that? That being primarily dark, it is thereby primarily cold as well.
For if he, taking oppositions of powers, supposes that the one necessarily follows the other, then earth surely has countless oppositions and antipathies toward the aether, which one might just as well claim that coldness follows. For earth is not opposed to aether merely as heavy to light and downward-tending to upward-tending, nor merely as dense to rarefied, nor as slow and stationary to swift and mobile, but rather as the heaviest to the lightest, the densest to the rarest, and finally as that which is of itself motionless to that which moves itself, and as that which occupies the central position to that which is forever revolving in a circle. It is not absurd, then, that the opposition of coldness and heat should follow upon oppositions so many and so great. 'Yes,' one might say, 'but fire is also bright.' And is earth not dark? It is the darkest and least luminous of all things.
Air, at any rate, has a share in light from the first, and it turns to light most quickly, and once filled with it distributes brightness everywhere, offering itself as the body for the sunbeam; for the sun, as it rises — as one of the dithyrambic poets put it — 'straightway filled the great air-walked house of the winds' with light. And from this, descending, it sends a portion of its beam into both lake and sea, and even the depths of rivers sparkle, to the extent that air reaches down into them. Earth alone, of all bodies, is forever unlit and untouched by the illuminating power of sun and moon; it is warmed by them and allows the heat, entering it, to make it tepid to a small depth, but on account of its solidity it does not let brightness pass through — it is only lit up on its surface, while within lie darkness and chaos and what is called Hades; and Erebus, it turns out, was this: the earthy, subterranean darkness.
As for night, the poets tell the myth that it was born from earth, while the mathematicians demonstrate that it is the shadow of earth, blocking off the sun's light; for the air is filled with darkness by earth just as it is filled with light by the sun, and its unlit extent is the length of the night, exactly as far as the earth's shadow spreads.
For this reason, humans make use of the outer air even when it is night, as do the many animals that pasture through the dark, since it somehow still has traces of light and scattered effluences of radiance in it; whereas the air that dwells indoors, housed beneath a roof, since the earth surrounds it on every side, is utterly blind and unlit. Indeed, the skins and horns of animals, taken whole, let no light pass through, because of their solidity; but when they are sawn and scraped thin, they become transparent, once air has been mixed in among them. I think, too, that earth is regularly called 'black' by the poets on account of its darkness and unlit condition, so that the much-prized opposition between dark and bright belongs to earth rather than to air. But this point has strayed from what we are investigating — for many...
...has been shown to be cold, while the dim and dark ones are hot. Those other powers, however, are more akin to coldness — heaviness, density, permanence, unchangeability — of which air has none at all, while earth partakes of them more than water does, indeed more than all of them. And moreover, in the plainest instances the cold is perceptibly hard and hardening, and offers resistance. For Theophrastus records that fish
stiffened by frost, if released onto land, break and shatter like glass or earthenware. And at Delphi you yourself heard how, of those who went up onto Parnassus to help the Thyiads, who were trapped by a fierce storm-wind and snow, their cloaks became so hard and wooden with the frost that they cracked and tore when stretched taut. Extreme cold also makes
the sinews hard to bend and the tongue speechless, through the stiffness and hardness it produces even in the soft parts of the body. Given these facts, consider how the process works. Surely every power, when it prevails, naturally changes and converts into itself whatever it overcomes: what is mastered by heat is turned to fire, what is mastered by wind is turned to air, and what falls into water, unless it escapes,
becomes soaked through, dissolving along with it. So too whatever is thoroughly cooled must necessarily change into that which is primarily cold. Now the extreme of cooling is solidification, and solidification ends in insensibility and petrification, when the cold, having completely mastered its object, freezes the moisture solid and squeezes out the heat. Hence the earth at depth is, so to speak, wholly frost and ice; for the cold there
dwells unmixed and unsoftened, thrust away as far as possible from the aether. And these visible things — cliffs, crags, and rocks — Empedocles supposes stand and are held up by the fire deep within the earth, which is in a blazing state; but it appears more likely that all these things, in those places from which the heat has been squeezed out and has flown away, have been completely solidified by coldness. That is why they are even called "frosts." And
when the extremities of many such things have blackened and the heat has departed, they look just like things burnt by fire — for cold solidifies some things more, some less, and especially those things in which it is naturally present from the start. For just as, if lightness belongs to heat, the lightest thing is the hottest, and if softening belongs to moisture, the softest thing is the moistest, so too, if solidifying belongs to cold, the most
solidified thing — such as earth — must necessarily be the coldest. And what is coldest is surely cold by nature and primarily; therefore earth is cold by nature and primarily. This is indeed also plain to the senses: for mud is colder than water, and men who wish to make fire disappear pile earth upon it; and smiths, when iron is being fired and melted, sprinkle marble dust and stone chippings on it, to check the great flow of heat
and to cool it down. Dust also cools the bodies of athletes and quenches their sweat. And what is the purpose of that need which each year moves and relocates us — fleeing, in winter, as far as possible from the earth to the heights and to places away from the ground, and in summer again clinging to what lies below, burrowing in and pursuing suitable refuges, making our dwelling in the lap of the earth
with gratitude? Are we not doing this because we are guided by our perception of coldness and our recognition of what is primarily cold by nature? At any rate, our winter retreats by the sea are, in a way, flights from the earth, as men leave it as much as they can on account of the cold, wrapping themselves instead in the sea air, which is warm. Then again in summer we long for the earth-born, land-dwelling air on account of the heat,
not because that air is itself cold, but because it springs from what is cold by nature and primarily, and is dyed by the power in the earth as iron is dyed by tempering. And indeed, of running waters those from rocks and mountains are coldest, and of well waters the deepest are coldest; for into these no outside air any longer mingles through their depth, while the others escape through earth that is unmixed and
pure — as with the water near Taenarum, which they call the water of Styx: trickling sparingly out of the rock, it is so cold that no vessel can hold it except only the hoof of an ass, while it cracks and shatters all others. Moreover we hear from physicians that all earth is by its nature astringent and cooling, and they list many minerals as providing an astringent
and constricting power for use in medicines: for indeed its element is neither cutting nor mobile, neither loose nor possessed of sharpness, neither soft nor easily poured, but firmly fixed like a cube and compacting — whence it has both its own weight, and its coldness, which was its distinctive power, by condensing and compressing and squeezing out moisture, produces shivering and trembling
in bodies through this unevenness; and if it prevails completely, once the heat has fled or been quenched, it fixes the condition in a frozen and deadened state. That is why earth does not burn at all, or burns only reluctantly and with difficulty. Air, for its part, often of itself sends up flames, flows, and flashes as it catches fire; but heat needs moisture as its fuel — for it is not the
solid part but the moist part of wood that is combustible; once this has been dried out, what is left is the solid and dry part, become ash. And those who are eager to prove that even this changes and is consumed, by repeatedly soaking it and smearing it with oil and fat, accomplish nothing: for when the oily part has burned away, the earthy part survives entirely and remains — and this is why it stays in place, not only
immovable from its seat, but unchangeable also in its substance. The ancients called it Hestia, "who abides in the house of the gods," and named it also klita, because of its fixity and solidification — the bond of which is its coldness, as Archelaus the natural philosopher said, since nothing loosens or softens it, seeing that it is neither warmed nor heated. But those who suppose that they perceive cold wind and cold water, but earth less so,
are looking only at the nearest layer of earth, which has become a mixture and composite full of air and water and sun and heat; and they are no different from those who declare that the aether is not by nature and primarily hot, but rather boiling water or red-hot iron, on the ground that they touch and make contact with these, while they receive no sensation by touch of the first, pure, heavenly fire — just as
these men, too, receive none of the earth at depth, which one might most properly regard as earth in itself, separated from the rest. A sign of this is found even here, in the case of rocks: for a great cold rises up from the depths, one not easy to bear when it strikes. And those who want colder drink throw pebbles into the water, for it becomes more compact and set firm by the
coldness coming from the stones, fresh and undiluted. We must therefore suppose that the wise and learned men of old held earthly things and heavenly things to be unmixed with one another — not looking at their positions as on a scale, toward what is below and what is above, but rather by the difference of their powers, assigning what is hot, bright, swift, and light to the divine and eternal nature, and
what is dark, cold, and slow to the lot of the dead and those below, judging it not a happy portion. For indeed the body of a living creature, as long as it is breathing and vigorous, as the poets say, makes use of heat and life; but once it is bereft of these and left with the earthy portion alone, coldness and frost take hold of it at once, as though heat by nature belongs to anything
rather than to the earthy. Compare these arguments, Favorinus, with what has been said by others; and whether they fall short in plausibility or do not much surpass it, let the opinions be — considering it more philosophical to withhold assent in matters that are unclear.

======== Moralia: De Pythiae Oraculis ========

BASILOCLES: You made a long evening of it, Philinus, escorting the stranger around among the votive offerings; I gave up waiting for you and lost hope of your coming.

PHILINUS: Yes, Basilocles, we went slowly, sowing words and reaping them at once amid battle—prickly, warlike words, like the Sown Men, sprouting up and springing beneath our feet along the way. So we shall have to call in someone else who was there, unless you would rather do us the favor
of going through who the speakers were and what was said. PHILINUS: That, it seems, Basilocles, is my task, for you would not easily find any of the others still in the city; most of them, I saw, had gone up again to the Corycian cave and Lycoreia with the stranger.

BASILOCLES: Is our stranger, then, so fond of sights, and so remarkably fond of listening? PHILINUS: Fond of learning, rather,
and fond of study more than that. Yet this is not the most admirable thing about him, but a gentleness that wins great favor, and a combative, questioning spirit tempered by good sense, neither difficult nor contentious in his replies—so that after only a brief acquaintance one would at once say, "a true son of a good father." For you know Diogenianus, best of men.

BASILOCLES: I myself have not seen him, Philinus, but I have met many who
warmly approve both the man's discourse and his character, and others say the same sort of things about the young man. But how did the discussion begin, and on what occasion? PHILINUS: The guides were going through their set speeches, paying no heed to our request that they cut short their recitations and the bulk of the inscriptions. The stranger, for his part, was only moderately drawn in by the appearance and craftsmanship of the statues,
for he had evidently been a spectator of many fine works before; but he marveled at the brightness of the bronze, which did not look like the color of grime or verdigris, but had the sheen of a dark-blue dye—so much so that he made a joke about the admirals (for it was with them that his viewing had begun), saying they stood there looking exactly like sea-colored, deep-sea creatures by their hue. "Was there, then," he asked, "some blending and treatment
practiced by the craftsmen of old upon their bronze," he said, "like the so-called tempering of swords, the loss of which brought a truce to works of war for bronze?" For the Corinthian bronze, he said, got its beauty not by art but by chance of color, when fire spread through a house that contained some gold and silver, and a great quantity of bronze stored up; these having been fused and melted together, the greater mass
gave its name to the bronze. Theon took this up and said, "We have heard another account, a more roguish one: that a bronzesmith in Corinth, having come upon a chest containing a great deal of gold, and afraid of being caught with it, kept cutting off small amounts and quietly mixing them into the bronze, which took on a marvelous blend, and he sold it for a high price, since it was prized for its color and beauty. But this story too, like the other, is a fable; there was, it seems, some
mixture and seasoning, just as even now people who blend gold with silver produce a certain peculiar and, to my mind, sickly greenish tint and an unlovely deterioration." "What cause, then," said Diogenianus, "do you suppose there is for the color of the bronze here?" And Theon said, "Whenever, of the first and most elemental things—those that will be and those that are, fire and earth and air and
water—nothing else comes near or associates with the bronze except air alone, it is clear that the bronze has been affected by air and owes to it whatever distinctive quality it has, since air is always in contact with it and pressing upon it. Or did you know this before Theognis was born, as the comic poet says, and do you wish to learn the nature air has, and by what power, through its constant touching, it has colored the bronze?"
When Diogenianus said he did, Theon said, "So do I, my boy; let us then inquire together, and first, if you like, into the reason why oil, more than any other liquid, becomes filled with verdigris—for surely it is not that the verdigris itself rubs off onto the bronze, seeing that oil comes into contact with it in a pure and unsullied state." "By no means," said the young man; "but the cause of this seems to me to lie elsewhere:
because oil is thin, pure, and transparent, the verdigris that falls into it is very conspicuous, whereas in other liquids it is not noticeable." And Theon said, "Well said, my boy, and rightly. Consider too, if you will, the explanation given by Aristotle." "I do wish to," he said. "He says, then, that in other liquids the verdigris, as it comes on, disperses invisibly and is scattered about, because their pores
are irregular and loose, whereas in oil, because of its density, it is contained and remains gathered together. If we too can put forward some such hypothesis, we shall not be entirely at a loss for a charm and comfort against our difficulty." As we urged him on and agreed, he said that the air at Delphi, being dense and continuous and possessing tension because of its rebound and resistance
from the mountains, is also, further, thin and biting, as is attested by its effects on the digestion of food; entering, then, by reason of its thinness, and cutting into the bronze, it scores out from it a great deal of earthy verdigris, and in turn contains and compresses this, the density not allowing it to disperse, so that what settles beneath it, because of its abundance, blooms out and takes on a sheen and
gleam upon the surface. When we had accepted this, the stranger said that the second hypothesis alone was sufficient for the argument. "Thinness," he said, "will seem to be at odds with the density of the air we spoke of, but this is not a necessary inference; for the bronze, growing old of itself, breathes out and releases the verdigris, which the density, by holding it together and compacting it, makes conspicuous
because of its abundance." Theon then took this up and said, "Why, stranger, should the same thing not be both thin and dense, as with silk and fine linen fabrics, of which Homer too spoke, saying, 'and from the well-timed linen liquid oil drips off,' indicating the fineness and thinness of the weave by the fact that the oil does not stay on it but flows off and slips away, since
thinness and density do not admit it. And indeed one might use the thinness of the air to explain not only the scoring of the verdigris, but also the fact that it seems to make the color itself more pleasant and bluer, mingling light and radiance with the dark-blue." After this a silence fell, and the guides again took up their recitations. When some oracle in verse had been recited, I believe, concerning the
kingship of Aegon the Argive, Diogenianus said he had often marveled at the poor and cheap quality of the verses in which the oracles are reported to have been given. And yet the god is a leader of the Muses, and it is no less fitting for him to excel in what is called eloquence than in tunefulness of melody and song, and to far surpass Hesiod in fine phrasing and Homer as well: "yet we see most of the oracles
filled with faults of meter and diction, and with poor quality." Then Sarapion the poet, who was present from Athens, said, "So then, believing these verses to be the god's, do we in turn dare to say that they fall short in beauty of Homer's and Hesiod's, and shall we not treat them as most excellently and beautifully composed, correcting our own judgment, which has been preoccupied by a poor habit?" Then
Boethus the geometer took this up (for you know the man is now shifting his allegiance to Epicurus), and said, "Have you heard, then, the story about Pauson the painter?" "I have not," said Sarapion. "Well, it is worth hearing. Having been commissioned, it seems, to paint a horse rolling on the ground, he painted one running instead. When the man grew angry, Pauson laughed and turned the panel upside down; and with what was above now below,
the horse now appeared, instead of running, to be rolling. Bion says that some arguments suffer the same fate when they are turned about. That is why some will say the oracles are good and admirable because they are the god's, while others will say they are not the god's because they are of poor quality. The former point is uncertain; but that the verses concerning the oracles are not well composed
is, I should think, evident even to you as judge, dear Sarapion," he said, "for the poems you write are, in their subject matter, philosophical and austere, but in power and grace and the crafting of their diction they resemble those of Homer and Hesiod more than the utterances delivered by the Pythia." And Sarapion said, "We are sick, Boethus—both our ears and our eyes—being accustomed
through luxury and softness to regard the more pleasant as the more beautiful, and to declare it so. Soon, no doubt, we shall find fault with the Pythia because she does not speak more sweetly than Glauce the singer to the lyre, nor does she come down into the inner shrine anointed with myrrh and clad in purple robes, nor does she burn cassia or ladanum or frankincense as incense, but laurel and barley meal. Do you not see," he said, "what charm the songs of Sappho have, enchanting and
bewitching their hearers? Whereas the Sibyl, 'with raving mouth,' as Heraclitus says, 'uttering things mirthless and unadorned and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, because of the god.' And Pindar says that Cadmus 'heard from the god the true music'—not sweet or delicate or broken into fragments in its melodies. For that which is impassive and pure does not admit pleasure, but here, along with Ate,
the greater part of pleasure has been cast down and has, it seems, flowed together into the ears of men." When Sarapion had said this, Theon smiled and said, "Sarapion has given us his usual performance, indulging his own bent when talk of Ate and pleasure came his way. But let us, Boethus, even if these verses are of poorer quality than Homer's, not suppose that the god himself composed them,
but rather that he supplies only the origin of the motion, each of the prophetesses being moved according to her own nature. For indeed, if the oracles had to be written down rather than spoken, we would not, I think, find fault with them as the god's own handwriting, on the ground that it falls short in calligraphy of the writing of kings. For the voice is not the god's, nor the sound, nor the diction, nor the meter, but the woman's; he
supplies only the visions, and creates a light in the soul concerning the future—for that is what inspiration is. And to speak generally, you—the prophets of Epicurus (for you too are plainly being carried along in that direction)—cannot escape the difficulty, but must blame the prophetesses of old as well for using poor verses, and the present-day ones for delivering their oracles in prose and in
everyday words, so that they may not have to answer to you for headless, feeble, and docked meters." And Diogenianus said, "Do not jest, in the gods' name, but resolve this difficulty for us, since it concerns us all. For there is no Greek who does not seek some cause and explanation for how the oracle has ceased to deliver its responses in verse and elaborate language." Theon then took this up
and said, "But even now, my boy, we seem, out of a kind of spite, to be robbing the guides of their proper work. Let us allow them to finish first, and then you may raise whatever difficulties you wish at leisure." We were now going forward and had come to the statue of Hiero the tyrant; and although the stranger already knew everything about the rest, he still, out of good nature, let himself be told. When he
heard that a bronze column of Hiero's, which had stood above, fell of its own accord on that very day on which it happened that Hiero died at Syracuse, he marveled. And I in turn recalled similar cases, such as that of Hiero the Spartan, whose statue's eyes fell out before his death at Leuctra, and the stars that Lysander had dedicated from the naval battle at
Aegospotami disappeared. And Lysander's own stone statue sprouted a wild thicket and so great a mass of grass that it covered the face. And in the Sicilian disasters of the Athenians, the golden dates fell off the palm tree, and crows pecked away the shield of the Palladium. And the Cnidian crown, which Philomelus the tyrant of Phocis had given
as a gift to Pharsalia the dancer, when she had moved from Greece to Italy, destroyed her at Metapontum while she was sporting about the temple of Apollo; for the young men, rushing at the crown and fighting one another over the gold, tore the woman apart. Aristotle, then, said that Homer alone makes words that move, because of his vividness; but I would say that of the votive offerings, those
here especially move together with, and give signs together with, the providence of the god, and that no part of them is empty or without perception, but all are filled with divinity." And Boethus said, "Yes—for it is not enough for you to shut the god up in a mortal body once each month, but you must also blend him together with every stone and every bit of bronze, as if you did not have Fortune, an adequate
craftsman for such coincidences, and automatic chance as well." "So then," I said, "you think that each of these events resembles the work of chance and automatism, and that it is plausible that atoms should slip, be dissolved, and swerve, neither earlier nor later, but at that very time when each of the dedicators was destined either to fare worse or better? And Epicurus, it seems, benefits you now by
what he said or wrote three hundred years ago; but would the god, if he did not involve himself by carrying himself into all things, nor be blended with all of them, not seem to you to provide the origin of motion and the cause of experience for any of the things that are?" Such was my reply to Boethus, and I said similar things about the Sibylline matters. For when we had come to a stop at the rock
on which it is said the first Sibyl sat, the one who came from Helicon and was raised by the Muses (though some say she came from the Malians, being the daughter of Lamia, daughter of Poseidon), Sarapion recalled the verses in which she sang of herself, saying that not even after death would she cease from prophecy; but she herself goes about in the moon, having become what is called the visible face of it, while
her breath, mingled with the air, will always be carried about in rumors and omens; and from her body, changed as it decays in the earth, and grass and vegetation springing up from it, sacred flocks will graze upon it, taking on all manner of colors, shapes, and qualities in their entrails, from which come the foretokens to men of the future. Boethus was now even more openly laughing at
...of the stranger, who said that even if these things resemble myths, yet many overthrows and relocations of Greek cities, and many appearances of barbarian armies and destructions of dynasties, bear witness to the prophecies: "and these disasters, recent and new, around Cumae and Dicaearchia, not celebrated and sung of old through the Sibylline verses — time, as though it owed a debt, has now paid: eruptions of mountain fire,
and boilings of the sea, and hurlings-up of rocks and blazing masses by the force of wind, and destructions of so many and so great cities all at once, so that to those who came upon the region afterward, by daylight, there was ignorance and confusion as to where they had once dwelt, the land itself thrown into such disorder. For that these things happened is hard to believe, let alone that they were foretold without some divine power." And Boethus said, "What sort of
"disturbance does time not owe to nature? What is there among strange and unexpected things concerning earth or sea or cities or men, that a man who foretold it would not chance to see happen? And indeed this can hardly even be called foretelling but rather uttering — or rather flinging and scattering words that have no fixed starting point into the infinite; and to these, wandering at random, fortune has often come to meet and
coincided with by chance. For I think it makes a difference whether the thing said comes to pass, or the thing that is going to happen is said beforehand. For the one who says what does not exist has, in himself, the very error of the statement, and does not justly wait for confirmation from chance, nor does he use a true proof of foreknowledge, since he understands only, after the saying, what happened to occur, while infinity carries everything along. Rather, the man 'who guesses well' is the one whom the proverb has proclaimed the
"best diviner' — he resembles one who tracks and follows a trail through likelihoods to the future. But these Sibyls and Bacides, as if into the sea, cast down time without any mark and scattered at random names and words of all sorts of sufferings and mishaps: and since some of these do occur by chance, what is now said is equally false, even if it later happens to come true."
When Boethus had gone through such things, Sarapion said, "The claim is fair concerning things spoken so indefinitely and without qualification, as Boethus says: if victory is foretold for a general, he has won; if the destruction of a city, it has perished. But where it is said not merely what will happen, but also how, and when, and after what, and with whom, this is no longer guesswork about what will perhaps happen, but a foretelling of what
is absolutely going to be. And such is this, concerning the lameness of Agesilaus: 'Take heed, Sparta, though you are greatly proud, lest from you a lame kingship harm your sound-footed one; for long and unexpected troubles will hold you fast, and the man-destroying wave of war rolling on' — and also what concerns the island, which the sea off Thera and Therasia sent up; and concerning the war of Philip and the Romans: 'But
when the race of the Trojans shall come to be above that of the Phoenicians in the contest, then there shall be incredible deeds: the sea shall blaze with unspeakable fire, and from thunderbolts fiery whirlwinds shall dart upward through the wave together with rock, and there shall be fixed there an island not to be told by men, and worse men, prevailing by force of hand, shall conquer the better one.' For that in a short time the Romans should prevail over the Carthaginians, defeating
Hannibal, and that Philip, joining battle with the Aetolians and the Romans, should be overcome in war, and finally that an island should rise up from the deep with much fire and a boiling surge — no one could say that all this met and coincided together by chance and automatically; rather the order reveals foreknowledge, and the fact that, about five hundred years beforehand, the time was foretold to the Romans in which
they would war against all nations at once — and this was the war against their revolted slaves. For in these cases the argument does not seek anything untraceable or blind about chance in infinity, but gives many pledges of experience and shows the road along which fate walks. For I do not think anyone will say that these things coincided by chance after being foretold as they were,
since what prevents someone else from saying, in the same way, that Epicurus did not write his Sovereign Maxims for you, Boethus, but that, the letters having fallen together with one another by chance and automatically, the book was completed?" While these things were being said, we walked on. And when, in the house of the Corinthians, we were looking at the bronze palm tree, which is still among the remaining dedications, the frogs and water-snakes
wrought around its root were a source of wonder to Diogenianus, and indeed to us as well. For the palm is not, like other trees, a marsh-loving and water-loving plant, nor do frogs have anything to do with the Corinthians, so as to be a symbol or emblem of the city — just as, to be sure, the Selinuntians are said once to have dedicated a golden parsley leaf, and the Tenedians the axe, on account of the crabs that occur around the place called
Asterion among them: for they alone, it seems, have the shape of an axe on their shell. And indeed we consider ravens and swans and wolves and hawks, and every other animal rather than these, to be dear to the god himself. When Sarapion said that the craftsman had hinted at the sun's nourishment, generation, and exhalation from moist things, whether
having heard Homer say, 'the sun leapt up, leaving the very beautiful lake'; or having seen the Egyptians depicting, at the beginning of sunrise, a newborn child seated upon a lotus — I laughed and said, "Where are you off to again, my good man, pushing the Stoa in here and quietly slipping into the argument these kindlings and exhalations, not, like the Thessalian women, drawing down the moon and the sun, as though from here, out of earth
and waters, they sprouted and were watered? For Plato indeed called man too a heavenly plant, as though set upright, from a root, upward from the head; but you people mock Empedocles for saying that the sun, formed around the earth by the reflection of heavenly light, shines back again toward Olympus with fearless face — while you yourselves declare the sun to be an earth-born creature or a marsh plant, enrolling it in the
homeland of frogs or water-snakes. But let us dedicate these matters to the Stoic tragedy, and examine, as a mere side issue, the side issues of the craftsmen. For in many things they are clever, but they have not everywhere escaped the frigid and the overwrought. Just as the man who made the cock on the hand of Apollo signified the early morning hour and the moment of approaching sunrise, so here too one might say the frogs have become a symbol of the season
of spring, in which the sun begins to gain mastery of the air and to dissolve the winter — if indeed, according to you, one must not regard Apollo and the sun as two gods but as one." And Sarapion said, "Do you yourself not think so, but suppose that the sun is different from Apollo?" "I do," I said, "just as the
moon is different from the sun — except that the moon does not often, nor for everyone, hide the sun, while the sun has made almost everyone ignorant of Apollo, turning the mind's perception away from what truly is toward what merely appears." After this Sarapion asked the guides why they name the treasury-house not after Cypselus, who dedicated it, but after the Corinthians. Since they were at a loss for the reason and, it seemed to me,
kept silent, I laughed and said, "Why do we still suppose these men to know or remember anything, utterly dumbfounded as they are while we go on chattering about high matters? For earlier we heard them saying that, after the tyranny was overthrown, the Corinthians wanted to inscribe both the golden statue at Pisa and this treasury here as belonging to the city. The Delphians, then, granted this, thinking it just, and agreed; but the Eleans, out of envy,
voted that no Elean should take part in the Isthmian games — hence no Elean has since become a contestant at the Isthmian games. The killing of the Moliones by Heracles near Cleonae has nothing at all to do, as some suppose, with the Eleans' exclusion; on the contrary, it would have been fitting for them to exclude the Corinthians, if it was on this account that they had quarreled with them." So I said these things. And when the guide, after we had passed the treasury of the Acanthians and of Brasidas, showed us
a place where the iron spits of Rhodopis the courtesan once lay, Diogenianus, displeased, said, "So it belonged to the same city, to grant a place to Rhodopis, where she might set down the tithes of her wages, and yet to destroy Aesop, her fellow-slave." And Sarapion said, "Why, my good friend, are you displeased at this? Look up there and behold, among the
generals and kings, the golden statue of Mnesarete, whom Crates said was set up as a trophy of Greek incontinence." And when the young man saw it, he said, "Was that then not said by Crates about Phryne?" "Yes," said Sarapion, "for she was called Mnesarete, but she got the surname Phryne on account of her sallow complexion. Nicknames, it seems, hide many people's real names. At any rate, Alexander's
mother, they say, was called Polyxena, then Myrtale, and Olympias, and Stratonice; and the Rhodian Eumetis most people still call Cleobuline after her father; and Herophile of Erythrae, who became a prophetic Sibyl, was given that name. And from the grammarians you will hear that Leda too was called Mnesinoe, and that Orestes was named Achaeus." "But how," he said, looking toward Theon, "do you intend
to resolve this charge concerning Phryne?" And he, smiling quietly, said, "In such a way that I will also bring a countercharge against you, for finding fault with the smallest of the Greeks' offenses. For just as Socrates, when feasting at Callias's house, makes war only on the perfume, but endures watching the dances of boys and their tumbling and kisses and jesters, so you too, it seems to me, are similarly excluding a poor woman from the sanctuary for having made ungenerous use of her bodily prime,
while you see the god surrounded on every side by first-fruits and tithes of murders and wars and plunderings, and the temple full of Greek spoils and booty, and you are not displeased, nor do you pity the Greeks when you read the most shameful inscriptions upon beautiful dedications: 'Brasidas and the Acanthians, from the Athenians,' and 'the Athenians, from the Corinthians,' and 'the Phocians, from the Thessalians,' 'the Orneatans, from the Sicyonians,' 'the Amphictyons,
from the Phocians.' But Praxiteles alone, it seems, vexed Crates, by winning a gift there for his mistress — whom Crates ought rather to have praised, because he set up, beside these golden kings, a golden courtesan, reproaching wealth as having nothing wonderful or solemn about it. For it is well that kings and rulers should set up, beside the god, dedications of justice and moderation and greatness of mind, not of golden
and luxurious abundance, in which even those who have lived most shamefully have a share." "But you do not mention," said the other of the guides, "that Croesus also made and dedicated here a golden statue of the baking-woman — though not out of indulgence toward the shrine, but for a good and just reason. For it is said that Alyattes, the father of Croesus, took a second wife and was raising other children by her; and this woman, plotting
against Croesus, gave poison to the baking-woman, and ordered her, kneading it into bread, to set it before Croesus; but the baking-woman secretly told Croesus, and instead set the bread before that woman's own children. In return for this, when Croesus became king, as though the god were witness, he repaid the woman's kindness, doing well by her. Hence, he said, it is worth honoring and cherishing such a dedication, whenever any city has one, as
that of the Opuntians. For when the tyrants of Phocis melted down many of the gold and silver dedications and struck coin from them and scattered it among the cities, the Opuntians, gathering together what silver they could, sent a water-jar here to the god and consecrated it. I for my part also praise the Myrinaeans and the Apolloniates for sending golden harvests here; and even
more the Eretrians and Magnesians, for honoring the god with first-fruits of human labor, as giver of crops, ancestral, patron of birth, and friend of man. But I blame the Megarians, because they are almost the only ones who set up here a statue of the god holding a spear, taken from the battle in which they defeated the Athenians, who held their city after the Persian Wars, and drove them out. Later, however, it seems, they dedicated a golden plectrum to the god, applying to it
what Scythinus says about the lyre, which the fair-formed Apollo of Zeus tunes, embracing every beginning and end; and he holds a bright plectrum, the light of the sun." When Sarapion was about to say something on these matters, the stranger said, "It is pleasant indeed to listen to such talk, but I must ask for the first thing promised, concerning the cause that has stopped the Pythia from prophesying in
epic verses and other meters; so, if you agree, let us set aside what remains of the sightseeing and, sitting down here, hear about these matters. For this is the argument that most opposes trust in the oracle: that of two things one must be true — either the Pythia does not draw near the place where the divine power is, or the spirit has been utterly extinguished and its power has failed." So we went around and
sat down on the southern steps of the temple, looking toward the shrine of Earth and the water, so that Boethus immediately said that even the place lent support to the stranger's difficulty. For there was a shrine of the Muses here, near the source of the spring, from which they used to draw water for libations, as Simonides says: 'there, with lustral water, is guarded the sacred water beneath the fair-haired
Muses.' And Simonides, again, somewhat more elaborately, addressing Clio as 'guardian of the holy lustral waters,' calls it 'much-invoked, delicate, ungolden-robed, sweet-smelling water, taken as a gift from ambrosial recesses.' Eudoxus, then, was not right in believing that this water is called the water of Styx, as some hold. And they established the Muses as assessors and guardians of the prophetic power beside the spring
and the shrine of Earth, whose oracle is said to have arisen because of prophecy delivered in meter and song. Some say that the heroic meter was first heard here: 'Gather wings, O birds, and wax, O bees' — when, being in need before the god, she lost her dignity." Sarapion said, "These things are more reasonable, Boethus, and more musical; for one must not fight against the
god, nor, along with the prophetic art, do away also with providence and the divine, but rather seek solutions for what seems contradictory, and not abandon the pious and ancestral faith." "You speak rightly," I said, "excellent Sarapion; for indeed we did not use to give up philosophy as though it had been utterly destroyed and corrupted, because formerly the philosophers used to express their doctrines and arguments in poems,
as Orpheus and Hesiod and Parmenides and Xenophanes and Empedocles and Thales did; but later they stopped, and have long since stopped, using verse — all except you; and through you poetry comes back down once more into philosophy, urging the young on nobly and loftily. Nor did the followers of Aristarchus, Timocharis, Aristyllus, and Hipparchus make astronomy less respectable by writing in prose, though earlier Eudoxus, Hesiod, and Thales wrote in verse — if indeed Thales really composed, to speak truly, the Astronomy attributed to him. Pindar, too, confesses that on his own he is at a loss over the neglect of a certain style of song, and expresses his wonder — for there is nothing strange or absurd in seeking the causes of such changes, but it is not right to condemn the arts and their powers themselves merely because something in their outward form shifts and varies.
Theon then took this up and said: "Well, these things," he said, "have indeed undergone great changes and innovations. But as for the oracles given here, we know of many that even in that period were delivered in prose, and on matters of no small importance. To the Lacedaemonians, for instance, as Thucydides has recorded, when they consulted about the war against the Athenians, the god foretold victory and mastery, and declared that he himself would come to their aid, whether called upon or not; and, concerning Pausanias, that if they did not bring him back they would 'plow with a silver plowshare.' To the Athenians, when they inquired about the expedition to Sicily, he directed them to bring the priestess of Athena from Erythrae — the little woman was called Hesychia, 'Quiet.' And when Deinomenes the Sicilian inquired about his sons, the god answered that the three of them would become tyrants; and when Deinomenes replied, 'Woe to them then, lord Apollo,' the god said that he granted that too, and added it to the oracle besides.
You know, then, that Gelon reigned while suffering from dropsy, Hieron while suffering from the stone, and the third, Thrasybulus, after being caught up in factions and wars, was driven from power within a short time. Procles, again, the tyrant of Epidaurus, killed many others cruelly and unlawfully, and also Timarchus, who had come to him from Athens with money; he received him hospitably and treated him kindly, and then killed him, and sank his body by putting it into a wicker hamper. He carried this out through Cleander the Aeginetan, the others being unaware. Later, when his affairs fell into disorder, he sent his brother Cleotimus here secretly to inquire about his own flight and change of fortune. The god replied that he would grant Procles flight and a change of place — at the spot where he had ordered the Aeginetan stranger to set down the hamper, or wherever the stag sheds its horn.
The tyrant, understanding that the god was bidding him drown himself or bury himself (for stags do bury and hide their shed horns in the ground when the horn falls off), held back for a while; but then, when his affairs became altogether desperate, he fled the city. The friends of Timarchus, however, caught him, killed him, and threw his corpse into the sea. And, what is most telling of all: the rhetrai by which Lycurgus ordered the constitution of the Lacedaemonians were given to him in prose. Furthermore, although Alyrius, Herodotus, Philochorus, and Ister — men especially eager to collect the oracles given in verse — nevertheless wrote down oracles without meter, Theopompus, who was as devoted as anyone to the shrine, has sharply rebuked those who do not believe that the Pythia used to prophesy in verse at that period; and then, wishing to prove this point, he managed to find only very few oracles to cite, since the rest even then were already being delivered in prose."
"Some people even now run headlong after verse, and on that account a notorious affair has actually occurred. There is a shrine of the woman-hating Heracles in Phocis, and it is customary that whoever holds the priesthood should not have relations with a woman during the year of his office; for this reason they generally appoint fairly old men as priests — except that once, before this, a young man, not a bad sort, but ambitious, and in love with a young girl, took the priesthood. At first he mastered himself and avoided the woman; but once, as he lay resting after drinking and dancing, she fell upon him and had her way. Frightened and troubled, he fled to the oracle and asked the god about his transgression, whether there was any pardon or release for it.
He received this oracle: 'The god grants all that is necessary.' Still, one might grant this and yet be all the more puzzled, given that nothing is now delivered without meter among us, about the ancient oracles, which gave their answers sometimes in verse and sometimes without it. Neither practice is at all strange, my boy, so long as we hold correct and pure opinions about the god, and do not suppose him to be the very one who composes the verses and, now as before, feeds the Pythia the oracles, as though speaking through masks." "But it is worth discussing this at greater length another time, and inquiring further into it. For now, let us learn it briefly and keep in mind that the body employs many instruments, and the soul in turn employs the body and the body's parts,
and the soul itself has become an instrument of god; and the virtue of an instrument lies above all in imitating, so far as its natural capacity allows, the one who uses it, and in displaying the work of the very intelligence that is in the user — yet displaying it not as it exists in the craftsman, pure, unaffected, and faultless, but mingled with much that is foreign to it. For in itself that intelligence is unclear to us, and, appearing otherwise and through another medium, it becomes filled with the nature of that other thing. I pass over wax, gold, silver, and bronze, and all the other kinds of material that take on shape: each receives one single form as the likeness is stamped upon it, yet each also contributes, from its own nature, a different variation to the copy — just as mirrors, whether flat, concave, or convex, produce countless distorted reflections and images from a single original form. For indeed there is nothing
that resembles its model more closely, and nothing has by nature become more compliant as an instrument to be used, than the moon: receiving from the sun its brightness and fiery glow, it does not send that same likeness back to us, but, mingled with its own nature, both changes its color and takes on a different power; its heat departs altogether, and its light fails through weakness. I think you know the saying of Heraclitus,
that 'the lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives a sign.' Add to this well-put saying the further thought that the god here uses the Pythia for his voice just as the sun uses the moon for its light: he displays and reveals his own thoughts, but displays them mingled — transmitted through a mortal body and a soul unable to keep still,
unable to offer itself motionless and settled to the one who moves it, but, as if tossed on a swell, sounding out and becoming entangled with the motions and passions within it, which throw it into further turmoil. For just as whirlpools do not hold firm mastery over the bodies swept round together with them in a circle, but, since these bodies are carried in a circle by compulsion while by nature they tend downward, a turbulent
and erratic swirling motion results from the two together — so what is called (divine) possession seems to be a mixture of two kinds of motion: one belonging to the soul as it is acted upon, the other as it moves according to its own nature. For where it is not possible to use lifeless bodies, which remain fixed in the same condition, in ways contrary to their nature by forcing them — one cannot make a cylinder move as if it were a sphere, or a cube, nor make a lyre sound like a pipe, or a trumpet like a lyre — is it not much the same, it seems,
with using each thing skillfully, according to its own nature? Surely a being that is ensouled and self-moving, and partakes of impulse and reason, could not be handled by anyone except in accordance with the disposition, capacity, or nature already present in it — moving an unmusical mind as if it were musical, or an unlettered one as if lettered, or one untrained and unpracticed in speech as if it were eloquent. It cannot be done." "And Homer bears witness for me as well,
for he assumes that almost nothing, so to speak, is accomplished 'without a god'; yet he does not portray the god as employing everyone for every purpose alike, but each person according to the skill or power that person has. Or do you not see, he said, my dear Diogenianus, that Athena, when she wants to persuade the Achaeans, appeals to Odysseus; when she wants to break the truce, seeks out Pandarus; when
she wants to turn the Trojans to flight, goes to Diomedes? For the one is strong and warlike, another skilled with the bow but foolish, another a clever and prudent speaker. Homer, in fact, did not hold the same view as Pindar — if indeed it was Pindar who wrote that, 'by the will of god, you might sail even on a mat of reeds' — but he recognized that different powers and natures had come to be for different purposes, each of which
is moved in its own distinctive way, even though the mover is one and the same for them all. Just as that which moves a walking creature cannot make it fly, nor can it make one who lisps speak clearly, or one with a weak voice sing tunefully — so too, I think, it was for this reason that the god, when Battus came to him about his voice, sent him instead to Libya as a colonist, because, though he was a lisper and weak-voiced, he was kingly, statesmanlike, and prudent. Just so impossible is it
for one who is unlettered and unversed in verse to speak poetically. So it is with the woman who now serves the god: she has become, if any woman ever has, one who has lived here lawfully, honorably, and in good order; but, raised in the house of poor farmers, she brings nothing to the oracle acquired from any craft or other experience or skill. Rather, just as Xenophon thinks a bride ought to come to her husband
having seen as little as possible and heard as little as possible, so this woman, inexperienced and untrained in practically everything, and truly a virgin in soul, keeps company with the god. Yet we suppose that the god employs herons, wrens, and ravens, crying out, to give his signs, and do not require that they, insofar as they are messengers and heralds of the gods, express each thing rationally and clearly — while we demand that the voice and speech of the Pythia,
as though coming from a stage, be furnished not plainly or without sweetness, but in meter, and grandeur, and artifice, and metaphor of words, and uttered to the accompaniment of a flute." "What, then, shall we say about the ancient oracles? No single explanation, I think, covers most cases. First, as has already been said, most of those too were delivered in prose. Second, that age produced constitutions and natures of bodies
possessing a certain fluency and aptitude for poetry — souls in which eagerness, impulse, and readiness sprang up at once, producing in them a preparedness needing only a slight external prompting and a small turn of the imagination, so that they were drawn immediately toward what suited them alone. This was true, as Philinus says, not only of astronomers and philosophers, but also of people amid much wine and strong feeling, when some wave of pity or joy
came over them: they would slip into 'tuneful utterance,' and symposia and books alike would fill up with love poems, songs, and writings. Euripides, when he said that 'Love teaches a man to be a poet, even if he had no gift for music before,' understood that Love does not implant the power of poetry and music in a person, but stirs and rekindles a power that already exists within, lying hidden and idle. Shall we say, then, my friend, that no one falls in love now,
that love has vanished and gone, simply because no one now, as Pindar said, 'swiftly shoots forth honey-sweet hymns for boys' in verses and songs? That would be absurd: many people are still stirred by love; but, keeping company with souls that are not naturally gifted or ready for music, they remain without flute or lyre, yet are no less talkative and ardent than the ancients. For it is not even pious or fitting to say
that the Academy, and the circle of Socrates and Plato, were without love — men whose erotic writings in prose one can find, though they left behind no poems. And how does this differ from the claim that Sappho alone among women was truly erotic, made by the very person who asserts that only the Sibyl, Aristonica, and the other women who prophesied in verse were truly prophetic? 'For wine,' as Chaeremon used to say, 'is mixed according to the characters of
those who drink it,' and prophetic possession, like erotic possession, makes use of the underlying capacity and moves each of those who receive it according to that person's own nature." "Nevertheless, if we also look to the god and to providence, we shall see that the change has been for the better. For the use of language is like the exchange of currency, and its own accepted and familiar form is what counts as valid,
though it takes on different value at different times. There was, then, a time when people used, as the currency of speech, meters, melodies, and songs, casting all of history and philosophy, and every feeling and matter, so to speak, that called for a more solemn expression, into the mold of poetry and music. For it is not only now that few can barely follow such things — in those days, too, everyone used to listen and delight in songs about 'shepherds and ploughmen
and fowlers,' as Pindar puts it. But because of the general aptitude for poetry, most people, through lyre and song, admonished one another, spoke freely, and exhorted; they told myths and proverbs, and further composed hymns to the gods, prayers, and paeans in meter and melody, some through natural gift, others through habit. So the god, for his part, did not begrudge divination its adornment and grace, nor did he drive away
the Muse, honored here, from the tripod, but rather welcomed her, stirring up and embracing the poetic natures; he himself supplied inspiration and helped rouse the solemn, oracular style as fitting and admired. But when, as life changed along with the fortunes and characters of the times, need drove out excess and did away with golden hair-clasps, and stripped off soft, flowing robes, and
cut back overly luxuriant hair and loosened the high buskin, as people not unreasonably grew accustomed to setting simplicity and economy against extravagance as a rival adornment, and to valuing what is plain and unaffected in their arrangement more than what is showy and elaborate — so, as language changed and was pared down along with everything else, history came down from its verses as though from a chariot, and truth, expressed mainly in prose, was separated from myth; and philosophy,
embracing clarity and instructiveness rather than what merely astonishes, conducted its inquiry through prose discourse. And the god stopped the Pythia from calling her own fellow citizens 'fire-scorched,' the Spartans 'snake-eaters,' men 'mountain-ranging,' and rivers 'mountain-drinking'; and by removing from the oracles epic verses, archaic words, circumlocutions, and obscurity, he made her converse with those who consulted her
just as laws converse with cities, and kings address their peoples, and pupils listen to their teachers, adapting himself to what is intelligible and persuasive." "For one should know well that the god, as Sophocles says, is always to the wise a riddler of oracles, but to the foolish a poor and all-too-brief teacher. And along with this clarity, belief too shifted and changed together with everything else, so that in former times
what is not familiar or common, but downright oblique and wrapped in circumlocution, so as to lead the many into suspecting something divine, and to strike them with awe and reverence; but later, loving to learn each thing clearly and easily, without pomp or artifice, they began to find fault with the poetry that clothed the oracles — not only as working against the understanding, by mixing obscurity and shadow with the plain truth as it was declared,
but they even came to suspect that the metaphors, the riddles, and the ambiguities had been devised as hiding-places and refuges into which the art of prophecy might retreat and take shelter when it stumbled. Indeed one could hear from many people that certain poetical men used to sit about the oracle taking up the utterances and construing them, weaving epic verses and metres and rhythms around the oracles, like vessels fitted from whatever came to hand.
As for those Onomacrituses and Herodicuses and Cinaethons, how much blame they incurred for the oracles — having tricked them out with tragic pomp and grandeur that they had no need of — I let pass and will not entertain the slanders. But it was chiefly that begging, market-place, vagabond tribe, buzzing about the shrines of the Mother of the Gods and of Serapis, that filled poetry with the greatest disrepute, some improvising on the spot, others reciting oracles allotted by lot out of certain little books
to servants and poor women, who are most readily led by metre and by poetical diction. Hence it is not least because poetry seemed to offer herself in common to charlatans, tricksters, and false prophets, that she fell from truth and from the tripod."

"I should not be surprised, then, if the ancients sometimes needed a certain duplicity and circumlocution and obscurity. For it was not
So-and-so who came down to consult the god about buying a slave, by Zeus, nor So-and-so about a business venture; but powerful cities, and kings, and tyrants of no moderate temper, would put questions to the god about matters where it did not profit those in charge of the oracle to vex and provoke men who would take much of what they did not wish to hear as an affront. For the god does not obey Euripides, as though he were laying down a law and
saying that Phoebus alone ought to prophesy to men. Since he employs mortal servants and prophets, whom it behooves him to care for and protect — so that they may not be destroyed by wicked men for serving the god — he does not wish to hide the truth, yet by deflecting its disclosure, as a beam of light undergoes many refractions within poetry and is repeatedly split apart, he removes from it what is harsh and resistant. It was necessary, then,
that tyrants too should remain ignorant, and that enemies should not get advance warning. To such people, therefore, he wrapped his answers in hidden meanings and ambiguities which, while concealing what was declared from others, did not escape or deceive those who needed it and paid attention. Hence it is quite foolish, now that circumstances have changed, if someone thinks the god ought no longer to help us in the same way but in a different one, to charge and accuse him of wrongdoing."

"Furthermore, nothing
in speech is more useful than poetry for the purpose of being remembered and retained, since what is said, bound up in metre and interwoven, is better fixed in the memory. In those days, then, people needed to have a great deal of memory at their disposal, for many things were declared — signs of places, opportune moments for actions, shrines of gods across the sea, and hidden tombs of heroes hard to discover, for men setting out far from Greece. For you know of the Chian, and Cretinus, and Nesichus,
and Phalanthus, and many other leaders of expeditions, who needed proofs of many kinds in order to find the settlement allotted and fitting to each of them; and some of them went wrong, as Battus did. For he seemed to have failed, not finding the place to which he had been sent; then he came a second time, imploring the god. So the god, adding a rebuke, said: "If you know Libya, nurse of flocks, better than I, though you have not gone there and I have, greatly do I marvel at your wisdom" — and so
sent him out again. And Lysander, too, utterly failed to recognize the hill called Orchalides, also named Alopecus, and the river Hoplites, and "the earth-born son, the deceiver, coming on behind" — and, defeated in battle, he fell in those very places at the hand of Neochorus of Haliartus, a man who carried a shield marked with the device of a serpent. There are many other such things, hard to recall and hard to remember, among the ancient oracles, which it is not necessary for me to recount to you, since you already know them."

"As for the present state of affairs, about which people question the god, I for my part am content and welcome it gladly; for there is great peace and quiet, war has ceased,
and there are no wanderings, no factions, no tyrannies, nor any of the other diseases and evils of Greece that would need many powerful remedies and extraordinary ones. Where nothing is intricate, nothing secret, nothing dire, but questions are asked about small, everyday matters — as if propositions set in a school — "whether one should marry," "whether one should set sail," "whether one should lend money"; while the greatest of the oracles given to cities concern the yield of crops, the increase of flocks, and the health of bodies — in such cases, to wrap the answers in metre and to fabricate periphrases and to bring in obscure diction for questions that require a simple and concise answer, is the work of an ambitious sophist decking out an oracle for the sake of reputation. The Pythia
herself, considered in her own character, is noble in disposition; but when she goes down there and comes to be beside the god, she cares more for truth than for reputation, and more for it than for men's praise or blame."

"Perhaps we too ought to be so disposed; but as it is, we behave as though anxious and afraid that the place might lose the reputation it has enjoyed for three thousand years, and that, as if the oracle were a sophist's school,
some might leave it in contempt — so we defend ourselves and invent reasons and arguments about matters we neither know nor are entitled to know, consoling and persuading the one who finds fault rather than telling him to go his way; whereas for him it will be, first of all, the more painful thing, to hold such an opinion about the god. So then, do accept these maxims of the wise inscribed here of old, "Know thyself" and "Nothing in excess," and
admire them not least for their brevity, as containing a dense and hammered thought within a small compass; yet you find fault with the oracles because for the most part they express things concisely, simply, and directly. And yet such sayings of the wise have suffered the same fate as streams compressed into a narrow channel: they do not offer a clear or transparent view of their meaning; rather, if you examine what
has been written and said about them by those who wish to learn how each case stands, you will not easily find longer discourses than these. But the Pythia's manner of speech, just as mathematicians call a straight line the shortest of all lines having the same endpoints, likewise makes no bend, no circuit, no duplicity, and no ambiguity, but goes straight toward the truth — though it is unreliable
for winning belief, and, being subject to scrutiny, has to this day yielded no refutation against itself; yet it has filled the oracle with offerings and gifts, both foreign and Greek, and has adorned its buildings with the beauty and the craftsmanship of Amphictyonic works. You yourselves surely see that much has been built anew where nothing stood before, and much restored of what had fallen into ruin and decay. And just as other growths spring up beside flourishing trees, so along with Delphi
the Pylaea too flourishes and grows together with it, taking on, through the prosperity that flows from here, a form and shape and adornment of temples and assembly-halls and waters such as it did not acquire in the thousand years before. Now those who dwell around the Galaxium in Boeotia perceived the god's epiphany through an abundance and superfluity of milk; for it flowed from all the ewes, as the finest water flows from springs,
rich milk; and they, hurrying, kept filling their jars; nor did any skin or jar stand idle in their houses, for all the wooden pails and jars were filled to overflowing. To us the god grants signs brighter and greater and clearer than these, having produced, as it were out of the former drought of desolation and poverty, abundance and splendor and honor. And yet, while I am fond of myself for the eagerness and usefulness I showed toward these
affairs together with Polycrates and Petraeus, I am also fond of the man who became the leader of this policy for us and who thought out and prepared most of these things; but it cannot be otherwise than that so great and so vast a change in so short a time has come about through human diligence alone, without a god being present here and joining in the divine work of the oracle."

"But just as in those
times there were people who blamed the oracles for their obliquity and obscurity, so now too there are those who carp at their excessive simplicity. Their feeling is quite childish and silly: for just as children, when they see rainbows and haloes and comets rather than the sun and moon, are delighted and pleased, so these people too, since the riddles, allegories, and metaphors of
prophecy are reflections directed toward what is mortal and imaginative, long for them; and if they do not adequately learn the reason for the change, they go away condemning the god, not us nor themselves, as though it were impossible to attain by reasoning to the god's intention."

======== Moralia: De Recta Ratione Audiendi ========

The reflections that occurred to me on the subject of listening, Nicander, I have sent to you in writing, so that you may know how someone who has laid aside the authority of others and put on the mantle of manhood ought to listen to one who exhorts him rightly. For anarchy — which some young men, out of lack of education, regard as freedom — sets over the appetites, once they are loosed as it were from their bonds, masters harsher than the teachers and tutors of their boyhood; and just as Herodotus
says that women strip off their modesty together with their tunic, so some young men, once they have laid aside the boy's cloak, lay aside along with it their sense of shame and fear, and having loosened the garment that gave them decorum, are at once filled with unruliness. But you, who have often heard that to follow God and to obey reason are the same thing, must consider that the passage from boyhood to manhood
is not, for those of sound mind, an abolition of authority but a change of ruler: in place of some hired man or purchased slave they take reason as the divine guide of their life, and it is right to count as free only those who follow it. For only they, having learned what they ought to want, live as they want; whereas in undisciplined and irrational impulses and actions there is something ignoble and petty,
since there is much room for regret in what is done willingly. But just as, among those enrolled as citizens, the foreigners and strangers who are entirely new find much to blame and are querulous about what goes on, while those who have grown up among the resident aliens and are familiar with the laws accept without difficulty what falls to them and are content with it, so you must, having been nurtured for a long time within philosophy — every piece of learning and
every lesson from boyhood on, having become accustomed to be conveyed by discourse mixed with philosophy — come to philosophy well-disposed and as to something of your own, which alone truly clothes young men, by means of reason, with the ornament of manhood and completeness. I think it would not be unwelcome for you to hear beforehand something about the sense of hearing, which Theophrastus says is the most emotional of all the senses. For nothing seen, nor tasted, nor touched, produces such
disturbances and confusions and panics as those which seize the soul when certain crashes and clatters and echoes fall upon the hearing. And yet it is more rational than emotional. For to vice it offers many places and parts of the body through which, entering by them, it may lay hold of the soul, but for virtue the ears of the young are a single handle, if they are kept pure
and untainted by flattery and untouched by base speech from the start. That is why Xenocrates urged that ear-guards be put on boys even more than on athletes, on the ground that while the ears of the latter are distorted by blows, the characters of the former are distorted by words — not recommending deafness or dullness of hearing, but urging that they guard against base speech until other, sound words, reared as guardians by philosophy,
take possession of that region of their disposition which is most easily moved and persuaded. And Bias of old, when Amasis bade him send the best and at the same time the worst piece of meat from the sacrificial victim, cut out the tongue and sent it, on the ground that speech carries the greatest harms and the greatest benefits. And most people, when they kiss small children, themselves take hold of their ears and bid the children do likewise,
hinting playfully that one ought especially to love those who benefit us through the ears. Since it is clear that a young man who is shut off from all discourse and tastes no reasoned speech not only remains altogether without fruit and without growth toward virtue, but is also liable to be turned toward vice — sending up, as it were from ground left unmoved and untilled, a great crop of wild growths of the soul. For the impulses toward pleasure
and the suspicions toward hardship are not foreign, nor imported from outside by words, but are, as it were, native-born, springs of countless passions and diseases; and if one lets them range unchecked wherever they are naturally inclined to go, and does not, by removing or redirecting with sound words, discipline the nature, there is no wild beast that would not appear gentler than man. That is why, since listening holds for the young a benefit that is great but a danger no less great, I think it well
to converse both with oneself always and with another about the subject of listening. For we see that most people handle even this badly: they practice speaking before they have become accustomed to listening, and they think that speech requires learning and practice, but that listening benefits anyone, however he engages in it. And yet for ball players the learning lies at once in throwing and
in catching the ball; but in the use of speech, receiving well comes before delivering — just as, in giving birth, conceiving and holding what is fertile comes before bringing forth. Now in the case of birds they say that wind-eggs and empty labors are the beginnings of certain unfinished and lifeless remnants; and likewise, for the young who are not able to listen, nor
trained to be benefited through hearing, the word truly becomes a wind-egg — 'falling inglorious, unseen, scattered beneath the clouds.' For vessels people tilt and turn to receive what is poured into them, so that there may truly be a pouring-in and not a pouring-out; but to present themselves to the speaker and to attune their attention to their listening so that nothing useful said escapes them — this people do not learn. Instead, most ridiculous of all,
if they happen upon someone recounting a dinner, or a procession, or a dream, or some quarrel that occurred between him and another, they listen in silence and press for more; but if someone draws them in and teaches them something useful, or exhorts them in matters of duty, or admonishes them for their faults, or soothes them when they are angry, they do not put up with it — instead, if they are able, they contend against the speech, striving to get the better of it; and if not,
they flee off to other talk and idle chatter, filling their ears, like poor and leaky vessels, with anything rather than what is needed. Now those who raise horses well make them obedient to the bit, and those who raise children make them attentive to reason, training them to listen much and speak little. That is why Spintharus, in praising Epaminondas, said that it was not easy to find anyone else who
knew more and said less. And they say nature has given each of us two ears but one tongue, since we ought to speak less than we hear. Everywhere, then, silence is a safe adornment for the young, and especially when, in listening to another, he is not thrown into confusion nor barks out at every point, but even if the speech is not entirely
to his liking, he holds back and waits for the speaker to finish, and once he has finished, does not immediately hurl his objection, but, as Aeschines says, lets some time pass, in case the one who has spoken wishes to add something to what has been said, or to alter or take away part of it. Those who cut in at once, neither truly listening nor being listened to, but speaking against those who speak, behave badly; whereas the one trained to listen with self-control and with reverence receives the
useful speech and holds fast to it, while he sees through and detects the useless or false speech all the more clearly, showing himself a lover of truth, not a lover of contention nor rash and quarrelsome. Hence some say — not badly — that young men need to let out their conceit and pretension even more than those who want to pour something useful into wineskins need to let out the air first; for otherwise, full of swelling and puffed-up pride, they will not
receive it. Envy, then, together with malice and ill will, is in no case a good companion to any action, but is an obstacle to everything noble, and is the worst possible seatmate and adviser to a listener, making what is beneficial painful and unpleasant and hard to accept, because those who envy take more pleasure in almost anything than in what is well said. And yet a person is envious of wealth, or reputation, or beauty only
when it belongs to others, since he is vexed at others' good fortune; but the man who is displeased at a well-spoken discourse is pained by what is actually his own good. For as light is a good to those who see, so speech is a good to those who hear, if they are willing to receive it. Now other undisciplined and base dispositions produce envy directed at others, but the envy directed at speakers is engendered out of untimely love of reputation and
unjust ambition, and does not allow the man so disposed even to attend to what is being said, but disturbs and distracts his mind — partly by having it examine its own condition, to see whether it falls short of the speaker's, and partly by having it watch the others present, to see whether they admire and marvel, being struck with alarm at the praise given and growing savage toward those present if they applaud the speaker, while it lets the words already
spoken pass by and be forgotten, on the ground that remembering them is painful, but grows agitated and trembling toward what remains to be said, fearing it may prove better than what has already been said, and hastens for the speakers to stop as quickly as possible just when they are speaking best; and once the audience breaks up, it dwells on none of the things that were said, but instead tallies up the voices and dispositions of those present, fleeing those who praise as if they were madmen and
leaping away from them, but running up to and flocking together with those who find fault with and disparage what was said; and if there is nothing to find fault with, it compares certain others as having spoken better on the same subject and more effectively — until, having corrupted and ruined its own listening, it renders it useless and unprofitable to itself. That is why one must make a truce between love of listening and love of reputation, and listen to the speaker graciously and gently, as if one had come to partake of a sacred feast and
received the first-fruits of a sacrifice — praising his ability where he succeeds, but valuing also simply the eagerness of the man who brings forward into the open what he knows, and who persuades others through the means by which he himself has been persuaded. In matters that are done well, one must reflect that they are brought to success not by chance nor spontaneously but by care and toil and learning, and one must imitate these things, admiring and emulating them;
but where mistakes are made, one must fix one's attention on the causes and the source from which the deviation arose. For as Xenophon says that men skilled in household management profit both from their friends and from their enemies, so those who are alert and attentive are benefited by speakers not only when they succeed but even when they go wrong. For cheapness of thought, emptiness of phrase, a vulgar posture,
and flustered excitement joined with a tasteless delight in applause, and all such things, are more apparent to listeners in others than to speakers in themselves. That is why one must transfer the scrutiny from the speaker to oneself, examining whether we too are unwittingly guilty of the like — for it is the easiest thing in the world to find fault with one's neighbor, and it is done uselessly and vainly unless it is referred to some correction or
guarding against similar faults in ourselves. And one should not hesitate always to say to oneself, in Plato's phrase, when faults are pointed out in others, 'Am I not perhaps such a one myself?' For just as we see our own faces reflected in the eyes of those near us, so in the case of speeches we ought to see our own reflected in those of others, so that we may neither despise others too rashly nor, at the same time, fail to attend to ourselves in speaking
with more care. Useful for this purpose too is the exercise of comparison, whenever, having withdrawn by ourselves after the lecture and having taken up something that seems not to have been well or adequately said, we attempt to work on the same subject and lead ourselves on — in part filling out what was missing, in part correcting it, in part putting it differently, and in part introducing altogether new material of our own devising in relation to the theme. This
is what Plato did in response to the speech of Lysias. For to speak against a speech already delivered is not difficult but quite easy; but to set up in its place another, altogether better one, is entirely a hard task. So too the Spartan, on hearing that Philip had razed Olynthus to the ground, said, 'But he could never build up such a city.' Whenever, then, in discussion on such
a subject we do not appear to differ greatly from those who have already spoken, we take away much of our grounds for contempt, and our self-conceit and self-love are most quickly checked when put to the test by such comparisons. Now the opposite of contempt is admiration, and it belongs, I suppose, to a more reasonable and gentler nature; yet it too requires no small caution, perhaps even greater caution: for those who are contemptuous and bold profit
less from speakers, while those who are admiring and simple-hearted are harmed more, and they do not refute Heraclitus when he said, 'A dull man is apt to be thrown into a flutter by every speech.' One should offer praise to speakers simply and without guile, but extend belief to their words cautiously, and be a well-disposed and straightforward spectator of the diction and delivery of the contestants, but
an exacting and severe examiner of the usefulness and truth of what is said, so that the speakers may not be hated, and the speeches may not do harm; for it is often the case that we unwittingly admit many false and wicked doctrines through the goodwill and trust we bear toward the speakers. The Spartan magistrates, for instance, when a man who had not lived a good life offered a sound proposal, rejected it and had another man, one of good repute in his life
and character, propose the very same thing — very rightly and in a statesmanlike fashion accustoming the people to be led by the character of their advisers rather than by their words. But in the case of philosophical discourses, one must set aside the reputation of the speaker and examine the arguments themselves on their own merits. For, as in war, so too in listening, there is much that is empty show. Indeed the speaker's grey hair, and his affectation, and his knitted brow, and his self-praise,
and above all the shouts and the uproar and the leaping about of those present, strike the inexperienced and young listener with amazement, sweeping him along as if by a current. There is also something deceptive in style, when it is pleasant and abundant and applied to the subject matter with a certain grandeur and elaborate artifice. For just as most of the faults of those who sing to the flute escape the notice of the audience, so too
an ornate and pompous style outshines, in the listener's eyes, the very thing it is meant to reveal. Melanthius, for example, when asked about Diogenes' tragedy, said, as it seems, that he could not make it out for being obscured by the words; and the discourses and rehearsed pieces of most sophists not only use fine words as veils for their thoughts, but also, by sweetening their voice with certain melodic cadences and softnesses and balanced clauses,
they drive their listeners into a kind of Bacchic frenzy and carry them away, giving them an empty pleasure and receiving in return an even emptier reputation. So that what happens to them is what was said by Dionysius. For he, it seems, having promised a celebrated singer to the lyre great gifts at the performance, afterward gave nothing, as though he had already paid the debt of gratitude: 'For exactly as long,' he said, 'as you were delighting me with your singing, for just so long were you enjoying the pleasure of hoping.' This kind of exchange belongs to those
such lectures satisfy their listeners: they are admired only so long as they delight, and then, as soon as the pleasure has drained out of the ear, the reputation deserts them too, and their time — for some, even their life — has been wasted for nothing. One should therefore strip away the excess and the emptiness of the diction and pursue the fruit itself, imitating not the garland-weavers but the bees.
For the garland-weavers, going over the flowery and fragrant blossoms, string and weave them together into something pleasant but short-lived and unfruitful; the bees, by contrast, often fly past meadows of violets, roses, and hyacinths and settle instead on the roughest, sharpest thyme, and there they stay, working out golden honey, and once they have taken something useful they fly off to their proper task. In just this way, then,
the lover of learning and the pure-minded listener should let the flowery and delicate elements of diction, and the dramatic and showy elements of subject matter, go by, reckoning them fodder for drones playing at sophistry, and should instead, with close attention, sink down into the sense of the discourse and the disposition of the speaker, drawing from it what is useful and beneficial — remembering that he has come not to a theater or a concert hall but to
a school and a place of instruction, to set his life right by reason. For this reason one must make an examination and assessment of what one has heard by looking to oneself and one's own state, reckoning up whether any of the passions has grown gentler, whether any of one's griefs has become lighter, whether one has courage, a settled resolve, an enthusiasm for virtue and the good. For one should not, on rising
from the barber's chair, go and stand before the mirror and feel one's head, examining the cut of the hair and the change made by the trim, and yet on leaving a lecture and a class not immediately look to oneself, studying the soul to see whether it has set aside anything troublesome and superfluous and become lighter and more pleasant. "For neither a bath," says Ariston, "nor a discourse is of any use
unless it cleanses." Let the young man, then, take pleasure in being benefited by what he hears; but he must not make the pleasure of listening his goal, nor think he ought to leave a philosopher's class humming a tune and glowing with delight, nor go looking to be perfumed when what he needs is a poultice and a compress — rather he should be grateful if, like smoke driving bees from a hive, some pungent word clears out a mind clouded with thick haze and dullness. And
if it is fitting for speakers not to neglect entirely a diction that has some charm and persuasiveness, this is the very last thing the young man should trouble himself about, at least at first. Later on, just as men who are drinking, once they have stopped being thirsty, then begin to notice and turn over in their hands the engraving on the cups, so too, once he has been filled with doctrines and can catch his breath, he may be allowed to examine the diction for whatever elegance or refinement it has. But the man who,
right from the start, fails to root himself in the substance and instead insists that the diction be Attic and spare is like someone unwilling to drink a medicine unless the vessel is fired from Attic clay, or to wrap himself in a cloak for winter unless the wool is from Attic sheep — sitting there useless and unmoved, as it were, wrapped in the thin, threadbare cloak of a Lysianic speech. These
maladies have produced, in the schools, a great desolation of mind and sound thinking, and a great deal of idle chatter and pretension, with the young men paying attention not to the life, conduct, and public bearing of a philosopher, but valuing instead diction, phrases, and fine delivery, without knowing or even caring to examine whether what is delivered is useful or useless, necessary or empty and superfluous.
Connected with this is the rule about the questions one poses. A man who has come to dinner should make use of what is set before him and not ask for anything else, nor find fault; but a man who has come to a feast of words, if the terms are fixed, should listen to the speaker in silence — for those who drag the discussion off into other topics, interjecting questions and raising further difficulties, are not welcome
nor are they easy company in an audience; they gain nothing themselves, and they throw the speaker and his discourse into confusion together. But when the speaker himself bids his hearers ask questions and pose problems, one ought always to be seen posing something useful and necessary. Odysseus is mocked by the suitors for begging scraps of food, not swords or cauldrons — for they take it as a sign of greatness of spirit to give something great, and likewise
to ask for something great. Even more, one might laugh at a listener who stirs up the speaker over small and stingy problems, of the sort that some young men, showing off a knack for logic-chopping or mathematics, are in the habit of proposing — about the division of indivisibles, or what kind of motion is 'lateral' and what 'diametrical.' To such people one may say what Philotimus
said to the man with an abscessed lung and consumption. For when the man began talking to him and asking for a salve for a hangnail, Philotimus, perceiving from his complexion and his breathing the real state of his health, said, "My good fellow, this is no time for you to be talking about a hangnail." So too, young man, it is not the time for you to be examining such questions, but rather to see how, once freed from conceit, pretension, love affairs, and idle talk, you may establish yourself in a life
free of vanity and sound. One must also take great care to frame one's questions in keeping with the speaker's experience or natural ability, in those areas where he is strongest, and not force a man who philosophizes more on the ethical side to take up problems in natural science or mathematics, nor drag a man who prides himself on natural philosophy into judgments about conditional propositions and the solution of logical paradoxes. For just as
a man who tries to split wood with a key and open a door with an axe would seem not to be doing harm to those tools but rather depriving himself of the use and function proper to each, so those who ask of a speaker what he is not by nature suited for and has not practiced, while failing to pluck and take what he does have and does offer, not only fail to profit thereby but also incur a reputation for ill nature and malice.
One must also guard against posing many questions oneself, and often: for this too is, in a way, a form of showing off. To listen readily and agreeably when someone else puts forward a question is the mark of a man who loves learning and is sociable — provided none of his own private concerns is pressing and urgent, some passion needing to be checked, some ailment needing comfort. For perhaps it is not even true that "it is better to hide one's ignorance," as Heraclitus says, but rather one should bring it out into the open and
attend to it. And if some anger, or an attack of superstitious fear, or a sharp quarrel with one's own household, or a frenzied desire born of love stirs the strings of the mind that ought to remain still and throws the understanding into turmoil, one must not flee for refuge into other topics, escaping examination, but must listen precisely about these very things in the lectures, and afterward, privately, approach the speaker and question him further about them — not do the opposite,
as most people do, who take delight in and admire philosophers when they discourse about other matters, but who, if the philosopher sets the others aside and speaks to them privately and frankly about their own faults, reminding them of what concerns them, are annoyed and think it meddlesome. For they suppose, quite reasonably, that one ought to listen to philosophers in their schools just as one listens to tragic actors in the theater, and that outside, in everyday affairs, philosophers are no
different from themselves. Toward the sophists this reaction is understandable: once they have risen from their seats and put away their books and their introductory manuals, in the real business of life they appear small and ordinary to most people; but toward genuine philosophers it is not right to feel this way, since people fail to realize that seriousness and play alike, a nod, a smile, a frown — all of these belong to
them, and above all the discourse conducted privately with each individual bears some useful fruit for those accustomed to be patient and attentive. The proper practice of giving praise also requires a certain caution and moderation, since neither falling short of it nor going beyond it is generous. A heavy and tiresome listener is one who is utterly unmoved and unresponsive to everything said, full of a hidden conceit and
an inward self-importance, as though he had something better to say than what is being said, moving neither an eyebrow in acknowledgment nor uttering a sound as honest witness to his enjoyment of listening, but instead hunting after a reputation for steadiness and depth through silence and an affected gravity of manner and bearing, as if he thought that whatever praise he gave another he was thereby taking away from himself, like money. There are, in fact, many who wrongly and out of tune
take up Pythagoras's saying as their own. For Pythagoras said that from philosophy he had gained the ability to be astonished at nothing; but these men take it to mean praising and honoring nothing, placing what is dignified in contempt and pursuing it through disdain. For philosophical reasoning removes wonder and amazement that spring from inexperience and ignorance, by knowledge and understanding of the cause of each thing, but it does not destroy
what is easy-going, moderate, and humane. For truly and steadfastly good men, the finest honor is to honor someone worthy, and the most fitting adornment is to add adornment to another, an act that comes from an abundance and generosity of reputation. But those who are stingy about praising others seem still to be poor and hungry themselves. The opposite type, in turn, who passes judgment on nothing but stops at every word
and syllable, shouting out — being a light and flighty sort of person — often fails to please even the very competitors he praises, and always annoys the audience, stirring them up and making them rise together against their better judgment, as though they were being dragged along by force out of a sense of shame, joining in the shouting. Having gained nothing himself because his attention during the praise-giving has been so disordered and flighty, he leaves carrying away one of three labels:
he is thought to be either an ironist, a flatterer, or a man of poor taste in matters of discourse. Now a judge deciding a case must listen neither out of hostility nor out of favor, but with a mind directed toward justice; but in lectures devoted to learning, no law and no oath restrains us from receiving the speaker with goodwill. Indeed the ancients even set up
Hermes alongside the Graces in worship, since discourse above all demands what is gracious and endearing. For it is not even possible for a speaker to be so utterly off the mark and mistaken as to offer no thought worthy of praise, no recollection of others' views, not even the very subject and purpose of the speech, nor even the diction or arrangement of what is said — as though among hedgehog-thorns and rough rest-harrow
there could grow the blossoms of soft gillyflowers. For if even those who deliver praises of vomiting, of fever, and, by Zeus, of the chamber pot are not lacking in persuasiveness, surely a discourse delivered by a man who is somehow reputed, or even merely called, a philosopher would not fail to give favorably disposed and kindly listeners any occasion at all, any opening, for praise. At any rate, all who are in the bloom of youth, as Plato says, somehow bite
the lover, and, calling the fair-skinned children of the gods "honey-pale" and the dark-skinned ones "manly," and endearingly calling the hook-nosed "kingly" and the snub-nosed "graceful" and the sallow "golden-hued," he embraces and cherishes them; for love is clever, like ivy, at fastening onto anything as a pretext. Much more, then, will the man who loves listening and loves learning always be resourceful in finding some reason
for which he will not appear out of place in praising each of the speakers. Indeed Plato, while not praising Lysias's speech for its invention and finding fault with its lack of order, nevertheless praises its delivery, and says that "each of the words has been clearly and roundly turned on the lathe." One might find fault with Archilochus for his subject matter, with Parmenides for his versification, with Phocylides for his plainness, with Euripides for
his talkativeness, with Sophocles for his unevenness — just as, of course, among the orators too, one lacks character, another is sluggish in stirring passion, another is wanting in charm; yet each is praised for that particular power by which he is naturally able to move and lead an audience. So that for listeners too there is abundant and ungrudging opportunity to show goodwill toward speakers. For some it is enough
even if we do not bear witness with our voice, to display gentleness of eye, calmness of countenance, and a kindly, untroubled disposition. Those other things, indeed, are already common and general to every audience, applying even to speakers who fail completely: an unaffected, steady posture, seated upright, one's gaze fixed on the speaker himself, an attitude of active attention, and a composure of countenance that is clear
and shows no trace not only of insolence or ill temper but also of other cares and preoccupations — since in every undertaking, beauty is achieved when many elements, like numbers, converge at a single moment through some proportion and harmony, while ugliness arises at once from a single element, whether missing or wrongly present; just as, in the case of
listening itself, not only a heavy, scowling brow, an unpleasant expression, a wandering gaze, a twisting of the body, and an unseemly crossing of the legs, but also nodding, whispering to another, smiling, sleepy yawning, and drooping — and everything resembling these — is culpable and requires great caution. Some people think that the speaker has some work to do, but the listener
none at all — they think it right that the speaker should arrive having thought and prepared, while they themselves, thoughtless and careless of their obligations, throw themselves down and sit as though they had simply come to a dinner, to be treated well while others labor. And yet even a pleasant dinner guest has some work to do, and a listener far more so. For he is a partner in the discourse and a fellow-worker with the speaker, and it is not the case that he should
examine the speaker's faults harshly, holding him to account word by word and point by point, while he himself behaves without accountability, conducting himself improperly and committing many solecisms in his listening — but rather, just as in ball games the one receiving the throw must move in rhythm together with the thrower, so too in speeches there is a certain shared rhythm between the speaker and the listener, if each keeps to what is fitting for himself. One must also
not use exclamations of praise carelessly, at random. Indeed even Epicurus is offensive when he says that his friends' letters were greeted with bursts of applause. As for those who nowadays import foreign expressions into their audiences, saying "divinely!" and "in a god-inspired way!" and "unapproachably!" — as though "well done," "wisely," and "truly" were no longer sufficient —
the signs of approval that Plato, Socrates, and Hyperides used to employ, but instead misbehave and bring speakers into disrepute, as though they needed extravagant and superfluous praise. Also thoroughly unpleasant are those who confirm speakers' words with an oath, as if giving testimony in a lawcourt. No less irritating than these are those who miss the mark in matters of quality, when they call out "keenly!" to a philosopher, but
"gracefully" or "charmingly" to an old man, transferring to philosophers the expressions used by revelers and merrymakers at school festivals, and bestowing on a sober discourse the kind of praise fit for a courtesan—like crowning an athlete with a garland of roses instead of laurel or wild olive. Euripides the poet, when he was singing over to the chorus a song he had composed, set to a musical mode, and one of them laughed, said, "if you were not
insensitive and ignorant, you would not have laughed at my singing in the mixolydian mode." A philosophical and statesmanlike man, I think, would cut short the affected languor of a listener by saying: "you seem to me foolish and ill-bred; for if I were teaching, admonishing, or discoursing about the gods, the constitution, or government, you would not be trilling and dancing along to my words." See how truly
absurd it is. When a philosopher is speaking, people outside, hearing the shouting and clamor of those within, are at a loss whether the applause is for a flute-player, a lyre-player, or some dancer. And indeed one ought to listen to warnings and rebukes neither insensibly nor unmanfully. For those who bear being spoken ill of by philosophers so easily and carelessly that they laugh even while being refuted, and then applaud
those who are refuting them, just as parasites applaud their patrons even when being reviled by them—being altogether impudent and shameless—give no fine or true proof of courage by their shamelessness. For to bear an inoffensive jest, let loose in some playful banter with wit, without pain and cheerfully, is not ignoble or uneducated but rather quite gentlemanly and Laconic; but when a discourse applies, like a biting medicine, a searching and reproving word for the correction of character,
one ought not to hear it while shrinking back, nor drenched in sweat and dizziness, with the soul aflame with shame, but rather unflinching, and not grimacing or feigning indifference—which belongs to some young person terribly ill-bred and unresponsive to shame through habit and continuance in wrongdoing, like flesh grown hard and callused, whose soul takes no bruise. Since this is so, those young people of the opposite disposition,
if they are once spoken ill of, flee without turning back and run away from philosophy altogether, and although they had from nature a fine foundation for their safety in their sense of shame, they destroy it through softness and self-indulgence, not enduring the process of refutation nor nobly accepting correction, but turning their ears away toward gentle and soft conversation, listening to certain flatterers or sophists
who sing to them pleasant but useless and unprofitable tunes. Just as one who, after surgery, flees the doctor and will not submit to the bandage endures the pain but forfeits the benefit of the treatment, so too the one who does not allow the discourse that has cut and wounded him to heal over and settle his foolishness departs from philosophy stung and pained, but having gained no benefit at all.
For not only, as Euripides says, is Telephus's wound soothed by the filings of the spear that caused it, but also the sting that philosophy implants in young men of good nature is healed by the very discourse that inflicted it. For this reason one must suffer somewhat and feel the bite, but the one being refuted must not be crushed or lose heart; rather, as in an initiation rite where philosophy is just beginning its rites of purification, one should endure the first purifications and disturbances, hoping
for something sweet and bright to come out of the present distress and turmoil. And indeed, even if the reproof seems to come unjustly, it is good to endure and hold out while the speaker is still talking; but once he has stopped, one should approach him with a defense and a request that he reserve that frankness of speech and that intensity, which he is now using against him, for some occasion of genuine wrongdoing. Further, just as in learning letters and
the lyre and wrestling, the first lessons involve much confusion, toil, and obscurity, but then, as one progresses little by little, familiarity and understanding grow, as with people one comes to know, until everything becomes friendly, tractable, and easy to say and do—so too, though philosophy has something rough, difficult, and unfamiliar in its first terms and subject matter, one ought not,
out of fear at the beginnings, timidly and faintheartedly abandon it, but by trying each point, persisting, and yearning for further progress, wait for the habituation that makes everything fine pleasant. For it will come before long, bringing much light to one's learning and instilling powerful longings for virtue, without which it is the mark of a very wretched or cowardly man to endure the rest of life, having fallen away from philosophy
through lack of manly courage. Now perhaps the subject matter itself does present some difficulty to the inexperienced and the young at the outset; still, for the most part they fall into obscurity and ignorance through their own fault, erring in the same way from opposite natures. For some, out of a certain shame and consideration for the speaker, hesitate to ask questions and confirm what has been said, and instead nod along as though they understood,
while others, out of an untimely and empty ambition to compete with others, display their quickness and capacity for learning by claiming to already understand before they have actually grasped it, and so they never do grasp it. Then it turns out that those modest and silent ones, when they have gone away, are distressed and at a loss, and in the end, driven by necessity, they trouble those who spoke, with even greater embarrassment, by going back to question them and chase after them, while the ambitious
and bold ones always conceal and hide the ignorance that dwells within them. So let us cast off entirely such great stupidity and pretense, and go toward learning, and with our minds set on grasping what is called useful, let us endure the laughter of those who seem naturally gifted—just as Cleanthes and Xenocrates, though they seemed slower than their fellow students, did not run away from learning nor grow weary,
but got ahead of themselves by joking about it, comparing themselves to narrow-mouthed vessels and bronze writing-tablets, in that they took in words with difficulty but retained them safely and securely. For it is not only, as Phocylides says, that one who seeks to learn much must be deceived much, but one must also endure much mockery and disrepute, and having accepted jibes and buffoonery, must drive out and overpower ignorance with all one's spirit.
Yet the opposite error must not be neglected either, the one committed by those who, out of sluggishness, are unpleasant and tiresome, for they are unwilling, once left to themselves, to take trouble, but instead give trouble to the speaker, repeatedly asking about the same things, like unfledged nestlings always gaping toward another's mouth, wanting to receive everything already prepared and worked out by others. Others, hunting for attentiveness
and sharpness where it is not needed, seeking a reputation for it, wear down speakers with chatter and fussiness, always raising some further difficulty about unnecessary matters and demanding proofs of things that need none—so a short road becomes long, as Sophocles says, not only for themselves but for others too. For by constantly interrupting the teacher with empty and superfluous questions, as in a journey together, they impede
the continuity of the lesson, which then involves stops and delays. These people, then, according to Hieronymus, are like cowardly and stingy puppies that bite at the hides at home and pull at the scraps of the animals but never actually lay hold of the beasts themselves. But let us urge on those idle ones, once they have grasped the main points with their understanding, to work out the rest for themselves, and to let memory guide discovery,
and, taking another's discourse as a starting point and a seed, to nurture and increase it. For the mind does not need filling up like a vessel, but rather, like fuel, it needs only a kindling spark that creates in it an impulse to discover and a desire for the truth. Just as, if someone in need of fire from a neighbor, upon finding a large and bright fire there, were to stay there permanently, warming himself, so too if someone, coming
to share in another's discourse, does not think it necessary to kindle a light of his own and a mind of his own, but instead sits enjoying the lecture, charmed by it, drawing from the words only a kind of blush and glow for his reputation, while he has not warmed away or driven out through philosophy the inner mold and darkness of his soul. If, then, one needs any further precept for listening, one must, remembering also what has just
been said, practice discovery together with learning, so that we may acquire not a sophistic or merely erudite disposition but an inward and philosophical one, believing that hearing well is the beginning of living well.

======== Moralia: De Se Ipsum Citra Invidiam Laudando ========

Talking about oneself as being or being capable of something in relation to others, Herculanus, everyone declares in theory to be offensive and illiberal, but in practice not many, not even among those who condemn it, have escaped its unpleasantness. Euripides, for instance, having said, "If words could be bought by men, no one would wish to speak well of himself" — yet now, since it is possible to draw them free of charge from the deep air, everyone delights in saying both what is and what is not true; for it costs him nothing.
He himself has used the most vulgar kind of boastfulness, weaving into the sufferings and events of his tragedies a discourse about himself that has nothing to do with them. Likewise Pindar, though he says that "boasting out of season chimes in with madness," never stops speaking grandly about his own power, which is indeed worthy of praise — for who denies it?
But even those who are crowned as victors in the games have others proclaim them winners, thereby removing the unpleasantness of self-praise. And when Timotheus wrote, after his victory over Phrynis, "Blessed were you, Timotheus, when the herald said, 'Timotheus of Miletus conquers the son of Camon, the bender of Ionian melody'" — we rightly find it distasteful, as unmusical and improper, that he should proclaim his own victory. For a man himself finds praise from others the sweetest of things to hear,
as Xenophon has said; but praise of oneself is, for others, the most tiresome thing. For in the first place we consider those who praise themselves shameless, since it would be fitting for them to feel shame even when praised by others; second, we consider them unjust, since they are giving to themselves what they ought to receive from others; and third, we either seem to be vexed and envious if we keep silent, or, fearing this, we are compelled against our judgment to join in and add our own testimony to their praises — a thing
more fitting to servile flattery than to honor, when we put up with praising people to their faces. Nevertheless, although matters stand thus, there is a way in which the statesman might venture to touch what is called self-praise — not for the sake of any reputation or favor of his own, but when occasion and the business at hand demand that something true about himself, just as about another, be said — and especially when, by not sparing to state the deeds he has accomplished and the good qualities he possesses,
he may thereby accomplish something similar. For such praise bears a fine fruit, as from a single seed many other and better praises spring up from it. And indeed the statesman does not seek reputation as a kind of wage or consolation for his virtue, and is content that it should attend upon his actions; rather it is because being trusted
and being thought a good man provides the means for more numerous and finer actions. For it is pleasant and easy to benefit people who trust and love us at the same time, but it is not possible to employ one's virtue in the face of suspicion and slander, when men shrink from being helped as though it were being forced upon them. But if the statesman should praise himself for some other reasons, we must consider what these are, so that, while being wary of what is empty and offensive in it, we may not overlook
whatever is useful in it. Empty, then, is the praise of those who praise themselves in order to be praised, and it is most despised, since it appears to arise from ambition and an ill-timed desire for reputation. For just as those who lack food are forced, against nature, to feed on their own body — and this is the end result of famine — so those who hunger for praise, if they do not get it from others,
seem to behave shamefully, wishing to supply something to their own love of glory from themselves and thinking they are contributing to it. But when they seek to be praised not simply and on their own account, but, competing against the praises given to others, set their own deeds and actions in rivalry, as though to dim the luster of others, then in addition to being empty, they commit an act of malice and ill nature. For the proverb shows that the man who puts his foot into another's dance is meddlesome and ridiculous,
and self-praise that thrusts itself into the midst of praise belonging to others, driven there by envy and jealousy, must be very carefully guarded against; one should not even tolerate being praised by others while doing so, but should yield to those who are being honored, if they are worthy of it; but if they seem unworthy and base, we should not take away their praises by means of our own, but rather refute them openly, showing that they do not deserve their reputation. These things, then,
are clearly to be guarded against. But to praise oneself blamelessly is possible, first, if you do it in defending yourself against slander or accusation, as Pericles did: "And yet you are angry with a man such as I, who, I think, am inferior to no one in knowing what needs to be done and in explaining it, who am a lover of my city and above being swayed by money." For by speaking in such a solemn manner about himself at that moment, he not only escapes boastfulness, emptiness, and love of honor,
but also demonstrates a lofty spirit and greatness of virtue, in that he is not humbled — indeed he humbles and subdues envy. For people no longer see fit to judge such men, but are lifted up and delighted and share in the enthusiasm of their great boasts, provided these are firm and true — as the events themselves bear witness. The Thebans, at any rate, when their generals were accused because, though the term of their command as boeotarchs had expired,
they had not returned home at once but had invaded Laconia and settled affairs around Messene — Pelopidas, who fell at their feet and begged for mercy, they released only with reluctance; but when Epaminondas, after speaking at great length and proudly about what had been accomplished, finally said that he was ready to die if they would admit that he had founded Messene, ravaged Laconia, and united Arcadia, they, unwilling as they were, did not even endure to take up their voting-pebbles against him,
but departed marveling at the man, rejoicing, and laughing at the same time. Hence not even Homer's Sthenelus is wholly to be blamed for saying, "We indeed claim to be far better than our fathers," when we recall the line, "Alas, son of Tydeus, tamer of horses, why do you cower? Why do you peer about at the passages of war?" For he himself had not been reviled, but spoke up in his own boastful manner in defense of his friend who had been abused, the accusation giving
license to his frankness of speech, and the charge excusing it. And indeed the Romans were displeased with Cicero for often extolling his own actions against Catiline, but when Scipio said that it was not fitting for them to judge Scipio, the very man through whom they had the power to judge all men, they crowned themselves with garlands, went up together to the Capitol, and joined in sacrifice. The reason was that Cicero used his praises not out of necessity but for the sake of reputation, whereas in Scipio's case
the danger removed the envy. And indeed it is fitting that boastfulness and grand speech belong not only to those on trial or in danger, but even more to those in misfortune than to those in prosperity. For the former seem, as it were, to be grasping at and enjoying their reputation, indulging their love of honor, while the latter, being far from ambition because of their circumstance, seem to be raising themselves up against fortune, bearing their spirit high, and altogether avoiding what is pitiable
and joining in lamentation over their misfortunes and being humbled. Just as we consider those who strut and hold their necks high while walking to be foolish and empty, but when men in boxing or fighting rouse and lift themselves up, we praise them — so too a man who, thrown down by fortune, sets himself upright again and, like a boxer facing an opponent, transfers himself by his boastfulness from what is low and pitiable to what is proud
and lofty, seems not offensive or rash, but great and unconquerable — just as, I think, the poet has made Patroclus, who was moderate and free of envy in success, speak in a boastful manner at the moment of his death, saying, "Even had twenty such men as you confronted me." And Phocion was in other respects gentle; but after his condemnation he displayed his greatness of spirit in many ways, and to
one of his fellow condemned men, who was lamenting and taking it hard, he said, "What are you saying? Are you not content to die together with Phocion?" Furthermore, it is granted to the statesman, no less but even more, when he is being wronged, to say something about himself to those who deal with him unreasonably — just as Achilles, on the one hand, deferred to the divine dispensation of glory and spoke with moderation, saying, "If ever Zeus grants me to sack the well-walled city of Troy,"
but when he has been outrageously and undeservedly insulted, he gives free rein to boastfulness along with his anger: "For with twelve ships I have sacked twelve cities of men," and, "for they do not see the front of my helmet gleaming near." For frankness of speech, being a part of self-defense, admits of grand language. And indeed Themistocles, who said and did nothing offensive regarding his achievements while the Athenians
still valued him and paid him heed, did not, once he saw that they were sated with him and disregarding him, refrain from saying, "Why, my blessed friends, are you weary of being benefited so often by the same men?" and further, "When there is a storm, you take shelter under a tree, as it were, but when fair weather comes you strip its leaves as you pass by." These men, then, though they were being wronged in other ways, recalled their successes to those who were behaving ungratefully toward them. But a man who is blamed for the very things he has accomplished well is altogether pardonable and blameless when he extols
his deeds; for he seems not to be reproaching but defending himself. This, at any rate, gave Demosthenes ample freedom of speech and removed the surfeit that attends praise, which he employs throughout almost the whole of his speech On the Crown, taking pride in the very embassies and decrees concerning the war for which he was being accused. Not far removed from this device is a certain calculated grace found in antithesis, whenever, on
the very point on which a man is accused, he shows the opposite to be shameful and base. So Lycurgus at Athens, when reviled for having persuaded a false accuser with money, said, "What sort of citizen, then, do you take me to be, who, though I have managed public affairs among you for so long, have been caught giving money unjustly rather than taking it?" And Cicero, when Metellus said to him that he had destroyed more men by testifying against them
than he had saved by defending them, replied, "Who would deny that there is more trustworthiness in me than skill?" And such too are the words of Demosthenes: "Who would not have justly put me to death, if I had attempted merely in word to disgrace any of the honors belonging to the city?" and, "What do you think these vile men would be saying, if, when I was then dealing precisely with these matters, the cities had deserted me?"
And in general the speech On the Crown, with the greatest skill, introduces its self-praise by means of antitheses and refutations of the charges. Nevertheless it is also useful to learn this from that same speech, that by mingling, most artfully, praise of his hearers with the discourse about himself, he made it free of envy and self-love: such as "what sort of men the Athenians showed themselves to be to the Euboeans, what sort to the Thebans,"
"what good things they did for the Byzantines and the Chersonesites" — while claiming for himself only a share in the service. For in this way he escapes the notice of the hearer, who is drawn along by praises of his own city, since a man delights in what is said in his own favor, and feels gratitude for what has been achieved successfully, while joy is followed immediately by admiration and affection for the one through whom the success was achieved. Hence too Epaminondas, when Meneclides once mocked him as
thinking more highly of himself than Agamemnon, said, "It is because of you, men of Thebes, with whom alone in a single day I overthrew the dominion of the Lacedaemonians." And since the majority are very much at war with, and resent, a man who praises himself, but are not similarly disposed toward one who praises others — indeed they often rejoice and readily join in confirming such praise — some men are accustomed to unite and win over the hearer to themselves by praising, at the right moment, those who share their own choices and actions,
and altogether those of similar character; for the hearer at once recognizes, in the speaker — even when the speech concerns someone else — a likeness of virtue deserving the same praises. For just as a man who reviles another for faults in which he is himself implicated unwittingly reviles himself more than the other, so good men, by honoring good men, remind those who share their knowledge
of themselves, so that they immediately exclaim, "For are you not such a man yourself?" So Alexander, by honoring Heracles, and again Androcottus, by honoring Alexander, advanced themselves toward being honored by means of these likenesses. But Dionysius, by mocking Gelon and calling him "the laughingstock of Sicily," unwittingly, out of envy, diminished the greatness and dignity of his own power. These things, then, it is fitting for the statesman to understand well in other respects too,
and to be on guard against. As for those who are compelled to praise themselves, it makes them appear less burdensome if they do not attribute everything to themselves, but instead, as though setting down part of the load of their reputation, ascribe some to fortune and some to the god. Hence Achilles spoke well when he said, "since indeed the gods have granted that this man be subdued," and Timoleon spoke well too, when he set up an altar to Automatia (Chance) in Syracuse in honor of
his achievements and dedicated his house to the "Good Spirit"; and best of all, Python of Aenus, when, after killing Cotys, he came to Athens, and the popular leaders were vying with one another in praising him before the people, and he perceived that some were envious and displeased, came forward and said, "Men of Athens, this was the work of some god; we merely lent our hands." And Sulla too removed envy from himself by always praising
Fortune, and in the end styled himself Epaphroditus, "Favorite of Aphrodite." For men prefer to be thought indebted to good fortune rather than to their own virtue, considering the former an outside good, and the latter a deficiency that has arisen from themselves. At any rate, they say that what pleased the Locrians most about the legislation of Zaleucus was that he claimed Athena visited him and appeared before his eyes on each occasion, guiding and teaching him the laws, and that none of the measures he introduced was
his own thought or design. But such devices are perhaps necessary as remedies and palliatives against those who are altogether harsh and malicious; toward more reasonable people, however, it is not out of place to employ also the corrective use of praise: if someone should praise a man as learned, or rich, or powerful, one may bid him not to speak of these things concerning himself, but rather, if he is good and harmless
and beneficial. For the man who does this does not introduce fresh praise but redirects it, and he does not seem to delight in those who extol him, but rather, since it is not fitting or on the proper grounds, to be displeased, and to conceal the lesser qualities behind the better ones — not wishing to be praised, but teaching others how they ought to praise. For the saying, "I did not wall the city with stones or bricks, but if you wish to examine
my walling, you will find arms, and horses, and allies," seems to touch on something of this sort. And the saying of Pericles does so even more: for when, as it seems, his associates, lamenting as he now lay dying and grieving, recalled his generalships and his power, and how many trophies and victories and cities he had won and left to the Athenians, he, raising himself up a little, rebuked them,
saying that they were praising things common to many men, and some of them belonging rather to fortune than to his own virtue, while passing over what was finest, greatest, and most his own — that because of him no Athenian had ever put on mourning garb. This example, then, offers a model also for an orator, if he is a good man, when praised for the power of his speech, to redirect the praise instead toward his life and character; and likewise for a general who is admired
...for military experience or good fortune, but instead speak frankly about his gentleness and justice — and conversely again, when some extravagant praises are voiced, of the kind that many flatterers, out of envy, actually intend to harm with, one should say, "I am no god at all; why do you liken me to the immortals? But if you truly know me, praise instead my incorruptibility, or my self-control, or my fair-mindedness, or my humanity toward others."
For envy is not unwilling to grant the more modest praises to a man who declines the greater ones, and it does not withhold the true encomium from those who refuse to accept the false and empty one. That is why, in the case of kings who wished to be proclaimed not gods or sons of gods but "Brother-loving," or "Mother-loving," or "Benefactor," or "Beloved of the Gods," people were not troubled at all in honoring them with these titles — noble titles, but human ones. It is much the same with writers and speakers: people are irritated by those who claim for themselves the title of "wise," but are glad to hear someone say something modest and unenviable about himself — that he "philosophizes," or is "making progress," or something of that kind. Orators and sophists, on the other hand, by welcoming in their public performances words like "divinely," "marvelously," and "grandly," end up losing along with them even words like "adequately" and "humanly."
And indeed, just as those who are careful not to trouble sore eyes mix in a little shade with what is too bright, so some people, instead of offering their self-praise in a wholly bright and undiluted form, insert certain shortcomings, or failures, or slight faults, and thereby remove from it what is oppressive and apt to provoke resentment — as Epeius does. After speaking without restraint about his skill in boxing and boasting that he "will tear the flesh right through and crush the bones together," he says, "Is it not enough that I fall short in war?" But he, perhaps, is a rather ridiculous case, trying to soften his athletic bragging with a confession of cowardice and unmanliness. Tasteful and charming, by contrast, is the man who admits to some forgetfulness of his own, or ignorance, or overeagerness, or a certain indifference to some branch of learning or to listening to speeches — as Odysseus does: "But my heart longed to hear it, and I signaled to my companions with my brows to set me free." And again: "But I would not be persuaded — though it would have been far better — until I could see the man himself, and whether he would give me gifts of hospitality." In general, faults that are not utterly shameful or ignoble, when set alongside one's praises, take the envy out of them.
Many people, too, sometimes work into their self-praise a confession of poverty, or hardship, or, by Zeus, low birth, and by this means blunt the edge of envy — as Agathocles did. While pledging the young men in gold and embossed cups, he also had earthenware ones brought in, and said, "This is what perseverance, hard work, and manly courage can do — once we used to make these, now we make those." For it was well known that Agathocles had been raised in a potter's workshop because of his low birth and poverty, and yet he went on to become king of very nearly the whole of Sicily.
These, then, are remedies for self-praise that can be brought in from outside. But other remedies are inherent, in a sense, in the very achievements being praised — remedies of the sort Cato used when he said that he was envied because he neglected his own affairs and lay awake at night for the sake of his country, and: "How could I be so foolish, when I might, without any trouble at all, being counted among the mass of the army, share equally with the wisest man in whatever fortune brings?" And: "Reluctant to squander the gratitude earned by my past labors, I do not push away the toils now before me." For just as with a house or a piece of land, so too with reputation and virtue: most people begrudge them not to those who have paid for them with many toils and dangers, but to those who seem to have gotten them for nothing, easily.
Since praises must be brought forward not only without causing pain or arousing envy, but also usefully and beneficially — so that we do not appear to be doing this for its own sake, but something else through it — consider first whether one might praise oneself for the sake of exhortation, to arouse emulation and ambition in one's hearers. This is what Nestor did: by recounting his own feats of prowess and his battles, he both spurred on Patroclus and roused the nine champions to single combat. For exhortation that unites word and deed, offering a familiar, domestic example and object of emulation, is a living thing: it moves people and spurs them on, and, backed by impulse and deliberate choice, instills in them the hope that the goal is attainable, not impossible. That is why, in the choral songs at Sparta, the old men sing, "We once were valiant young men"; the boys sing, "And we shall be far mightier"; and the young men sing, "And we are that now — if you wish, behold." Here the lawgiver has, wisely and in a manner suited to a community, set before the young examples close and familiar to them, drawn from the very deeds accomplished.
Nonetheless, there are also occasions when, for the sake of overawing and restraining someone, of humbling a self-willed and insolent man and getting the upper hand over him, it is no bad thing to boast a little about oneself and speak grandly — as, again, Nestor does: "For I have in the past kept company with men braver even than you, and not one of them ever made light of me." So too Aristotle told Alexander that it is permitted to think highly of oneself not only to those who rule over many, but also to those who hold true beliefs about the gods. Such things are also useful against enemies and foes: "The sons of luckless men will face my might." And when the Persian king was called "the Great," Agesilaus said, "How is he greater than I am, unless he is also more just?" And to the Spartans, when they accused the Thebans of talking too much, Epaminondas said, "At any rate, we have cured you of speaking too little."
But these examples apply to enemies and foes. As for friends and fellow citizens, self-assertion can serve not only to check the overbold and make them more modest, but also, conversely, to raise up and spur on the fearful and terror-stricken, when boastfulness is used at the right moment. For Cyrus, too, in the face of danger and battle, "spoke grandly of himself, though at other times he was not given to grand speech." And Antigonus the Second, though in other respects free of arrogance and moderate, when in the sea-battle off Cos one of his friends said, "Do you not see how many more ships the enemy has?" replied, "And against how many do you count me alone?" Homer, too, seems to have understood this: he represents Odysseus, when his companions were cowering at the roar and swell around Charybdis, reminding them of his own skill and courage: "This is surely no greater evil than when the Cyclops held us penned by sheer force in his hollow cave; yet from there too, by my valor, my counsel, and my wit, we made our escape."
Praise of this kind does not belong to a man courting the crowd or playing the sophist, nor to one seeking applause and cheers, but to one who offers his own valor and skill as a pledge to give his friends courage. For in perilous moments, confidence and trust in a man of proven leadership and ability count for much toward safety.
It has already been said that it is far from statesmanlike to set oneself in rivalry against another's praise and reputation. Nevertheless, wherever misplaced praise for great deeds does harm — by breeding emulation of base things and a wicked resolve — it is not without use to strike it down, or rather to turn the hearer toward what is better, by pointing out the difference. One would, I think, be content merely to see most people willing to keep away from vice when it is denounced and censured. But if vice should also gain a good name, and if honor and esteem should attach themselves to a man led on by its pleasures and greed, then there is no nature so fortunate or so strong that vice could not master it. That is why the statesman must wage war not on men's praises but on the deeds themselves, when they are base — for it is through such praises that the impulse to imitate shameful things, and to admire them as though they were noble, is smuggled in and takes root.
Such false praises are exposed most effectively when set beside the true. For instance, the tragic actor Theodorus is said once to have told the comic actor Satyrus that it is no great feat to make an audience laugh, but to make them weep and cry. But a philosopher, I think, might answer him even better: "It is not making people weep and cry, my good man, that is admirable, but rather putting a stop to their grief and their weeping." For in praising himself this way, he does his hearer good and reshapes his judgment. So too Zeno, faced with the great number of Theophrastus's pupils, said, "His chorus is larger, but mine sings more in tune." And Phocion, while Leosthenes was still enjoying success, being asked by the orators what good he himself had done for the city, said, "Nothing — except that, under my generalship, you have had no need of funeral orations, and all who die are buried in their ancestral tombs." Very charmingly, too, Crates answered the line "This I have — all I ate, and all I indulged in wantonly, and the delights I took in love," with his own version: "This I have — all I learned, and all I pondered, and the solemn truths I came to know in the company of the Muses." For self-praise of this kind is noble and beneficial: it teaches people to admire and value what is useful and advantageous instead of what is empty and superfluous.
Let this, then, be counted among what has already been said in answer to our question. What remains for us — since the argument's next step requires and calls for it — is to say how each of us may avoid praising himself at the wrong moment. For self-praise, having self-love as its base of operations, is a formidable thing, and it often takes root even in those who seem quite moderate in their attitude toward reputation, catching them off their guard. Just as one of the rules of health is either to avoid unhealthy places altogether or to be more watchful of oneself while in them, so self-praise too has certain occasions and slippery spots that draw one round into it on every pretext. In the first place, as has been said, it is when others are being praised that ambition brings self-praise into flower, and a person catches himself bitten and tickled, as if by an itch, by an ungovernable desire and impulse toward glory — especially if someone else is being praised for achievements equal to, or even less than, his own. For just as those who are hungry, when they watch others eating, are all the more provoked and have their appetite whetted, so the praise given to those near at hand inflames with jealousy those who lack self-command where reputation is concerned.
Second, narratives of things carried through with good fortune and according to plan carry many people, before they notice it, into boasting and swagger out of sheer joy. For once they fall into telling of victories of their own, or successes in public life, or actions and words of theirs that won approval among rulers, they lose control and keep no measure. It is chiefly the seafaring and soldiering sort that one may see caught by this kind of self-praise; but it also happens, as a rule, to those returning from the dinner tables of governors and from great affairs: in recalling eminent and royal personages they weave in certain compliments those men spoke about them, and suppose that they are not praising themselves but merely recounting praises of themselves that came from others. Others think they escape their hearers' notice entirely when they report the handshakes, greetings, and courtesies of kings and emperors, as though they were rehearsing not praises of themselves but demonstrations of those men's graciousness and kindness toward others. Hence we must watch ourselves very closely when it comes to praising others, so that the praise be clean and free of any suspicion of self-love and self-praise, and we not seem to be making "Patroclus the pretext" while in fact praising ourselves through those we praise.
Then again, the whole business of censures and reproaches is treacherous ground, offering byways into self-praise to those who are sick with the desire for reputation. Old men fall into this most of all, whenever they are drawn into admonishing others and running down bad habits and misguided actions, magnifying themselves as having been quite marvelous in those same matters. To such men, if they possess not only age but also reputation and virtue, this should be conceded; for it is not without profit, but instils great emulation and even a certain ambition in those who are chastened in this way. But the rest of us ought to guard sharply against this byway and fear it. For since the reproving of one's neighbors is painful in any case, barely tolerable, and in need of great caution, the man who mixes praise of himself into blame of another, and hunts reputation for himself through another's disgrace, is altogether obnoxious and vulgar, as one who wants to win a good name for himself out of the humiliation of others.
Furthermore, just as those who are by nature prone and quick to laughter ought above all to shun and guard against ticklings and light touches, in which the smoothest parts of the body, slipping and yielding, stir the affection and set it off, so those who have drifted more passionately toward glory should be advised not least to abstain from praising themselves precisely when they are being praised by others. For a man ought to blush when he is praised, not to be shameless; he ought to restrain those who say something great about him, not to fault them for praising too sparingly — which is what most people do, themselves supplying reminders and heaping on still other deeds and feats of valor, until by praising themselves they spoil even the praise that comes from others. Some men, flattering them, tickle them, as it were, and puff them up; others maliciously toss in a small bait of compliment to draw out their self-praise; and others question and cross-examine them, so as to have a laugh, like the soldier in Menander: "'How did you get this wound?' 'With a javelin.' 'How, in heaven's name?' 'As I was climbing a wall.' And I display it in earnest, but they sneered at me all over again."
In all these situations, then, one must be as much on guard as possible, neither being swept along with the praises nor surrendering oneself to the questions. The most complete precaution and safeguard against them is to pay attention to others when they praise themselves, and to remember how unpleasant and painful the practice is to everyone, and that no other kind of talk is so obnoxious or so hard to bear. For though we cannot say that we suffer any other harm at the hands of those who praise themselves, still, as if burdened by the thing by our very nature and shunning it, we hasten to get away and to breathe freely again; when even for a flatterer, a parasite, or a man in need, a rich man or satrap or king extolling himself is, in their hour of need, hard to stomach and hard to sit through — and they call this the heaviest table-contribution they pay, like the man in Menander: "He slaughters me; I grow thin while being feasted — those jokes of his, so wise and general-like, the braggart pest that he is!" Since, then, it is our habit to feel and to say such things not only about soldiers and the newly rich as they spin out their purple-bordered, pompous tales, but also about sophists and philosophers and generals who are puffed up about themselves and talk grandly — if we remember that blame from others always follows upon our own praises, that the end of this vainglory is disrepute, and that what results, as Demosthenes says, is the annoyance of our hearers, not the reputation we claim to deserve — we shall refrain from speaking about ourselves, unless we are about to do some great benefit either to ourselves or to our hearers.

======== Moralia: De Sera Numinis Vindicta ========

Having spoken so, Quintus, Epicurus went off before anyone could answer, since we had by then reached the far end of the portico. As for us, in sheer wonder at the man's strangeness, we stood still in silence, glancing at one another, and then turned back again along the walk we happened to be taking. Then Patrocleas spoke first: "Well then, does it seem best to drop the inquiry, or shall we answer the argument as though its speaker were both present and not present?" Timon took this up: "But even if the man had let fly his shot and made his escape, it would hardly have been right to overlook the dart still lodged in us. Brasidas, it is said, pulled the spear out of his own body and with that very weapon struck down and killed the man who had thrown it; but for us it is no great task, I think, to ward off
those who let loose an absurd or false charge against us — it is enough if, before the opinion takes hold, we ourselves cast it out." "What then," I asked, "most disturbed you in what was said? For the man poured out a great deal all at once, in no order, dragging one thing from here and another from there, as if in some fit of anger and abuse, hurling it all together against providence." And Patrocleas said: "It is the slowness and delay of the divine in punishing the wicked
that seems to me the most terrible thing. Indeed, just now, under the pressure of these arguments, I found myself as fresh and unsettled in opinion as if I had never thought about it, though long ago I used to be indignant on hearing Euripides say, 'it delays, but such is the nature of the divine.' And yet it suits nothing less than it suits God to be lax toward the wicked, since they themselves are not lax
nor slow to do wrong, but are swept toward injustice by the sharpest of impulses under their passions. And indeed, as Thucydides says, 'retaliation, lying nearest to the wrong suffered,' at once blocks the road for those who make the freest use of the smooth-flowing stream of wickedness. For nothing so much as a debt of justice falling into arrears makes the wronged man weak in hope and humbled, while it swells the wrongdoer with boldness and
daring; whereas punishments that fall close upon the heels of daring deeds also serve as checks upon crimes not yet committed, and above all they carry within them what comforts the victims. That is why the saying of Bias often troubles me when I call it to mind: he said, it seems, to some wicked man, that he did not fear the man would go unpunished, but that he himself would not live to see it.
For what good did it do the Messenians, who had already perished, that Aristocrates was at last punished — the man who betrayed them at the battle of the Trench, escaped detection for more than twenty years, and all that time ruled as king over the Arcadians, and only later paid the penalty when he was found out? The men themselves were no longer alive. Or what comfort did it bring to the Orchomenians, who had lost children, friends, and kinsmen betrayed by Lyciscus, that a disease attacked him many years later,
eating away that part of his body which he had always dipped and soaked in the river when he swore his oath and called down the curse that it might rot, if he betrayed and wronged them? For the castings-out of the accursed bodies at Athens, and the banishments of the dead, were never even witnessed by the grandchildren of those men who had been slaughtered. This is why Euripides is beside the mark when, to deter men from wickedness, he uses these lines: 'Justice will not come upon you, do not tremble, and strike you to the liver,
nor any other mortal who does wrong, but silently, with slow foot advancing, she will seize the wicked, whenever it happens.' For it is likely that the wicked encourage and urge one another with these very words to rejoice in their transgressions, on the ground that injustice yields its fruit at once, ripe and plain to see, while its punishment comes late and lags far behind the enjoyment."
When Patrocleas had gone through this, Olympichus took up the argument: "And this too, Patrocleas — how great an absurdity there is in the divine's lingering and procrastination over these matters, in that the delay strips away belief in providence, and since the evil that follows does not come hard upon each wrongdoing but only later, men classify it instead under the head of misfortune, calling it a disaster rather than a punishment, and gain nothing from it,
being vexed at what has happened to them but not repenting of what they themselves have done. For just as with a horse, the blow and the prick that follows immediately upon the stumble and the fault corrects it and turns it toward what is required, but blows and checks and jerks that come later and after an interval seem to happen for some other purpose rather than instruction, so that they carry the pain without the lesson —
in the same way, vice, when it is struck and checked for each particular fault as it stumbles into it, being punished on the spot, would most likely become thoughtful, humbled, and fearful before god, as one who stands over human affairs and passions as a judge not behind on his accounts; whereas the Justice that steals along quietly and 'with slow foot,' as Euripides says, and falls upon the wicked as chance has it rather than according to
providence, resembles something wandering, overdue, and disorderly. And so I do not see what use there is in these things said to be ground late indeed by the mills of the gods, seeing that they make justice dim and blunt the fear of wickedness." When this had been said, and I was turning it over in my own mind, Timon spoke up: "Shall I now myself set the capstone
upon the difficulty, or shall I first let him fight it out against these points on his own?" "Why," I said, "is it necessary to bring up a third wave and flood the argument further, if he will not be able to fend off the first ones, nor escape the charges? Let us then begin, as it were from an ancestral hearth, with the reverence toward the divine shown by the philosophers of the Academy: as to speaking as though we knew anything certain about these matters,
we shall disclaim that in advance. For it is a greater thing than for men unversed in music to discuss musicians, or men who have never served in war to discuss soldiers, for us, being human, to examine divine and daemonic matters — like untrained persons pursuing, from opinion and conjecture, some likely approximation of a craftsman's thinking. For it is no easy task even for a layman to work out a doctor's reasoning as to why he did not operate earlier but later, or did not bathe the patient yesterday but today —
that indeed would be work; but about the gods it is easy for a mortal to say nothing else with certainty, except that he, knowing best the right moment for the treatment of wickedness, applies punishment to each case as a physician applies a remedy, having neither a common measure of severity nor one and the same span of time for all alike. For that the therapy of the soul — called justice, or righteousness — is the greatest of all arts,
besides countless other witnesses, Pindar too testified, when he called the ruler and lord of all things, God, 'supreme craftsman,' as being the maker of justice, to whom it belongs to determine when, and how, and for how long each of the wicked must be punished. And of this very art Plato says that Minos, being a son of Zeus, became a pupil, on the ground that it is not possible for one who has not learned and acquired the knowledge either to succeed rightly in matters of justice
or even to perceive one who does succeed rightly. For not even the laws that men themselves make have what is reasonable in them plain and evident at all times — indeed some of their ordinances seem quite absurd: for instance, in Sparta, the ephors, as soon as they enter office, proclaim publicly that no one is to grow a moustache, and that men are to obey the laws, so that the laws may not be harsh toward them;
whereas the Romans, when they set a slave free, lay a thin straw upon his body; and when they draw up wills, they leave some men as heirs while selling their property to others — which seems paradoxical. And most paradoxical of all is Solon's law, that a man who in a civil conflict of the city joins neither faction, and takes no part in the sedition, is to be stripped of his citizen rights. And in general one could point out many absurdities in laws, without either
grasping the lawgiver's reasoning or understanding the cause behind each provision written down. What wonder is it, then, if, human affairs being so hard for us to observe, it is no easy matter to speak about the gods — by what reasoning they punish some offenders later and others sooner?" "These considerations," I said, "are not a pretext for evasion but a request for indulgence, so that the argument, looking to them as to
a harbor and refuge, may more confidently make its way back up toward the difficulty by way of what is plausible. But first consider this: that according to Plato, God, having set himself in the midst as a pattern of all things beautiful, grants to those able to follow him a human virtue that is in some way an assimilation to himself. For indeed the nature of the universe, being disorderly, took this as the starting point of its transformation into an ordered cosmos, through a certain likeness
and participation in the divine idea and its virtue. And this same man says that God kindled sight itself within us so that the soul, growing accustomed through the viewing and wonder of the bodies borne along in heaven to welcome and love what is orderly and well-arranged, might come to be hostile to passions that are discordant and errant, and might flee what is random and haphazard, as being
the origin of vice and of every kind of error. For there is nothing greater that man by nature can gain from God than, by imitating and pursuing the beautiful and good things in him, to be established in virtue. This is why God also applies punishment to the wicked slowly and at leisure — not because he himself fears making some error by punishing quickly, or fears later regret, but because he is stripping away from us
the beastlike and violent element in acts of vengeance, and teaching us not to fall upon those who have wronged us in anger, nor at the very moment when our passion is most inflamed and leaping and bounding above our reason, glutting ourselves on the wrongdoer as though slaking a thirst or hunger, but rather, imitating his own gentleness and his delay, taking as counselor a period of time least inclined toward repentance, to lay hold of justice in due order and measure. For
to make use of troubled water when one happens upon it, through simple lack of self-control, is a lesser evil, as Socrates used to say, than, while one's reasoning is still murky and brimming with anger and madness, to glut oneself with the punishment of a kindred and related being before that reasoning has settled and become clear. For it is not, as Thucydides said, that retaliation lies nearest at hand to the wrong suffered; rather, being set at the greatest distance, it receives its due more fittingly. For just as anger, according to
Melanthius, does terrible things once it has taken up residence in the mind, so too reasoning does what is just and measured once it has put anger and passion out of the way. This is why men are also tamed by human examples, hearing how Plato, having raised his stick against a slave-boy, stood a long while, as he himself said, chastising his own anger; and how Archytas, having noticed some fault and disorder among his household slaves in the field,
and their unruliness, then becoming aware that he himself felt rather too much passion and harshness toward them, did nothing more than say, as he walked away, only this: 'You are fortunate that I am angry with you.' If, then, the remembered words and recounted deeds of mere men can strip away the harshness and violence of anger, it is far more likely that we, seeing that God — who has no fear and no cause for regret about anything — nevertheless
lays up punishment for the future and waits out the time, should ourselves become cautious in such matters, and should regard gentleness and moderation of passion as a divine portion of virtue, one that God displays by correcting a few through punishment, but by his slowness benefiting and admonishing many." "Let us, then, consider this second point: that acts of justice among men, having only the function of paying back pain for pain,
stop at making the wrongdoer suffer in his turn, and go no further; hence, like a dog, they keep close watch upon offenses and pursue the deeds hot on their heels. But it is likely that God, whenever he lays his justice upon a soul that is diseased, also looks closely into its passions, to see whether they yield in any way and incline toward repentance, and gives time to those in whom vice is not by nature
unmixed or unchangeable. For, knowing what portion of virtue souls carry with them as they set out from him toward birth, and how their nobility is implanted in them as something strong and not easily quenched, but blossoms into vice against its own nature, corrupted by bad nurture and bad company, and then, in some cases, once properly tended, recovers its rightful condition — he does not press the same punishment equally upon all, but
whatever is incurable he removes at once from life and cuts away, since it is altogether harmful to others and most harmful of all to itself to go on living in company with wickedness; but to those in whom the tendency to err seems to have arisen more from ignorance of the good than from deliberate choice of the shameful, he grants time to change. And if they persist in wrongdoing even so, he renders justice to these as well — for surely he has no fear that they will escape him. Consider, then,
how many changes have occurred in the character and life of men — indeed 'character' itself (tropos) was named from the changing (metaballon) of a man's own disposition and temper, insofar as habit most fully clothes it and, once it takes hold, prevails above all. I think, for my part, that the ancients called Cecrops 'of two natures' not, as some say, because he turned from a good king into a savage, dragon-like tyrant, but on the contrary because at first he was crooked
and fearsome, and only later ruled gently and humanely. But if that case is uncertain, we do at least know of Gelon and Hiero the Sicilians, and Peisistratus the son of Hippocrates, that though they acquired their tyrannies by wickedness, they put those tyrannies to the use of virtue, and, having come to power unlawfully, became moderate rulers who benefited the people — the one providing good order in abundance and care for the land, and rendering
the citizens themselves temperate and hard-working instead of extravagant and idly talkative. Gelon, moreover, though he had fought most excellently in war and had defeated the Carthaginians in a great battle, would not make peace with them when they begged for it until he had also included this in the treaty: that they should stop sacrificing their children to Cronus. And in Megalopolis, Lydiadas was tyrant; then, in the very midst of his tyranny, he changed his ways, and, disgusted at his own
injustice, restored their laws to the citizens, and, fighting the enemy on behalf of his homeland, fell gloriously in battle. But if someone had put Miltiades to death earlier as a tyrant in the Chersonese, or had pursued and caught Cimon for living with his sister and had him executed, or had taken the city away from Themistocles for the outrages by which he ran riot and reveled disgracefully through the marketplace — indicting him as later happened to Alcibiades — would we not have lost
our Marathons, our battles at the Eurymedon, our fair Artemisium, 'where the sons of the Athenians laid the shining foundation of freedom'? For great natures bring forth nothing small, nor does their vehemence lie idle because of its very sharpness — indeed it is active within them; rather, they are tossed about in turmoil before they arrive at a fixed and settled character. Just as, then, a man with no experience of farming would not welcome a piece of land, seeing it thick with
...full of dense undergrowth, wild plants, and many beasts, with streams of water and a great deal of mud. But to a man trained to perceive and to judge, these very features reveal the land's strength and everything it promises, and also its softness. In the same way great natures put forth many strange and base shoots before they bloom, and we, unable to bear at once their roughness and their sting, think we must cut them off and check them. But the better judge, discerning in these very things what is useful and noble, waits for the age and season that will cooperate with reason and virtue, the season in which nature renders its proper fruit.
"So much, then, for that. But as for the law in Egypt, do you not think some of the Greeks were right to have adopted it in copying down for you — the law which commands that a pregnant woman condemned to death be kept in custody until she gives birth?" "Certainly," they said. So I went on: "But if a person, though not pregnant with a child, is nevertheless able in time to bring to light and disclose some secret act or design — having revealed some hidden wrong, or having become the counselor of a saving plan, or the discoverer of some necessary benefit — is not the one who waits for this better than the one who kills off in advance what is useful, before the punishment is exacted? To me, at least," I said, "it seems so." "And to us," said Patrocleas. "Rightly," I said.
"Consider: if Dionysius had paid the penalty at the very start of his tyranny, no Greek would have gone on living in Sicily, for it would have been laid waste by the Carthaginians — just as neither Apollonia nor Anactorium nor the Leucadian peninsula would have been inhabited by Greeks, had Periander not been punished only after a long time. I think Cassander too was granted a postponement of his punishment, so that Thebes might be resettled again. As for the mercenaries who joined in seizing this very shrine, most of them crossed over to Sicily with Timoleon, and when they had defeated the Carthaginians and put down the tyrannies there, they too later came to a bad end, wicked men meeting a wicked fate. For indeed, in some cases the divine has made use of other wicked men, as public executioners so to speak, to punish still other wrongdoers, and then afterward crushed them in turn — as it did, I think, with most tyrants. For just as the hyena's gall and the seal's rennet, though these are foul creatures in other respects, have some use against disease, so too, when certain people need biting and chastisement, the god casts upon them the harsh bitterness of a tyrant hard to appease, or the grievous roughness of a ruler, and does not remove what pains and disturbs them until he has cleansed and rid them of what is diseased. Such a remedy Phalaris was for the people of Agrigentum, and Marius for the Romans. And to the Sicyonians the god plainly foretold that their city would need whip-bearers, because in robbing the Cleonaeans of the boy Teletias, who had been crowned victor at the Pythian games, and claiming him as their own citizen, they tore him to pieces. Now for the Sicyonians, Orthagoras, becoming tyrant, and after him Myron and Clisthenes and their circle, put a stop to this licentiousness; but the Cleonaeans, who did not obtain the same treatment, have come to nothing at all.
"And you have heard Homer say somewhere that a son far better than his father was born of one far worse in every virtue. And yet that son of Copreus performed no brilliant or distinguished deed; but the line of Sisyphus, and of Autolycus, and of Phlegyas, flourished in the fame and virtues of great kings. Pericles too was born at Athens of an accursed house, and Pompey the Great at Rome was son of Strabo, whose corpse the Roman people, out of hatred, threw out and trampled underfoot. What is strange, then, if — just as the farmer does not cut down the thorn until he has taken the asparagus growing beside it, and the Libyans do not burn the brushwood before gathering the ladanum resin from it — the god does not destroy the wicked and rough root of a famous and royal stock before the fitting fruit has grown from it? For it was better for the Phocians that countless oxen and horses of Iphitus should be lost, and more gold and silver be carried off from Delphi, than that neither Odysseus nor Asclepius should ever have been born, nor the others who, sprung from bad and wicked men, became good and greatly beneficial men."
"Do you not think it better that punishments should come at the fitting time and in the fitting manner, rather than swiftly and at once? Consider the case of Callippus — with the very same dagger with which, pretending to be his friend, he killed Dion, he himself was afterward killed by Dion's friends. Or consider Mitys of Argos: when he was killed in a civil disturbance, a bronze statue in the marketplace, while a spectacle was in progress, fell upon the man who had killed Mitys and slew him. And you surely know the story concerning Bessus the Paeonian and Ariston the Oetaean mercenary captain, Patrocleas?" "No, by Zeus," he said, "but I would like to learn it." "Ariston," I said, "took down the ornament of Eriphyle that lay dedicated here, when the tyrants gave it to him, and brought it home as a gift to his wife; and his own son, enraged against his mother for some reason, set fire to the house and burned them all together in it. As for Bessus, it seems that after killing his own father he went undetected for a long time; but later, when he had come to dine with strangers, he struck a swallows' nest with his spear and knocked it down, destroying the nestlings. When those present said, as was natural, 'Man, whatever possessed you to do such a strange thing?' he replied, 'Have not these birds long been bearing false witness against me, crying out that I killed my father?' The astonished bystanders reported the remark to the king, and when the matter was investigated and proved true, Bessus paid the penalty.
"But these examples," I said, "we have offered, as was proposed, to establish that there is some postponement of punishment allowed to the wicked. As for the rest, we ought to think we are listening to Hesiod, when he says — though Plato disagrees — that punishment is not something that follows injustice afterward, but is born together with it, of the same age, sprung from the same root and the same soil: 'For evil counsel is worst for the one who counsels it,' and 'whoever devises evil for another devises evil for his own heart.' For the blister-beetle is said to contain within itself, mixed together, the antidote to its own poison, from a kind of natural counteraction; but wickedness, in the very act of engendering what will pain and punish it, does not pay the penalty for its injustice later, but pays it at the very moment of the outrage. And just as, of those criminals punished in the body, each wrongdoer carries his own cross out to execution, so vice fashions out of itself each one of its instruments of torture against itself, being the crafts-woman of a terrible life that carries with it disgraceful reproaches, many fears, harsh sufferings, and unceasing regrets and disturbances. But some people are no different from children who, watching criminals in the theaters often dressed in gold-embroidered tunics and purple robes, wearing crowns and dancing the pyrrhic dance, admire them and gape at them as blessed — until the moment they are seen being goaded and whipped and giving off fire from beneath that flowered and costly clothing. For most wicked men, though wrapped about with great houses and offices and conspicuous power, do not notice that they are already being punished, until they are suddenly cut down or hurled from a cliff — which one might call not the punishment itself, but the completion and consummation of the punishment.
"For just as they say that Herodicus of Selymbria, having fallen into consumption, an incurable disease, and having been the first man to combine gymnastic training with medicine, is said by Plato to have made his own death a long one, and likewise that of others suffering the same disease — so too, of the wicked, as many as seem to have escaped the immediate blow do not pay their penalty after a longer time, but pay a longer penalty in that time; they are not punished only once they have grown old, but grow old in the very process of being punished. I speak, of course, of a long time as it appears to us; for to the gods every span of human life is as nothing, and 'now,' as opposed to 'thirty years ago,' is the same sort of thing as torturing or hanging a wicked man in the evening rather than in the morning — especially when he is kept under guard throughout his life as in a prison with no removal and no escape, though with many banquets set in between, and business, and gifts, and favors, and even amusements — much as men gamble or play draughts in prison while the noose hangs over their heads. And yet what prevents us from saying that even those shut up to await execution are not yet being punished, until someone cuts off their neck; or that a man who has drunk the hemlock and then walks about, waiting for the heaviness to settle into his legs before the numbness and stiffening that bring insensibility overtake him, is likewise not yet being punished — if we reckon only the final moment of the penalty as the punishment, and set aside the sufferings in between, the fears, the expectations, and the regrets in which every wrongdoer is caught, just as we would refuse to say that a fish has been caught once it has swallowed the hook, until we see it being roasted or cut up by the cooks?
For each wrongdoer, from the moment he commits injustice, is held fast by justice, and has already swallowed down the sweetness of his injustice like bait; but the guilty conscience lodged within him, exacting its payment, thrashes about like a young tunny caught in open water. For that boldness and audacity of vice is strong and ready only up to the point of the wrongdoing; after that, as the passion fails like a dying wind, it grows weak and abject, and falls prey to fears and superstitious terrors — so that, in the face of what actually happens and of the truth, one might well believe Stesichorus was not merely inventing when he composed his account of Clytemnestra's dream, speaking somewhat as follows: 'And to her it seemed that a serpent came, its head bloodied at the tip, and from it there appeared the king, a son of Pleisthenes.' And indeed visions in dreams, and apparitions by day, and oracles, and omens from the sky, and whatever comes to be thought as brought about by the agency of a god, bring storms of fear upon those so disposed. They say, for instance, that Apollodorus once dreamed he was being flayed by Scythians and then boiled, and that his heart spoke to him from within the cauldron, saying, 'I am the cause of these things for you'; and again, that he saw his daughters running around him in circles, ablaze and burning in their bodies. And Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus, shortly before his death saw Aphrodite splash blood upon his face from a bowl. The friends of Ptolemy Ceraunus used to see him being summoned to trial by Seleucus, with vultures and wolves sitting as his judges, and distributing great quantities of flesh to his enemies. And Pausanias, having summoned Cleonice, a freeborn girl of Byzantium, by night, meaning to force himself on her, then killed her in some fit of confusion and suspicion as she approached him; he often saw her afterward in his sleep, saying to him, 'Draw near to justice: hybris is truly an evil thing for men.' And since the apparition would not stop, he sailed, it seems, to the place of the dead at Heraclea, and by certain rites of propitiation and libations called up the girl's soul; and when she came into his sight she told him he would be free of his troubles once he reached Lacedaemon — and upon arriving there he died at once.
So that, if nothing at all remains for the soul after death, but death is the limit of every grace and of every punishment alike, one might rather say that the divine deals gently and carelessly with those wicked men who are punished swiftly and who die easily and without suffering. And indeed, even if one were to say that no other evil at all belongs to the wicked in their lifetime,
but that, injustice being exposed somewhere along the way — a fruitless and thankless business, bringing back nothing good or worth the effort from many great struggles — the mere perception of this overturns the soul. So they tell, for instance, that Lysimachus, driven by thirst to surrender his person and his power to the Getae, once he had drunk after falling into their hands, said, 'Alas for my cowardice, that for so brief a pleasure I have been robbed of so great a kingdom.' And yet to resist a natural compulsion of passion is an exceedingly difficult thing. But when a man, whether out of greed for money, or envy of another's political fame and power, or for some pleasure of illicit union, has committed a lawless and terrible deed, and then, once the craving and frenzy of his passion have subsided, comes in time to see the shameful and fearful consequences of his injustice still remaining with him, of no use, no necessity, and no benefit — is it not likely that the thought often occurs to him, that for the sake of empty glory, or for some ignoble and thankless pleasure, he has overturned the finest and greatest of the rights that hold among men, and has filled his life with shame and turmoil? For just as Simonides used to say, jesting, that he always found his money-chest full but his chest of graces empty, so too the wicked, looking closely into their own vice, find that the pleasure it gave was empty of gratitude and quickly gone, and bare of any good hope, while it is forever full of fears and griefs and joyless memory, and of suspicion toward the future and distrust toward the present. Just as we hear Ino, in the theaters, saying, after she has repented of what she did, 'Dear women, how might I, from the beginning, have dwelt in the house of Athamas, having done none of the deeds now done?' — it is likely that the soul of every wicked person turns this same thought over within itself, reasoning how it might step out of the memory of its wrongdoings and cast the guilty conscience out of itself, and, becoming clean, might live some other life all over again from the start. For there is nothing bold, nothing free of vanity, nothing settled and secure, in the things the wicked man chooses — unless, by Zeus, we are to say that wrongdoers are in some sense wise. But wherever love of wealth and love of pleasure, fiercely contested, and unmixed envy take up residence together with ill will or malice, there too, if you look, you will find superstition lurking beneath, and softness in the face of toil, and cowardice in the face of death, and a sudden shifting of impulses, and a hollow vanity about reputation born of empty boasting. Such men fear those who find fault with them, and dread those who praise them too, as though they were being wronged by the flattery, and they are especially hostile to the wicked, because these are the ones who most readily praise those who seem to be good. For hardness in vice, like hardness in poor iron, is brittle, and what resists is easily shattered; hence, in the course of a long time, coming to understand better how they stand, such men grow burdened and discontented and hold their own lives up to reproach.
For surely it is not the case that a base man who has restored a deposit entrusted to him, or stood surety for an acquaintance, or given and contributed to his country's cause with honor and public spirit, is straightway plunged into regret and pained at what he has done, on account of the utter instability and wandering of his character — while men applauded in the theaters at once groan, as their love of glory subsides back into love of money. Others, however, who sacrifice human beings for the sake of tyrannies and conspiracies, as Apollodorus did, or who defraud their friends of money, as Glaucus son of Epicydes did, felt no repentance, no hatred of themselves, no grief over what had been done. For my part, indeed, if it is permitted to say so, I do not think the impious have need of any punisher, whether god or man, but that their own life suffices them, overturned as it is by wickedness —
wholly corrupted and thrown into turmoil." "But consider," I said, "whether the argument is running too far past its proper point." And Timon said, "Perhaps so, in view of what remains and the length still left to it; for I am already raising up, like a reserve held in waiting, the last difficulty, since it has contended moderately well with the first ones. For the charges Euripides brings and speaks freely against the gods, in turning the failings of parents onto their offspring, think that we too, who keep silent about them, share in the blame.
For either those who did the wrong themselves paid the penalty, in which case there is no further need to punish those who did no wrong—since it is not even just to punish the wrongdoers twice for the same acts; or else, through negligence, they let the punishment of the wicked slip by, and then exact it late from the innocent, and there is nothing right in adding injustice to slowness. Take, for instance, what is said to have happened here.
They say Aesop came here bringing gold from Croesus, so that he might offer a magnificent sacrifice to the god and distribute four minas to each of the Delphians. But some quarrel and dispute arose, it seems, between him and the local people, so he performed the sacrifice but sent the money back to Sardis, on the ground that the men were not worthy to benefit from it. They, having conspired against him, charged him with temple robbery
and killed him, hurling him from that rock which they call Hyampeia. And because of this, they say, the divine power grew angry with them and brought both barrenness of the land and every sort of strange disease, so that, going about at the Greek festivals, they had to proclaim and invite anyone willing to exact justice from them on Aesop's behalf. In the third generation a Samian, Iadmon, arrived—a man in no way related to Aesop by blood,
but a descendant of those who had bought him in Samos; and when the Delphians paid him certain penalties, they were freed from their troubles. From that time, they say, the punishment of temple-robbers was also transferred from Hyampeia to Nauplia. And even those who love Alexander most warmly—among whom we count ourselves—do not praise him for destroying the city of the Branchidae and putting to death every age of its people, on account
of the betrayal, committed by their ancestors, of the temple near Miletus. And Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse, when the Corcyreans jeeringly and with laughter asked why he was ravaging their island, said, "Because, by Zeus, your fathers received Odysseus." And when the Ithacans likewise complained that his soldiers were taking their sheep, he said, "But your king, when he came
to us, even blinded our shepherd besides." Is not Apollo, then, more absurd than these men, if he destroys the Pheneatans of today by blocking up their chasm and flooding their whole country, because a thousand years before, as they say, Heracles tore up the prophetic tripod and carried it off to Pheneus? Or if he declares release from their troubles to the Sybarites only when they have propitiated the wrath
of the Leucadian Hera by three disasters? And indeed it is not long since the Locrians ceased sending their maidens to Troy—girls who, cloakless and barefoot, like slave-women of the dawn, used to sweep around the altar of Athena, without a headband, even should heavy old age come upon them—all on account of the licentiousness of Ajax. Where, then, is the reasonableness and justice in this? We do not, after all, praise the Thracians for still tattooing
their own wives to this day, in vengeance for Orpheus; nor the barbarians who live along the Eridanus for wearing black in mourning for Phaethon, as they say. Indeed I think it would be even more ridiculous if, while the people of that time, when Phaethon perished, had let the matter drop, those born five or ten generations after the event had then begun to change their clothing on his account and to mourn. And yet that
involves only foolishness, nothing terrible or incurable. But by what reasoning do the wraths of the gods, which at first sink from view like certain rivers, then later rise again upon other people and end in the utmost calamities?" When he first paused, I, fearing he might start over again and bring in still more and greater absurdities, at once asked him, "Well then," I said, "do you hold all this to be true?" And he said, "If
not all of it," he said, "still some of it—do you not think the argument faces the same difficulty?" "Perhaps," I said, "just as with those who are burning with high fever, whether they happen to be wrapped in one cloak or in many, the heat is the same and much alike, yet it still helps, as a comfort, to remove the excess. But if you do not wish that, let it go—though most of these tales resemble myths and fictions.
Remember rather the recent Theoxenia, and that fine portion which they proclaim is to be set aside and given to the descendants of Pindar—how noble and pleasant the thing appeared to you." "Who," he said, "would not delight in the grace of an honor observed in so Greek and simple, archaic a fashion—if only he had not forged for himself 'a black heart in cold flame,' to use Pindar's own words?" "I pass over, then,"
I said, "a proclamation like this one made at Sparta—'after the Lesbian singer'—proclaimed in honor and memory of the ancient Terpander; for it is the same argument. But you yourselves, I take it, claim to have precedence over others both among the Boeotians, as being of the family of the Opheltiadae, and among the Phocians, through Daiphantus; and you were present with me and joined in helping, first, when for the Lycormae and the Satilaei, in pursuing
their ancestral honor and right of wreath-bearing as descendants of Heracles, I argued that it was especially fitting that honors and favors should remain secure for the descendants of Heracles, since he, having benefited the Greeks, did not himself obtain a worthy return or recompense." "You have reminded us," he said, "of a fine contest indeed, and one very fitting for philosophy." "Then drop," I said, "my good fellow, this vehemence of accusation, and do not
take it bitterly if some are punished for having come from base or wicked stock, or else do not rejoice or praise noble birth when it is honored. For if we preserve gratitude within a family line on account of virtue, then by the same reasoning we ought not to think that punishment must stop short and abandon its claim in the case of wrongdoing, but rather that it should run alongside that same principle, rendering what is deserved in reverse. Now the man who is glad to see the descendants of Cimon
honored at Athens, but is vexed and indignant when the descendants of Lachares or of Ariston are driven out, is altogether too soft and careless—or rather wholly fond of finding fault and ill-disposed toward the divine: for he complains, on the one hand, if the children and children's children of an unjust and wicked man seem to prosper; and complains again, on the other hand, if the families of base men are cut short and disappear, blaming the god equally,
whether the children of a good father fare badly, or equally, whether those of a bad one do." "Let these points, then," I said, "stand as a kind of barrier for you against those who are excessively harsh and accusatory. But taking up again, as it were, the beginning of a thread in an argument about the god that runs dark and full of many windings and wanderings, let us guide ourselves cautiously and gently toward what is likely and probable, since
we cannot state with clarity and certainty even the truth about matters we ourselves do. For instance: why do we bid the children of those who have died of consumption or dropsy to sit with their feet soaked in water until the corpse is burned? For it seems that in this way the disease is thought not to shift its ground or draw near to them. Or again, for what reason, when a goat
takes sea-holly into its mouth, does the whole herd stand stock-still, until the goatherd comes up and removes it? Other powers too have contacts and transmissions beyond belief, working through sharp and far-reaching channels from one thing to another. But we marvel at intervals occurring across time, not across space—and yet it would be more marvelous still if, a plague having taken its start in Ethiopia, Athens should be filled with it and
Pericles should die of it and Thucydides fall ill, than if, when the Delphians and the Sybarites had turned wicked, the justice due should have made its way around and come at last upon their children. For these powers have certain connections and linkages reaching from the last things back to the first, whose cause, even if unknown to us, works out its own proper end in silence." "And yet, surely, the public wraths visited on cities do have
the argument of justice ready to hand. For a city is a single continuous thing, like a living creature, which does not step outside itself through the changes wrought by age, nor become one thing after another through time, but remains ever a sympathetic and united whole with itself, and takes upon itself the responsibility and the credit for everything it does, or has done, as a community, so long as the fellowship that makes and binds it together through its interweavings
preserves its unity. To divide a single city into many, or rather into countless cities, by means of time, is like making the one man into many, on the ground that he is now older, but was younger before, and higher up still was a boy. Rather, this resembles altogether the argument of growth that arose among the sophists from Epicharmus's sayings, according to which the man who once took out a loan long ago
no longer owes it, having become someone else; and the man invited to dinner yesterday comes uninvited today, for he is a different person. And yet the changes that the successive ages of life work upon each of us individually are greater than those which cities undergo in common; for a person who saw Athens thirty years ago would recognize, even now, that its manners and its movements, its playfulness and its earnestness, its graces and
its fits of anger, closely resemble those of old, on the part of the people as a whole—whereas a relative or friend, meeting a man again after a long time, would scarcely recognize his outward form; and the changes of character, readily altered as they are by every argument, every labor, every experience, and every law, and always shifting toward whoever is with them at the time, present an astonishing strangeness and novelty. Yet a man is said to remain one and the same
from birth right to the end, while we think it right that a city, though it remains this same city throughout, should be held liable for the disgraces of its ancestors, by the same right by which it shares in their glory and their power—or else we shall find, without noticing it, that we have thrown all things together into Heraclitus's river, into which he says one cannot step twice, because nature, by moving and altering everything, changes it." "But if a city is one continuous thing,"
then surely also a family, depending as it does from a single origin, possesses a certain power and a fellowship that has grown up together and carries itself forward; and what is begotten has not been separated from its begetter as though it were some artifact once made—for it has come to be out of him, not merely by him; and so it has and carries within itself some part of that man, both being punished appropriately and being honored. And if I may say so without seeming to jest, I would say
that a bronze statue of Cassander, melted down by the Athenians, suffers something more unjust, and that the body of Dionysius, exiled after his death by the Syracusans, suffers something more unjust, than would the punishment of their descendants when they pay the penalty. For in the statue there is nothing at all of Cassander's nature, and the soul of Dionysius has already left the corpse behind; but in Nysaeus and Apollocrates and Antipater and Philip and the other children of wicked men, alike,
the most essential and sovereign part has been implanted and remains present, not quiescent or idle, but living, being nourished, governed, and thinking along with them. And there is nothing terrible or strange in it, if, being of those men, they have what belongs to those men. To put it generally: just as in medicine what is useful is also just, and it is ridiculous for anyone to claim it unjust to cauterize the thumb for those suffering pain in the hip, or
to lance the abdomen when the liver has become ulcerated, or, in the case of cattle whose hooves have grown soft, to anoint the tips of their horns—so too the man who, regarding punishments, holds anything else to be just besides what heals the vice, and who is indignant if the cure is applied to one person through another, as those who open a vein to relieve inflammation of the eye do—such a man seems
to see no further than what strikes the senses at once, nor to remember that a teacher, by disciplining one of his pupils, admonished the rest, and that a general, by putting to death one man out of ten, brought all of them to their senses. And thus certain dispositions, faults, and corrections come about not only from one part to another part of the same body, but also from one soul to another soul, even more than from body to body; for there, it seems, the same
affection must arise and the same change occur, but here the soul, led by its impressions of confidence or fear, is by nature apt to turn out worse or better." While I was still speaking, Olympichus broke in and said, "You seem, in your argument, to be laying down a great foundation—the persistence of the soul." "And it is you," I said, "who are granting it to me—or rather, who have already granted it; for it is on the assumption that
god apportions to us what we deserve that the argument has proceeded thus far." And he said, "Then do you really think it follows, from the gods overseeing and apportioning each of our affairs, that souls exist either wholly indestructible, or that they remain for some time after death?" "No, my good friend," I said, "but the god would be so petty and given to empty concerns, that, though
we have nothing divine in ourselves, nor anything even remotely resembling him, lasting and stable, but instead, like leaves, as Homer said, wither away entirely and perish in a short time, he should take such account of us—like the women who tend and nurse the 'gardens of Adonis' in little pots, nursing creatures of a day that sprout in tender flesh which admits no strong root of life, only to be quenched
at once by whatever chance occasion arises. But if you like, leave the other gods aside, and consider this one of ours right here—whether it seems to you that, though he knows that the souls of the dead perish at once, breathing away from their bodies like mists or smoke, he nevertheless prescribes many propitiations for the departed, and demands great gifts and honors for the dead—thereby deceiving and cheating those who believe him.
For my part, I would not readily give up the persistence of the soul, unless someone, like Heracles, should snatch away the Pythia's tripod and abolish and destroy the oracle. But so long as many such predictions continue to be given even in our own time, such as they say was delivered to Corax of Naxos, it is not a holy thing to condemn the soul to death." And Patrocleas said, "What, then, was
the prophecy," he said, "or who is this Corax? Both the matter and the name are strange to me." "Not at all," I said, "the fault is mine, for using his nickname instead of his real name. The man who killed Archilochus in battle was called Callondas, it seems, but Corax was his nickname. Having been expelled at first by the Pythia as a man who had slain a sacred
of the Muses, he was ordered — after certain supplications and pleas for pardon along with a defense of his case — to go to the dwelling of the Cicada and propitiate the soul of Archilochus. This dwelling was Taenarum; for they say that Tettix the Cretan came there with a colony, founded a city, and settled beside the place where souls are conducted. Similarly the Spartans, when an oracle bade them propitiate the soul of Pausanias, sent for evocators of the dead from Italy, who by sacrifice drew the phantom away from the sanctuary.
“So it is one and the same account,” I said, “that establishes both the god's providence and the persistence of the human soul, and it is not possible to abandon the one while doing away with the other. If the soul continues to exist after death, it is more likely that it also receives both honors and punishments; for it contends, as it were, like an athlete throughout life, and when it has finished its contest, then it obtains what is fitting for it. But whatever recompenses or punishments it receives there, by itself, for the deeds of its former life, are nothing to us the living — they are disbelieved and pass unnoticed; whereas those that pass through children and through one's line, becoming visible to people here, turn many away from wickedness and restrain them. That there is no more shameful or more distressing punishment than to see, because of oneself, evils befalling those who spring from oneself — and that no one, seeing the soul of an impious and lawless man, after his death, looking not upon statues overturned nor upon any honors, but upon children or friends or his own kin meeting with great misfortunes on his account and paying the penalty — no one, I say, would be persuaded that it is a light thing, even with the honors owed to Zeus at stake, to become unjust and unrestrained.
I do have an argument to offer that I recently heard, but I hesitate lest it appear to you a mere myth; so I will use only what is probable.” “By no means,” said Olympichus, “go through that one too” — and since the others made the same request, “allow me,” I said, “to render to the argument first what is probable; afterward, if it seems good, we will bring in the myth, if indeed it is a myth.
“Bion says that the god, in punishing the children of the wicked, is more ridiculous than a doctor who administers medicine to a descendant or child for a disease belonging to his grandfather or father. Now in some respects the two cases are unlike, but in others they resemble and correspond to one another. For in disease, one person's being treated does not cure another, nor has anyone with ophthalmia or a fever ever fared better by seeing another person anointed or plastered with medicine; but the punishments of the wicked are displayed to all for this reason: that it is the work of justice, when carried out according to reason, that some be checked through the punishment of others.
But what Bion compared did not, as it happens, correspond to the matter under inquiry — it escaped his notice. For consider: a man has already fallen into a wretched but not incurable disease, and then through intemperance and softness lets his body be given over to the affliction and ruined by it; his son does not seem to be sick, but only to be disposed in a way suited to the same disease. A doctor, or a household member, or a trainer who has observed this, or a good master, puts him on a strict regimen, removes rich foods and pastries and drinking and women, uses continual medications, and works the body hard with exercises — thus he scatters and dispels the seed of a great affliction while it is still small, not allowing it to grow to its full size.
Is this not just what we urge, when we think it right that people pay attention to themselves and be on guard and not neglect it, whoever is born of fathers or mothers prone to disease, but instead expel at once the ingrafted predisposition, while it is still easily dislodged and precarious, by taking preventive measures?” “Certainly,” they said. “It is, then,” I said, “not an absurd but a necessary thing, nor a ridiculous but a beneficial one, when to the children of epileptics, of the melancholic, and of the gouty we prescribe exercises, diets, and medicines — not because they are sick, but so that they may not become sick. For a body born from a diseased body deserves not punishment but treatment and watchful care; and if anyone, because such treatment removes pleasures and brings on stinging pain and toil, calls it a punishment inflicted out of cowardice and softness, he may be dismissed without concern.
Well then — if a body that is the offspring of a defective body deserves to be treated and guarded, must a hereditary likeness of vice, sprouting and springing up in a young character, be left alone and awaited and allowed to bide its time, until, poured out into the passions, it becomes visible and 'brings to light the wicked fruit of its mind,' as Pindar says?” “Or is it that in this respect the god is no wiser than Hesiod, who bids and enjoins us not to beget offspring 'on returning from a doleful funeral, but from the feast of the immortals' — meaning that not only vice and virtue but also grief and joy and all such things are received by the process of generation, and so we should approach begetting cheerful, glad, and at ease?
But the following is not, according to Hesiod, nor is it a work of human wisdom at all, but of god's: to discern and perceive the resemblances of temperament and their differences before the passions, falling into great wrongdoing, make them manifest. For the cubs of bears and the whelps of wolves and of apes display their kindred character at once, while still infants, disguised and covered over by nothing; but human nature, casting itself into customs, opinions, and laws, hides its bad qualities and often imitates the good, so that it either entirely effaces and escapes the inborn stain of vice, or else conceals it for a long time — wrapping its own knavery about itself as though in a husk — and eludes us, who barely perceive the vice of each wrongdoing as though from a single blow or bite, and rather suppose that people become altogether unjust only when they act unjustly, licentious only when they commit outrage, and cowardly only when they flee — just as if one were to suppose that scorpions grow their sting only when they strike, and vipers their venom only when they bite: a foolish notion.
For each wicked person does not come into being and become manifest at the same moment; rather, he possesses the vice from the beginning, but employs it once he seizes upon opportunity and power — the thief turns to stealing, the tyrannically inclined to lawbreaking. But the god surely neither fails to know each person's disposition and nature, since it is his nature to perceive the soul rather than the body, nor does he wait to punish violence once it has come into action by the hands, or impudence once it is voiced, or licentiousness once it is manifest in the body's organs; for he does not avenge himself on the wrongdoer by having first suffered ill, nor grow angry at the robber by having been forcibly robbed, nor hate the adulterer by having been outraged — but for the sake of healing he often punishes the man prone to adultery, or to greed, or to injustice, destroying the vice, as it were, like an epileptic seizure, before it has taken hold.”
“We, however, were just now indignant that the wicked pay the penalty late and slowly; and now, because the god checks the tendency and disposition of some even before they do wrong, we find fault with that too — not realizing that what is future and hidden is often worse and more fearsome than what has already occurred and is manifest, and that we are unable to reckon up the reasons why it is better to let some go even after they have done wrong, while forestalling others while they are still only intending it — just as, of course, medicines do not suit some who are sick, while they benefit others who are not sick but are in a more precarious condition than those who are. Hence the gods do not turn all the failings of parents upon their offspring; rather, if a good man is born of a bad one, as a healthy man is born of a sickly one, he is released from the penalty owed to his lineage, having been, so to speak, disowned by its vice.
But a young man who through resemblance is carried back into a wicked line owes it, as though a debt of inheritance, to receive the punishment due to its wickedness in turn. For it was not on Demetrius' account that Antigonus paid the penalty, nor, of the heroes of old, was it on Augeas' account that Phyleus did, nor on Neleus' account that Nestor did; for these were good men sprung from bad ones. But whoever's nature has cherished and taken to itself the family likeness — these are the ones that justice, pursuing the resemblance of the vice, has gone after and punished. For just as warts, dark blemishes, and moles, vanishing in the children of their fathers, have reappeared later in grandsons and granddaughters — and a certain Greek woman, having borne a black infant and then being tried for adultery, discovered that she was, four generations back, descended from an Ethiopian —
and among the children of Pytho of Nisibis, who died not long ago, and who was said to belong to the Sown Men, one of them bore on his body the mark of a spear-point, which after so long a time rose up and emerged, as it were from the depths, from the family resemblance — so too the characters and passions of the soul are often hidden by the first generations and submerged, but later, sometimes even through other lines, they blossom forth again and give back what is proper to nature, whether for vice or for virtue.”
When I had said this and fallen silent, Olympichus smiled and said, “We are not praising you, lest we seem to be letting the myth go, as though the argument were sufficient proof on its own — but we will render our verdict only once we have heard that one too.” So then I said that Thespesius of Soli, a kinsman and friend of that Protogenes who lived in our own time here,
having spent the earlier part of his life in great licentiousness, then quickly squandering his estate, for a time also became wicked out of necessity; and pursuing wealth out of a change of heart, he suffered the same thing that happens to licentious men who, while they have their wives, do not guard them, but once they have let them go, try again to seduce them unjustly when they are now with other men. Abstaining from no shameful act that offered enjoyment or profit, he amassed not much property but, in a short time, the greatest possible reputation for depravity.
What discredited him most was an oracle brought back from Amphilochus's shrine; for having sent to ask the god, it seems, whether he would live the rest of his life better, the god replied that he would fare better once he had died. And indeed, in a certain manner, this came to pass for him not long after.
For he was thrown headlong from some height onto his neck, and though no wound resulted, only the blow, he died from it; and on the third day, just as the funeral rites were being performed, he revived. Quickly regaining his strength and coming to himself, he brought about an incredible change in his manner of life: for the Cilicians of that time knew no man more just in his dealings, none more pious toward the divine, none more painful to his enemies or more steadfast to his friends. So those who met him longed to hear the reason for the change, not supposing — rightly, as it turned out — that so great a transformation of character had come about from any chance cause, as he himself related to Protogenes and to those of his friends who were similarly upright.
For when his power of understanding had left his body, at first he experienced what a helmsman might experience if he were flung from his ship into the deep; but then, gradually rising, he seemed to breathe freely again with his whole self and to look about on every side, as though the soul had opened a single eye. He saw none of the things he had seen before, only stars of enormous size and immeasurable distance from one another, sending out a light marvelous in color and possessing great intensity, so that the soul, riding upon it as though in a calm, moved everywhere easily and swiftly through the light.
Passing over most of the sights, he said that the souls of the dying, rising up from below, formed a fiery bubble as the air gave way; then, as the bubble gently broke, they emerged bearing a human shape, but slight in bulk, and moving not all in the same way — some leapt out with wondrous lightness and darted straight upward, while others whirled around in a circle like spindles, and, inclining now downward, now upward, were carried along in a mixed and disordered motion, only after a very long time and with difficulty settling into a steady course. Most of them he did not know who they were; but seeing two or three acquaintances, he tried to approach and speak to them. They, however, neither heard him nor were in possession of themselves, but, frantic and terrified, avoiding every sight and touch, wandered about at first alone by themselves, then, meeting others in a similarly disordered state and becoming entangled with them, were borne along in every direction without any judgment, and gave out inarticulate cries, like wails mingled with lamentation and fear.
Others, higher up at the outer edge of the encompassing region, appeared bright, and drawing near to one another repeatedly out of goodwill, turned away from those disordered ones — showing, it seemed, by their contraction into themselves their displeasure, and by their expansion and diffusion their joy and welcome. There he said he saw the soul of a certain kinsman, though not clearly, for the man had died while he himself was still a child; but it drew near and said, 'Greetings, Thespesius.' Astonished, he replied that he was not Thespesius but Aridaeus;
but the other said, 'That was your name before; from now on you are Thespesius. For you have not really died, but by some dispensation of the gods you have come here with your understanding, while you have left the rest of your soul, like an anchor, in your body. And let this be a sign to you, now and hereafter: the souls of the dead cast no shadow and do not blink.' Hearing this, Thespesius gathered himself together the more, by reasoning it out,
and, looking closely, saw that with himself there hovered a faint and shadowy line, while those others were illuminated all around and were translucent — though not all alike. Some sent forth one smooth, continuous, and even color, like the purest full moon; in others certain scaly patches ran across, or scattered bruises; others still were altogether mottled and strange to look upon, like vipers, marked with black blotches; and others had faint scratches upon them. And so the kinsman of Thespesius went on explaining each thing to him — for nothing prevents calling the souls by the names of human beings — how Adrasteia, daughter of Necessity and Zeus, is stationed as avenger of all wrongdoing, highest of all, and no wrongdoer, however great or however small, has ever escaped her notice, whether by stealth or by force;
and how there are three different punishments, each assigned to its own guardian and executioner. Those who are punished at once, in the body and through the body, are dealt with by swift retribution, in a comparatively gentle manner, passing over many things that need further purification; but those whose vice requires a greater work of healing are handed over by the guardian spirit, after death, to Justice;
while those who are altogether incurable, once Justice has rejected them, are pursued by the third and fiercest of Adrasteia's servants, the Fury, who chases them as they wander and flee, each in a different direction, and pitiably and harshly annihilates them all and submerges them in what is unspeakable and unseen. 'Of the other modes of retribution,' he said, 'the one inflicted by Punishment in life resembles the barbarian...'
So it seems. For just as among the Persians they strip off the garments and tiaras of those being punished and scourge them, while the victims weep and beg them to stop, so too punishments carried out through money and through the body have no sharp edge and do not take hold of the vice itself, but for the most part aim only at reputation and at the victim's own sensation. But whoever arrives there undisciplined and unpurified,
him Justice takes and lays bare to the soul's view, naked, with nothing into which he can sink or hide or cover over his depravity, but seen from every side, by everyone, and in every part. She shows him first to his good parents, if such they were, or to his ancestors, as an object of loathing and unworthy of them; but if they were base men, having watched them punished and having been seen by them in turn, he is made to answer for justice a long time, each of his passions being drawn out of him
with pains and torments that exceed in magnitude and intensity those inflicted through the flesh by as much as waking reality is more vivid than a dream. Scars and weals remain on the soul from each passion, in some more lasting, in others less so. "Observe," he said, "these varied and manifold colors of souls: the murky and filthy one is the stain of meanness and greed,
and the blood-red, fiery one is that of cruelty and bitterness; and wherever the sea-green shows, from there some incontinence about pleasures has been scraped away, though with difficulty; and malice mixed with envy gives off this livid, festering color, just as cuttlefish give off their black ink. For there, in life, it was the vice of the soul, itself turned about by the passions and in turn turning the body, that produced these colors; but here
is the very end of purification and punishment, when these stains, once smoothed away, leave the soul entirely radiant and of a single uniform hue. But as long as they remain, there occur certain relapses of the passions, with throbbings and leapings, in some souls faint and quickly extinguished, in others straining violently. Of these, some, having been punished again and again, recover their proper state and disposition, while others
are dragged once more into the bodies of animals by the sheer violence of ignorance and love of pleasure. For the one, ignorance, through weakness of reason and idleness in contemplation, tips the soul toward the active, practical life, toward becoming; the other, love of pleasure, needing an instrument for its incontinence, longs to stitch its desires to enjoyments and to be carried along together through a body: for here there is nothing present but some imperfect shadow and dream of a pleasure that never reaches fulfillment." Having said this,
he led him quickly through what seemed an immense space, traversing it easily and without going astray, as though borne up on wings by the rays of the light, until, on arriving at a kind of great chasm reaching downward, he was left behind by the power that had been carrying him. And he saw the other souls undergoing the same thing there: drawing themselves together like birds and swooping down, they circled around the chasm
— for they did not dare to cross straight through it — which within appeared, like the caves of Bacchic revelers, decked out all over with foliage, greenery, and the fresh shoots of every kind of flower; and it breathed out a soft, gentle breeze that carried up scents of wonderful pleasure, producing a blending such as wine works in those growing drunk. For the souls, feasting on the fragrances, were suffused with delight and showed one another affection,
and all around the place was filled with revelry and laughter and every kind of music from those playing and taking their pleasure. He said it was here that Dionysus ascended to the gods, and afterward led Semele up as well; and that the place is called Lethe. For this reason the guide would not let Thespesius linger, wishful though he was, but pulled him away by force, teaching him as he did so that the rational part of the soul is melted and dissolved by
pleasure, while the irrational, bodily part, watered and made fleshly, creates in the soul a memory of the body, and out of that memory a longing and desire that draws it toward becoming — which is accordingly called a "leaning" toward earth, since the soul is weighed down by moisture. Having then traveled another such distance, he seemed to see a great mixing bowl, and streams pouring into it, one whiter than sea-foam or snow,
another the color of the purple that blooms in the rainbow, and others tinted with still other dyes, each having its own particular gleam when seen from a distance; but as they drew near, that bowl — once what surrounded it had vanished and the colors had grown faint — kept only the more flowery hue, except for the whiteness. And he saw three deities sitting together in the shape of a triangle, blending the streams with one another according to certain measures. Then
the guide of Thespesius's soul said that Orpheus had advanced only this far, when he went in search of his wife's soul, and, not remembering well, brought back to mankind a false report — that there was a shared oracle at Delphi of Apollo and Night; for Night shares nothing in common with Apollo. "But this," he said, "is a shared oracle of Night and the Moon, having no fixed place on earth and no single seat,
but wandering everywhere among men in dreams and phantoms; for it is from this source, as you see, that dreams arise, mixing the simple and the true with the deceptive and the manifold, and scattering it about. But you did not see the oracle of Apollo," he said, "nor will you be able to see it; for the earthly part of the soul does not rise so high, nor does it slacken, but is held taut, tethered to the body." At the same time
he tried, bringing him closer, to show him the light from the tripod, resting, as he said, on Parnassus through the folds of Themis. And though eager to see it, he could not, because of its brightness; but as he passed by he heard the shrill voice of a woman speaking in verse of various other matters, and, it seemed, of the time of his own death. The daimon told him the voice was the Sibyl's,
for she sang of things to come as she was carried around on the face of the moon. Wishing then to hear more, he was thrust back in the opposite direction by the rush of the moon, as in an eddy, and caught only a little of it — among which was the coming destruction of Mount Vesuvius and of Dicaearchia by fire, and a small fragment about the ruler of that time, that though he was noble in nature, through illness
he would lay down his tyranny. After this they turned to the spectacle of those undergoing punishment. At first the sights he saw were only distressing and pitiable; but when Thespesius, quite unexpectedly, came upon friends, relatives, and acquaintances among those being punished, who, enduring terrible sufferings and shameful, painful torments, cried out to him in pity and wept aloud, at last he caught sight of his own
father, emerging from a kind of pit, covered with brands and scars, stretching out his hands to him and not being allowed to keep silent, but forced by those set over the punishments to confess that, having become guilty of a crime against certain guest-friends who possessed gold, he had destroyed them with poison, and though he had escaped everyone's notice there, here he had been exposed, and having already suffered some of his penalty was being led away to suffer more. He did not dare to plead or beg mercy
on his father's behalf, out of shock and fear; and wishing to turn back and flee, he no longer saw that gentle, familiar guide, but, pushed forward by certain other fearsome-looking beings, as though it were necessary to pass through in this way, he observed that among those who had become notorious in wickedness and had already been punished there, the shadow-self was no longer being worn away so harshly or in the same manner,
since the pain concerned the irrational, passionate part, which was already worn down by toil; but as for those who had wrapped themselves in a pretense and reputation of virtue and lived their lives with a hidden vice, other beings standing around them forced them, painfully and grievously, to turn what was within to the outside of the soul, writhing unnaturally and bending back on themselves, like sea-centipedes that, having swallowed the hook, turn themselves inside out; and some they flayed and unfolded, exposing them as festering
and mottled, their depravity residing in the reasoning, governing part. He said he saw other souls too, coiled together like vipers, two, three, or more at once, devouring one another out of rancor and ill will for what they had suffered or done to one another while alive. And there were also lakes lying side by side, one boiling round about with gold, another most frigid with lead, another rough with iron,
and certain daimons stood over them, like smiths, with their instruments, taking up and lowering by turns the souls of those made wicked through insatiability and greed. For in the gold they threw them, once they had become red-hot and translucent from the burning, dipping them next into the lead; and once they had hardened there and become as hard as hailstones, they transferred them again into the iron; and there
they turned terribly black, and, shattering because of their hardness and being crushed, they changed their forms; then in this state they were carried back once more into the gold, enduring, as he said, terrible pains in each change. But of all of them, he said, those suffered most pitiably who, having already seemed to be released from justice, were then seized again — these were the ones through whom the penalty had come round upon certain descendants or children.
For whenever one of these descendants arrived and came upon them, the punished soul fell upon him in anger, cried out, and displayed the marks of its sufferings, reproaching him and pursuing him as he tried to flee and hide, unable to escape; for the tormentors quickly ran after him toward the punishment, and from the very start hurried him along as he wailed, already knowing what torment awaited him through foreknowledge. He said that with some souls many of their descendants at once were fastened on, just like bees
or bats, clinging on quite literally and shrieking out of memory and anger for what they had suffered because of them. Last of all, as he watched, he saw the souls turning toward a second birth bent by force into all sorts of animals and reshaped by those who fashion such things, using certain instruments and blows — some driving whole limbs together, others twisting them back, some smoothing away and obliterating entirely,
so that the soul might fit other characters and lives. Among these he saw the soul of Nero, already in a wretched state generally, and pierced through with red-hot nails. And when the craftsmen had prepared for this soul too the shape of a Pindaric viper, in which, conceived within it and eating its way out through its mother, it was to live, he said a great light suddenly shone out, and a voice came from the light commanding them to change it instead into another, gentler kind of creature,
contriving something like a singing creature that lives about marshes and pools; for he had already paid the penalty for the wrongs he had done, but something good was also owed him by the gods, because he had freed the best and most god-beloved of the peoples subject to him, namely Greece. Up to this point, then, he had only been a spectator; but as he was about to turn back, he fell into utter dread, for a certain woman took hold of him,
wondrous in form and stature, and said, "Come here, you, so that you may remember each thing all the better." And she brought toward him a kind of small red-hot rod, such as painters use, but another woman prevented her. And he himself, as though suddenly snatched up by a violent, forceful blast as from a pipe, fell back into his body and opened his eyes, finding himself almost exactly at his own tomb.

======== Moralia: De Sollertia Animalium ========

AUTOBULUS. When Leonidas was asked what sort of man he considered Tyrtaeus to be, he said, "A good poet for whittling down the souls of the young" — meaning that through his verses he instilled in the young an impulse accompanied by spirit and love of honor, so that in battles they had no regard for their own lives. So I am afraid, my friends, that the encomium of hunting that was read yesterday may likewise rouse our young hunting-enthusiasts beyond due measure, so that they will
come to think everything else a mere side issue and nothing at all, and will be swept wholly toward this one pursuit — seeing that I myself seem, though well past the age for it, to have become more passionately affected than before, starting again as if from youth, and to long, like Euripides' Phaedra, "to call out to the hounds as I press close upon the dappled deer": so much did the argument touch me, bringing forward its many persuasive points, one after another. On the Cleverness of Animals. SOCLARUS. What you say is true, Autobulus:
for that man too seemed to me to be reviving his rhetorical powers after a long interval, indulging the young men and sharing their springtime enthusiasm. But I was especially delighted when he set beside his argument the gladiators, as no small proof that the art of hunting deserves praise, because it takes what is by nature in us, or has been learned, as delight in the combats of men against one another by the sword, and turns the greater part of it in this direction instead, providing a clean spectacle, in which skill and daring, informed by intelligence,
are pitted against senseless strength and violence, and it approves the Euripidean line: "Slight indeed is the strength of a man, but by the versatility of his wits he subdues the dread tribes of the sea, of the earth, and of the air." AUTOBULUS. And yet, dear Soclarus, they say that from that very source — hunting — there has come upon men insensibility and savagery, once it has tasted blood and been habituated, in hunts and chases, to
the blood and wounds of animals, not to be troubled by them but to delight in creatures being slaughtered and dying. Then, just as at Athens the first man put to death by the Thirty as a sycophant was said to deserve it, and the second likewise, and the third — and from this, advancing little by little, they went on to lay hands on decent men and in the end did not spare even the best citizens — so too the first man who killed a bear or a wolf won praise for it,
and then some ox or pig that had tasted of meat set out for sacrifice was charged and thought to deserve death; and from there deer, and hares, and gazelles came to be eaten, and in some places they went on to provide the flesh of sheep and dogs, and even of horses. "But the tame goose and the dove, a pet of the household hearth" — Sophocles' phrase — men tear apart and cut to pieces not, like weasels and cats, for food out of hunger, but for pleasure and as a relish,
and in doing so they have strengthened whatever in their nature is bloodthirsty and beastlike and have made it unyielding to pity, while they have blunted the greater part of their gentleness. So too, conversely, the Pythagoreans made gentleness toward beasts into a training exercise for humanity and compassion; for habit is a fearful thing, carrying a man far by means of the feelings that become, little by little, ingrained in him. But somehow, I do not know how, we who have been occupied with arguments have forgotten ourselves, cut off neither from what happened among us yesterday
nor from what is soon likely to happen today. For having declared yesterday, as you know, that in some manner all animals share in thought and reasoning, we provided our hunting-mad young men with a not unrefined or ungraceful contest concerning the intelligence of creatures of sea and of land, which, it seems, we are to judge today — if indeed Aristotimus and Phaedimus stand by their challenges. Of those two, the one, holding that the earth produces animals superior in intelligence, offered himself as advocate for his companions, while the other did the same for the sea. SOCLARUS. They do stand by them, Autobulus, and any moment now they will be here — for I saw them at dawn already marshalling their arguments. But if you wish, before the contest let us take up again among ourselves whatever, of yesterday's discussion, found no occasion to be said,
or was said over wine and in the course of drinking without due seriousness. For it seemed to me that something rather businesslike was, as it were, echoing from the Stoa — the notion that as the immortal is opposed to the mortal, and the imperishable to the perishable, and the incorporeal to body, so likewise, since the rational exists, the irrational must be opposed to it and stand over against it, and this pairing alone should not be left, among so many such correlative pairs, incomplete
and crippled, lacking its counterpart. AUTOBULUS. But who, dear Soclarus, would think it fitting, granted that the rational exists among things, that the irrational should not exist? For it is abundant and plentiful in all things that have no share of soul, and we need no further opposite to the rational; rather, everything soulless simply, as irrational and unthinking, stands opposed to that which, possessing soul, has reason
and understanding. But if someone claims that nature is not truncated but that ensouled nature possesses, in part, the rational, and in part, the irrational, another will claim that ensouled nature possesses, in part, the capacity for imagination, and in part lacks imagination, and, in part, the capacity for sensation, and in part lacks sensation — so that nature may possess these paired and opposed states and privations concerning the same class of thing,
as though holding them in balance. But if it is absurd to seek, within the ensouled, a part that has sensation and a part that lacks it, and a part that forms images and a part that does not, on the ground that every ensouled thing by nature immediately has both sensation and the capacity for imagination — then such a person, too, will not reasonably demand that a part of the ensouled be rational and a part irrational, when arguing against men who suppose that nothing shares in sensation
which does not also share in understanding, and that nothing is an animal in which there is not present, just as sensation and impulse are present by nature, some measure of judgment and reasoning as well. For nature — which, they say, does everything rightly for some purpose and with reference to something — did not make the animal capable of sensation for the bare purpose of its being affected by something and perceiving it; rather, since some things are congenial to it and many others alien,
it would not have been possible for it to survive even a moment without learning to guard against the one and to go along with the other. Now sensation supplies to each creature knowledge of both alike, but as for the responses that follow upon sensation — the seizing and pursuing of what is beneficial, and the fending off and fleeing of what is destructive and painful — there is no way for these to be present in creatures not naturally disposed to reason about something, to judge, to remember, and to attend; rather,
if you take away entirely from them expectation, memory, purpose, preparation, hoping, fearing, desiring, being distressed, then eyes and ears, even if present, are of no use to them at all; and it would be better for a creature having no use for all sensation and imagination to be rid of them altogether than to labor and be pained and suffer, when nothing is present by which it might fend these things off. And yet there is an argument of Strato the natural philosopher, demonstrating that
perceiving at all does not occur without thinking; for indeed letters, often, as we pass our eyes over them, and words falling upon our hearing, escape our notice and slip by us while our mind is fixed on other things; then afterward the mind returns and runs after and pursues each of the things let slip, picking them up again — whence the saying, "mind sees and mind hears, all else is deaf and blind," as though the affection
that occurs in the eyes and ears produces no perception at all unless the thinking faculty is present. That is why King Cleomenes, when at a drinking party a performer was being much applauded, and he was asked whether it did not seem to him excellent, told the others to judge for themselves, for his own mind, he said, was in the Peloponnese. Hence it is necessary that in all creatures capable of sensation the capacity for thought also be present, if it is by thinking that we are by nature capable of sensing. But suppose it granted that
sensation does not need the mind for its own function; still, whenever, in the animal, sensation has done its work of producing a distinction between what is congenial and what is alien, and then departs, what is it that remembers, and that already fears the things that cause pain and longs for the things that are beneficial, and, when these are not present, contrives how they will be present, preparing for itself refuges and hiding-places, and, again, snares
for the creatures it will catch, and means of escape from those attacking it? And indeed those men wear us out by saying just these things, in their introductory treatises, whenever they define "purpose" as "a signal of completion," and "design" as "an impulse before an impulse," and "preparation" as "an action before an action," and "memory" as "the retention of a proposition that has passed, of which the present instance was grasped from sensation" — for none of these is anything other than rational, and all of them
belong to all animals, just as, indeed, do the things concerning conceptions, which they call "notions" when stored up and "acts of thought" when set in motion; and all the emotions in common they agree to call "faulty judgments and opinions." It is astonishing, then, that they overlook, in beasts, the many deeds and movements of spirited anger, and many of fear, and, by Zeus, of envy and jealousy as well, while they themselves
punish dogs and horses when they do wrong, not idly but for the sake of correction, producing in them distress through pain, which we call repentance. Of pleasure, that which comes through the ears has the name "enchantment," and that which comes through the eyes, "bewitchment"; and men employ both against beasts. For deer and horses are enchanted by pipes and flutes, and men call crabs forth from their burrows
by forcing them out with hissing sounds, and they say that the shad-fish rises and comes forward when men sing and clap. The owl, in turn, is caught by being bewitched, as it strives, in eager delight, to match well with its shoulders the rhythm of those dancing before its eyes. But those who speak foolishly about these matters, saying that animals feel neither pleasure nor anger nor fear nor make preparation nor remember, but that the bee "remembers, as it were,"
and the swallow "prepares, as it were," and the lion "is angered, as it were," and the deer "is afraid, as it were" — I do not know what they will do with those who say that animals do not see or hear at all, but "see, as it were," and "hear, as it were," and do not even make sounds, but "make sounds, as it were," and do not live at all, but "live, as it were." For these statements are said no less contrary to plain evidence than the others, as
I for my part am persuaded. SOCLARUS. Then count me too, Autobulus, as persuaded of these points. But as for setting the ways of animals, their lives, their conduct, and their manner of living beside human characters, lives, actions, and modes of living, I see much else that falls short, and, above all, I see in them no clear striving toward virtue — the very thing for the sake of which reason has come into being — nor any advance toward it, nor any desire for it; and so I am at a loss how nature could have given them
the starting point, if they are unable to arrive at the goal. AUTOBULUS. But this, Soclarus, does not seem strange even to those men themselves, the philosophers: at any rate, though they set down affection for one's offspring as the starting point, for us, of community and justice, and though they see this affection present in animals in abundant and strong measure, they deny that animals share in justice at all, and do not think it fitting. Yet mules lack nothing of the generative parts:
for indeed, having both the genitals and the wombs, and the capacity to use them with pleasure, they nonetheless do not arrive at the end result, namely offspring. Consider it from another angle too, whether it is not actually laughable to say that men like Socrates and men like Plato consort with vice no less light than that of any chance slave, but are equally senseless and unrestrained and unjust — and then to fault the beasts for not being
pure and perfectly refined toward virtue, treating this as a privation rather than as a fault and weakness of reason, and this while agreeing that vice itself is something rational, of which every beast is full to overflowing — for indeed we see cowardice present in many of them, and lack of restraint, and injustice, and ill will. Whoever claims that what is not by nature disposed to receive rightness of reason does not, by nature, receive reason at all, differs in no way, first of all, from one who would claim that an ape
does not by nature share in ugliness, or that a tortoise does not deserve to be called slow, on the ground that neither is capable of receiving beauty or speed; and, further, he fails to see the crucial distinction: reason arises by nature, but excellent and perfect reason arises from care and instruction. Hence a share in the rational belongs to all ensouled beings. But the rightness and wisdom that they go looking for — they cannot say that even man possesses it as something acquired. For just as
there is a difference between one kind of sight and another, and between one kind of flight and another — hawks do not see as cicadas do, nor do eagles fly as partridges do — so too not every rational being shares equally in the supreme suppleness and sharpness that has been discovered; since indeed many examples of sociability, of courage, and of cunning in matters of provisioning and household management are found in animals, just as, on the other hand, examples of
injustice, cowardice, and foolishness are found in them too. And what has now taken place among our young men bears witness to this very point: as though there really were some difference at issue, some claim that land creatures, others that sea creatures, have been advanced by nature more toward virtue — which indeed becomes clear when horses and hippopotamuses are compared to storks; for the one kind feeds its parents, while the other kills them so that it may
mate with its mothers; and among doves and partridges: for partridges destroy and spoil the eggs, since the female, while she is brooding, does not accept mating — while doves, on the contrary, share the care between them, warming the eggs in turn, and the male is the first to feed the chicks, and if the female wanders off for too long, he strikes her and drives her back to the eggs and the chicks. As for donkeys
and sheep, Antipater, in charging them with neglect of cleanliness, somehow overlooked the lynxes and the swallows, of which the former go out of their way entirely to hide and conceal their lynx-stone, while the swallows teach their chicks, by turning them around, to void their droppings outside the nest. And yet why do we not call one tree more ignorant than another tree, as we call a sheep more cowardly than a dog, nor one vegetable more unmanly than another vegetable, as we call a deer more cowardly than a lion? Or
just as, among things that cannot move at all, one is not slower than another, nor, among things that cannot speak, is one softer-voiced than another, so too there is no such thing as one animal being more cowardly, or more sluggish, or more intemperate than another, among creatures that do not all by nature possess the capacity for thought, but possess it, in different creatures, differently, according to more and less, and this is what has produced the differences we observe? SOCLARUS. But it is a marvel how greatly man surpasses the animals in aptitude for learning and in quickness of mind, and in matters concerning
justice and community. AUTOBULUS. Yes, and indeed among animals too, my friend, many, whether through greatness of size or swiftness of foot or keenness of sight, are found remembering — while others are full of confusion and, having gone out of their minds, fail to recognize the faces most dear to them and flee the surroundings they were reared in; and it seems that in this either they fail to perceive what is plainly the case, or, perceiving what actually results from it, they choose to contend against the truth out of love of victory. SOCLARUS. You seem to me
to be hinting rightly: for the philosophers of the Stoa and of the Peripatetic school strain especially hard toward the opposite conclusion in their argument, since justice, they say, has no other origin, and becomes wholly unstable and non-existent, if all animals share in reason; for it then follows either that we necessarily act unjustly, in not sparing them, or that, if we do not make use of them, life becomes impossible and impracticable; and in a certain way
...we shall be living the life of wild beasts, if we give up the uses we get from animals. I pass over the countless myriads of Nomads and Cave-dwellers who know no food but flesh and nothing else; but for us, who suppose we live in a gentle and civilized way, what work is left undone on land, what in the sea, what skill in the mountains, what refinement of diet, if, as is fitting, we learn to deal without harm and with due caution with all animals, since they are rational and akin to us? That is not easy to say. So then we have no remedy or cure that does not either destroy life or leave us at a loss over justice, unless we keep to the ancient boundary and law by which, according to Hesiod, he who divided the natures and set each kind apart ordained that fish and beasts and winged birds should eat one another, "since there is no justice among them," but to human beings he gave justice toward one another. Where there is no possibility of just dealing on the part of animals toward us, there is likewise no possibility of our doing them wrong; and indeed those who have put forward this argument have left neither any broad nor any narrow path by which justice could find its way in besides this one.
"These, my friend," said Autobulus, "are the sentiments those men have spoken 'from the heart,' yet we should not, as with women in hard labor, fasten a birth-charm on the philosophers so that they may bring forth justice for us easily and without travail. For not even they themselves grant Epicurus, for the sake of the greatest matters, so small and trivial a thing as letting a single atom swerve the least little bit, so that stars and living creatures and chance might find a way in and what depends on us not be lost — and yet they think it proper to posit, as though it were something already established and needing no proof, an unclear and undemonstrated claim about animals as the basis for their argument about justice, when it is neither agreed upon nor otherwise demonstrated. For justice has, in that other matter, a different path, not so treacherous and steep, nor one that leads through things overturned by plain evidence, but the path which, under Plato's guidance, my own son here points out, Soclarus — your companion too — to those who are willing not to wrangle but to follow and to learn.
Since indeed that man is not altogether free of injustice who treats animals in this way, Empedocles and Heraclitus accept as true, often lamenting and reviling nature as a thing of necessity and war, having nothing unmixed or pure in it but accomplished through many unjust sufferings; where they even say that generation itself comes about from injustice, the mortal joining with the immortal, and that what is begotten is nourished contrary to nature, torn from the limbs of its begetter. Yet these views appear too harsh and bitter, unmixed with anything gentler; there is another, more fitting consolation, one that does not strip animals of reason but preserves justice in our dealing with them as is fitting — a consolation which the wise men of old introduced, but which gluttony, joined with love of luxury, cast out and destroyed once it had taken hold,
and which Pythagoras later took up again, teaching that men benefit without doing wrong. For those do no wrong who punish and kill only what is utterly unsociable and harmful, while making tame and useful for our needs whatever is gentle and friendly to humankind, each according to what it is naturally suited for — the breeding of horses and donkeys and the begetting of bulls — gifts which the Prometheus of Aeschylus says he gave us "in place of slaves, to take over our labors"; and using dogs we keep watch, and pasture goats and sheep, milking and shearing them. For human life is not taken away, nor is our livelihood destroyed, if we do not have platters of fish or goose livers, and do not cut up oxen or kids for the sake of feasting, nor, idling in theaters or amusing ourselves in hunts, force some creatures to fight unwillingly and destroy others that by nature have no means of defending themselves.
For I think that the one who plays and the one played with ought to be treated as fellow-players and with cheerfulness, not as Bion said children do, throwing stones at frogs in play — the boys playing, but the frogs no longer playing but truly dying — so it is with those who hunt and fish for their own delight while the creatures suffer and die in agony, and with those who are led off pitifully as cubs and fledglings. For it is not those who make use of animals who do wrong, but those who use them harmfully and carelessly and with cruelty."
"Hold on, Autobulus," said Soclarus, "and set aside for a moment the door of your indictment; for here approach many young men, all fond of hunting, whom it is not easy to convert and not necessary to distress." "You are right to advise this," said Autobulus; "but I know well Eubiotus and my own cousin Ariston, and the sons of Dionysius from Delphi, Aeacides and this Aristotimus here, and then Nicander the son of Euthydamus — men "skilled" in the hunting of land creatures, as Homer says, and for that reason likely to side with Aristotimus; just as, on the other side, these islanders and coast-dwellers, Heracleon of Megara and Philostratus the Euboean, "to whom the works of the sea are dear," whom Phaedimus keeps about him. As for the son of Tydeus, you would not know to which side he belongs — I mean this age-mate of ours,
Optatus, who has adorned Artemis the Huntress and Dictynna alike with many first-fruits of the chase, both of the sea and of the mountains; here he is, plainly making his way toward us, as though he means to attach himself to neither side. Or do we guess wrongly, dear Optatus, that you will be a common and impartial arbiter for the young men?" Optatus: "You surmise quite rightly, Autobulus; for long ago the law of Solon has lapsed, the one that punished those who, in a civil dispute, joined neither side."
Autobulus: "Come then, sit down here with us, so that, if we should need a witness, we may not trouble the books of Aristotle, but, following your testimony out of experience, cast our vote truly on what is said." Soclarus: "Well then, young men, has some agreement been reached among you about the order of speaking?" Phaedimus: "It has, Soclarus, though not without much rivalry; and then, by Euripides, the child of fortune —" the lot was cast on this, assigning to land creatures the right to argue their case before those of the sea. Socrates: "It is time then, Aristotimus, for you to speak and for us to listen."
Aristotimus: "The market feeds those who go to law, but for the other creatures their offspring consume much, running about among the females at the time of birth; and the kind of gray mullet they call the sea-bream feeds on its own slime; while the octopus sits in winter in a house without fire and in wretched dwellings, eating itself, so idle or so senseless or so gluttonous, or guilty of all of these together, is it. For this reason Plato, again, when legislating, forbade — or rather prayed against — the young acquiring a passion for hunting in the sea; for it affords no exercise of courage nor practice of wisdom, nor any of the training in strength
or speed or movement that men undergo in contests against bass or conger-eels or parrot-fish — whereas here on land the spirited animals exercise the love of danger and courage found in fighters, the cunning ones the thoughtfulness and intelligence of those who lay ambushes, and the swift ones the vigor and endurance of those who pursue. And these qualities have made hunting on land a noble thing; but fishing has won honor from nothing,
nor has any god thought it worthy — no one, my friend, is called "conger-slayer," as Apollo is called "wolf-slayer," nor "mullet-striker," as Artemis is called "deer-striker." And what wonder is there in this, when even for a human being it is nobler to catch a boar or a stag, or, by Zeus, a gazelle or a hare, than to buy one, while it is more dignified to buy a tunny or a crayfish or a bonito than to catch it oneself by fishing? For the ignoble
and altogether resourceless and unskilled character of these creatures has made the hunting of them a shameful, unenviable, and illiberal pursuit. And in general, since the proofs by which the philosophers show that animals share in reason are purposeful action and preparation, memory and emotion, care for offspring, gratitude toward benefactors and resentment toward those who have injured them, and further the discovery of what is necessary, and displays of virtue — such as
courage, sociability, self-control, and greatness of spirit — let us examine the sea-creatures, to see whether they show none of these things, or only some altogether faint and hard-to-discern flicker that one can barely make out even by conjecture; whereas among land-dwelling and earth-born creatures it is possible to take and observe bright, clear, and sure examples of each of these qualities. First, then, consider the purposeful preparation of bulls dusting themselves for battle and
of boars whetting their tusks; and elephants, since the wood which they eat by digging or cutting wears down and blunts one tusk, use that one for such work while keeping the other always sharp and pointed for defense. The lion always walks with his claws drawn in, hiding them within his paws, so that they may not be worn down and blunted by rubbing, nor leave an easy trail for those
tracking him; for it is not easy to find the mark of a lion's claw, but men who come upon small and indistinct tracks wander off and go astray. As for the mongoose, you have surely heard how it lacks nothing that a hoplite arming himself for battle needs: for it plasters and hardens around its body so thick a coat of mud, meaning to attack the crocodile. Consider too the preparations swallows make before bearing their young: we see how well they lay down the solid twigs
first, like a foundation, and then plaster the lighter material over them; and if they perceive that the nest needs some sticky sort of clay, flying low over a lake or the sea they skim the surface with their feathers, just enough to get them damp without becoming heavy from the wetness, then gather up dust and thus smear it on and bind together the loose and slipping parts; and in shape they make their work not angular or many-sided, but as smooth
and spherical as possible; for such a shape is both stable and roomy, and does not offer easy purchase from outside to animals plotting against it. As for the works of the spider, a common model for women's weaving and for hunters' nets, one could not admire them on a single count only: for both the fineness of the thread and the weave's not being loose or warp-like, but forming instead the continuity of a smooth membrane
joined and glued together by some imperceptibly blended stickiness, and the dyeing of its color making the surface look airy and hazy so as to escape notice, and above all, most of all, the driving and steering of the device itself, whenever something catchable is caught in it — how, like a skilled net-fisherman, it quickly draws together and gathers in its snare, perceiving and understanding what is happening — this has, through daily
sight and observation of what occurs, made the account credible. Otherwise it would seem a fable, just as it once seemed to us the story of the ravens in Libya, who, needing to drink, throw in stones, filling up and raising the level of the water until it comes within reach; then indeed I myself, seeing a dog on a ship, when the sailors were not present, dropping pebbles into a jar of oil that was not quite full, marveled
at how it perceived and understood the rise brought about when the lighter substance is pushed up by the heavier ones settling beneath it. Similar too are the doings of the bees of Crete and of the geese in Cilicia: the bees, when about to round some windy headland, ballast themselves with little pebbles so as not to be swept off course; and the geese, fearing eagles, when they cross the Taurus range, take into their mouths
a stone of good size, as if to muzzle and bridle their own love of noise and chatter, so that they may pass by unnoticed in silence. As for cranes, their manner of flight too is admired: for they fly, whenever there is much wind and the air is rough, not, as in fair weather, in a straight front or in the curve of a crescent, but at once draw themselves into a triangle and cleave with their point the wind flowing around them, so as not
to have their formation torn apart. And when they come down to land, those keeping watch by night support their body on one leg while with the other foot they grasp and hold a stone; for the tension of the grip keeps them from sleeping too long; and whenever they relax, the stone falls out and quickly wakes the one who let it slip — so that one need not wonder so much at Heracles, if with his bow
tucked under his armpit and wrapped around his mighty arm, he sleeps gripping a club in his right hand; nor again at the heron's cleverness in dealing with the oyster, once someone had guessed how it opens its closed shell — for when the heron has swallowed the shut mussel, though troubled by it, it endures until it perceives it softening and relaxing under the heat within; then, casting it up gaping and drawn open, it extracts the edible part. As for the domestic economy and
preparations of ants, it is impossible to describe them exactly, but wholly to pass them over would be a great neglect: for nature has nothing so small that it does not serve as a mirror of greater and finer things, but just as in a clear drop there is contained a reflection of every virtue — "therein is friendship," the spirit of community, and therein an image of courage, the love of toil; and therein too many seeds of self-control, and many of prudence and of justice. Cleanthes
used to say — though he did not claim that animals share in reason — that he himself once witnessed such a spectacle: ants coming to another anthill, carrying a dead ant; then, as some came up out of the anthill, as though meeting them, they went back down again, and this happened two or three times; and finally those from below brought up, as a ransom for the corpse, a grub, and the others, taking it up and handing over
the dead ant in exchange, went away. Among things evident to everyone are their fair dealing when they meet one another — those carrying nothing stepping aside from the path for those who are carrying, and letting them pass — and their gnawing apart and dividing of loads too heavy and unwieldy to carry, so that they may become easy to bear for several together. Aratus makes their handling and airing out of their eggs, apart from rain, a sign of weather, when he says, "the ants have brought up all their eggs the faster from their hollow burrow" —
and indeed some do not write "eggs" (ōia) but "stores" (hea), meaning the grain they have laid up, which, whenever they perceive it gathering mold and fear its ruin and decay, they bring up to the surface. But surpassing every notion of intelligence is their foreknowledge in dealing with the sprouting of wheat: for the grain does not remain dry and unspoiled but dissolves and turns milky as it changes toward putting forth its shoot; so, in order
that it may not become seed and so destroy its usefulness as food, but remain edible for them, they eat out the very point from which the wheat sends forth its sprout. As for those who say that ants dig out their anthills for the sake of studying them as though by dissection, I do not accept this; but they do say that the way down from the opening is not straight, nor easy for another creature to pass through, but consists of passages bent
with turns and twists, and openings that lead down finally to three hollow chambers, of which one is their common dwelling place, another a storeroom for their food, and into the third they lay away their dead. I do not think it will seem out of place to you if, after the ants, I bring in the elephants, so that we may observe the nature of intelligence together in the smallest and in the greatest bodies, neither
—neither vanishing in these smallest bodies nor falling short in those largest ones. Now most people admire the elephant for the many kinds and changes of postures it displays in theaters after being taught and trained, feats whose intricacy and refinement are not at all easy even for human practice to achieve and retain in memory and habit. But I myself see intelligence shining out more clearly in the animal's own untaught feelings and movements, as it were unmixed and unadulterated.
In Rome not long ago, when many elephants were being trained together to take up certain hazardous postures and go through movements difficult to perform, one that was the slowest to learn, and was constantly being scolded and often punished, was seen by night, off by itself, going over its lessons and practicing before the moon. And in Syria previously, Hagnon relates, an elephant was being kept in a household, and its keeper used to take a measure of barley and steal and cheat it of half each day. But once, when the master was present and watching, the keeper poured out the whole measure, and the elephant, looking at it and running its trunk through the barley, separated out and set apart the missing portion, thereby denouncing the keeper's dishonesty as clearly as it could. And another elephant, when its keeper was mixing stones and earth in with the barley in the measure, while meat was being boiled, took up a handful of ashes and threw it into the pot.
And the elephant that had been jostled about by boys in Rome, who were pricking its trunk with their styluses—when it caught one of them and lifted him into the air, everyone expected it would dash him down. But at the outcry of the bystanders it gently set him back on the ground again and passed on, judging it sufficient punishment for so young a boy to have been frightened. As for wild and unrestrained elephants, other marvels too are told, and in particular about their crossings of rivers: for the youngest and smallest one crosses first, going ahead of the rest, while the others stand and watch, so that if that one, though smallest, is not swept off its feet by the current's depth, the larger ones may take great confidence that it is safe.
Having reached this point in my discourse, I do not think I should pass over, on account of its similarity, the story of the fox. The mythographers say that a dove released from the ark was a sign to Deucalion—diving back inside in stormy weather, but flying off in fine weather. And the Thracians, even now, whenever they attempt to cross a frozen river, use a fox to test the solidity of the ice: for it goes forward quietly, laying its ear to the ice, and if it perceives by the sound that the current is running close beneath, it concludes that the freezing has not gone deep but is thin and unstable, and it stops; and if one lets it, it turns back. But if it does not hear any sound, it crosses confidently, trusting the silence.
And let us not call this an irrational precision of sense-perception, but rather a piece of reasoning drawn from sense-perception, namely: "what makes a sound is in motion; what is in motion is not frozen; what is not frozen is liquid; and what is liquid gives way." The logicians, for their part, say that the dog, at a fork with several paths, employs a disjunctive syllogism of several parts, reasoning to itself: "the animal set off either by this path, or by that one, or by that other one; but it did not go by this one, nor by that one; therefore by the remaining one." Here, they say, sense-perception supplies nothing but the minor premise, while reason furnishes the propositions and draws the conclusion from them. But the dog, in truth, has no need of such testimony—for that account is false and spurious. Sense-perception itself, working through the tracks and scent-trails of the animal, points out the direction of its flight, without any regard for disjunctive or conjunctive propositions.
And through many other deeds, feelings, and duties—things neither smelled nor seen but performed and observed only by intelligence and reason—one can discern the dog's true nature. As for its endurance and obedience and quickness of mind in hunting, I would be ridiculous to speak of these before you, the devotees of Asclepius. There was a man who took the substantial silver and gold votive offerings and, thinking he had escaped unnoticed, slipped away. But the temple's guard-dog, Capparus by name, when none of the attendants responded to his barking, set off after the fleeing temple-robber. At first, though pelted with stones, he did not give up; and when day came, he followed at a distance, not approaching closely but keeping watch from where he could see, and would not take food when it was thrown to him. When the man rested for the night, the dog kept watch nearby; and when the man set off walking again, the dog rose and followed once more. He wagged his tail at travelers he met along the way, but kept guard over the thief and stuck close to him.
Those pursuing the man, learning of this from the travelers they met—who also told them the dog's color and size—pressed the chase more eagerly, and, catching up with the man, brought him back from Crommyon. And the dog, turning around, led the way back, proud and overjoyed, as though he had made the temple-robber his own prize and quarry. The people accordingly voted that he be given food at public expense, and charged the priests to look after him forever, imitating the kindness the ancient Athenians showed toward a mule. For when Pericles was building the hundred-foot temple on the Acropolis, stones, as one would expect, were being brought up daily by many teams of animals. One of the mules that had worked eagerly in this labor but had by now been let go on account of old age would come down to the Ceramicus, and whenever he met the teams bringing up the stones he would always turn around and run alongside them, as though urging them on and encouraging them. The people, admiring his eagerness, ordered that he be maintained at public expense, just as they voted a pension for an athlete worn out by old age.
For this reason, those who say that we have no obligation of justice toward animals should be told that they speak well enough, perhaps, concerning creatures of the sea and the deep—for those are altogether alien to any sense of affection, without tenderness and having no share in any sweetness of temper, and Homer put it well: "the gray sea bore you," said of one who seems savage and unapproachable, meaning that nothing of the sea's nature is kindly or gentle. But whoever applies this same argument to land animals as well is harsh and brutish—unless he would also deny that Lysimachus owed anything in justice to the dog Hyrcanus, who alone stayed beside his master's corpse and, when the body was being burned, ran in and threw himself upon it. They say the dog of Aston did the same thing—Aston not the king, but another private man of the same name, who raised the dog.
For when his master died, the dog stayed close by the body and hovered around the bier as it was carried out, and finally, mounting the pyre, threw himself upon it and was burned along with him. And the elephant of King Porus, when Porus had been badly wounded in his battle against Alexander, gently and carefully drew out with its trunk many of the javelins that had struck him, and, though itself already in a bad way, did not give in until it perceived that the king had lost much blood and was growing faint, at which point, fearing he might fall, it sank down gently, offering him an easy descent. Bucephalas, when unadorned, would allow the groom to mount him, but once decked out in the royal trappings and neck-ornaments, he would let no one approach except Alexander himself; and if others tried to approach him, he would charge at them, neighing loudly, rearing up, and trampling those who did not flee quickly enough or get out of his way in time.
I am not unaware that this variety of examples may seem to you rather a mixed bag: it is not easy to find a single action of these clever animals that displays only one virtue in isolation. Rather, in their affectionate nature there also appears their love of honor, and in their nobility their courage of spirit; and their cunning and intelligence are not separate from their high-spiritedness and manliness. Nevertheless, for those who wish to distinguish and classify case by case: dogs display a mark of both tameness and lofty pride together, in that they turn away from those who grovel before them—as indeed has been said of this too: "they, howling, rushed upon him; but Odysseus sat down cunningly, and the staff fell from his hand"—for dogs no longer fight against those who have fallen and become abject, once their bearing has changed to match. They say too that the champion Indian dog that fought against Alexander lay quietly and paid no attention when a deer, a boar, and a bear were successively let loose against him; but the moment a lion was shown to him, he leapt up at once and made ready, plainly regarding it alone as a worthy opponent, and holding all the others in contempt.
Dogs that hunt hares, if they kill the hare themselves, take pleasure in tearing it apart and eagerly lap up the blood; but if the hare, as often happens, gives up the ghost, having spent all its breath in the final stretch of the chase, and dies on its own, the dogs, on catching up with the corpse, do not touch it at all, but stand around wagging their tails, as though they were competing not for the meat but for victory and the glory of the contest. As for cunning, there are many examples, but leaving aside foxes and wolves and the tricks of cranes and jackdaws, since these are well known, I will call as my witness Thales, the oldest of the wise men, who is said to have won no small admiration for his cleverness with a mule.
One of the salt-carrying mules, in fording a river, slipped by accident, and, once the salt had dissolved, got up much lighter; the mule noticed the cause and remembered it, so that ever after, in crossing the river, it would deliberately lower itself and dip its packs into the water, settling down and leaning first to one side and then to the other. Thales, hearing of this, ordered the men to fill the mule's packs with wool and sponges instead of salt, and load them on, and then drive the mule as usual. The mule, doing what it was accustomed to do and having soaked its load with water, realized that its cleverness had backfired against itself, and from then on, taking care and being on its guard, crossed the river in such a way that not even against its will did the water so much as touch its load.
Partridges display another kind of cunning together with parental affection: they train their chicks, while these are still unable to flee when pursued, to throw themselves down on their backs and hold up a clod of earth or some rubbish in front of their bodies, as though hiding under it; while the mother birds themselves lead the pursuers off in another direction and draw them toward themselves, flying up just in front of them and then rising a little at a time, giving the impression that they can be caught in just this way, until they have drawn the pursuers far away from the chicks. And hares, on returning to their forms, carry their young off one by one to different places, often a furlong apart from each other, so that if a man or a dog comes upon one, they will not all be endangered together; and they themselves, having laid tracks in many places by their comings and goings, take one final great leap far from their tracks, and so lie down to sleep.
The bear, when overtaken by that condition they call hibernation, before becoming altogether numb and sluggish, first clears out the spot, and, when about to go down into it, makes the rest of her journey as lightly and as buoyantly as she can, touching the ground only with the very tips of her tracks, but then draws her body along on her back and shifts herself in this way toward her den. Female deer bear their young mostly beside the road, where flesh-eating beasts do not approach; and the males, whenever they perceive that they have grown heavy from fat and excess flesh, withdraw to remote places, saving themselves by concealment when they no longer trust to flight. Among land hedgehogs, their defense and protection has given rise to a proverb: "the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog one big thing." For when the fox approaches, as Ion says, the hedgehog, curling its body into a ball around its spines, lies there, impossible either to touch or to bite.
More refined still is the hedgehog's forethought concerning its young: in autumn it creeps in under the vines, and, shaking the grapes down from the bunch with its feet, rolls itself over them on the ground, and gathers them up on its spines—a sight that once afforded all of us who saw it the spectacle of a bunch of grapes crawling or walking along. In this way, laden full with the autumn harvest, it goes off; then, going down into its den, it hands the grapes over to its young to use and take from as needed, doled out little by little. Their sleeping-den has two openings, one facing south and the other facing north; and whenever they sense in advance a change in the weather, like helmsmen shifting a sail, they close up the one facing the wind and open the other. Someone in Cyzicus, having observed this, gained a reputation for predicting on his own authority which wind was about to blow.
As for the elephants' capacity for cooperation together with intelligence, Juba reports the following: hunters dig pits for them and cover them over with light brushwood and loose litter; whenever one elephant slips in, since they travel in large groups together, the rest carry wood and stones and throw them in, filling up the hollow of the pit, so that it becomes easy for the trapped one to climb out. He also relates that elephants, untaught, make use of prayer to the gods, purifying themselves in the sea and doing obeisance to the rising sun, as if with an uplifted hand, by the raising of their trunks. This is why the elephant is the animal most beloved by the gods, as Ptolemy Philopator testified: for after defeating Antiochus, and wishing to honor the divine in a signal manner, he sacrificed, among a great many other things in thanksgiving for his victory in the battle, four elephants as well. But then, encountering in his dreams by night the god threatening him in anger on account of that outlandish sacrifice, he made many acts of propitiation and set up four bronze elephants in place of those he had slaughtered.
No less given to cooperation are lions. The young lions take out with them on the hunt the slow ones and those already old; and wherever the old ones give out, they sit down and wait, while the young ones do the hunting, and whenever they catch anything at all, they call the others back with a roar resembling the bellowing of a calf; and the old lions, recognizing the call at once, come and share the kill together. As for lions' passions, there have been many: some have become wild and utterly frenzied, while others have shown an attachment that was not without a certain human tenderness, nor devoid of affection. Such was the elephant in Alexandria that rivaled the grammarian Aristophanes: for they were in love with the same flower-girl, and the elephant's devotion was no less evident—for he would always bring her, as he passed the fruit-stalls, some of the season's produce, and would stand a long while, and, slipping his trunk gently inside the fold of her tunic as though it were a hand, would touch the swell of her breast.
And the serpent that fell in love with the girl of Aetolia used to visit her by night, sliding in against her body and coiling around her, but never did her any harm, whether willingly or unwillingly; rather, he would always withdraw decorously around dawn. But when he kept doing this continually, her neighbors moved the girl farther away. For three or four days the serpent did not come, but, it seems, went about searching and wandering; and when at last he found her again and, coming upon her, embraced her, he was not gentle as before but rather rough—
binding her hands to her body with the greater part of his coil, while with the end of his tail he whipped her legs, showing an anger that was light and tender, and had more of restraint in it than of punishment. As for the goose in Aegium that fell in love with a boy, and the ram that desired Glauce the singer to the lyre, these stories are famous, and I imagine you are already sated with many such tales; so I will let them pass.
I will let these pass. But starlings, crows, and parrots, which learn to talk and offer the breath of their voice, so pliable and imitative, to their teachers to be counted out and set to rhythm, seem to me to plead the case and speak on behalf of the other animals in the matter of learning, teaching us in a way that they too have a share in articulate speech and vocal expression. And it is quite ridiculous to leave the comparison to those creatures which do not possess even so much voice as to howl or to groan.
As for the natural, untaught cries of birds, how much music and grace attend them is attested by the most learned and sweetest-voiced men, who liken their most delightful poems and songs to the songs of swans and the odes of nightingales. But since teaching is a more rational act than learning, we must now believe Aristotle when he says that these animals actually do this: a nightingale has been observed teaching its chick to sing beforehand. Confirmation of his claim is that those nightingales which happen to have been caught young and reared away from their mothers sing worse; for those raised together are taught, and they learn not for pay nor for reputation, but because they delight in trilling out their phrases and love beauty more than mere usefulness in their voice.
On this point I can tell you a story too, which I heard from many Greeks and Romans who were present. A certain barber who kept a shop in Rome, in front of the precinct they call the Greek Market, was raising a marvelous creature, a magpie of many voices and many sounds, which reproduced human words, the cries of animals, and the noises of instruments — no one compelling it, but the bird training itself and striving, out of sheer ambition, to leave nothing unspoken and nothing unimitated.
Now it happened that a wealthy man from that quarter was being carried out for burial with many trumpets, and, as usually happens at that spot, a halt was made; the trumpeters, being applauded and urged on, lingered there a long time. After that day the magpie was voiceless and mute, not even uttering its own natural cry for its basic needs. So to those who had earlier marveled at its voice, its silence now provided an even greater marvel — a mute performance for those who habitually passed that way. Suspicions of poisoning fell on its fellow craftsmen, but most people supposed that the trumpets had stunned its hearing, and that its voice had been extinguished along with its hearing.
But it was neither of these; rather, it was, it seems, a kind of practice, a withdrawal of its mimetic faculty into itself, as though it were tuning and preparing its voice like an instrument. For suddenly it came back to life and burst forth — not with any of its familiar old imitations, but sounding out the melodies of the trumpets in their very phrasing, running through every modulation and every rhythm of their notes. So that, as I said, self-teaching proves more rational in these creatures than mere aptitude for learning.
However, there is one piece of learning by a dog that I do not think I should pass over, since I myself witnessed it in Rome. A dog took part in a mime with a dramatic plot involving many characters, giving various imitations suited to the emotions and events portrayed; and when the play staged a trial of a drug, supposedly a sleeping potion but represented in the plot as deadly, the dog took the bread in which the drug had ostensibly been mixed, and after eating a little, shortly afterward it seemed to tremble, stagger, and grow dizzy; finally, stretching itself out, it lay there like a corpse, and let itself be dragged and carried about, as the plot of the drama required.
Then, when it perceived from what was being said and done that the moment had come, it first stirred itself gently, as though rising from a deep sleep, and, lifting its head, looked about; then, to the amazement of the audience, it got up and walked over to the person it was meant to approach, fawning joyfully and affectionately — so that everyone present, including Caesar himself (for old Vespasian was present, in the Theater of Marcellus), was moved to sympathy.
But perhaps we are ridiculous to make such solemn matter of animals' capacity to learn, when Democritus declares that in the greatest matters we have become their pupils: pupils of the spider in weaving and mending, of the swallow in building, and of the melodious swan and nightingale in song, by way of imitation. In the art of medicine, too, we can see a great and noble contribution from each of the three kinds of creatures — land, air, and water — for they make use not only of drugs: tortoises eat oregano, and weasels eat rue in addition after eating a snake; dogs purge themselves of bile with a certain herb; the serpent, when its eye grows dim, thins and clears it with fennel; and the bear, on emerging from its den, first eats the wild arum, whose pungency opens up its bowel, which has grown constricted.
At other times, when it feels nauseous, the bear goes to anthills and sits down, putting out its tongue, moist and soft with sweet moisture, until it is covered with ants — for it benefits by swallowing them. As for the ibis, the Egyptians say they observed and imitated its self-administered enema of salt water; and the priests use for their ritual purification only water from which an ibis has drunk, for if the water is medicinal or otherwise unhealthy, the bird will not go near it.
Some animals are also treated by abstaining from food: wolves and lions, when gorged with meat, lie quietly and keep themselves warm. And they say that a tigress, when given a kid while on a controlled diet, did not eat it for two days, but on the third, being hungry, demanded another and tore at the cage, sparing the one she had first been given, since she now thought of it as a companion and housemate.
Moreover, it is reported that elephants practice a kind of surgery: standing beside wounded companions, they pull out arrow shafts, spears, and darts easily and without tearing the flesh. And the Cretan goats, when they eat dittany, easily expel arrows lodged in them — which readily taught pregnant women that the herb has the power to cause miscarriage, since when wounded, goats seek out, pursue, and go for nothing else but dittany.
Less astonishing, though still astonishing, is what is done by creatures endowed with a conception of number and a capacity for counting, such as the oxen near Susa possess. There, oxen irrigate the royal park by means of revolving water-scoops, and the number of scoopfuls for each is fixed: each ox brings up a hundred scoopfuls a day, and it is not possible to get it to bring up more, even by force, however much one wishes. Indeed, when men, just to test it, repeatedly add more, it stands still and will not go on, once it has delivered the fixed amount — so precisely does it reckon and remember the total, as Ctesias of Cnidus has recorded.
The Libyans laugh at the Egyptians for their fable about the oryx, that it cries out on the very day and hour when the star rises which the Egyptians themselves call Sothis but which we call the Dog-star, Sirius. For they say that all their goats together, precisely when that star rises together with the sun, turn and gaze toward the east, and that this is the surest sign of its cyclical return, and one that agrees most closely with the astronomers' tables.
But so that my speech may crown itself and come to a stop, let us now set in motion the subject that begins from sacred matters, and say a few words about the divinity of animals and their power of divination. For augury is no small or obscure part of divination, but a great and very ancient one; the keenness and intelligence of birds, so responsive through their agility to every impression, offers the god an instrument, as it were, to use and direct — toward motion, toward cries and calls and postures — now checking their course, now driving it forward like winds, in some cases cutting actions short and in others guiding impulses toward their fulfillment.
That is why Euripides, speaking generally, calls birds "heralds of the gods," while Socrates, speaking of himself in particular, says he makes himself "a fellow-slave of the swans." So too, among kings, Pyrrhus was pleased to be called an eagle, and Antiochus a hawk; whereas we use the names of fish — calling men ignorant and foolish — when we abuse or mock them.
But although land and winged creatures offer ten thousand times ten thousand instances of signs shown and foretold to us by the gods, there is not a single such instance that anyone pleading the cause of water creatures can produce; instead, all of them are cast out, deaf and blind to providence, into that godless and titanic region, as into a place fit for the impious, where the rational and intelligent part of the soul has been extinguished, and, being confounded and submerged in some last remnant of mere sensation, they seem to gasp rather than to live.
HERACLEON: Raise your eyebrows, my dear Phaedimus, and rouse yourself against us, the men of the sea and the islands. This matter of our debate has become no game, but a vigorous contest, and oratory calling for the railing and the speaker's platform.
PHAEDIMUS: Well then, Heracleon, your ambush laid with treachery is plain to see: while we are still reeling from yesterday's revel and still drenched in it, our noble friend here, sober as you can see, has attacked us by design. Yet there is no declining the contest: for I have no wish, as an admirer of Pindar, to hear it said that "the pretext of contests set aside has cast excellence into a steep darkness." You have plenty of leisure today, for it is not your choruses that stand idle, but your dogs and horses and nets and every kind of seine — since, for the sake of our discourse, a truce has been granted in common to all creatures, on land and at sea alike, for today.
But do not be afraid: I shall use this leisure in moderation, bringing in neither the opinions of philosophers, nor Egyptian myths, nor unattested tales from the Indians or Libyans. Rather, of those things which are everywhere witnessed by the men who work the sea, seen with their own eyes and giving conviction to sight, I shall set before you only a few.
And yet, in the case of examples from land, nothing stands in the way: the open land plainly offers its record to perception. But the sea gives us only a little, and grudgingly; it conceals the births and feedings, the attacks and mutual defenses of most of its creatures — among which there are no small number of instances of intelligence, memory, and cooperation that, remaining unknown, work against my argument. Moreover, land creatures, because of their kinship with us and their shared way of life, are in some way tinged by human character, and so enjoy the benefit of nourishment, teaching, and imitation — which, like an admixture of fresh water into the sea, sweetens whatever is harsh and sullen in them, and rouses whatever is dull and slow to understand, being fanned into activity by contact with human movement.
But the life of sea creatures, separated from human company by great boundaries, has nothing imported or acquired by habituation; it is entirely its own, native, and unmixed with alien character — and this is because of their location, not their nature. For nature, so far as it admits and retains any measure of learning, produces many eels called sacred, tame to human hands, such as those at Arethusa, and in many places fish that respond to their own names, as they say of the moray eel that belonged to Crassus, which, when it died, Crassus wept for.
And once, when Domitius said to him, "Did you not weep when your moray eel died?" Crassus replied, "And did you not fail to shed a tear when you buried three wives?" As for crocodiles, they not only recognize the voice of the priests calling them and submit to their touch, but even open their mouths wide and let the priests clean their teeth with their hands and wipe them with linen cloths.
Recently that excellent man Philinus, returning to us after wandering through Egypt, related that he had seen an old woman at Antaeopolis sleeping alongside a crocodile, which lay stretched out beside her on a couch very decorously. And they report from long ago that once, when King Ptolemy summoned it, the sacred crocodile did not heed or obey, despite the earnest entreaties and pleas of the priests, and this was thought to have foreshown the king's death, which occurred not long after — so that not even the highly prized art of divination is without a share for the race of water creatures, nor without honor.
For I also learn that at Sura, a village in Lycia between Phellus and Myra, men sit and divine by fish just as by birds, observing with a certain skill and reasoned method their windings, their flights, and their pursuits of one another. But let these serve as sufficient proof that the race of water creatures is not entirely foreign to us, nor without sympathy.
As for their pure and natural intelligence, a great proof of it is this common fact: no swimming creature is so easy for a man to catch by hand — unless it clings and adheres to rocks — nor so easily taken without effort, as donkeys are for wolves, bees for bee-eaters, cicadas for swallows, or serpents for deer, which draw serpents out easily; indeed the very name is formed from this, a derivative not of their swiftness but of their "drawing out" of the serpent. And a sheep, they say, actually summons a wolf by stamping its foot; and most animals, they say, approach the leopard gladly, delighted by its scent — the ape especially so.
But nearly all sea creatures possess a foresight that is wary and guarded against attacks, thanks to their intelligence, so that the work of catching them is neither simple nor trivial, but requires devices of every kind and cunning stratagems directed against them. And this is clear even from the most obvious cases. Fishermen do not want their fishing rod to have thickness, although they need it to be strong enough for the struggles of what is caught; instead they choose a thin one, so that it will not cast a broad shadow and alarm the fish's wariness.
Nor do they make the fishing line elaborately knotted with loops, or rough, since this too becomes, for the fish, evidence of a trap. And they contrive that the hairs leading down to the hook appear as white as possible, since in this way, through similarity of color, they more easily go unnoticed in the sea. As for the line in the poet, "and like a plummet of lead it darted to the depths, mounted on the horn of a field-grazing ox, bringing death to the ravening fish" — some, mishearing this, suppose that the ancients used ox-hair for their fishing lines, since "keras" (horn) is said to mean "hair," and that this is why "keirasthai" (to be shorn) and "koura" (a haircut) are so named, and that Archilochus's "keroplastes" means a man fond of adornment about his hair and given to primping.
But this is not true: fishermen use horsehair, taking it from the manes of stallions, since the hair of mares, once wetted with their urine, becomes weak and brittle. Aristotle, however, says that nothing clever or unusual is meant in these matters, but that in fact a small piece of horn is placed in front of the hook along the line, since fish coming for something else would otherwise bite through it.
As for hooks, fishermen use the round ones for mullets and amias, since these fish have small mouths and are wary of anything too straight; and often, even suspecting the round hook, the mullet swims around it in a circle, batting the bait with its tail and snatching up whatever is knocked loose; and if it cannot manage even that, it draws its mouth together and, pursing its lips, touches the bait only with the tips and nibbles a bit off it. The sea-bass, more manfully than the elephant — for it is not another creature but itself that it draws the barb from, once it has become caught on the hook — pulls the hook out on its own, widening the wound by turning its head this way and that,
...the wound, and enduring the pain from the laceration, until he casts out the hook.
The fox-shark, for its part, does not often approach the hook but avoids the trap; but once caught, it immediately turns itself inside out — for by its strength and suppleness it is able to twist and turn its body, so that what was inside becomes outside, and the hook falls away.
These cases, then, display an intelligence that is resourceful and remarkable in making use of opportunity for its own advantage; but other creatures show, along with intelligence, a sociable and mutually affectionate nature — as with the anthias and the parrotfish. When a parrotfish swallows a hook, the other parrotfish nearby leap up and gnaw through the fishing-line; and when one of their number falls into a fish-trap, they offer their tails to it from outside, and it eagerly bites hold and they pull it out together. The anthiai help a fellow of their kind still more boldly: laying the line along their back and setting the spine upright, they try to saw through it and cut it with its roughness.
And yet we know of no land animal that dares to come to the aid of another in danger — not a bear, not a boar, not a lioness, not a leopard. They will indeed gather together in the same place in the arenas, animals of the same kind, and circle around one another; but none knows how, or has the sense, to help another — instead each flees and leaps as far away as possible from the one that has been wounded and is dying.
As for the story about elephants, my friend — those that carry earth into pits and haul up one that has slipped down by means of a mound of soil — it is extraordinary and strange indeed, and, coming as it does from the books of Juba, seems to command belief as if by royal decree; but being true, it shows that many sea creatures are in no way inferior in sociability and intelligence to the wisest of land animals. But there will perhaps be a separate discussion of their sociability.
Fishermen, seeing that most fish parry the casts of the hook as if by countermoves in wrestling, have turned to force instead, netting them as the Persians do, on the ground that once creatures are caught in a net there is no escape for them through reasoning or cleverness. With casting-nets and creels, grey mullet and rainbow wrasse are caught, as well as mormyrus, sargue, gudgeon, and sea bass; and the fish called ‘the sinkers’ — red mullet, gilthead, and scorpion-fish — they draw in and enclose with trawl-nets and seine-nets. Homer was therefore right to call this class of net the ‘all-catcher.’
But against these too the dogfish have their devices, as does the sea bass: for on perceiving that it is being dragged along, it forcefully splits and pounds the ground, hollowing it out, and once it has made room by the sweeping motions of the net, it thrusts itself in and clings there until the net has passed over.
A dolphin, when it is enclosed and perceives that it has come within the embrace of a seine-net, stays put without being disturbed, but rather rejoices: for it feasts without effort on the abundant fish that are present; but when the net comes near land, it eats through it and departs. But if it fails to escape in time, the first time nothing terrible happens to it — instead the fishermen stitch bulrush cords through its dorsal fin and let it go; and if it is caught again, they punish it with blows, recognizing it by the stitch-marks. This rarely happens, however: for having been pardoned the first time, most dolphins learn their lesson and are careful thereafter not to offend again.
And since there are many further examples of caution, forethought, and evasion, it is worth not passing over that of the cuttlefish. For it has, near its neck, the so-called sac full of a dark fluid, which they call its ‘ink’; and when it is being caught, it discharges this fluid outward, contriving thereby, once the sea has been darkened, to create darkness around itself and so slip out from under and escape the eye of its hunter — imitating the gods of Homer, who often, hidden ‘in a dark cloud,’ spirit away and steal off with those they wish to save.
But enough of these examples. As for their cleverness in attacking and hunting, one can observe the ingenious tricks of many creatures. The starfish, for instance, knowing that whatever it touches dissolves and melts away, relaxes its body and lets itself be touched by whatever swims past or comes near.
You surely know the power of the electric ray, which not only numbs those who touch it directly, but even through the heaviness of the net induces a numbness in the hands of those who take hold of it. Some report, having tested this further, that if it is thrown out still alive and water is poured over it from above, one can feel the numbing effect running up to the hand and dulling the sense of touch, apparently because it is transmitted through the water, which is affected first. Having, then, an innate awareness of this power, the ray never fights anything face to face or takes such a risk; instead, circling around its prey, it scatters its emanations like arrows, first poisoning the water and then, through the water, the creature itself, which is thereby unable either to defend itself or flee, but is caught fast as if bound in chains and grows numb.
The creature called the ‘fisherman’ (angler-fish) is well known to many, and it got its name from what it does — a device which Aristotle says the cuttlefish also employs: it lets down from its neck a tentacle like a fishing-line, one naturally suited to stretch far out when relaxed and to contract back into itself again quite easily when drawn in. So whenever it sees one of the small fish nearby, it lets the fish bite at it, and then little by little draws the line in unnoticed and reels it closer, until the thing that has taken hold comes within reach of its mouth.
As for the octopus’s change of color, Pindar has made it famous, saying: ‘Adapt your mind, above all, to the color of the sea-creature, and mingle with every city [as it appears to each]’; and Theognis likewise: ‘Have the mind of the many-colored octopus, which takes on the appearance of whatever rock it clings to.’ For the chameleon changes color not through any contrivance or in order to hide itself, but simply changes under the influence of fear, being by nature timid and easily startled. This goes along with its being, as Theophrastus says, full of air: for the animal’s whole body is very nearly one great lung, from which one may infer its airy, pneumatic nature, and hence its readiness to change.
With the octopus, however, the change of color is an act, not a passive experience: it changes deliberately, using it as a device to escape the notice of what it fears and to catch what it feeds on; by deceiving them, it catches some creatures that fail to flee, and itself escapes others as they pass by unaware. The claim that it eats its own tentacles is false; but that it fears the moray eel and the conger eel is true, for it suffers badly at their hands, being unable to do anything to them since they slip out of its grasp. Just as, conversely, the spiny lobster easily gets the better of those same eels once they are in its grip — for their smoothness does not help them against its roughness — but is destroyed when the octopus wraps its tentacles around and forces its way in. This cycle and recurring round of chasing and fleeing one another nature has made into a kind of competitive training and practice for them in cunning and intelligence.
Moreover, Aristotle related a certain foreknowledge of winds possessed by the land hedgehog, just as he also marveled at the triangular flight-formation of cranes. I, for my part, offer as evidence not some particular hedgehog from Cyzicus or Byzantium, but all sea-urchins together, which, when they sense that a storm and rough sea are coming, ballast themselves with small pebbles, so that they are not overturned by their own lightness nor swept away once the swell arises, but stay firmly fixed to the little rocks.
The changing of the cranes’ flight-direction against the wind is not peculiar to that one kind of creature: rather, all fish alike, with similar understanding, always swim against the wave and the current, and take care that the wind, if it should come from behind, does not ruffle open their scales and so hurt the body by exposing and roughening it. For this reason they always keep themselves oriented head-on into the current: for the sea, being split in this way along the crown of the head, presses down the gills and, flowing smoothly over the surface, keeps them close and does not raise the roughness. This, then, as I said, is common to fish, with the exception of the ellops (sturgeon): this fish, they say, swims with the wind and current, not fearing the ruffling-up of its scales, since its scales do not overlap toward the tail.
The tuna, moreover, has so keen a sense of the equinoxes and solstices that it can even teach a person, without any need of astronomical tables: for wherever the winter solstice overtakes it, it stays still and remains in the same spot until the equinox. But clever too is the crane’s grasping of a stone, so that when it lets the stone drop, it is repeatedly woken up.
And how much cleverer, my friend, is the case of the dolphin, for which it is not permitted to stand still or cease from motion — its nature is perpetually in motion, and the end of its life and the end of its movement coincide! Whenever it needs sleep, it raises its body up to the surface of the sea, then lets itself sink down on its back through the depths, lulled to sleep by a sort of gentle rocking swell, until it strikes and touches the bottom. Waking up in this way, it darts off with a rush, and once back up at the surface again lets itself sink once more, and so is carried along, contriving for itself a rest mixed together with motion. They say tuna do the same thing, and for the same reason.
Now that I have just finished describing their mathematical foreknowledge of the sun’s turning-points, to which Aristotle is a witness, hear next about their skill in arithmetic. First, though, by Zeus, let me mention their skill in optics, of which even Aeschylus seems to have been aware: for he says somewhere, ‘having turned his left eye aside, like a tuna.’ For tuna are thought to be weak-sighted in one eye; hence, when they enter the Black Sea, they keep the land on their right, and the opposite when they go out — very sensibly and intelligently always relying, for the safety of their body, on their better eye.
As for arithmetic, tuna have needed it, it seems, on account of their sociable and mutually affectionate attachment to one another, and have reached such mastery of that science that, since they thoroughly enjoy being raised and gathering together in schools, they always arrange their numbers into a cube-shaped formation, forming a single solid body out of all of them, bounded by six equal square faces; and they then swim maintaining this formation, so that the whole block presents an even, symmetrical front on every side. At any rate, the tuna-watcher, if he accurately counts the number visible on the surface, can immediately declare the size of the whole school, knowing that its depth is arranged in a rank equal to its breadth and its length. Indeed, it is this schooling behavior that has given the amia its very name, and I think the same is true of the young tuna (pelamys) as well.
As for the other kinds that are seen living together sociably in schools, one could not state their number; rather, we must turn instead to their individual partnerships and forms of cohabitation. Among these is the pinna-guard (pearl-mussel crab), which used up so much of Chrysippus’s ink, holding pride of place in every one of his books, both on natural philosophy and on ethics; for he never learned of the sponge-guard, since he would not have left it out if he had.
The pinna-guard, then, is a crab-like creature, so they say, which lives together with the pinna-mussel and, sitting in front of it, guards the entrance, keeping the shell open and gaping until one of the small fish that they prey on falls in; then it bites the flesh of the pinna, which prompts it to close the shell, and together they eat the catch that has now been enclosed within their fence.
The sponge, meanwhile, is driven by a small creature that is not crab-like but rather resembles a spider; for the sponge is not lifeless, insensate, or bloodless, but, though it is attached to rocks like many other creatures, it has its own motion, internal to itself, one that needs, so to speak, prompting and guidance. Being otherwise porous and left slack in its openings through sluggishness and dullness, whenever some edible thing enters, it closes up and consumes it once its guardian gives the signal. Still more, when a person approaches or touches it, being informed and alerted, it bristles, so to speak, and closes its body up, making it dense and firm, so that cutting it free is easy enough for its harvesters, but slow and laborious.
Purple-shellfish, gathering in colonies, build a comb in common, like bees, in which they are said to breed. They take up the edible mosses and seaweeds clinging to their shells, providing one another a kind of banquet passed round in turn, each grazing on what is on the outside of the next.
And why should one marvel at sociability in such creatures, when even the most unsociable and beastly of all the animals that rivers, lakes, and seas nourish, the crocodile, shows itself remarkably capable of partnership and mutual favor, in its dealings with the plover? For the plover is a bird of the marshes and riverbanks, and it guards the crocodile, not out of its own free provisioning but being fed on the crocodile’s leftovers.
For whenever it perceives, while the crocodile is asleep, that the mongoose is plotting against it, smearing itself with mud and dusting itself off against it like an athlete, it wakes the crocodile with its cries and pecking; and the crocodile has grown so tame toward it that it opens its mouth wide and lets it inside, and takes pleasure as the bird gently picks out and probes with its beak the small scraps of flesh caught between its teeth. And when it has had enough and wants to close its mouth, it tilts its jaw and gives a signal, and does not let it fall shut until the plover, perceiving this, has flown out.
The creature called the ‘pilot-fish’ is small, about the size and shape of a goby, but its surface, on account of the roughness of its scales, is said to resemble a ruffled bird; it always keeps company with one of the great sea-monsters and swims ahead of it, guiding its course, so that it will not run aground on rocks or fall into some shoal or strait from which escape is difficult. For the sea-monster follows it, obediently guided, as a ship follows its rudder.
As for anything else the monster takes into its gaping mouth — animal, boat, or stone — everything sinks in and is at once destroyed and lost; but the pilot-fish it recognizes and takes up inside its mouth, as if it were an anchor. For the pilot-fish sleeps within it, and the sea-monster stands still and lies at rest while it rests; and when the pilot-fish sets out again, the monster follows after, never leaving it by day or by night — or else it wanders aimlessly and goes astray, and many such monsters have perished, driven ashore like rudderless ships. Indeed, we ourselves witnessed such a case near Anticyra not long ago; and it is recorded that earlier, when one ran aground and rotted not far from Bounoi, a plague resulted.
Is it, then, worth comparing to these partnerships and mutual dealings the friendships Aristotle records between foxes and snakes, on account of their having the eagle as a common enemy, or those between bustards and horses, because the birds enjoy coming close to horses and scratching through their dung? For my part, I do not see so great a mutual concern even among bees, or among ants. For they all together promote the common task, but no individual gives any particular thought or care to another individual as such.
We shall see this difference still more clearly if we turn our discussion to the oldest and greatest of social works and duties — those concerning procreation and the rearing of offspring. First, those [fish] that graze in places bordering on lakes, or that take shelter in rivers...
fish that live in the sea near lagoons or in waters fed by rivers, when they are about to give birth, run up into the fresh water, pursuing the gentleness and stillness of the fresh streams; for calm is good for giving birth, and freedom from predators is found together with lagoons and rivers, so that the offspring are preserved. This is why the greatest number of births, and the best, occur around the Euxine Sea; for it does not harbor sea-monsters, but only a scrawny seal and a small dolphin.
Moreover, the mingling of the rivers—since the largest and most numerous empty into the Pontus—provides a mild and suitable blend for those giving birth there. But the case of the anthias is most wonderful, the fish that Homer calls "sacred." Some think that "sacred" here means "large," just as they call a certain bone the "sacred bone" because it is large, and call epilepsy, being a great disease, the "sacred disease"; but others take it, in general use, to mean the fish that is "released" and consecrated.
Eratosthenes seems to mean the chrysophrys, the "golden-browed," when he speaks of a sacred fish with golden eyebrows; many mean the ellops, since it is rare and not easy to catch. It appears often around Pamphylia; whenever the fishermen catch one, they crown themselves and crown their boats, and they are received with clapping and applause and honored as they sail in. But most people believe that the anthias is called sacred, and is in fact sacred, because wherever an anthias is seen there is no dangerous creature about; sponge-divers dive down with confidence when it is present, and fish give birth with confidence, as though they held a guarantee of safety. The reason is hard to determine—whether the predatory creatures flee the anthias, as elephants flee the wild boar and lions flee the cock, or whether the fish, being intelligent and possessed of memory, recognizes and keeps watch for signs of places free of predators.
But the forethought for their offspring is common to all fish that give birth. The males do not eat their own young, but even linger by the spawn, guarding the eggs, as Aristotle has recorded; and those that follow the females sprinkle their milt upon the eggs little by little, for otherwise what is born does not grow large but remains incomplete and stunted. The wrasses, for their part, fashion something like a nest out of seaweed and wrap it around their spawn, sheltering it from the surf.
As for the dogfish, its affection surpasses that of any of the tamest animals in sweetness of disposition and kindness toward its young: it first produces an egg, then the creature not outside but inside itself, and so nourishes and carries it as though from a second birth. When the young grow larger, the mother releases them outside and teaches them to swim nearby; then again she takes them back into herself through her mouth, and offers her body to them as a dwelling place, providing at once room, nourishment, and refuge, until they are able to help themselves.
Wonderful too is the tortoise's care in the matter of birth and the preservation of her offspring. She lays her eggs after coming up close to the sea, but since she cannot brood over them nor stay long on dry land, she buries the eggs in the sand and heaps over them the smoothest and softest part of the beach. When she has covered and hidden them securely, some say that she scratches and marks the spot with her feet, making it recognizable to herself; others say that the female, being turned about by the male, leaves behind distinctive marks and imprints of her own.
But more wonderful still is this: having watched for the fortieth day—for it is in that many days that the eggs are hatched and burst open—she approaches, and each mother, recognizing her own treasure, opens it gladly and eagerly, as no human being opens a chest of gold. As for crocodiles, the rest is much the same, but regarding the location—no reckoning gives a person insight into the cause, nor any process of reasoning; hence they say that the foreknowledge shown by this creature is not rational but divinatory.
For the crocodile lays her eggs neither farther nor nearer than the point to which the Nile, when it rises, will flood and cover the land at that season of the year—so that any farmer who comes upon the eggs both knows for himself and tells others how far the river will advance that year. In this way she has calculated it so precisely that, without the eggs being wetted, she herself, once wetted, may still brood over them.
If the young are stolen, then whichever hatchling, as soon as it emerges, fails to seize something at hand in its mouth—whether a fly, a little worm, a piece of earth, a twig, or a blade of grass—the mother tears it apart and kills it with a bite; but the spirited and active ones she cherishes and looks after, exactly as the wisest of men think proper, apportioning her affection by judgment, not by mere feeling.
And indeed seals give birth on dry land, but little by little they lead their pups forward and give them a taste of the sea, then quickly bring them out again, and they do this repeatedly, in turn, until the young, becoming accustomed in this way, grow confident and come to love the life of the sea. Frogs, for their part, use summoning-calls in their mating, producing the sound called the "ololygon," which is an erotic and nuptial cry. When the male has thus drawn the female to him, they remain together through the night, for they cannot mate in the water, and by day they are afraid to couple on land; but once darkness has fallen, they come forward and mate without fear. At other times they make their voice ring out in anticipation of rain, and this is counted among the most reliable of signs.
But, dear Poseidon, what an absurd and laughable thing has just happened to me, if, while lingering over seals and frogs, the creature most wise and most beloved of the gods among the animals of the sea has escaped me and passed by unmentioned! What nightingales would deserve comparison, for love of music, with the halcyon, or what swallows for love of their young, or what doves for love of their husbands? Or what bees could be compared to it for skill? Whose birth-giving, whose labor and travail has a god so honored?
For they tell that only a single island received the birth-pangs of Leto, but for the halcyon, when she gives birth around the solstice, the god stills the whole sea into windlessness and calm. Hence there is no other creature that people love so much, for whose sake they sail without fear for seven days and seven nights at the very height of winter, considering passage by sea at that time safer than travel by land.
But if I must also say a few words about each of the virtues she possesses: she is so devoted to her husband that she consorts with him and welcomes his company not just at one season but throughout the year, and this is not from wantonness—for she never mates with another at all—but out of goodwill, like a wedded wife, and out of affection. And when the male grows weak and burdensome to accompany because of old age, she takes him up, carries him in his old age and nurtures him, never letting him go nor abandoning him apart, but taking him upon her shoulders she carries him everywhere, tends him, and stays with him until his death.
As for her love of offspring and her concern for the safety of her young, once she perceives that she herself is pregnant, she turns at once to the building of her nest—not kneading mud nor plastering it against walls and roofs as the swallows do, nor using many active parts of her body, as the bee does when it enters into the honeycomb, opening it up, where the six feet, all touching together, divide the whole vessel into hexagonal cells. The halcyon, by contrast, has a single simple instrument, a single tool, a single implement—her mouth—and no other assistant to her industry and skill; what she contrives and constructs with it is hard to credit unless one has observed it with one's own eyes:
the thing molded—or rather built, like a ship—by her, alone among many shapes, resists capsizing and cannot be swamped. For she gathers the spines of the needlefish and puts them together, binding them to one another by weaving them, some straight and some crosswise, as though throwing a weft across a warp, making use of bends and turns through one another, so as to fit them together and produce something round and stable, elongated in shape, resembling a fisherman's weel.
When she has finished it, she carries it and sets it down beside the wash of the wave, where the sea, striking it gently, teaches her to repair and thicken whatever is not well fitted together, as she watches it loosen under the blow, while what is properly joined it compresses and binds fast, so that it becomes hard to break apart or pierce even with stone or iron. No less admirable than this is the symmetry and shape of the cavity of the vessel: for it has been made to admit only that one creature herself as she enters it, while to everything else it is entirely blind and hidden, so that nothing can get inside, from either the land or the sea.
Now I suppose none of you has failed to see the nest; but for my part, having often seen and touched it, I am moved to say and sing, "Once on Delos I beheld such a thing, beside Apollo's shrine"—I mean the horned altar, celebrated among the things called the Seven Sights, because, needing neither glue nor any other binding, it has been fastened and fitted together solely from the right-hand horns. May the god be gracious—being himself something of a musician and an islander—to the celebrated sea-siren, and kindly laugh off those questions which people ask in mockery, asking why Apollo...
...not even knowing... a red mullet... that Aphrodite, near the sea, makes her own rites and sisterhoods, and delights in nothing being slaughtered. At Lepcis the priests of Poseidon eat nothing from the sea at all, while, as you know, the initiates at Eleusis hold the red mullet in reverence, and the priestess of Hera at Argos abstains from it in honor of the creature: for it is the mullets above all that hunt down and consume the sea-hare, which is deadly to man; and for this reason, as creatures friendly to man and life-saving, they enjoy immunity.
And indeed shrines and altars of Artemis Dictynna and of Apollo Delphinius exist among many of the Greeks; but the special place which the god has made his very own is where the descendants of the Cretans dwell, who used a dolphin as their guide—for the god himself did not swim ahead of the expedition, having changed his shape, as the mythographers say, but sent a dolphin to guide the men's voyage and brought them down to Cirrha. It is also recorded that the men sent to Sinope by Ptolemy Soter to fetch the statue of Sarapis, Soteles and Dionysius, when driven off course by a violent wind and carried, against their intention, past Malea with the Peloponnese on their right, then wandering and disheartened,
a dolphin appeared before their prow, as though calling them onward, and led them to safe harbors and to gentle anchorages of that coast where they might rest secure, until, guiding and escorting the ship in this manner, it brought them safely into Cirrha. From this they sacrificed a landing-offering and learned that of the two statues they must take up and carry away that of Pluto, but make a cast of that of Kore and leave it behind. It was likely, then, that the god should also love the creature's love of music—Pindar too, comparing himself to it, says that he is stirred like a sea-dolphin, whom the lovely melody of pipes has roused in the windless swell of the sea.
But it seems rather that its love of humankind is what makes it beloved of the gods: for it alone embraces man simply because he is man. Among land creatures, some cherish no one, and the tamest cherish only those who feed them, out of need—the dog, the horse, the elephant—and those they are used to; swallows, for their part, settle in among us to get what they need, shade and necessary safety, but flee and fear man like a wild beast. But to the dolphin alone, beyond all others, belongs by nature toward men that very thing sought after by the best philosophers—love without need.
For needing nothing at all from man, it is nevertheless well-disposed and friendly to all, and has come to the aid of many. Of these the story of Arion is known to everyone, for it is famous everywhere. But you, my friend, have opportunely reminded me of Hesiod's line: "yet you have not reached the end of your tale"—for in telling the story of the dog one ought not to have left out the dolphins. The dog's testimony was, after all, a mute one—barking, and rushing with cries upon the murderers—
whereas at Nemea, when the body was being tossed about by the sea, dolphins took it up, passing it eagerly one to another, and set it out at Rhium, revealing it slain. Myrsilus of Lesbos records the story of Enalus the Aeolian, who was in love with the daughter of Smintheus, who had been thrown into the sea by the Penthilidae in accordance with an oracle of Amphitrite; and Enalus himself leapt into the sea after her and was carried safe to Lesbos by a dolphin.
And the goodwill and affection of the dolphin toward the boy of Iasus seemed, through its excess, to be love itself: it used to play with him and swim beside him daily, and let itself be touched at close quarters; then, when the boy mounted upon it, it did not flee, but bore him gladly, turning and bending in whatever direction he inclined, while all the people of Iasus would gather together on the shore each time to watch. But once, when a great rainstorm fell together with hail,
the boy, swept off, slipped away and died, and the dolphin, taking him up together with his corpse, drove itself along with him onto the land and would not leave the body until it too died, having judged it right to share in the death of which it seemed to have been, in part, the cause. And a memorial of this misfortune is stamped on the coinage of the people of Iasus: a boy riding upon a dolphin. From this story the tale about Coeranus also gained credence, though it seems fabulous.
Being a Parian by birth, he came upon a catch of dolphins at Byzantium, caught in a seine and in danger of being cut to pieces, and he bought them all and released them. A little while later, as the story goes, he was sailing in a fifty-oared ship carrying men who turned out to be pirates; and in the strait between Naxos and Paros, when the ship capsized and the rest were destroyed, they say that he alone, a dolphin swimming beneath him and buoying him up,
was carried to a cave on Sicinus, which is shown even to this day and is called the Cave of Coeranus. It is said that on this account Archilochus composed the line: "gentle Poseidon spared Coeranus alone of fifty men." And later, when he had died and his relatives were burning his body near the sea, many dolphins appeared along the shore, as though showing themselves come to attend his funeral, and they remained until the rites were completed.
That the shield of Odysseus bore the emblem of a dolphin, Stesichorus too has recorded; and as for the reason, the people of Zacynthus preserve the memory, as Critheus attests: for Telemachus, while still an infant, as they say, slipped into deep water and was saved when dolphins took him up and swam him back to shore; and it was for this reason that his father had the design engraved on his seal and as the ornament of his shield, repaying the creature in kind.
But since I said beforehand that I would tell you no tale at all, and I myself do not know how, in speaking of dolphins, I was carried unawares far beyond what is credible, running aground on Odysseus and Coeranus, I now impose the penalty on myself: I stop, for I am already talking too much. It is open to you, then, gentlemen of the jury, to cast your vote. But we, for our part, have long ago resolved upon the saying of Sophocles: for a speech, even when in dispute with itself, is still...
fashions a middle ground uniting both. For if you two combine what you have said to each other and bring it together into a single argument, you will fight well in common cause against those who would strip animals of reason and understanding.

======== Moralia: De Stoicorum Repugnantis ========

First I hold that the agreement of a philosophy's doctrines ought to be examined in the lives of its adherents. For it is not merely, as Aeschines said of the orator, that word and law must speak the same thing; rather the philosopher's life ought to be in harmony with his teaching. For the philosopher's reasoned account is a law he has chosen for himself and made his own, at least if they truly regard philosophy — as indeed it is — not as play and word-hunting for the sake of reputation, but as a task worthy of the greatest seriousness.
Since, then, Zeno himself wrote much, considering how little he wrote on other things, and Cleanthes much, and Chrysippus most of all, on statecraft — on being ruled and ruling, on judging cases and on public speaking — yet in their lives one can find in none of them any generalship, any lawgiving, any entry into the council, any advocacy before the courts, any military campaign on behalf of their country, any embassy, any public benefaction. No: as though they had tasted some foreign lotus of leisure, they spent their whole life — no short one, but exceedingly long — in discourses and books and walks in the colonnades. It is not unclear that they lived their lives in agreement not with what they themselves professed but rather with what others wrote and said — that very quietism which Epicurus and Hieronymus praise — living out their days entirely in it.
Chrysippus himself, at any rate, in the fourth book On Lives, holds that the scholastic life differs not at all from the life of pleasure. I will quote his very words: "As for those who suppose that the scholastic life belongs above all to philosophers from the outset, these seem to me to be mistaken, supposing that one must do this for the sake of some pastime or something else of that kind, and so drag out one's whole life in this fashion — which, if clearly examined, amounts to living pleasantly. For their underlying assumption must not go unnoticed, since many say this plainly and not a few more obscurely."
Who, then, grew old more thoroughly in this very scholastic life than Chrysippus, and Cleanthes, and Diogenes, and Zeno, and Antipater — men who even abandoned their own native countries, with no complaint, except so as to spend their days quietly at leisure and engaged in literary pursuits in the Odeum and at Zoster? Aristocreon, at any rate, the pupil and kinsman of Chrysippus, when he set up a bronze statue of him, inscribed this epigram upon it: "This new Chrysippus did Aristocreon dedicate — the cleaver that severs the knotty tangles of the Academics." This, then, is the very Chrysippus — the old man, the philosopher, the one who praises the royal and political life but supposes the scholastic life to differ not at all from the life of pleasure!
As for the rest who do engage in public affairs, they are still more at odds with their own doctrines. For they hold office and judge cases and give counsel and legislate and punish and honor, as though there really existed cities in which they hold office — with councilors and jurors always chosen by lot, and generals elected by show of hands, and laws those of Cleisthenes and Lycurgus and Solon — whom they say were foolish and senseless men. So that even in taking part in public life they contradict themselves.
Moreover Antipater, in his work on the dispute between Cleanthes and Chrysippus, records that Zeno and Cleanthes were unwilling to become Athenian citizens, lest they seem to wrong their own native countries. Whether these two acted rightly, and Chrysippus wrongly in having himself enrolled as a citizen, let that be set aside. But there is a great and absurd contradiction in keeping their names attached to their native countries while having so thoroughly estranged their persons and their lives from them — just as if a man who had abandoned his wedded wife, and was living and sleeping with another and begetting children by her, should refuse to draw up a marriage contract with the second, so as not to seem to wrong the first.
Chrysippus, again, writing in his work On Rhetoric that the wise man will engage in public speaking and in politics on the assumption that wealth is a good, and reputation, and health, thereby admits that their arguments have no practical outlet and are unfit for political life, and that their doctrines are ill-fitted to actual needs and actions.
Further, it is a doctrine of Zeno's that "one ought not to build temples of the gods; for a temple is not worth much, and is not holy; and nothing made by the work of builders and craftsmen is worth much." Yet those who praise these sayings as sound are initiated in sanctuaries, go up to the Acropolis, bow down before the cult images, and hang garlands upon the temples — which are the works of builders and vulgar craftsmen! Then they think to refute the Epicureans for sacrificing to the gods, while they themselves are refuted still more, sacrificing as they do upon altars and in temples which they themselves maintain ought neither to exist nor to be built.
Zeno posits several distinct virtues, differing from one another, just as Plato does — prudence, courage, temperance, justice — as inseparable from one another yet distinct and different. But then again, when defining each of them, he says that courage is prudence in matters to be endured, temperance is prudence in matters to be chosen, and justice is prudence in matters to be distributed — as though it were one single virtue that only appears to differ according to its relations to particular activities. Nor is it only Zeno who is found contradicting himself on this point: Chrysippus too, while finding fault with Ariston for saying that the other virtues were merely dispositions of the one virtue, nevertheless supports Zeno in defining each of the virtues in just this way.
Cleanthes, in his Physical Notes, having said that tension is a stroke of fire, and that when it becomes sufficient in the soul to accomplish what is required, it is called strength and power, adds in these very words: "And this strength and power, when it occurs with respect to things that must be firmly held to as they appear, is self-control; when it occurs with respect to things that must be endured, it is courage; with respect to what is deserved, justice; and with respect to choices and avoidances, temperance."
Against the man who said, "Do not judge a case before you have heard both sides," Zeno used to argue in reply, employing some such reasoning as this: "If the first speaker has proven his case, the second need not be heard, for the matter under inquiry is settled; and if he has not proven it, it is just as if he had failed to answer when called, or answered but talked nonsense; but either he has proven it or he has not proven it; therefore the second speaker need not be heard." Yet having posed this very argument himself, he went on to write against Plato's Republic and to solve sophisms, and he urged his students to take up the study of dialectic as being capable of accomplishing just this. And yet either Plato proved, or did not prove, the doctrines in the Republic; on neither alternative was it necessary to write against him, but it was in every way superfluous and pointless. The same may be said concerning sophisms.
Chrysippus holds that young men ought first to attend lectures on logic, second on ethics, and after these on physics, and likewise, last of all after these, to take up the account concerning the gods. He says this in many places, but it will suffice to quote what he says in the fourth book On Lives, in these very words: "In the first place, then, it seems to me, in accordance with what has rightly been said by the ancients, that there are three kinds of the philosopher's theorems — the logical, the ethical, and the physical; and that among these, the logical must be ranked first, the ethical second, and the physical third; and of the physical, last of all comes the account concerning the gods — wherefore also they have called the handing-down of this account 'initiations.'"
But this very account, which he says must be ranked last — the account concerning the gods — he habitually places first and sets forth in advance of every ethical inquiry. For he appears not to speak at all about ends, or about justice, or about goods and evils, or about marriage and the rearing of children, or about law and the constitution, except as those who bring decrees before the cities first write at the head "Good Fortune" — so he too first writes at the head Zeus, Fate, Providence, the notion that the universe, being one and finite, is held together by a single power. None of these can be accepted as true unless one has been thoroughly steeped in the physical doctrines.
Hear what he says about these matters in the third book On the Gods: "For it is not possible to find any other origin or source of justice than that which comes from Zeus and from the common nature; for from this source everything of this kind must take its origin, if we are going to say anything at all about goods and evils." Again, in the Physical Theses: "For it is not possible to approach the account of goods and evils, nor the virtues, nor happiness, in any other or more appropriate way than from the common nature and from the governance of the universe." And proceeding further he again says: "For it is necessary to connect the account of goods and evils with these matters, there being no other, better source or point of reference for them, nor any other reason for which the study of nature must be undertaken than for the sake of the distinction between goods and evils."
It follows, then, according to Chrysippus, that the account of nature is at once both prior to and posterior to ethics — or rather, the reversal of order is altogether impossible to sustain, if that which comes after is to be ranked after matters none of which can be grasped apart from it. And the contradiction is plain: on the one hand he posits the physical account as the foundation of the account of goods and evils, while on the other he bids that it be handed down not first but last of all those subjects.
But if someone should say that Chrysippus has written, in his work On the Use of Reason, that "one who first takes up logic need not abstain altogether from the rest, but must take a share of those other subjects too, as far as is given," he will speak the truth, but will only confirm the charge; for Chrysippus contradicts himself, at one point bidding that the account concerning the gods be taken up last of all, on the ground that it is for this reason even called an 'initiation,' and at another point saying that a share of this too must be taken up along with the first subjects — for the order is simply destroyed, if one must take a share of everything in everything.
But the greater point is this: having made the account concerning the gods the foundation of the account of goods and evils, he does not bid that those who begin the study of ethics start from this, but rather that they take a share of it, as far as is given, while engaged with the other, and only afterward move on to this from those other subjects — apart from which, he says, there is no possible starting point or approach to it at all.
As for arguing on the opposite side of a question, he says he does not disapprove of it in general, but advises that it be used with caution, as in the law courts — not with the aim of advocacy, but so as to dissolve its persuasiveness. "For those," he says, "who suspend judgment about everything, it is fitting to do this, and it serves their purpose; but for those who are producing in their pupils the kind of knowledge by which we are to live in consistency with ourselves, it is necessary to instill and drill in the opposite doctrines, from beginning to end, in those who are being introduced to philosophy — and on these occasions there is also opportunity to recall the opposing arguments, dissolving their persuasiveness, just as is done in the law courts." These are his very words.
Now that it is absurd for him to suppose that philosophers ought to state the opposing argument not for the sake of advocacy but, like pleaders at law, doing harm to it — as though contending not for the truth but for victory — this has been said against him elsewhere. But that he himself, not in a few places but in many, has constructed the arguments opposed to what he approves with such vigor, and with such seriousness and ambition, that it is not easy for everyone to discern which side he really favors — this the Stoics themselves say, in admiration of the man's cleverness; and they suppose that Carneades said nothing of his own, but merely took his starting points from what Chrysippus had undertaken to argue on the opposite side, and attacked his arguments from there, often murmuring, "Unhappy man, your own strength will destroy you" — as though Chrysippus were giving great advantages against himself to those who wished to unsettle and slander his doctrines.
As for what he published Against Custom, they are so proud and boastful about it that they say the arguments of all the Academics put together, heaped into one, are not worthy to be compared with what Chrysippus wrote to discredit the senses. This is indeed a sign either of their inexperience or of their self-love in saying so. But this much is true: when he wished, in turn, to speak on behalf of Custom and the senses, he became weaker than himself, and his second treatise was feebler than the first — so that he is at odds with himself, on the one hand always bidding that the opposing arguments be set forth not by way of advocacy but with an indication that they are false, and on the other hand being, with regard to his own doctrines, a more formidable prosecutor than advocate — urging others to be on their guard against arguments on the opposite side, as distracting one's grasp of the truth, while he himself composes, with more ambition than the arguments that confirm our grasp, the very arguments that destroy it.
And yet that he himself fears this very thing, he shows plainly in the fourth book On Lives, writing as follows: "Nor should the opposing arguments be admitted just as they happen to come, nor should the opposing plausibilities be accepted, but one must be on guard lest, being distracted by them, men let go their grasp of the truth — being unable either to hear the solutions adequately, or, having grasped them, to shake them off easily; since even those who hold fast to custom and to the objects of sense-perception and other things derived from the senses readily let these go when they are distracted by the questions of the Megarics, and by many other more powerful questions besides."
I would gladly, then, ask the Stoics whether they think the questions of the Megarics are more powerful than those which Chrysippus wrote against custom in six books, or whether this must be asked of Chrysippus himself. For consider what he has written about the Megaric argument in his work On the Use of Reason: "Something of the same kind has happened also in the case of the argument of Stilpo and Menedemus; for though these men had become greatly renowned for their wisdom, their argument has now turned to their reproach, on the ground that the one kind of arguer is somewhat coarse, and the other openly indulges in sophistry."
Then, my good sir, these very arguments — at which you scoff, and which you call reproaches to those who pose them, as having their badness plain to see — you nevertheless fear that they may distract some from their grasp of the truth; while you yourself, writing so many books against Custom, to which — whatever you discovered — you kept adding, in your ambition to surpass Arcesilaus, did you expect to disturb none of your readers? For he does not employ his arguments against Custom in a bare, unadorned way, but, as in a lawsuit, sharing in some passion, he repeatedly says that it talks nonsense and babbles emptily.
So that he might leave no possibility of denying that he argues on both sides, in the Physical Theses he has written as follows: "It will also be possible, even while grasping something firmly, to argue the opposite side, providing the support inherent in it, and sometimes, grasping neither side firmly, to state what can be said on each side." And in his work On the Use of Reason, having said that one ought not to use the power of reason for purposes to which it is not suited, just as one ought not to use weapons for such purposes, he adds this...
for the discovery of truths one must use it, and for their kinship, but not for the opposite — though many do this to many people?” meaning, presumably, the Suspenders of Judgment. But they, at least, apprehending neither side, argue on each side alike: as though, if anything were apprehensible, truth would provide its own apprehension only, or best, in that way. But you, who accuse them of this, yourself write the opposite of what you apprehend about Custom, and dissuade others from doing the same thing with advocacy, while confessedly using the power of reason for useless and harmful ends out of sheer ambition to play the young man. “Correct action,” they say, “is a command of law, and error is a prohibition of law; hence the law forbids the base many things but commands nothing, since they cannot act rightly.”
But who does not know that for one who cannot act rightly it is impossible not to err? So they make the law contradict itself, commanding what people are unable to do and forbidding what they are unable to refrain from: for the man who cannot be temperate cannot help being intemperate, and the man who cannot be wise cannot help being foolish. Yet they themselves say that to forbid is one thing, and to command another, and to say is yet another: for the one who says “do not steal” says precisely that, “do not steal,” and thereby forbids stealing, and commands not stealing. So the law will forbid the base nothing, if indeed it commands nothing. And they say that the physician commands his pupil to cut and cauterize, by omission of the proper time and measure, and that the musician commands him to play the lyre and sing, by omission of the tuneful and harmonious; and that is why they punish those who do these things unskillfully and badly — for the command itself was right, but they did not carry it out rightly.
So too, when the wise man commands his servant to say and do something, even if the servant does not do it at the right time nor in the way he ought, and is punished for it, it is clear that the wise man was commanding a right action, not something intermediate. And if the wise commit intermediate acts to the base, what prevents the commands of law from being of that sort too? Moreover, according to Chrysippus himself, impulse is a man’s reason commanding him to act, as he has written in his treatise On Law. Then aversion, too, is reason forbidding; and avoidance is reasoned avoidance; and caution, accordingly, is reason forbidding to the wise man — for caution is proper to the wise, not to the base.
If, then, the wise man’s reason is one thing and the law another, the wise possess in their caution a reason that conflicts with the law; but if law is nothing other than the wise man’s reason, then a law forbidding has been found, one that forbids the wise from doing the things they are cautious about. “Nothing,” says Chrysippus, “is useful to the base, nor does the base man have need or want of anything.” But having said this in the first book of On Right Actions, he says again that “usefulness and favor extend to intermediate things” — none of which is useful, according to them. And further he says that nothing is proper or fitting to the base man, in these words: “in the same way, nothing is foreign to the good man, and nothing is proper to the base man, since the one is good and the other bad.”
How then does he wear us out again, in practically every book of physics and ethics — by Zeus! — writing that “we become dear to ourselves the moment we are born, and to our own parts and offspring”? And in the first book On Justice: “Even the beasts,” he says, “have become attached, in due measure, to their own offspring — except fish, whose young are nourished by themselves.” But there is neither perception where nothing is perceptible, nor attachment where nothing is proper to one: for attachment seems to be a perception and apprehension of what is proper. And this doctrine follows from the most authoritative principles; and Chrysippus, even though he has written much against it, is clearly committed to the view that neither is one vice greater than another vice, nor one error than another error, nor one virtue than another virtue, nor one right action than another right action. This is the man who says, in the third book On Nature: “Just as it befits Zeus to take pride in himself and in his life, and to think great thoughts and, if one may put it so, to hold his neck high and let his hair grow long and speak in a lofty manner, living a life worthy of such lofty speech,
so all good men have a right to these things equally, being outdone by Zeus in nothing.” Yet he himself, again, in the third book On Justice, says that those who posit pleasure as the end destroy justice, while those who say it is merely a good, and not the end, do not destroy it; and here are his very words: “For perhaps, if pleasure is left as a good, but not as the end, while what is fine is also choiceworthy for its own sake, we could preserve justice, leaving the fine and the just as a greater good than pleasure.” But if only the fine is good, then the man who declares pleasure a good errs, but errs less than the man who also makes it the end: this second man destroys justice, that first man preserves it; and on Chrysippus’s own reckoning, community and fellowship are then utterly gone and lost, whereas the other view leaves room for kindness and benevolence.
Further, as for his saying, in his work On Zeus, that “virtues grow and advance,” I let that pass, lest I seem to be catching at mere words — though Chrysippus himself bites bitterly at Plato and the others on this very point of terminology. But when he bids us not to praise every act done in accordance with virtue, he thereby implies some difference among right actions; for he speaks thus in his work On Zeus: “Since acts in accordance with the virtues exist, it is proper that the things that are brought forward, and among these too, — for instance, to stretch out one’s finger bravely, and to hold back with self-control from a dying old woman, and to hear without over-hastiness that three and four do not make seven — reveals a certain frigidity in the man who undertakes to praise and extol people for such things.”
Similar remarks are made in the third book On the Gods: “For I think,” he says, “that praise, too, will be alienated by such occurrences arising from virtue — for instance, holding back from a dying old woman, and steadfastly enduring the bite of a fly.” What other accuser, then, does this man await for his own doctrines? For if the man who praises such things is frigid, then surely far more frigid is the man who counts each of these things a right action, and indeed a great one, the greatest one. For if it is equal to bear the bite of a fly bravely and to hold back temperately from the old woman, I think it makes no difference whether the sage is praised for the one or for the other. Further, in the second book On Friendship, teaching that friendships ought not to be dissolved over every fault, he uses these very words: “For it is fitting that some faults be altogether passed over, others receive only slight attention, others a greater degree of it, and others still be judged worthy of complete dissolution.”
But something more telling than this: in the same passage he says that “we shall associate more closely with some, less closely with others, so that some are friends to a greater, others to a lesser degree; and as this variation becomes considerable, some become worthy of this much friendship, others of that much, and some will be judged worthy of this much trust and the like, others of that much.” What else has he done here but leave great differences among these things too? Moreover, in his work On the Fine, in support of the demonstration that only the fine is good, he uses arguments of this kind: “The good is choiceworthy, the choiceworthy is pleasing, the pleasing is praiseworthy, the praiseworthy is fine”;
and again, “The good is a cause for joy, what is a cause for joy is solemn, what is solemn is fine.” But these arguments conflict with the passage above: for if every good thing is praiseworthy, then holding back temperately from the old woman would be praiseworthy too; or else not every good thing is either solemn or a cause for joy — and then his argument collapses. For how can it be that for others to praise such things is frigid, while for the sage himself to rejoice and take pride in such things is not ridiculous? So he is like this in many places; but in his controversies against others he cares least of all about saying nothing contrary to and dissonant with himself. At any rate, in his work Against Plato’s Protrepticus,
taking Plato to task for saying that for one who has neither learned nor knows how to live, it is more profitable not to live, he says, word for word: “For such an argument both conflicts with itself and is least of all protreptic (exhortatory). For, in the first place, by showing that it is best for us not to live, and in a sense urging us to die, he has thereby urged us toward certain other things rather than toward philosophizing — for it is not possible to philosophize without being alive, nor, if one does not go on living for a long time, to become wise, however badly and carelessly one has lived.”
And going on, he says that “even the base ought to remain alive”; then, word for word: “For in the first place, virtue in itself is nothing as regards our living, and just so, vice is nothing as regards our needing to depart from life.” And indeed there is no need to unroll other books to display Chrysippus’s contradiction with himself: within these very same works he is found now praising Antisthenes’ dictum that one must acquire either sense or a noose, and Tyrtaeus’s line, “before he comes to the bounds of valor or of death” — and yet what else do these mean, except that not living is more profitable than living, for the wicked and the senseless?
and elsewhere, correcting Theognis, he says: “He ought not to have said, ‘One must, in fleeing poverty,’ but rather, ‘one must, in fleeing vice, hurl oneself into the deep-yawning sea, or from towering cliffs, Cyrnus.’” What else, then, would he seem to be doing but writing in himself the same doctrines and matters that he erases when others write them — finding fault with Plato for demonstrating that not living is more profitable than living badly and ignorantly, while advising Theognis to hurl himself off a cliff or drown himself in order to escape vice?
In praising Antisthenes for driving those who lack sense to the noose, he was condemning himself, since he had said that vice is nothing as regards freeing us from life. And in his work Against Plato himself On Justice, right from the start he leaps into the argument about the gods and says: “It was not right to deter Cephalus from injustice by fear of the gods; for such an argument is easily discredited, and, being led toward the opposite, exposed to many diversions and plausible counter-arguments, the discourse on divine punishments is no different from the bogey-women Akko and Alphito, by which women keep children from misbehaving.”
Yet having thus torn Plato’s views to shreds, he elsewhere praises them again, and often quotes these lines of Euripides: “But it is true — even if one mocks the saying — that Zeus and the gods look upon mortal sufferings”; and likewise, in the first book On Justice, he has cited these lines of Hesiod: “Upon them the son of Cronus sent a great woe from heaven, famine together with plague, and the people wasted away.”
“This,” he says, “is what the gods do, so that, when the wicked are punished, the rest, using these as examples, may be less inclined to attempt such a thing.” Again, in the treatise On Justice, having first suggested that those who posit pleasure as a good but not as the end can nonetheless preserve justice, he sets this down, word for word: “For perhaps, if pleasure is left as a good but not as the end, while what is fine is also choiceworthy for its own sake, we could preserve justice, leaving the fine and the just as a greater good than pleasure.” So much, in this passage, about pleasure. But in his arguments against Plato, accusing him of apparently leaving health as a good, he says: “Not only justice, but also greatness of soul and temperance and all the other virtues are destroyed, if we leave pleasure, or health, or anything else that is not fine, as a good.”
Now what ought to be said on Plato’s behalf has been written elsewhere, against him; but here the contradiction is plain to see, since in one place he says that if one posits pleasure as a good along with the fine, justice is preserved, while in another he charges that those who leave anything other than the fine as a good destroy all the virtues. And so that he might leave no defense open even for these inconsistencies, writing against Aristotle on justice, he says: “He is not right in saying that, pleasure being the end, justice is destroyed, and together with justice each of the other virtues as well; for justice is indeed truly destroyed by them,
but the other virtues are in no way prevented from existing, even if not choiceworthy for their own sakes, yet at least as being goods and virtues that will result.” Then he names each of them by name. But it is better to take up his own words: “For,” he says, “if pleasure appears as the end according to such reasoning, then it seems to me that nothing of the sort is included in it at all; and so one must say that none of the virtues is choiceworthy for its own sake, nor any of the vices to be avoided for its own sake,
but that all these things must be referred to the underlying goal. Nothing, however, will prevent bravery and prudence and self-control and endurance, and virtues akin to these, from being among the goods, according to them, while the opposite qualities are to be avoided.” Who, then, has ever been bolder in argument than this man, who has charged two of the very best philosophers — the one, that he destroys every virtue by leaving only the fine as good; the other, that, pleasure being the end, he thinks not every virtue is preserved without justice?
For it is a marvelous freedom, when discussing the very same matters, to charge Aristotle with positing certain things, and then again to destroy those same things himself, when accusing Plato. And further, in his Demonstrations concerning Justice, he says explicitly that “every right action is also a lawful act and a just act; and what is done in accordance with self-control, or endurance, or prudence, or bravery, is a right action, and so it is also a just act.” How, then, does he not also leave out justice, when he leaves out prudence and bravery and self-control, in the case of all those who act rightly in the aforementioned virtues and are thereby acting justly?
...injustice, being a corruption and internal faction of the soul, does not, even in those who possess it, lose its power, but sets a wicked man at odds with himself and dashes him together and throws him into turmoil — Chrysippus, finding fault with this, says: "It is said absurdly that a man wrongs himself, for injustice is directed toward another, not toward oneself." Yet forgetting this, he again says in his Proofs concerning Justice that "the wrongdoer is wronged by himself, and wrongs himself whenever he wrongs another, becoming for himself the cause of his own transgression and harming himself beyond his desert." In his work Against Plato he made these statements about injustice being said to be directed not toward oneself but toward another: "For unjust men are not so constituted individually, but rather from a plurality of such men who say the opposite" — and injustice being taken in another way, as it would be among a number of people so disposed toward one another, whereas toward a single person, with no such relation extending, only insofar as one behaves so toward one's neighbors is it so.
But in the Proofs he has posed arguments of this sort about the unjust man wronging even himself: "The law forbids becoming an accessory to a transgression, and to do wrong is a transgression; therefore whoever becomes an accessory to himself in wrongdoing transgresses against himself; and whoever transgresses against a single person also wrongs that person; therefore whoever wrongs anyone whatsoever also wrongs himself." And again: "Error belongs to the class of harms, and everyone who errs, errs against himself; therefore everyone who errs harms himself undeservedly; and if this is so, he also wrongs himself." And further, in this way too: "He who is harmed by another harms himself, and harms himself undeservedly; but this was what it meant to be wronged; therefore he who is wronged, even by anyone whatsoever, wrongs himself."
As for the account of goods and evils which he himself introduces and approves, he says it is "most in accord with life and above all in contact with our innate preconceptions" — this he stated in the third book of his Exhortations; but in the first book he says that "this account draws a man away from all other things, as being nothing to us and contributing nothing to happiness." Observe, then, how consistent he is with himself: the very man who declares that living, health, freedom from pain, and the soundness of the sense organs — things we ask of the gods — are nothing to us, at the same time asserts that this position is most in accord with life and with our common preconceptions.
But, so that there might be no denying that he contradicts himself, in the third book On Justice he has said this: "Wherefore, on account of the excess both of the greatness and of the beauty, we seem to be speaking of fictions and not in accordance with man and human nature." Is there, then, any way one could more clearly confess to contradicting oneself than this man does, when about the very things which he says, on account of their excess, seem to be fictions and to be spoken beyond man and beyond human nature, he asserts that these are in accord with life and above all in contact with our innate preconceptions? He declares vice to be the essence of misfortune, writing and insisting in every book, physical and ethical, that "to live according to vice is the same as to live in misfortune."
Yet in the third book On Nature, having first said that "it is more profitable to live foolishly than not to live at all, even if one is never going to become wise," he adds: "For such are the goods that belong to men, that in a sense the evils among the intermediate things take precedence." Now that, having said elsewhere that nothing is profitable for fools, he here says that living foolishly is profitable, I let pass. But of the things called "intermediate" among the Stoics, being neither evils nor goods, when he says that evils take precedence, he is saying nothing other than that evils take precedence over things that are not evils, and that being unfortunate is more profitable than not being unfortunate — and he holds that not being unfortunate is less profitable than being unfortunate; and if less profitable, then also more harmful; so that not being unfortunate turns out, on his view, to be more harmful than being unfortunate.
Wishing, then, to smooth over this absurdity, he adds concerning the evils: "But it is not these that take precedence, but reason, in accordance with which it is more fitting to live, even if we are to be foolish." Now, in the first place, he calls "evils" vice and the things that partake of vice, and nothing else; and vice is a rational thing, or rather a mistaken reason; so living with reason while being foolish is nothing other than living with vice.
In the next place, living while being foolish is living in misfortune, since one is so. In what respect, then, does this take precedence over the intermediate things? For he will surely not say that being unfortunate takes precedence with a view to being fortunate. But, they say, Chrysippus does not think that either remaining in life for the good, or departing from it for the wicked, ought to be measured by these things at all, but by the things that are intermediate and in accordance with nature; wherefore it sometimes becomes fitting for the fortunate to remove themselves from life, and for the unfortunate, in turn, to remain in it.
What, then, could be a greater contradiction of the principle of choice and avoidance than this — that it should be fitting for those who are supremely fortunate to withdraw from the goods present to them because of the absence of things indifferent? And yet none of the things indifferent is, on their view, either to be chosen or to be avoided; only the good is to be chosen, and only the evil to be avoided — so they hold. So it follows, on their own account, that the calculations governing actions are made with reference neither to things to be chosen nor to things to be avoided, but that men aim at other things which they neither avoid nor choose, and live and die with reference to these. Chrysippus agrees that goods differ from evils in every respect, and this is necessary, if the one sort makes men wretched in the extreme the moment they are present, and the other sort makes them supremely fortunate.
He says that goods and evils are perceptible by the senses, writing in the earlier book On the End as follows: "For that goods and evils are perceptible, this too makes it possible to say; for not only the passions are perceptible, together with their forms — such as grief and fear and the like — but also
theft and adultery and things of that sort can be perceived, and in general folly and cowardice and not a few other vices, and not only joy and acts of kindness and many other right actions, but also prudence and courage and the rest of the virtues." Setting aside the other absurdity in this, who would not agree that it conflicts with their doctrine of the sage who is wise without knowing it?
For if the good is perceptible and differs greatly from evil, then that a man passing from wickedness to virtue should be unaware of this, and not perceive that virtue is present in him, but suppose that vice is still present in him — how is this not most absurd? For either no one who possesses all the virtues can fail to notice or disbelieve it, or else the difference between virtue and vice, and between happiness and misfortune, and between the noblest life and the most shameful, is small indeed and altogether hard to discern, if a man who has acquired these instead of those can remain unaware of himself.
There is a single treatise, On Lives, in four books. In the fourth of these he says that the sage is a man of leisure and of few affairs, and one who minds his own business; and this is his statement: "For I think that the prudent man is a man of leisure and of few affairs and minds his own business, since minding one's own business and being a man of few affairs are both fine things."
Much the same he has said in the treatise On Things Choiceworthy for Their Own Sake, in these words: "For indeed the life of quietude appears in truth to have something free from danger and secure about it, though not all people are quite able to perceive this." That this does not clash with Epicurus, who does away with providence through his doctrine of the god's freedom from all business, is clear. But Chrysippus himself, in the first book On Lives, says that "the sage willingly undertakes kingship, making money from it; and if he himself cannot be king, he will live with a king and go on campaign together with a king, as was the case with Idanthyrsus the Scythian
or Leucon the Pontic." And I will set beside this also this other statement of his, so that we may see whether, as from the lowest and highest strings some concord arises, so too the life of a man who chooses leisure and having few affairs is in harmony with then riding alongside Scythians and doing the business of the tyrants of the Bosporus out of some sort of necessity: "For that he will also go on campaign with rulers and live with them, let us examine again
once we have taken up these points — some not even suspecting this, because of similar reckonings, and we ourselves also setting these aside for similar reasons." And a little further on: "and not only with those who have made some progress and have been raised in a certain kind of training and habits, such as with Leucon and Idanthyrsus." Some blame Callisthenes for having sailed to join Alexander, hoping to restore Olynthus,
as Aristotle hoped for Stagira; and they praise Ephorus and Xenocrates and Menedemus for declining Alexander's invitation. But Chrysippus, for the sake of profit, thrusts the sage headlong into Panticapaeum and the desolation of the Scythians. For that he does this for the sake of business and profit he has already made plain, having proposed that there are three sources of income most fitting for the sage: that from kingship, that from friends, and third besides these,
that from sophistry. And yet in many places he wears one out with praising the lines: 'For what do mortals need, save these two things alone — the fruit of Demeter and a draught of flowing water?' But in the books On Nature he says that "the sage, were he to lose the greatest estate, would think he had lost but a single drachma." So, having exalted him in the one place and puffed him up, he then in the other casts him back down again into wage-earning and sophistry —
for he says that the sage will ask for and take his fee, in one case immediately at the start, in the other after some time has passed for the pupil, which he says is the more considerate way, though it is safer to take it in advance, since the subject admits of wrongs being done. And he speaks thus: "Not all sensible men exact their fee in the same way, but variously, as the occasion offers, not promising to make their pupils good, and that within a year,
but rather that whatever pertains to themselves they will do, up to the agreed time." And again, proceeding further: "He will also know the right occasion — whether he ought to take the fee at once, together with the enrollment, as most have done, or also allow them time, since this subject admits of wrongdoing more than most, though it might seem the more considerate course." And how could the sage be a despiser of money, who under written contract hands over virtue for silver, and even when it is not paid, exacts his little fee, as one who has done his part;
or is he superior to harm, only guarding against being wronged in the matter of his little fee? For no one is wronged who is not harmed; hence, having declared elsewhere that the sage is not wronged, he here says that this subject admits of some wrongdoing. In the treatise On the Republic he says that citizens will do nothing, and make no preparation, for the sake of pleasure;
and he praises Euripides for producing these lines: 'For what do mortals need, save these two things alone — the fruit of Demeter and a draught of flowing water?' Then, going on a little from this, he praises Diogenes for masturbating in public and saying to those present, 'Would that I could likewise rub away my hunger by rubbing my belly.' What sense, then, is there
in praising, in the same breath, the man who casts out pleasure and the man who does such things and engages in such shameful conduct for pleasure's sake? For having written, in the books On Nature, that nature has produced many animals for the sake of beauty, taking delight and rejoicing in variety, and having added a most irrational argument, that "the peacock came to be for the sake of its tail, on account of its beauty," he then, again,
in the treatise On the Republic, rebukes with youthful vehemence those who keep peacocks and nightingales, as though legislating against the lawgiver of the universe and mocking nature, who delights in beauty in such creatures, to which the sage gives no place in his city. For how is it not absurd to blame those who raise creatures whose begetting he praises as the work of providence? So then, in the fifth book On Nature, having said
that "bedbugs usefully wake us up, and mice make us turn to arranging each thing carefully, and it is likely that nature loves beauty, delighting in variety," he has said this word for word: "This would be most manifest above all in the tail of the peacock; for there it is evident that the animal came to be for the sake of its tail and not the reverse, and that the female, at any rate, followed the male
as he came to be so." But in the treatise On the Republic, having said that "we are close to painting even our privies," he says a little later that some people beautify their farmland with climbing vines and myrtles, and keep peacocks and doves and partridges so that they may cluck for them, and nightingales. I should be glad to learn from him what he thinks about bees and honey; for was it not consistent,
having said that bedbugs came to be usefully, to say that bees came to be uselessly? But if he grants these a place in his city, why does he bar the citizens from the things that give delight to hearing and sight? In general, just as it would be absurd for a man to blame his fellow-diners for making use of desserts and wine and delicacies, while praising the host who invited them to this and provided these very things,
so too is he absurd, who on the one hand praises providence for having provided fish and birds and honey and wine, while on the other hand blaming those who do not forgo these and are not content with 'the fruit of Demeter and draughts of flowing water,' which are present and by nature suited to nourish us — he seems to take no account of the fact that he is contradicting himself. Moreover, in the treatise Exhortations, having said that "intercourse with mothers or sisters or
daughters, and eating certain food, and going up to a temple after childbirth or a death, have been irrationally condemned, and that one must look to the beasts," he says, "and draw evidence from what is done by them, that none of such things is out of place or contrary to nature; for the placing of the examples of other animals side by side with these matters serves the timely purpose of showing that neither their coupling, nor their giving birth, nor their
dying within temples defiles the divine." And again in the fifth book On Nature he says: "Hesiod does well to forbid urinating into rivers and springs; and one must all the more abstain from urinating toward an altar or a statue of a god; for it is not reasonable, if dogs and donkeys do this, and little infant children, that no attention or reasoning
...having such-and-such qualities." It is absurd, then, that in the one case it should be fitting to appeal to the observation of irrational animals, but here that one should reason it out instead.
To provide release from the impression that our impulses are compelled by external causes, some philosophers construct a certain "adventitious" motion within the ruling faculty, a motion that becomes most evident in cases involving indistinguishable alternatives. For when, of two things equally possible and alike in every respect, it is necessary to take one, with no cause inclining us to the one rather than the other because there is no difference between them, this adventitious power of the soul, taking an inclination from itself, cuts through the impasse.
Arguing against these men, as though they were doing violence to nature by introducing the uncaused, Chrysippus in many places sets down this argument: "Can the knucklebone, or the balance, or many other things that cannot at different times fall or incline differently, do so without some cause and difference, either wholly within themselves or arising from external circumstances? For the uncaused is altogether nonexistent, and so is the spontaneous. But in these 'adventitious' motions fabricated and spoken of by some, hidden causes underlie them and escape our notice, leading the impulse now to one side, now to the other."
These, then, are among the best-known of the things he has often said. But what he himself has said, in turn, contrary to these — though not so readily at hand — I shall set forth in his own words.
In his treatise On Judging, having supposed that two runners finish a dead heat together, he raises the difficulty of what it is proper for the judge to do: "Is it permitted," he asks, "for the judge to award the palm to whichever of the two he pleases? And if they happen to be closer acquaintances of his, is it permitted, as it were, to grant him something of his own in this case? Or rather, in a way — since the palm has become common property of both — is he to give it as if by some hidden lot, following the inclination, as chance dictates? I mean the chance inclination of the sort that occurs when, two similar drachmas being set before us, alike in every other respect, we incline toward one of them and take it."
In the sixth book On Appropriate Acts, having said that "there are certain matters not worth much trouble or attention," he holds that in such cases one ought to let the matter go and, allotting the choice to the mind's chance inclination, leave the decision to it. "For example," he says, "if, among men testing two drachmas up to a certain point, some should judge this one to be the good one and others that one, and it were necessary to take just one of them, then, giving up further inquiry, we shall take whichever we happen to, allotting between them by some hidden reckoning — even if we thereby take the worse of the two." In these passages, then, sortition and the mind's chance inclination introduce the taking of indifferent things without any cause whatsoever.
In the third book On Dialectic, having remarked that "Plato took dialectic seriously, and so did Aristotle, and after them those down to Polemo and Strato, and above all Socrates," and having exclaimed that "one might well be willing to share even in the errors of men so numerous and of such stature," he adds, word for word: "For if they had spoken of these matters only in passing, one might perhaps have made light of the point; but since they spoke of it so carefully, on the ground that it is among the greatest and most necessary of the faculties, it is not plausible that men who are, on the whole, of the sort we take them to be, should go so far wrong in this."
What then of you yourself, one might ask — do you never cease contending with and refuting men so many and so great, on the ground that you think they go wrong in the most authoritative and weightiest matters? For surely they did not write earnestly about dialectic while writing about first principles, the end of life, the gods, and justice only in passing and in jest — the very matters in which you call their reasoning blind, self-contradictory, and guilty of countless other errors.
"Malicious delight at another's misfortune," he says in one place, "does not exist, since none of the refined take pleasure in others' evils, and none of the base take pleasure at all." Yet in the second book On the Good, having explained envy as "pain at another's goods, felt somehow by those who wish to humble their neighbors so that they themselves may excel," he goes on to add the matter of malicious delight: "Continuous with this, malicious delight at another's misfortune arises in those who wish their neighbors humbled for the same reasons; but when they are turned aside instead by other natural impulses, pity arises." Here, then, he plainly leaves malicious delight standing as real, alongside envy and pity — though elsewhere he says it does not exist, any more than hatred of wickedness or love of shameful gain does.
Though he has said in many places that "over a longer span of time men are no happier, but just as much so, and equally, as those who partake of happiness for a single indivisible instant," he has again said in many places that "it would not be proper even to stretch out a finger for the sake of a momentary wisdom, as though it were a flash of lightning passing by." It will suffice to cite what he wrote on this subject in the sixth book of the Ethical Questions. Having first said that "not every good falls equally into joy, nor every right action into solemn pride," he adds: "For indeed, if one were to possess wisdom for only a single instant, or as one's last, it would not be proper even to extend a finger for the sake of a wisdom that would be present in that way" — even though, over a longer span of time, men are no happier, and eternal happiness is no more choiceworthy than momentary happiness.
Now if he held wisdom to be a good that produces happiness, as Epicurus does, one would only need to seize on the absurdity and paradox of the doctrine itself. But since, according to him, wisdom is not distinct from happiness but is happiness itself, how does it not contradict itself to say that momentary happiness is equally choiceworthy as eternal happiness, and yet that momentary happiness is worth nothing?
"The virtues," he says, "follow reciprocally upon one another — not only in that whoever has one has them all, but also in that whoever performs any single act in accordance with one virtue performs it in accordance with all; for he says that no man is perfect who does not possess all the virtues, and no act is perfect that is not performed in accordance with all the virtues." And yet in the sixth book of the Ethical Questions Chrysippus says that the excellent man does not always act with courage, nor the base man always with cowardice, but rather that, as various impressions come upon them, one stands firm in his judgments while the other abandons them. "It is plausible," he says, "that the base man is not always intemperate either." If, then, acting courageously is the same as exercising courage, and acting cowardly the same as exercising cowardice, they contradict themselves in saying, on the one hand, that whoever possesses the virtues and vices acts in accordance with all of them at once, and, on the other, that the excellent man does not always act courageously, nor the base man always cowardly.
He defines rhetoric as an art concerned with order and the arrangement of well-composed speech; and further, in the first book, he has also written this: "I think that in speeches, too, one must attend not only to a liberal and unaffected order, but also to the delivery proper to them, in keeping with the fitting modulations of the voice and the gestures of face and hands." Yet this same man, so ambitious about style here, says again in the same book, discussing the clash of vowels: "Not only must these be avoided by those who hold to the better course, but also certain kinds of obscurity and omission and, by Zeus, solecisms — over which not a few others would be ashamed." To concede, then, at one moment that speakers should arrange their speech with propriety down to the gestures of hand and mouth, and at another that one need not attend to omissions and obscurities, nor be ashamed of solecisms — this is the mark of a man saying whatever occurs to him.
And in the Physical Theses, having urged, concerning matters that require experience and empirical inquiry, that one keep silent unless one has something better and clearer to say — "so that," he says, "we may not, like Plato, suppose that liquid nourishment is carried to the lung and dry nourishment to the stomach, nor fall into other blunders of the same kind" —
I think that to censure others and then fall oneself into the very faults one censures, without guarding against it, is the greatest of self-contradictions and the most shameful of blunders. And yet he himself says that the combinations formed from ten propositions exceed a million in number, without either investigating the matter carefully himself or inquiring into the truth from those experienced in it. And yet Plato has the most eminent physicians as his witnesses — Hippocrates, Philistion, Dioxippus the Hippocratic — and among the poets Euripides, Alcaeus, Eupolis, and Eratosthenes — all of whom say that drink passes through the lung; but Chrysippus is refuted by all the mathematicians, among them Hipparchus, who demonstrates that the error in his calculation was enormous, since he makes the affirmative combinations of compound propositions one hundred and three thousand and forty-nine, and the negative combinations thirty-one thousand nine hundred and fifty-two.
Some of the older writers said that what happens to a man who has sour wine, unable to sell it either as vinegar or as wine, happens also to Zeno: for his "preferred" thing has, in his system, a status that is neither that of a good nor that of an indifferent. But Chrysippus has made the matter still harder to settle. For at one time he says: "those who count wealth, health, freedom from pain, and bodily soundness as nothing, and do not hold fast to such things, are mad"; yet at another time, citing Hesiod's line "Work, Perses, scion of the gods," he declares that it would be madness to counsel the opposite — "Do not work, Perses, scion of the gods."
"And the wise man," he says in his work On Lives, "will consort even with kings for the sake of profit, and will play the sophist for money, taking payment in advance from some of his pupils and making agreements with others." And in the seventh book of the On Appropriate Acts: "and he will even turn a somersault for a talent, if paid to do so." Yet in the first book On Goods he in a way concedes, and grants to those who wish it, that the "preferred" things may be called goods and their opposites evils, in these words: "It is possible, if one wishes, to call one of these good and the other bad in accordance with such variations, provided one keeps to the actual facts and does not wander off in some other direction — not going wrong as to their meaning, but in other respects following ordinary usage in naming them." Thus, having here drawn the "preferred" close to the good and all but merged the two, he says again elsewhere: "none of these things is of any concern to us at all, but reason draws us away and turns us from all such things" — for this he has written in the first book of the Exhortations.
And in the third book On Nature he says: "some men are counted blessed for being kings and being rich, as though one were counted blessed for using golden chamber-pots and golden fringes; whereas for the good man, to lose his property is like losing a drachma, and to fall ill is like stubbing one's toe." Hence he has filled not only virtue but also providence with these contradictions. For on the one hand virtue will appear utterly petty and foolish if it busies itself over such trifles, bidding the wise man sail to the Bosporus and turn somersaults for their sake; and on the other hand Zeus becomes ridiculous, if he delights in being called "Ktesios" (Possessor), "Epikarpios" (Giver of Increase), and "Charidotes" (Giver of Grace), seeing that he evidently grants golden chamber-pots and golden fringes to the base, and things worth a mere drachma to the good, whenever they grow rich by the providence of Zeus. Still more ridiculous is Apollo, if he sits pronouncing oracles about golden fringes and chamber-pots, and about release from stubbed toes.
Moreover, by their own proof they make the contradiction still more manifest. For whatever, they say, can be used well or badly is neither good nor bad. But all fools use wealth, health, and bodily strength badly; therefore none of these is a good. If, then, god does not give virtue to men, but the noble is a matter of free choice, while he gives wealth and health apart from virtue, he gives them not to men who will use them well but badly — that is, harmfully, shamefully, and ruinously. And yet, if the gods are able to bestow virtue, they are not good if they fail to bestow it; and if they are unable to make men good, they are unable to benefit them at all, since nothing else is either good or beneficial. As for judging as superior those who have become good in some other way, by virtue or by power — that amounts to nothing, for the good judge even the gods by virtue and power; so that the gods benefit men no more than they are benefited by them.
And indeed, Chrysippus declares neither himself nor any of his acquaintances or teachers to be a sage. What, then, do they think of everyone else, but exactly what they say — that all are mad, foolish, impious, lawless, that they have reached the utmost pitch of misfortune and every kind of wretchedness? Are our affairs, then, faring so wretchedly, really governed by the providence of the gods? At any rate, if the gods should change their minds and wish to harm us, to do us evil, to pervert us, and to grind us down further, they could not put us in a worse state than we are in now, since Chrysippus himself declares that our life leaves no room for any excess of vice or wretchedness beyond what it already has — so that, if life could find a voice, it would say the words of Heracles: "I am full of evils now; there is no place left to put another." What statements, then, could one find more at odds with each other than Chrysippus's statements about the gods and about men — saying that the one class exercises providence in the best way possible, while the other fares in the worst way possible?
Some of the Pythagoreans bring a charge against him for writing, in his work On Justice, concerning roosters, that "they have come into being usefully; for they wake us, and pick out scorpions, and rouse us for battle, instilling in us a certain zeal for courage; nevertheless we must eat these too, lest the number of chicks exceed our need of them." Yet he so ridicules those who bring charges on such grounds that, concerning Zeus — the Savior, the Begetter, and father of Justice, Good Order, and Peace — he writes this in the third book On the Gods: "Just as cities, when they grow too populous, send off their excess numbers to colonies and enter into wars against certain peoples, so god provides the beginnings of destruction." And he brings forward Euripides and others as witnesses, who say that the Trojan War was brought about by the gods for the sake of draining off the excess of the human race.
But let the other absurdities of these views pass — for our purpose is not to examine whatever is not well said, but only to consider the points on which they contradict themselves...
...is my present business: but observe that while he always attaches to god beautiful and humane epithets, he also attaches savage and barbarous and "Galatian" deeds. For such destructions and utter annihilations of human beings as the Trojan War wrought, and again the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, do not resemble colonizations — unless these men suppose that some cities are founded in Hades and under the earth. But
what Chrysippus makes god do to Deiotarus the Galatian is comparable: as when, several children having been born to him, wishing to leave the kingdom and the house to one, he slaughtered all the rest, just as one cuts off and lops the shoots of a vine, so that the one left might become strong and great. And yet the vinedresser does this while the shoots are still small and weak, and we ourselves, while puppies are newborn
and still blind, remove most of them, sparing the mother; but Zeus, not only permitting and looking on while they grow to maturity, but himself having begotten and reared them, then beats them to death, contriving pretexts for their destruction and ruin, when he ought rather not to have furnished the causes and origins of their birth at all. This, however, is the lesser point; the greater is this: no war arises among men without
vice, but one man is driven to conflict by love of pleasure, another by greed, another by love of glory or love of power. If, then, god brings about wars, he also brings about vices, by goading and perverting human beings. And yet he himself says, in his work On Judging, and again in the second book On the Gods, that "it is not reasonable for the divine to be held partly responsible for shameful things"; for
just as law cannot be held partly responsible for lawbreaking, nor the gods for impiety, so likewise it is not reasonable that they be held partly responsible for anything shameful. What, then, is more shameful for human beings than their destruction at one another's hands — a destruction whose origins, Chrysippus says, god himself supplies? But someone will say, by Zeus, that he again approves Euripides' saying, "if gods do anything shameful, they are not gods."
And you have said the easiest thing — to blame the gods — as though we were now doing anything other than setting his own statements and assumptions side by side with their opposites. Yet this very thing now being praised will have to be said to Chrysippus not once, nor twice, nor three times, but ten thousand times: "you have said the easiest thing — to blame the gods." For first, in the first book On Nature, likening the eternal
motion to a kykeon — stirring and mixing up now this thing, now that, among the things that come to be — he has said this: "since the administration of the whole proceeds thus, it is necessary that we be, in accordance with it, however we happen to be at any time — whether diseased contrary to our own nature, or maimed, or having become grammarians or musicians." And again a little further on: "by this same reasoning we shall say similar things about
our virtue and about our vice, and in general about the arts and the lack of arts, as I said." And a little further, removing all ambiguity: "for nothing whatever, not even the smallest particular thing, can come to be otherwise than in accordance with the common nature and its reason." And that the common nature and the common reason of nature
are fate and providence and Zeus has not escaped notice even of the Antipodes; for this is proclaimed everywhere by the Stoics themselves: and he says that Homer spoke rightly in saying "and the will of Zeus was being fulfilled," referring this to fate and to the nature of the whole, in accordance with which all things are governed. How then can it be, at once, that god is responsible for nothing shameful, and also that not even the smallest thing can come to be
otherwise than in accordance with the common nature and its reason? For among all the things that come to be, shameful things surely are included. And yet Epicurus, in some manner, twists and contrives, devising a way to free and release the voluntary from the eternal motion, so as not to leave vice unaccountable; whereas Chrysippus grants it unrestrained license, holding that it comes to be not only by
necessity, nor merely according to fate, but also according to the reason of god and according to a nature that has been made the best possible. Moreover these words too are found, stated in this very form: "since the common nature extends to all things, everything that comes to be in any way whatsoever in the whole, and in any of its parts, must come to be in accordance with that nature and its reason, in unhindered sequence; because
there is nothing external that could obstruct the administration, nor does any of the parts have any way of being moved or disposed otherwise than in accordance with the common nature." What then are the dispositions and motions of the parts? Clearly the dispositions are the vices and the diseases — avarice, love of pleasure, love of glory, cowardice, injustice; and the motions are adulteries, thefts, betrayals, murders, parricides. Of these
Chrysippus thinks that neither small nor great occurs apart from the reason of Zeus and his law and justice and providence, so that lawbreaking does not occur apart from the law, nor wrongdoing apart from justice, nor evildoing apart from providence. And yet he says that "god punishes vice, and does many things for the punishment of the wicked" — as in the
second book On the Gods: "sometimes," he says, "unpleasant things happen to good men, not, as with the base, for the sake of punishment, but according to a different dispensation, as in cities." And again in the same passage: "first, concerning evils, one must listen in a manner similar to what has already been said; then, that these are apportioned according to the reason of Zeus, either for punishment or according to some other dispensation bearing
some relation to the whole." This too, then, is a terrible thing — that vice both comes to be and is punished according to the reason of Zeus. And he intensifies the contradiction, writing this in the second book On Nature: "vice, in relation to the terrible mishaps, has a certain proper rationale of its own: for it too comes to be, in some way, according to the reason of nature,
and, so to speak, does not come to be uselessly with respect to the whole; for otherwise the good itself would not exist." And this same man rebukes those who argue equally on both sides of a question, he who, from his utter determination to want to say something, and something distinctive and extraordinary, about everything, says not uselessly that purse-cutting and sycophancy and folly are, not uselessly, useless things — harmful, ill-starred. Then what sort of being is Zeus, I mean
Chrysippus' Zeus, punishing a thing that arises neither from himself nor uselessly? For vice, according to Chrysippus' own account, is altogether beyond reproach, whereas Zeus is open to reproach, whether he has made vice a useless thing, or, having made it not uselessly, punishes it. Again, in the first book On Justice, having spoken about the gods as opposing certain acts of injustice, he says that
"vice cannot altogether be removed, nor is it good that it should be removed." But whether it is not good that lawlessness, injustice, and folly be removed is not a question for the present discussion; the point is that he himself, so far as it lies with him, does away with vice through philosophizing — vice which, he says, it is not good to do away with — thereby doing something at odds both with reason and with god; and moreover,
in saying that god opposes certain acts of injustice, he again gives the impression that human wrongdoings are impious. Further, concerning the claim that nothing in the cosmos is blameworthy or reprehensible, since all things are produced according to the best nature, though he has often written this, there are places where again he leaves certain culpable acts of negligence, and not about small or trivial matters. At any rate, in the third book On Being, mentioning that certain things of this kind happen
to good and noble men, he says: "is it perhaps that, while some things are neglected — just as in larger households some bran and a few grains of wheat fall by the wayside though the whole is well managed — or is it because inferior daemons are placed in charge of such matters, among whom culpable negligences do in fact occur?" And he says that a great deal of necessity is also mixed in. Now, to compare such misfortunes of
good and noble men — such as the condemnation of Socrates, and the burning alive of Pythagoras by the followers of Cylon, and the killing of Zeno at the hands of the tyrant Demylus, and the torturing to death of Antiphon by Dionysius — to grains of bran falling aside, betrays how great a facility for such things he has; I let that pass. But that inferior daemons should, by providence, be set over such supervisions — how is that not a charge against god, just as it would be against a king who entrusts administrations to bad and
reckless satraps and generals, and looks on while the best men are neglected and abused by them? And indeed, if a great deal of necessity is mixed into affairs, then god neither controls all things, nor are all things administered according to his reason. He fights most of all against Epicurus and against those who do away with providence, on the basis of the conceptions we have concerning the gods,
conceiving them as beneficent and humane. And since these things are written and said in many places among the Stoics themselves, there was no need to cite passages and to add that all the gods are good. For consider what the Jews and Syrians think about the gods; consider how full of superstition the works of the poets are. But hardly anyone, so to speak, conceives of god as perishable and having come to be. Of all the others, to pass them by,
Antipater of Tarsus, in his work On the Gods, writes this verbatim: "before the whole account, we shall briefly set out the clear conception we have concerning god. We conceive of god, then, as a blessed and imperishable living being, and beneficent to human beings." Then, expounding each of these points, he says: "and indeed, all men consider them imperishable." Chrysippus, then, is not of all men,
according to Antipater; for he thinks that none of the gods is imperishable except fire, but that all of them alike have come to be and will perish. And this is said by him virtually everywhere. I shall cite a passage from the third book On the Gods: "by another account, some are said to be generated and perishable, others ungenerated; and this must be shown from the beginning
in a more physical manner. For the sun and moon and the other gods, having a similar rationale, are generated, but Zeus is eternal." And again, going on: "similar things will be said concerning their perishing and their coming to be, both regarding the other gods and Zeus; for the others perish, but of Zeus, his parts are imperishable." To these I wish further
to set alongside a few of the things said by Antipater: "those who strip away beneficence from the gods attack, in part, the preconception we have of them; by the same reasoning, so do those who think them to partake of generation and destruction." If, then, one who thinks the gods perishable is equally absurd as one who does not think them provident and beneficent, then Chrysippus has fallen equally short as Epicurus:
for the one takes away their beneficence, the other their imperishability. Moreover, in the third book On the Gods, Chrysippus says this about the other gods being nourished: "the other gods make use of nourishment, being sustained by it in a similar manner; but Zeus and the cosmos are sustained in a different way, the substances being consumed and coming to be out of fire." Here, then,
he declares that all the other gods are nourished, except the cosmos and Zeus; but in the first book On Providence he says that "Zeus grows, until he has consumed everything into himself. For since death is the separation of soul from body, and the soul of the cosmos is not separated but grows continually, until it has consumed
all matter into itself, one must not say that the cosmos dies." Who, then, could appear to contradict himself more than one who says that the same god now grows and now is not nourished? And this need not be inferred by reasoning; for he himself has clearly written, in the same work: "the cosmos alone is said to be self-sufficient, because it alone has within itself all that it needs;
and it is nourished from itself and grows, its other parts being exchanged into one another." So not only does he, in the former passage, declare that the other gods are nourished, except the cosmos and Zeus, but in these passages he says that the cosmos too is nourished, and thus fights against himself; and even more so, in that he says the cosmos grows by being nourished from itself. The opposite would have been reasonable —
that this alone should not grow, having its own decay as its nourishment, while for the other gods, nourished from outside, there should be increase and growth, and the cosmos should rather be consumed into them, if indeed it is the case that the cosmos takes something from itself, while they always take something from it and are nourished. Secondly, then, the conception of the gods includes happiness and blessedness and self-sufficiency. Hence
they also praise Euripides for saying: "for god, if he is truly god, needs nothing; these are the wretched tales of poets." But Chrysippus himself, in the passages I have cited, says that the cosmos alone is self-sufficient, because it alone has within itself all that it needs. What then follows from the cosmos alone being self-sufficient? That neither the sun is self-sufficient, nor
the moon, nor any of the other gods; and not being self-sufficient, they could not be happy or blessed. "The infant in the womb is believed by nature to be nourished like a plant; but when it is born, being cooled by the air and hardened, its breath changes and becomes an animal; hence it is not inappropriate that the soul (psyche) is named from cooling (psyxis)." But he himself,
again, holds that the soul is a rarer and finer breath than nature's, thereby contradicting himself. For how can something fine-particled come to be out of something coarse-particled, and rarefied, by means of chilling and condensation? And what is more serious, how, declaring that the ensouled comes to be by chilling, does he hold the sun to be ensouled — the sun being fiery, and having come to be from exhalation changed into fire? For he says, in the first book
On Nature: "the transformation of fire is of this kind: through air it turns into water; and from this, as earth settles out, air is exhaled; and as the air becomes finer, the aether is poured round it in a circle, and the stars are kindled out of the sea together with the sun." What then is more opposed to kindling than chilling, or to condensation than dispersal? He makes water and earth out of fire and air, but
but the wet and earthy element he turns into fire and air. Yet even so, sometimes he makes kindling and sometimes cooling the origin of ensoulment. Moreover, when the conflagration occurs, he says the cosmos lives entirely and is a living creature, but when it is quenched again and thickens into water and earth and the corporeal, he says otherwise. He writes in the first book On Providence: "For while the cosmos is wholly fiery, it is at once both its own soul and its own governing faculty; but when it changes into the moist state and the soul that is left within it changes in a certain way into body and soul, so as to be composed of these, it acquires a different account." Here, then, he clearly says that at the conflagration even the soulless parts of the cosmos turn into the ensouled,
but at the quenching, conversely, the soul too is relaxed and moistened, changing into the corporeal. He thus appears absurd, making by cooling now living things out of insensate ones, and now turning the greater part of the soul of the cosmos into insensate and soulless things. And apart from these points, his account of the generation of the soul itself is at odds with his own doctrine, as his proof shows.
For he says the soul comes into being when the infant is born, its breath being tempered, as it were, by the cooling — like a hardening of steel; and he uses as proof "that the soul comes into being and is later in origin" the fact, above all, that children come to resemble their parents in character and disposition. But the contradiction between these claims is plain: it is not possible for the soul to be shaped in character before birth,
since it comes into being only after birth; or else it will follow that, before the soul exists, it is similar to a soul — that is, that it both is, by virtue of the similarity, and is not, because it has not yet come to be. And if someone should say that, since the resemblance arises in the mixtures of the bodies, the souls, once they have come into being, change accordingly, this destroys the very evidence for the soul's having come into being; for it is possible in this way, even for something ungenerated,
to change, once it enters in, according to the mixture producing the resemblance. As for air, he sometimes says it is naturally light and tends upward, sometimes that it is neither heavy nor light. In the second book On Motion he says: "Fire, being weightless, tends upward, and air similarly so, water being assigned rather to earth, and air to fire." But
in the Physical Treatises he inclines to the opposite view, that air "has of itself neither weight nor lightness." He says air is by nature dark, and uses this as evidence that it is also primarily cold: "for its darkness is opposed to brightness, and its coldness to the heat of fire." Having set these views in motion in the
first book On Physical Problems, again in the treatises On Habitual States he says: "habitual states are nothing other than currents of air; for it is by these that bodies are held together, and the air that holds together is the cause of each thing held together by such a state being of a certain quality — the air which they call hardness in iron, density in stone, whiteness in silver." This involves great absurdity and inconsistency:
for if the air remains such as it is by nature, how does blackness arise as whiteness in what is not white, softness as hardness in what is not hard, and looseness as density in what is not dense? But if, mixing with these things, it departs from its own nature and is assimilated to them, how is it a habitual state, or a power, or a cause of these things, by which it is itself overpowered? For this
is a case of being acted upon, not of acting or holding together, but of being weakened — such a change, in the course of which it loses its own qualities — even though everywhere they declare matter to lie inert and unmoved of itself beneath the qualities, while the qualities, being currents of air and tensions of an airy nature, in whatever parts of matter they come to be present, give each thing its form and shape. But they cannot say this
while positing that air is by nature of this sort: for being a habitual state and a tension, it will assimilate each of the bodies to itself, so that they will be black and soft; but if by its mixture with those bodies it takes on the opposite forms which it does not naturally have, then it is, in a sense, itself matter, and is not a cause of matter, nor a power over it. As for the claim, often made by him, that the void outside the cosmos is infinite, and that the infinite has neither beginning, middle,
nor end — this is often said by him. And by this above all they do away, from its own premises, with the downward motion of the atom asserted by Epicurus, since in the infinite there is no differentiation by which the one direction is conceived as up and the other as down. Yet in the fourth book On Possibilities, having posited a certain middle place and middle region, he says there that the cosmos has settled
and the passage runs thus: "Hence, as to whether one should say that the cosmos is perishable, I think this needs argument. Nevertheless, to me it appears rather to be so. But something like everlastingness is greatly assisted for it by its occupation of the middle region — namely, its being in the middle; since if it were conceived as existing elsewhere, destruction would attach to it altogether." And a little later again: "For in this way, somehow, the substance too has come to occupy the middle place eternally, being from the start of such a kind that, though it might in another way, yet because of this coincidence it does not admit destruction, and on this very account is eternal."
This passage contains one manifest and evident contradiction — leaving a certain middle place and middle region in the infinite; and a second, less obvious but even more irrational than this. For in supposing that the cosmos would not remain indestructible if its settlement had come about by chance in some other part of the void, he plainly reveals his fear that, the parts of its substance being carried toward the middle, dissolution and destruction of the cosmos would occur. Yet he would have no such fear
if he did not suppose that bodies are naturally borne everywhere toward the middle — not the middle of the substance, but of the region that surrounds the substance. About this he has often said that it is "impossible and contrary to nature; for there exists in the void no differentiation by which bodies are drawn hither rather than thither; but it is the arrangement of this cosmos that is the cause of the motion
toward its center and middle, of things inclining and being borne from every direction." It suffices for this purpose to cite a passage from the second book On Motion. Having first said that "the cosmos as a whole is a perfect body, but the parts of the cosmos are not perfect, in that they stand in a certain relation to the whole and do not exist by themselves," and having gone on to discuss its motion,
saying that "it is naturally moved, through all its parts, toward its own coherence and cohesion, not toward its dissolution and disintegration" — having said this, he adds: "Since the whole is thus stretched toward the same point and is in motion, and the parts have this motion by virtue of the nature of body, it is plausible that for all bodies the primary motion in accordance with nature is
toward the middle of the cosmos — the cosmos itself being thus moved toward itself, and its parts being moved as parts belonging to it." Then, one might say, my good man, what happened to you, that you forgot these arguments, so as to declare the cosmos dissoluble and perishable if it had not by chance occupied the middle region? For if the cosmos itself is naturally always inclined toward its own middle,
and its parts are everywhere straining toward this, wherever it may be shifted within the void, thus holding itself together and enclosing itself, it will remain indestructible and unbroken; for things that are broken and scattered suffer this through the separation of each of their parts and their dissolution toward their own proper place, as it flows away from what is contrary to nature. But you, positing the cosmos as situated in a different part of the void,
suppose that it would thereby be joined to utter destruction, and in speaking thus, and for this reason seeking a middle in the infinite, which by nature has no middle, you have abandoned those tensions and cohesions and inclinations, on the ground that they offer no security for its preservation, and have assigned the entire cause of its permanence to the occupation of place. And yet you attach the following to what you have already said, as though you were eager to refute yourself:
"the manner in which each of the parts, being connected with the rest, is moved, it is reasonable that it should also be moved in the same way by itself; and if, for the sake of argument, we should conceive of it and suppose it to be in some void outside this cosmos, then, just as it would have been moved toward the middle while being held together on every side, it will remain in this same motion, even if, for the sake of argument, a void should suddenly come to be around it."
Then again: any part whatsoever, when surrounded by void, does not lose its inclination leading toward the middle of the cosmos; yet the cosmos itself, unless chance provides for it the middle region, will lose its power of cohesion, its parts being carried off in different directions elsewhere. These points, then, contain great contradictions with the physical doctrine; but the following point already bears also on the doctrine concerning god and providence — namely, that in attributing the most trivial of causes to these things, he takes away the most authoritative and greatest cause. For what is more authoritative than the permanence of the cosmos and its substance being held together, united with its parts, toward itself? Yet this, according to Chrysippus, has come about by pure chance. For if the occupation of place is the cause of indestructibility, and this
came about by coincidence, it is clear that the preservation of the universe is the work of chance, not of fate and providence. And how does his account of possibles not conflict with his account of fate? For if, as Diodorus holds, nothing is possible except what either is or will be true, but rather everything that admits of coming to be, even if it is not going to come to be, is possible,
then many things will be possible which are not in accordance with fate — fate being, as Chrysippus maintains, invincible, irresistible, and prevailing over all things — either fate loses its power, or, if it is of such a kind as Chrysippus holds, that which admits of coming to be will often fall into the impossible. And every true statement will be necessary, being seized by the most authoritative of all necessities; and every false statement will be impossible, having the greatest cause
working against its becoming true. For the man fated to die at sea, how can he at the same time admit of dying on land? And again, is it possible for the man at Megara to go to Athens, if he is prevented by fate? Moreover, what he says about impressions vigorously conflicts with fate as well. For, wishing to show that the impression is not by itself a sufficient cause of assent,
he has said: "the wise will do harm by producing false impressions, if impressions by themselves produce assents; for the wise often use falsehood against the wicked, and present a persuasive impression, yet not one that is the cause of assent — since otherwise it will also be the cause of the false supposition and of the deception." If, then, one were to transfer this
from the case of the wise man to the case of fate, and say that assents do not come about because of fate, then, since it is because of fate that there will also be false assents and suppositions and deceptions, and men will be harmed because of fate, the very argument that exempts the wise man from doing harm at the same time proves that fate is not the cause of all things. For if men neither hold opinions nor are harmed
because of fate, it is clear that they neither act rightly nor think soundly nor form firm suppositions nor are benefited because of fate either — and the claim that fate is the cause of all things vanishes. But one who says that Chrysippus made fate not the complete cause of these things but only their preliminary cause will find him again contradicting himself elsewhere, where he praises Homer to excess for saying, about
Zeus: "hold fast to whatever ill or good he sends to each of you"; and Euripides: "O Zeus, why should I say that wretched mortals have understanding? For we depend on you, and do such things as you happen to think." He himself writes much in agreement with these lines, and says in the end that nothing, not even the least thing, moves or is checked otherwise than in accordance with the
reason of Zeus, which he says is the same as fate. Furthermore, the preliminary cause is weaker than the complete cause, and does not prevail, being overpowered by other causes rising up against it; but he declares fate to be an invincible, unhindered, and unalterable cause, and himself calls it Atropos, and Adrasteia, and Necessity, and Fate, as setting a "limit" upon all things. Should we, then, say that assents are not
in our power, nor virtues, nor vices, nor right action, nor error, or should we say that fate is deficient and that destiny is unfulfilled and the motions and dispositions of Zeus are ineffectual? For from these follow, on the one hand, its being a complete cause, and on the other, its being only a preliminary cause of fate. For being a complete cause of all things
does away with what is in our power and what is voluntary, while being a preliminary cause destroys its being unhindered and effective. For not once or twice, but everywhere — indeed in all his physical writings — he has written: "for the particular natures and motions many obstacles and hindrances arise, but for the nature of the whole, none." And how, when the particular motions
are hindered and obstructed, can the motion of the whole that extends into them be itself unimpeded and unhindered? For neither is the nature of man unimpeded, if that of the foot or the hand is not; nor would the motion of a ship be unhindered, if the activities concerning the sail or the rowing meet with certain hindrances. And apart from these points, if impressions do not come about in accordance with fate,
then fate is not the cause of assents; but if, because it produces impressions leading to assent, assents are said to come about in accordance with fate, how does it not often conflict with itself, producing, in matters of the greatest moment, differing impressions and dragging the mind toward opposite sides — as when they say that those who assent to the one impression and do not withhold judgment err: if they yield to unclear impressions, falling short; if to false ones, being wholly deceived; and if
...or opine, when assenting to things that are simply non-apprehensible? And yet, since there are three possibilities, one of them must hold: either not every impression is the work of fate, or every acceptance of an impression and every assent is free of error, or fate itself is not beyond reproach. For I do not see how it can be blameless in producing impressions of such a kind that not to fight against them, not to resist, but to follow and yield to them, is itself blameworthy.
Indeed, in his debates against the Academics, what was the greater part of the argument, for Chrysippus himself and for Antipater, concerned with? It concerned the claim that one should neither act nor have impulse without assent, and that those who maintain that, once the appropriate impression occurs, one should have impulse at once without yielding or assenting, are uttering fictions and empty suppositions. And again Chrysippus says that god instills false impressions, and so does the wise man, not because they need us to assent or yield, but only to act and to have impulse toward what appears; whereas we, being inferior, assent to such impressions because of our weakness.
Now the confusion and inconsistency of these statements, set against one another, is not at all hard to see. For he who does not need people to assent but only to act -- he who instills the impressions in them, whether god or the sage -- knows that for the purpose of acting the impressions suffice and that assents are superfluous. So that if, knowing that an impression does not by itself produce an impulse to act apart from assent, he nevertheless creates false and persuasive impressions, he is himself willingly responsible for people falling into error and going wrong by assenting to things non-apprehensible.

======== Moralia: De Superstitione ========

...of ignorance and unawareness about the gods, which from the very start has split into two streams: the one, as it were in hard and resistant soils, has produced atheism in unyielding characters; the other, as it were in soft and moist soils, has produced superstition. Now every judgment that is false is bad, especially when it concerns matters such as these, but it is worst of all when emotion attaches itself to it as well. For every emotion seems to be an inflamed wound,
and just as dislocations of the joints accompanied by injury are worse than ordinary ones, so too are the distortions of the soul that come with emotion worse than those without it. Someone supposes that atoms and void are the first principles of all things; this is a false belief, but it produces no ulcer, no throbbing, no disturbing pain. Someone else assumes that wealth is the greatest good: this falsehood has venom in it, it gnaws at the soul, drives it out of itself, does not let it
sleep, fills it with frenzied longing, pushes it over cliffs, chokes it, robs it of its freedom of speech. Again, some think that virtue and vice are bodies. That is perhaps a shameful misconception, but not one worth lamenting and wailing over. But whatever judgments and suppositions are of this sort — "O wretched Virtue, you were nothing but a word, yet I cultivated you as though you were a real thing" — abandoning the injustice that produces wealth and the
licentiousness that breeds every pleasure — these are worthy both of pity and of indignation, because they beget in the soul, like maggots and worms, many diseases and passions by their very presence. So then, with regard to the subject of our discourse: atheism, being a base judgment that nothing is blessed and imperishable, seems through disbelief in the divine to bring about a certain freedom from emotion, and its end is
simply not fearing what one does not believe exists. Superstition, however — as its very name indicates — is an emotional opinion, one productive of dread, a supposition that abases and crushes a person, since he thinks there are gods, but that they are painful and harmful. For the atheist seems to be unmoved with regard to the divine, while the superstitious man is moved in a way that is not fitting, and is thereby distorted. For ignorance
has produced in the one a disbelief in what benefits him, while in the other it has added the further belief that it harms him. Hence atheism is a mistaken judgment, whereas superstition is an emotion engendered from that false judgment. Now all diseases and passions of the soul are shameful, yet in some of them there is nonetheless a kind of vaunting loftiness and elevation arising from their very shallowness, and they are not, so to speak, deprived of any vigorous impulse to action.
But this is the common charge brought against every passion: that, forced on by its practical impulses, it hurries and strains the reasoning faculty. Fear alone, being no less lacking in boldness than in reason, keeps its irrationality inactive, helpless, and at a loss. Indeed dread and terror are named from this very binding and disturbing of the soul together. Of all fears,
the most inactive and most helpless is that of superstition. The man who does not sail does not fear the sea, nor does the man who is not a soldier fear war, nor the man who stays at home fear robbers, nor the poor man fear the false accuser, nor the private citizen fear envy, nor the man in Gaul fear an earthquake, nor the man among the Ethiopians fear a thunderbolt; but the man who fears the gods fears everything — earth, sea, air, sky, darkness, light, a chance remark, silence,
a dream. Slaves forget their masters when they sleep; sleep lightens the fetter for those in chains; inflammations around wounds and savage ulcerations of the flesh and their attendant agonies subside while men sleep. "O sleep, dear charm, healer of sickness, how sweetly you have come to me in my hour of need" — this is what superstition alone does not allow one to say. For it alone makes no truce with sleep, and never at all
does it allow the soul to breathe freely and take heart by casting off its bitter and heavy opinions about god; rather, as though in the domain of the impious, it rouses in the sleep of the superstitious frightful phantoms and monstrous apparitions and certain avenging punishments, and whirls the wretched soul about, driving it with dreams out of its sleep, scourging it and punishing it by itself as though by another, and making it receive terrible
and outlandish commands. Then, upon rising, such people neither show contempt nor laugh it off, nor do they realize that none of the things that disturbed them was real; instead, fleeing a shadow of deception that contains no real harm, they deceive, exhaust, and disturb themselves while wide awake, falling into the hands of charlatans and sorcerers who say: "But if a dream-apparition frightens you, and you have received the visitation of chthonic Hecate's revel, summon the old woman who purifies, and dip yourself in
the sea, and sit on the ground and spend the whole day there." O the barbarous evils that the Greeks have devised for superstition — smearings with mud, wallowings in filth, ritual immersions, prostrations on the face, shameful squattings, outlandish acts of worship. It was with good reason that those who claim to preserve the traditional standards of music used to bid the citharodes sing with a mouth held straight; yet we consider it right to pray to the gods with a mouth held upright and just, and not to examine
whether the tongue that comes from our entrails is pure and straight, while distorting and polluting our own tongue with outlandish names and barbaric words, thereby disgracing and transgressing against the divine and ancestral dignity of piety. But the comic poet, not unpleasantly, once said, addressing those who overlay their couches with gold and silver-plate everything, concerning the one thing the gods have given us for free — sleep: "Why do you make this
so expensive for yourself?" One might also say to the superstitious man: since the gods have given us sleep as an oblivion of troubles and a rest, why do you make of it for yourself a persistent and painful place of torment, since your wretched soul is unable to flee into some other sleep? Heraclitus says that for those who are awake there is one common world, while each of those who are asleep turns aside into
a private one of his own. But for the superstitious man there is neither a common nor a private world: for when awake he does not use his reasoning faculty, and when asleep he is not released from what disturbs him; rather, his reason lies dreaming while his fear is forever awake, and there is no escape and no change of place for him. Polycrates was a fearsome tyrant in Samos, and Periander in Corinth, but no one feared them any longer once he had moved to a free and
democratically governed city. But the man who fears the rule of the gods as though it were a grim and inexorable tyranny — where can he move, where can he flee, what godless land can he find, what sea? Into what part of the world can you sink and hide yourself, poor wretch, and believe that you have escaped god? There is even a law for slaves who have despaired of freedom, allowing them to demand to be sold and to exchange their master for a more reasonable one; but superstition
grants no exchange of gods, nor is it possible to find a god that the man who fears his ancestral and native gods will not also fear — the man who shudders even at the Saviors and trembles and cowers before the Gracious Ones, from whom we ask for wealth, prosperity, peace, concord, and the successful outcome of our best words and deeds. Then these same people consider slavery a misfortune, and say it is a terrible calamity for a man or woman to become
slaves and to get harsh masters. Yet how much more terrible, do you suppose, is it for them to suffer under masters from whom there is no escaping, no running away, no withstanding? A slave has an altar to flee to; even for robbers there are many sanctuaries that remain inviolable; and enemies, if they lay hold of a statue or a temple in their flight, take courage. But the superstitious man shudders and fears and dreads precisely those things in which those who fear the most terrible dangers place their
hopes. Do not drag the superstitious man away from the sanctuaries: it is there that he is punished and tormented. Why go on at length? "Death is the limit of life for all mankind" — but not even death is the limit for superstition; it oversteps its bounds and reaches beyond life itself, making the fear last longer than life and attaching to death the notion of undying evils, and just when troubles cease, it seems to begin
anew, as though they had not ceased. Certain deep gates of Hades are thrown open, and rivers of fire mingle together with torrents breaking off from the Styx, and the darkness is filled with a swarm of many phantom shapes bringing grim visions and piteous cries, and judges and tormentors and chasms and recesses teeming with countless evils. Thus ill-starred superstition, through its excessive caution before everything that seems dreadful, unwittingly subjects itself to every sort of
terror. None of this attaches to atheism; rather, ignorance is a harsh thing, and overlooking and being blind to matters so momentous is a great misfortune of the soul — as though the brightest and most sovereign of its many eyes, the perception of god, had been extinguished. But to this same failing is attached, as has been said, the emotional element — the ulcerous, disturbing, and enslaving quality — in the case of superstitious belief. Plato says that music was given to men by the gods, as a craftsman of measure and
good rhythm, not for the sake of luxury or for tickling the ear, but so that the turbulent and errant element in the soul's revolutions and harmonies, embodied and running wild in many directions through lack of the Muse and of grace, through licentiousness and discord, might be brought back into order by unwinding and guiding it fittingly once more. "But whatever Zeus has not loved," says Pindar, "is thrown into panic when it hears the cry of the
Muses": for it grows savage and enraged, and they say that tigers, when drummed at all around, go into a frenzy, are thrown into confusion, and in the end tear themselves apart. It is a lesser evil, then, for those who through deafness and impairment of hearing experience insensibility and lack of feeling toward music. Tiresias made use of his misfortune by not seeing his children or those he knew; but Athamas suffered a greater one, and so did Agave, for they saw them
as lions and deer; and surely for Heracles, when he went mad, it would have profited him neither to see nor to perceive his sons as present, nor to treat his dearest ones as enemies. What then? Does it not seem to you that the passion of the atheists differs from that of the superstitious in just such a way? The former do not see the gods at all, while the latter believe them to exist but to be evil; the former overlook them, while the latter
suppose their benevolence to be dreadful, their paternal care tyrannical, their solicitude harmful, and their aloofness savage and beastlike. Yet then, these same people trust bronze-workers and stone-carvers and wax-modelers, who fashion the forms of the gods in human shape, and they mold and fabricate and worship such images; but they despise philosophers and statesmen who demonstrate that the majesty of god is accompanied by goodness, magnanimity,
benevolence, and solicitous care. So the outcome for the one group is insensibility and disbelief in what benefits them, and for the other, disturbance and fear in the face of what benefits them. And in general, atheism is a freedom from emotion toward the divine that fails to conceive of the good, while superstition is an excess of emotion that supposes the good to be evil. Superstitious people fear the gods and yet take refuge with the gods, they flatter them and revile them,
they pray to them and reproach them. It is common to all human beings not to have unbroken good fortune: "For those men are free from sickness and old age and untried by toils, having escaped the deep-roaring strait of Acheron," as Pindar says — but human sufferings and affairs are mingled with circumstances that flow now one way, now another. Come, then, first consider the atheist in the face of unwanted events, and observe his disposition: if he is otherwise moderate, he bears his present circumstances in silence
and procures for himself help and consolation; but if he is distressed and overwhelmed with passion, he lays all his complaints and cries at the feet of fortune and chance, shouting that nothing happens according to justice or providence, but that all human affairs are carried along and thrown into confusion at random and without judgment. The superstitious man's manner is not like this; rather, even if the smallest
misfortune has befallen him, he sits and builds upon his grief other harsh and great and hard-to-shake-off passions, heaping upon himself terrors and fears and suspicions and disturbances, assailing himself with every lament and every groan. For he blames neither man nor fortune nor circumstance nor himself, but god for everything, and he says that from that source a divine stream of ruin has come upon him and swept him along,
and he believes that he is not simply unfortunate but a man hated by god, being punished and paying a penalty and suffering everything he deserves because of himself. The atheist, when he falls ill, reasons it out and recalls his own overindulgences and bouts of drunkenness and irregularities of diet, or excessive exertions, or unaccustomed changes of climate and place; and then, if he has run into trouble in public affairs and fallen into disrepute
with the crowd or into slander before a ruler, he looks within himself for the cause and among the circumstances around him: "Where did I go wrong? What did I do? What duty of mine was left unfulfilled?" But for the superstitious man, every bodily illness and every loss of money and every death of children and every misfortune and failure in public affairs are called blows of god and assaults of a divine power. Hence he does not dare to help himself, nor
to undo what has befallen him, nor to treat it, nor to resist it, for fear of seeming to fight against god and to struggle against his punishment; instead, the doctor is thrust away from the man who is sick, and the philosopher who would admonish and console is shut out from the man who is mourning. "Let me," he says, "O man, pay my penalty — I, the impious one, the accursed one, the one hated by gods and spirits." It belongs to a man who does not believe the gods exist, but is simply grieving,
to have his tears wiped away, his hair cut in mourning, his cloak taken from him while he is overwhelmed with passion; but how could you even address the superstitious man, or where could you help him? He sits outside wearing sackcloth, girded about with filthy rags, and often, naked, rolling in the mud, he confesses certain sins and transgressions of his own — that he ate this, or drank that, or walked some road that the divine power forbade him. And if he is doing quite well
and keeps company with a mild form of superstition, he sits at home smeared all over with sulfur and being purified, while the old women, as Bion says, "hang on him whatever object they happen to bring, as though he were a peg." They say that Tiribazus, when he was being arrested by the Persians, drew his scimitar, being a strong man, and fought back; but when they cried out and called witnesses that they were arresting him on the king's own order, at once he cast down his sword
and offered his two hands to be bound. Is not, then, what happens in this case similar? Other men struggle against their misfortunes and push back against events, contriving for themselves escapes and diversions from what they do not wish; but the superstitious man, listening to no one, says to himself, "You are suffering this, wretched man, by providence and at god's command," casts away all hope, gives himself up, flees, and repels those who would help him.
Superstitions turn many moderate evils into fatal ones. Midas of old, it seems, becoming despondent and disturbed because of certain dreams, fell into so bad a state of soul that he willingly killed himself by drinking bull's blood. And Aristodemus, king of the Messenians, in the war against the Spartans, when dogs howled like wolves and grass sprang up around his ancestral hearth, and
...of the seers fearing the signs, he lost heart, and with his hopes extinguished he cut his own throat. Perhaps it would have been best for Nicias too, the Athenian general, to be rid of his superstition in the way of Midas or Aristodemus, rather than, frightened by the shadow cast when the moon was eclipsed, to sit penned in by the enemy's siege-works, and then, when forty thousand men had been slaughtered or taken alive, to fall into their hands himself and die ingloriously.
For it is not the interposition of the earth coming between sun and moon that is fearsome, nor is the encounter of earth's shadow with the moon at the appointed time of its revolutions a terrible thing; terrible is only the darkness of superstition, which, once it has fallen upon a man, confounds and blinds his reasoning in matters that most need reasoning. "Look, Glaucus — already the deep sea is stirred by waves, and around the headland of the Gyrae a cloud stands straight up, a sign of storm." Seeing this,
the helmsman prays to escape it and calls upon the gods as saviors, but even as he prays he swings the tiller round, lowers the yardarm, and flees, his great sail taken in, from the murky sea. Hesiod bids the farmer, before ploughing and sowing, to pray to Zeus of the Earth and holy Demeter while gripping the plough-handle; and Homer says that Ajax, about to meet Hector in single combat, bade the Greeks pray to the gods on his behalf,
and only then, once they had prayed, arm themselves. And Agamemnon, when he ordered the fighters, "let one sharpen well his spear, and set well his shield," then asked of Zeus, "grant that I may cast headlong the palace of Priam"; for the god is a hope of excellence, not a pretext for cowardice. But the Jews, since it was the Sabbath, sat there unmoved in their unwashed garments while the enemy set their ladders against the walls
and were taking the fortifications, and did not rise up but remained bound together, as if in a single net, by their superstition. Such, then, is superstition in what are called unwelcome and critical circumstances and occasions; but it is no better even in the more pleasant ones than atheism is. Most pleasant to human beings are festivals and banquets at the shrines, initiations, revels, prayers to the gods, and acts of prostration.
Here, then, observe the atheist laughing a mad, sardonic laugh at what is being done, and perhaps murmuring quietly to his familiars that those who suppose such things are done for the gods are addled and possessed by demons — yet having no other harm in him. The superstitious man, by contrast, wishes to rejoice but cannot, nor can he take pleasure; the city all around him is full of incense, full of hymns of praise, and yet
the soul of the superstitious man is full of groans. Garlanded, he turns pale; he sacrifices and is afraid; he prays with a trembling voice and burns incense with shaking hands, and altogether proves foolish the saying of Pythagoras, that we become our best selves as we draw near to the gods; for it is precisely then that the superstitious fare most wretchedly and worst — approaching the shrines and sanctuaries of the gods as if they were bears' dens, serpents' lairs, or the caves of sea-monsters.
Hence it occurs to me to wonder at those who say that atheism is impiety, but do not say the same of superstition. And yet Anaxagoras was prosecuted for impiety for saying that the sun is a stone, while no one has called the Cimmerians impious for believing that the sun does not exist at all. What do you say — is the man who does not believe in gods unholy? And
is not the man who believes in gods of the sort the superstitious believe in involved in far more unholy opinions than he? I, for my part, would rather people said of me that Plutarch never existed at all and does not exist, than say that Plutarch is a man unreliable, fickle, quick to anger, vindictive over trifles, petty — the sort of man who, if you invite others to dinner and leave him out, or if, being occupied elsewhere,
you fail to come to his door or fail to greet him, will fasten himself upon your body and seize hold of you, or will catch your child and beat it to death, or will let loose some beast upon your crops and ruin your harvest. When Timotheus was singing of Artemis at Athens, calling her "raving one, prophetic one, maenad, frenzied one," Cinesias the lyric poet stood up from among the audience and said, "May you have just such a daughter!" And indeed,
things similar to these, and worse, are what the superstitious suppose about Artemis — that she darts forth from hanging nooses, that she gnaws and defiles, that she comes on in confusion from tripods entwined with purifying rites, joined to the avenging spirit of bloodguilt. They think no more temperately of Apollo, or of Hera, or of Aphrodite: all of these they tremble and quake before. And yet how great a thing, in comparison,
was the blasphemy that Niobe spoke against Leto, compared with what superstition has persuaded the foolish to believe of the goddess — that, being reviled, she shot down with arrows six daughters and six grown sons of that wretched woman? So insatiable and implacable was she, they suppose, toward others' misfortunes. For if the goddess truly had gall in her and hated wickedness, and was pained at being spoken ill of, and did not laugh at
human folly and ignorance but was angered by it, then it is those who falsely charge her with such cruelty and bitterness, and who say and write such things, that ought to have been shot down by her. We, for instance, condemn Hecuba's bitterness as barbarous and savage when she says, "would that I might fasten on his liver and devour it raw, clinging fast" — yet the superstitious believe that the Syrian goddess, if a person eats a sprat or an anchovy, gnaws through his shins,
covers his body with festering sores, and wastes away his liver. Is it, then, unholy to speak ill of the gods, but not unholy to believe such things of them? Or does belief make the blasphemer's very words seem strange? We ourselves object to blasphemy precisely because it is a sign of ill will, and we count those who speak evil of us as enemies, on the ground that they also think evil of us. You see, then,
what sort of things the superstitious think about the gods — supposing them fickle, faithless, changeable, vindictive, cruel, and petty over trifles — from which it necessarily follows that the superstitious man both hates and fears the gods. How could he not, believing as he does that the greatest of his misfortunes have come upon him because of them, and will come again? And hating the gods while fearing them, he is their enemy. And yet he prostrates himself and sacrifices and
sits before their shrines — and this is nothing to wonder at, for men also pay court to tyrants, attend upon them, set up golden statues to them, and yet hate them in silence, "shaking their heads." Hermolaus paid court to Alexander, Pausanias served as bodyguard to Philip, Chaerea to Gaius — yet each of these men, as he followed behind, would say to himself, "How I would take vengeance on you, if only the power were mine!" The atheist does not believe gods exist; the superstitious man does not wish them to exist, but believes against his will,
for he is afraid to disbelieve. And yet, just as Tantalus would gladly slip out from under the stone hanging over him, so this man too, pressed no less hard by his fear, would gladly be free of it, and would count the atheist's condition blessed as one of freedom. As things stand, however, the atheist has no share at all in superstition, while the superstitious man, though an atheist by inclination, is too weak to hold
the opinion about the gods that he actually wishes to hold. And indeed the atheist is in no way a cause of superstition, whereas superstition has both given atheism its very origin and, once atheism has come to be, supplies it with a defense — not a true or honorable one, but not entirely without some pretext. For it was not by observing anything blameworthy in the heavens, or in the stars, or in the seasons or revolutions of the moon, or the motions of the sun about the earth, "craftsmen of day
and night," or any irregularity or disorder in the nourishment of animals or the generation of crops, that men condemned the universe as godless; rather, it is the absurd doings and experiences of superstition — its words and gestures, its sorceries and spells, its frantic runnings-about and beatings of drums, its impure acts of purification and squalid rites of holiness, its barbarous and lawless punishments and public humiliations performed at the shrines — that lead
some to say it is better there be no gods at all than that there be gods who accept such things and delight in them, so given to insolence and pettiness. Would it not, then, have been better for those Gauls and Scythians to have had no notion, no conception, no account of gods whatsoever, than to believe that gods exist who delight in the blood of slaughtered human beings and count this the most perfect sacrifice and offering?
What of it? Would it not have profited the Carthaginians to take Critias or Diagoras as their lawgiver, believing from the start in neither divinity nor god at all, rather than to offer such sacrifices as they offered to Cronus? Not as Empedocles describes it, rebuking those who sacrifice animals — "the father, having changed his son's shape, lifts him up and slaughters him while praying, great fool that he is" — no, but knowingly and consciously they consecrated their own children,
and those without children bought infants from the poor and slaughtered them like lambs or chicks, while the mother stood by without a tear, without a groan. And if she should groan or weep, she was to forfeit the honor due her, and the child was sacrificed all the same; the whole place was filled with the din of flutes and drums played before the image, so that the cry of the wailing should not be heard outside. But if
some Typhons or Giants were ruling over us, having cast out the gods, with what sacrifices would they take delight, or what other rites would they demand? Amestris, the wife of Xerxes, buried twelve men alive on her own behalf as an offering to Hades — whom Plato says was named Hades because, kindly toward men and wise and rich, he holds souls fast by persuasion and reason. Xenophanes the natural philosopher, seeing
the Egyptians beating their breasts and wailing at their festivals, reminded them fittingly: "These beings," he said, "if they are gods, do not mourn them; and if they are men, do not sacrifice to them." But no disease is so full of wandering symptoms and suffering, so mixed with opinions that clash and contradict one another, as that of superstition. It must therefore be fled from safely and advantageously, not as those who flee
the onslaught of robbers, or of wild beasts, or of fire, carelessly and unreasoningly, and so blunder into pathless places full of pits and cliffs. For that is how some, in fleeing superstition, tumble into a harsh and unyielding atheism, having leapt clean over piety, which lies between the two.

======== Moralia: De Tranquilitate Animi ========

Plutarch to Paccius, greeting. I received your letter late, in which you asked me to write something for you about tranquility of mind, and about the passages in the Timaeus that need a more careful exposition. At the same time our friend Eros was for some reason compelled to sail at once to Rome, having received a letter from the excellent Fundanus, urging him on with haste, as is his way. Since I had neither the time, as I had intended, to compose something suited to what you wished, nor was I willing for him to be seen arriving from us to you with hands utterly empty, I gathered together my thoughts about tranquility of mind from the notes I happened to have made for myself, thinking that you too were seeking this discourse not for the sake of a hearing that hunts after fine writing, but for practical use in life; and rejoicing that, though you have friendships with men in power and a reputation no less than that of those who speak in the assembly, you have not suffered the fate of the tragic Merops, nor has the crowd that calls such a man blessed driven you out of your natural feelings — you have often heard, and you remember, that neither does patrician rank free a man from gout, nor an expensive ring from a whitlow, nor a royal diadem from headache.
What use, then, toward freedom from pain of soul and an unruffled life, is wealth, or reputation, or power at court, unless the enjoyment of them is agreeable to those who have them, and there constantly attends them a freedom from need of what is absent? And what else is this but reasoning, habituated and trained, again and again quickly to take hold of the emotional and irrational part of the soul when it starts out of place, and not to allow it to be swept away and carried off by present circumstances? Just as Xenophon advised that we should especially remember and honor the gods when we are prosperous, so that when we come to be in need, we may confidently call upon them as already well disposed and friendly — so too, of those arguments that help against the passions, men of sense must take care before the passions arise, so that, being prepared long in advance, they may be of greater use. For just as fierce dogs, roused to fury at every sound, are calmed only by a familiar voice, so too the passions of the soul, once made savage, cannot easily be stilled unless familiar and habitual arguments are at hand to take hold of what is disturbed.
Now the man who said that "he who is going to have peace of mind must not do many things, either privately or in common," makes tranquility, in the first place, a costly thing for us, since it comes to be purchased at the price of inactivity — as if one were advising each sick man: "Poor wretch, lie quiet in your bed"; and yet insensibility is indeed a poor remedy for the body's freedom from pain. No physician of the soul is worse than one who removes its turbulence and pain by laziness, softness, and betrayal of friends, relatives, and country. Besides, it is also false that those who do not do much are at peace of mind: for then women would have to be more tranquil than men, since they spend most of their time confined to the house; yet nowadays, though "not even the north wind blows through a tender maiden's soft skin," as Hesiod says, griefs and disturbances and ill humors, arising from jealousy, superstition, ambition, and empty opinions — more than one could name — flow into the women's quarters. And Laertes, who for twenty years lived by himself in the country with only an old serving-woman to bring him food and drink, fled indeed from his country, his home, and his kingship, but kept grief as an ever-present housemate, together with inactivity and dejection.
Some men indeed are cast into despondency by the very fact of not being active, as was Achilles: "But he sat by the swift-faring ships nursing his wrath, the Zeus-born son of Peleus, swift-footed Achilles; never would he go to the assembly where men win glory, nor ever to war, but wasted his own heart away, remaining there, and longed for the war-cry and for battle." And, deeply distressed and vexed about this, he himself says: "But here I sit beside the ships, a useless burden on the earth." Hence not even Epicurus thinks that men who are ambitious and fond of honor ought to remain at rest, but rather that they should follow their own nature and engage in politics and public affairs, since they are by nature more liable to be disturbed and harmed by inactivity if they fail to obtain what they desire. But he is not being absurd, in urging on — not those who are capable of managing public affairs, but those who are incapable of keeping quiet.
One must define what is conducive to peace of mind and what to distress, not by the multitude or the paucity of one's occupations, but by what is noble and what is base: for the omission of noble deeds is no less painful and disturbing than the commission of base ones, as has been said. As for those who suppose that some one particular kind of life, taken by itself, is free from pain — as some suppose the farmer's life to be, or the bachelor's, or the king's — Menander reminds us sufficiently of the truth when he says: "I used to think, Phanias, that the rich, who have no need to borrow, did not groan through the nights, nor, tossing this way and that, cry out 'Alas!', but slept a sweet and gentle sleep" — and then he goes on to describe how he saw that the rich suffer the very same things as the poor: "Is there, then," he says, "some kinship between grief and life? It keeps company with a life of luxury, it attends a life of fame, it grows old together with a life of poverty."
But just as timid men who grow seasick while sailing, thinking they will fare better by changing from a small boat to a merchant vessel, and again from that to a trireme, accomplish nothing, since they carry their own bile and their own cowardice along with them — so exchanges of one way of life for another do not remove from the soul the things that grieve and disturb it. These are: inexperience of affairs, irrationality, the inability and lack of skill to make right use of what is present. These things trouble the rich and the poor alike; these things vex the married and the unmarried alike; because of these, men flee the public square, and then cannot bear their retirement; because of these, they pursue advancement at court, and no sooner have they attained it than they are at once weighed down by it.
The sick are hard to please because of their helplessness: they find fault with their wife, blame the doctor, and are dissatisfied with the sickbed; and of friends, as Ion says, "the one who comes is tiresome, and the one who leaves is a burden." But then, once the illness has passed and a different constitution of body has set in, health arrives, making everything friendly and agreeable. For the man who yesterday spat out eggs and fine cakes and bread made of spring wheat, today eats coarse whole-wheat bread with olives or cress gladly and eagerly. It is reasoning, once it takes root in us, that produces this kind of readiness and change toward each way of life. Alexander wept on hearing Anaxarchus discourse about the infinity of worlds, and when his friends asked him what was wrong, he said, "Is it not worth weeping, if, there being infinite worlds, we have not yet become master of even one?"
But Crates, who owned only a wallet and a worn cloak, spent his whole life playing and laughing as though at a festival. And indeed the rule over many peoples caused Agamemnon grief: "You will come to know the son of Atreus, Agamemnon, on whom Zeus laid toils continually, throughout." Diogenes, while being sold as a slave, lying down, mocked the auctioneer; and when ordered to stand up he refused, but joking and laughing said, "What if you were selling a fish?" And Socrates, philosophizing in prison, conversed with his companions; while Phaethon, having ascended into heaven, wept because no one would hand over to him his father's horses and chariot. Just as the shoe is bent to the shape of the foot, and not the other way round, so too our dispositions make our ways of life resemble themselves. For it is not habit that makes life pleasant for those who have chosen the best life, as someone has said, but it is wisdom that makes the very same life both best and most pleasant.
Therefore let us purify within ourselves the very spring of tranquility, so that external things too, as if familiar and dear to us, may work together favorably with those who deal with circumstances without harshness. For it is not right to be angry at circumstances, since they care nothing for us; but he who happens upon them, if he sets them right, fares well. For Plato compared life to a game of dice, in which one must both throw what is fitting, and, having thrown, make good use of what has fallen. Of these two things, the throw is not in our power; but the fitting acceptance of what falls to us from fortune, and the assigning to each thing its proper place, where what is our own will benefit us most and what is unwanted will least distress those who meet with it — that is our own task, if we are of sound mind.
For the unskilled and senseless in life, like the sickly in body who can endure neither heat nor cold, are thrown out of themselves by good fortune and shrink under misfortune; and they are disturbed by both, but more by themselves in both, and no less by what are called goods. For Theodorus, the man called the Atheist, used to say, while offering his arguments with his right hand, that his hearers received them with their left; and the uneducated, often receiving fortune, though it is offered them with the right hand, in a left-handed manner, behave disgracefully. But the wise, just as bees draw the sharpest and driest honey from thyme, so too often take from the most difficult circumstances something that is their own and useful to them.
This, then, is what one must first practice and study — like the man who, missing the dog with his stone and hitting his stepmother instead, said, "Not so bad, after all" — for it is possible to redirect fortune away from what is unwanted. Diogenes was driven into exile — not so bad, after all, for it was after his exile that he began to practice philosophy. Zeno of Citium had one cargo ship left; and when he learned that it had been lost, cargo and all, wrecked in a storm, he said, "Well done, Fortune, driving us to the cloak and the Stoa!"
What, then, keeps us from imitating such men? Did you fail at the very start of some undertaking? You will live in the country, tending your own affairs. But were you rebuffed in seeking the friendship of a ruler? You will live free of danger and free of trouble. Again, have you become involved in affairs full of occupation and care? "Not even so much warm water will soften weary limbs," as Pindar says, as glory does, and being honored, together with some measure of power, which make toil pleasant and hardship easy to bear. But has some misfortune and public disgrace befallen you through slander or envy? A favoring wind blows you toward the Muses and the Academy, as it did for Plato when he was caught in the storm of his friendship with Dionysius. Hence this too is a great aid toward tranquility of mind: to look to famous men, and see whether they too have not suffered the same things.
Is it childlessness that grieves you? Look at the kings of the Romans, not one of whom left his rule to a son. Are you weighed down by present poverty? And who would you rather be — of the Boeotians, than Epaminondas? Or of the Romans, than Fabricius? But has your wife proven unfaithful? Have you not read the inscription at Delphi: "King Agis, of the wet and the dry, dedicated me"? Have you not heard that his wife Timaea was seduced by Alcibiades, and that, whispering to her maidservants, she used to call the child that was born Alcibiades? Yet this did not prevent Agis from being the most illustrious and greatest of the Greeks — just as it did not prevent Stilpo, the most cheerful of the philosophers of his time, from living most happily, though his daughter was unchaste. And when Metrocles reproached him for it, he said, "Is this fault mine, then, or hers?" And when Metrocles said, "Hers is the fault, but yours the misfortune," Stilpo replied, "How do you mean? Are not faults also failures?" "Quite so," said Metrocles. "And are not failures the failures of those whose failures they are, and misses?" Metrocles agreed to this too. "And are not misses the misses of those whose misses they are, and misfortunes?" By this gentle and philosophical argument he showed the Cynic's abuse to be an empty bark.
Most people are vexed and provoked to anger not only by the misdeeds of friends and relatives, but also by those of their enemies. For abusive words, fits of anger, envy, malice, and jealousy, together with ill will, are indeed the banes of those who possess them, but they also trouble and provoke fools — just as, no doubt, the irascibility of neighbors, the difficult tempers of acquaintances, and certain failings of those who serve under us in our affairs do too. And it seems to me that you yourself are not least disturbed by such things, so that, like the physicians in Sophocles who purge bitter bile with a bitter drug, you grow harsh in turn and become embittered together with the passions and maladies of others — and not reasonably so. For the affairs you have been entrusted to manage are carried out, for the most part, not by simple and decent characters, as by well-fitted instruments, but by crooked and jagged ones.
Do not think it your task to straighten these men out, nor is this in any case easy; but if you deal with them as being naturally such as they are, like a physician with his forceps and cauterizing tools, and show yourself, so far as circumstances allow, mild and moderate, you will find more pleasure in your own disposition than you will suffer pain from the unpleasantness and depravity of others. And just as, when dogs bark, you will suppose that they are only doing what is proper to their nature, so you will avoid gathering up many griefs, which flow together as into a hollow and low-lying place — this pettiness of spirit and weakness, filling itself up with the troubles of others.
For whereas some philosophers even find fault with the pity felt toward men in misfortune, holding that it is a fine thing to help one's neighbors, not to share their suffering and give way along with them; what is more — and this is a greater point — they do not even allow men, when they are themselves aware of their own faults and find themselves in a bad moral condition, to be despondent and distressed over it, but hold that vice must be treated without pain: consider, then, how unreasonable it is to be vexed at ourselves because not all who deal with us and approach us are fair-minded and agreeable, but are instead burdensome and difficult.
But watch, dear Paccius, lest we fail to notice that it is not the general depravity of those we deal with, but rather some kind of self-love, not hatred of wickedness, that we put forward and are apprehensive about, when it touches ourselves. For violent alarms about practical affairs, and undeserved eager pursuits and rejections, or again aversions and slanders, breed in us suspicions and ill feeling toward men, because of which we seem, in some cases, to be robbed of things, and in others, to fall into misfortunes. But he who has grown accustomed to deal lightly and moderately with circumstances becomes the most agreeable and gentlest of men in his dealings with others. Hence let us take up again that argument concerning circumstances.
For just as, in a fever, all things taste bitter and unpleasant to those who partake of them, but when we see others eating the same food without being disgusted, we no longer blame the food or the drink, but ourselves and our disease — so too, with regard to circumstances, we shall cease finding fault and being discontented, if we see others accepting the very same things without pain and with cheerfulness. It is a good thing, then, toward tranquility of mind, in the face of unwanted misfortunes, not to overlook such things as are agreeable and pleasant that are present to us, but rather, by mingling them in, to dim out what is worse with what is better.
As it is, though we turn our eyes away from things that are overly bright, since they injure our sight, and soothe them with the fresh colors of flowers and grass, we instead strain our mind toward what is distressing and force it to dwell on calculations of painful things, all but tearing it away by force from what is better. And yet, as to the
the busybody is not unpleasant to transfer here as well: "Why, most malicious of men, do you see so sharply another's evil, but overlook your own? Why, blessed one, do you stare so intently at your own trouble and always keep it vivid and fresh, while you do not turn your mind to the good things present to you? Instead, like cupping-glasses that draw off the worst matter from the flesh, you gather to yourself the worst of your own affairs" — no better than the Chian who, selling much good wine to others, went about tasting for himself in search of something sour for his own dinner. And a household slave, when asked by someone else what he had left his master doing, replied, "With good things at hand, searching for something bad." For most people likewise pass over the wholesome and pleasant parts of their own lives and run toward what is troublesome and hard to bear.
Aristippus, however, was not of this sort, but, like a good man on a balance-scale, was skilled at raising and lightening himself by weighing things toward the better side. Having lost a fine piece of land, he asked one of those who made a great show of sharing his distress and indignation, "Don't you have just one small plot, while three farms are left to me?" And when the man agreed, he said, "Then should not I be sympathizing with you, rather than you with me?" For it is madness to grieve over what is lost and not rejoice over what is preserved, but instead, like small children, if someone takes away one of their many toys, to throw down all the rest and weep and cry out — in the same way, when we are troubled by fortune over one thing, we make everything else useless to ourselves by lamenting and being distressed. "And what do we have?" someone might say. But what do we not have? One man has reputation, another a household, another a marriage, and to another a good friend belongs. Antipater of Tarsus, at the point of death, reckoning up the good things that had fallen to his lot, did not even omit the fair voyage he had once had from Cilicia to Athens.
We ought not overlook the common blessings either, but set some value on them and rejoice that we live, that we are healthy, that we see the sun; that there is neither war nor civil strife; but the earth lies open for farming and the sea for sailing without fear to those who wish it; and it is possible to speak and to act and to be silent and to have leisure. We shall find more cheer in these things while they are present if we do not, by imagining their absence, keep reminding ourselves how longed-for health is to the sick, and peace to those at war, and how painful it is to win reputation in so great a city, and friends, when one is unknown and a stranger — and how grievous it is to be deprived of things once one has had them. For each thing does not become great and precious to us only when it is lost, while, so long as it is preserved, it counts for nothing; for the fact of its not existing adds no value to anything. Nor should we acquire things as though they were great and then always tremble with fear of losing what we hold, as though it were something great, while at the same time, while we have them,
overlook and despise them as worth nothing — but rather make the most use of them for the sake of joy and enjoyment, so that if losses do occur, we may bear them more gently. Most people, as Arcesilaus used to say, think they must examine other people's poems and paintings and statues closely and in every detail, going over each one carefully with both mind and eye, and yet they let their own life pass by without the many pleasant reviews it could offer, always looking outward and admiring the reputations and fortunes of others — like adulterers who admire other men's wives while despising themselves and what belongs to them. And yet this too contributes greatly to cheerfulness: to look above all to oneself and to one's own affairs, or failing that, to look at those who are worse off, and not, as most people do, to measure oneself against those who surpass them.
For instance, prisoners in chains count the freed as fortunate, and the freed count the free-born, and the free-born count the citizens, and citizens in turn count the wealthy, and the wealthy count the satraps, and the satraps count the kings, and the kings all but wish to thunder and lighten like the gods. And so, always lacking what is above them, people never feel gratitude for what belongs to them. "I care nothing for the wealth of golden Gyges; envy has never yet seized me, nor do I admire the works of the gods, nor do I aspire to great tyranny — such things are far removed from my sight." That man was a Thasian; but another, a Chian, or a Galatian, or a Bithynian, is not content, whatever share of honor or power he has attained among his own countrymen, but weeps because he does not wear the patrician stripe; and if he does wear it, because he is not yet a praetor of the Romans; and if he is praetor, because he is not consul; and being consul, because he was proclaimed not first but second. What is this but gathering excuses for ingratitude, so as to punish and condemn oneself before fortune?
But the man of sense, mindful of things that bring safety, of the sun that looks out over the countless men, all of them broad-earth's, who gather the fruit of the ground, does not sit lamenting and humbled because he is less famous or less rich than some, but because, among so many myriads upon myriads, he lives more decently and better than most — praising his own guardian spirit, and proceeding on his way through life. For at Olympia it is not possible to win by choosing one's opponents; but in life circumstances allow a man who surpasses many to think highly of himself, and to be envied rather than to envy others — provided, that is, you do not make yourself a rival of Briareus or of Heracles. So, whenever you are greatly struck with admiration for someone as superior because he is carried in a litter, stoop down and look also at the men who are carrying him; and whenever you count that famous Xerxes blessed as he crosses the Hellespont on his bridge,
look also at the men digging through Mount Athos under the lash, and those whose ears and noses were cut off because the bridge was broken apart by the surge, and consider at the same time their state of mind — that they in turn count your life and your circumstances blessed. When Socrates heard one of his friends say how expensive the city was — "Chian wine costs a mina, purple dye three minas, a pint of honey five drachmas" — he took the man and led him to the barley-meal: "a half-measure for an obol — the city is cheap"; then to the olives: "two coppers a quart — the city is cheap"; then to the cloaks: "ten drachmas — the city is cheap." So we too, whenever we hear someone say how small and terribly meager our own circumstances are because we hold no consulship or governorship, may reply, "our circumstances are splendid, and our life is enviable — we do not beg, we do not carry burdens, we do not flatter."
Nevertheless, since through foolishness we have grown accustomed to live more by reference to others than to ourselves, and since our nature has a large share of envy and malice, and does not rejoice so much in its own goods as it is pained by the goods of others — do not look only at the brilliant and celebrated aspects of the people you envy and admire, but draw back and part, as it were, a bright curtain from their reputation and outward show, and get inside, and you will see many troubles and much unpleasantness residing within them. Take that famous Pittacus, of whom there was great renown for courage, wisdom, and justice: he was entertaining guests when his wife came in in a rage and overturned the table; and when the guests were dismayed, he said, "Each of us has some trouble; whoever has only mine is doing very well."
"This man is thought blessed in the marketplace, but once he opens his door, thrice wretched: his wife rules everything, gives orders, is forever quarreling. I suffer from many things; I from none." Many such troubles, unseen by the many, attach also to wealth, reputation, and kingship, for pretension covers them over. "O blessed son of Atreus, child of fate, favored by fortune" — this is how he is congratulated from the outside, amid the mass of weapons and horses and army surrounding him; but the voices of his own passions, testifying from within against that empty glory, cry, "Great Zeus, son of Cronus, has bound me fast in heavy ruin," and, "I envy you, old man, and I envy any man who has passed through life free of danger, unknown, without renown."
It is possible, then, by such further reasonings as well, to draw off the tendency to complain against fortune, and the tendency, through admiring the possessions of neighbors, to belittle and cast down what is one's own. Cheerfulness is not least cut short by failing to use impulses that are proportioned, like sails, to one's underlying capacity, but instead, reaching after greater things with one's hopes and then failing, blaming one's guardian spirit and fortune rather than one's own folly. For the man who wants to shoot arrows with a plow, or hunt hares with an ox, is not unfortunate, nor is the man who fails to catch deer with fish-baskets and nets, nor are those against whom no evil spirit is opposed, but rather it is folly and stupidity attempting the impossible. The chief cause of this is self-love, which makes people eager to be first and eager to win, grasping insatiably at everything and in every field. For people demand not only to be rich and learned and strong and good company at table and pleasant and friends of kings and rulers of cities all at once,
but if they do not also own dogs that excel in quality, and horses, and quails, and fighting cocks, they are downcast. Dionysius the elder was not content with being the greatest of the tyrants of his time, but because he could not sing better than the poet Philoxenus, nor hold his own in conversation better than Plato, he grew angry and provoked, and threw the one into the stone quarries and sold the other, sending him off to Aegina. Alexander was not of this sort; rather, when Crison the runner, racing against him, seemed to hold back on purpose, Alexander was greatly indignant — and rightly so, for even the Homeric Achilles, adding a qualification, said, "being such as no other bronze-clad Achaean was in war; but in council others are better." As for Megabyzus the Persian, when he went up into Apelles' studio and tried to hold forth about the art, Apelles silenced him, saying, "So long as you kept quiet, you seemed to be someone, on account of your gold and purple; but now even the boys here who grind the ochre are laughing at your nonsense."
But some people think the Stoics are joking when they hear that the wise man among them is called not only prudent, just, and courageous, but also an orator, a poet, a general, rich, and a king; yet they themselves lay claim to all these things, and are distressed when they fail to attain them. And yet even among the gods, one has one power and another another — one is called Warlike, another Prophetic, another God of Gain — and Zeus sends Aphrodite off to weddings and bedchambers, as having no part in works of war. For some pursuits are not merely compatible with others but are by nature opposed to them: for instance, the practice of rhetoric and the pursuit of learning require freedom from public business and leisure, whereas political power and friendship with kings are not attained without business and preoccupations. And indeed, "wine and a surfeit of meat make the body strong and vigorous, but the soul weak"; and constant attention to and safeguarding of money increases wealth, while contempt and disregard for it is a great resource for philosophy.
Hence not everything belongs to everyone, but one must, in obedience to the Pythian inscription, come to know oneself, and then apply oneself to that one pursuit for which one is naturally fitted, and not drag one's zeal now toward one way of life, now toward another, forcing nature: "the horse for the chariot, the ox for the plow, the dolphin darts fastest alongside the ship, and for a boar plotting death one must find a stout-hearted hound." The man who is vexed and grieved that he is not also a mountain-bred lion trusting in his strength, while at the same time keeping a little Maltese lapdog nursed in the bosom of a widow, is out of his mind. No better than this man is the one who wants to be Empedocles or Plato or Democritus all at once, writing about the universe and the truth of things, while also sleeping with a rich old woman like Euphorion, or going off to revel and drink with Alexander like Medius — and who is aggrieved and distressed if he is not admired for his wealth like Ismenias, and for his virtue like Epaminondas. For runners are not disheartened because they do not win the crowns given to wrestlers,
but take delight and pride in their own; "you have been allotted Sparta; adorn that" — as Solon too said. "But we will not exchange our virtue for their wealth, since virtue is ever secure, while money passes from one man's hands to another's." And Strato the natural philosopher, on hearing that Menedemus had many times more students than he, said, "What wonder is it, if there are more people who wish to bathe than there are who wish to be anointed with oil?" And Aristotle, writing to Antipater, said, "It is not Alexander alone who has cause to think highly of himself, because he rules over many men, but no less do those who hold correct beliefs about the gods." For those who take such pride in what is their own will not be troubled by what belongs to their neighbors. As it is, we do not require the vine to bear figs, nor the olive to bear grapes; yet we ourselves,
unless we possess at once the advantages of the rich and of the learned and of soldiers and of philosophers and of flatterers and of the outspoken and of the frugal and of the extravagant, malign ourselves and feel no gratitude and despise ourselves as living meagerly and cheaply. And besides this, we can see that nature herself reminds us of this truth. Just as she provided different food for different animals, and did not make all of them carnivorous, or seed-gathering, or root-digging, so too she gave human beings varied resources for life — for the shepherd, the plowman, the fowler, and the man whom the sea sustains. We must choose what is suited to ourselves and work hard at it, and leave the rest to others,
and not, following Hesiod's saying, though he put it too weakly, that "potter is angry with potter, and carpenter with carpenter" — for it is not only those who share the same trade or the same way of life whom we envy, but rich men envy the learned, and the wealthy are envied by men of reputation, and pleaders at law envy sophists, and, by Zeus, free men and men of noble birth stand in stunned admiration and count blessed even comic actors thriving in the theaters, and dancers, and servants in the courts of kings — and in doing so they trouble and disturb themselves beyond measure.
...to the future in their anxieties, while the sensible make even things that no longer exist present to themselves vividly by remembering them; for the present, though it permits us to touch it for the smallest fraction of time before it escapes our perception, no longer seems to belong to us or to be ours, in the eyes of the unthinking. Rather, like the rope-twister depicted in the underworld who lets a certain donkey grazing beside him eat up what he braids,
so an insensible and ungrateful forgetfulness steals upon and consumes most people, blotting out every action, every success, every pleasant occupation, every act of fellowship and enjoyment. It does not allow life to become a unity, since the past is not woven together with the present; instead, as though today were somehow different from yesterday, and tomorrow likewise not the same as today, it makes everything that comes into being
pass at once into non-existence through failure of memory. For just as those in the philosophical schools who deny growth, on the ground that substance is in continuous flux, make each of us in theory a different person from himself and another, so those who fail to retain what came before in their memory, and do not take it back up but let it flow away, in practice make themselves each day deficient and empty and dependent on tomorrow, as though
the events of last year and the day before and yesterday had nothing to do with them and had not happened to them at all at all. This too, then, disturbs our tranquility of mind, and that even more: when, just as flies slip off the smooth places on mirrors but cling to the rough spots and scratches, so people, sliding off cheerful and pleasant things, become entangled instead in the memory of unpleasant ones — very much like
the beetles they speak of in Olynthus, which, once they fall into a certain place called the "beetle-killer," cannot get out but die there, spinning round and round in circles. In just this way people, once they have slipped down into the memory of their misfortunes, are unwilling to rise back up or even catch their breath. Instead, as on a tablet of colors, we must in the soul set forward the bright and radiant elements of our affairs and hide and suppress the gloomy ones,
for it is not possible to erase them altogether or be rid of them entirely. "For the harmony of the world is one that bends back upon itself, like that of the lyre and the bow," and among human affairs nothing is pure or unmixed. But just as in music there are low notes and high, and in grammar vowels and consonants, and the musician or the grammarian is not the one who is annoyed by and avoids one or the other, but the one who knows how to use and blend them all toward what is
fitting — so too, since human affairs have their counterparts (for as Euripides says, "good and bad could not exist apart, but there is some blending, so that things go well"), one ought not to despair over the one set of things or give up, but rather, like harmonists blunting the bad always with the better and taking in the worse elements along with the good, make the mixture of one's life tuneful
and fitting for oneself. For it is not the case, as Menander says, that a guardian spirit stands beside every man the moment he is born, a good initiator into life; rather, as Empedocles says, two fates, so to speak, and daemons take charge of each of us as we come into being and preside over our beginning: "There were Earthy and far-seeing Sun-face, and bloody Strife and stately Harmony, Beauty and Ugliness, Swiftness and Slowness,
truthful Sincerity and dark-fruited Uncertainty." Since, then, our birth has received a mixture of the seeds of all these passions, and is for this reason full of great irregularity, the person of sense prays for the better outcomes but expects the others as well, and makes use of both while removing excess. For not only "he who has the least need of tomorrow," as Epicurus says, "comes most gladly to meet
tomorrow," but wealth too gives joy, and reputation, and power, and office — and most of all to those who least dread their opposites. For intense desire concerning any given thing, by producing an equally intense fear that it will not remain, makes the pleasure weak and unstable, like a flame being blown out. But the person to whom reasoning grants the power to say to Fortune, without fear or trembling, "if you bring something sweet,
and leave but a little pain behind," is enabled by that confidence, and by not dreading the loss of these things as unbearable, to enjoy most gladly what is present. For it is possible, without merely admiring the disposition of Anaxagoras — from which, at the death of his son, he cried out, "I knew I had begotten a mortal" — actually to imitate it, and to say to each of the strokes of fortune, "I know that my wealth is short-lived and not
secure"; "I know that those who granted me office can also take it away"; "I know that my wife, though a good woman, is nonetheless a woman, and my friend, though a man, is by nature a changeable creature," as Plato said. For such preparations and dispositions, if something unwanted but not unexpected occurs, since they do not admit the thoughts "I would never have imagined this" and "I was expecting otherwise" and
"I did not foresee this," remove, as it were, the leapings and throbbings of the heart, and quickly settle again what is frenzied and disturbed. Carneades, then, used to remind people, in the case of great affairs, that the whole and entire cause of grief and despondency is the unexpected. For the kingdom of Macedon was a tiny fraction of Rome's dominion; yet when Perseus lost Macedonia he himself lamented his
own fate, and everyone thought he had become the most unfortunate and heavy-burdened of men; while Aemilius, who defeated him, on handing over to another a power that ruled virtually the whole of land and sea together, was crowned with garlands and offered sacrifice, and was congratulated as fortunate, rightly so. For the one knew that he was receiving a command that would have to be given back, while the other lost his without having expected it. The poet, too, taught well what "contrary to expectation" means: for Odysseus
wept when his dog died, but sitting beside his weeping wife felt nothing of the sort; in the latter case he had arrived with his reasoning already holding the emotion in check and forestalled, but into the former he fell suddenly, through the element of surprise, not having expected it. In general, then, since among unwanted things some by nature bring pain and heaviness, while the majority we become accustomed and taught by opinion to find distressing,
it is not without use, with regard to the latter, to have always at hand the saying of Menander: "You have suffered nothing terrible, unless you make it so." For what is it to you, he asks, if it touches neither your flesh nor your soul — such things as low birth in a father, or a wife's adultery, or the loss of some crown or seat of honor — none of which, even in their absence, prevents a person from having his body
disposed in the best condition, and his soul as well? As for the things that seem by nature to cause pain — such as sicknesses, and toils, and the deaths of friends and children — there is that line of Euripides: "Alas! But why 'alas'? We have suffered what mortals suffer." For no argument seizes hold of the passionate element as it is being carried down and slipping, so effectively as the one that brings to mind the common and natural necessity by which,
through his bodily nature, a human being gives Fortune this one single handhold, while in the things of highest authority and greatest importance he stands secure. Demetrius, on capturing the city of the Megarians, asked Stilpo whether any of his belongings had been plundered, and Stilpo replied that he had seen no one carrying off anything of "his own." And so too, though Fortune plunders and strips away everything else, we still possess something of this sort — within ourselves, something that
neither could the Achaeans carry off nor drive away. For this reason one must not utterly abase or cast down one's nature, as though it possessed nothing strong or lasting or beyond the reach of Fortune; on the contrary, one should recognize that it is only a small part of a human being that is frail and perishable — the part that admits Fortune's power — while we ourselves are masters of the better portion, in which the greatest of goods are established,
namely sound opinions and learning and reasoning that ends in virtue — these possess an essence that cannot be taken away and cannot be corrupted, making us unconquerable and confident in the face of the future, saying to Fortune what Socrates, while seeming to address his accusers, actually said to the jurors: that Anytus and Meletus can kill him, but they cannot harm him. For indeed Fortune has the power to afflict one with sickness,
to take away money, to slander one before the people or a tyrant; but it cannot make a good and manly and great-souled and noble and generous person into one who is bad, cowardly, mean-spirited, ignoble, and envious, nor can it take away that disposition, the constant presence of which is of more use for living than a pilot's skill is for the sea. For a pilot has no power to calm rough waves and
wind, nor, when he needs a harbor, to reach whichever one he wishes, nor to endure with confidence and without trembling whatever happens; rather, so long as he has not given up hope, he uses his skill and "flees, having furled his great sail," until "he raises the lower mast clear of the murky sea" — but he sits there trembling and quaking. The disposition of the wise person, by contrast, provides calm for bodily matters too, relaxing to the greatest extent the causes of illness
through self-control and a temperate regimen and moderate exertions; and if some external onset of suffering occurs, like the sweep of a reef, he passes it by "with sail trimmed low and light," as Asclepiades says; but if something unforeseen and great overtakes and overpowers him, the harbor is near, and it is possible to swim free of the body, as of a small boat that is no longer seaworthy. For it is not the desire to live but the fear of death that makes the foolish man cling
to the body, clutching it as Odysseus clung to the fig tree, dreading the Charybdis lying in wait below — "there neither wind allows one to remain nor to sail" — and so being ill at ease with the one and terrified of the other. But the person who somehow suspects the true nature of the soul, and reckons on its change at death as being either for the better or in no way worse, has
no small provision for the tranquility of his life in his fearlessness of death. For to one who can, so long as the preferable and proper portion prevails, live pleasantly, and, when the foreign elements that lie outside nature's due measure overwhelm him, depart without fear, saying, "the divinity will release me myself, whenever I wish" — what difficulty or hardship or disturbance could we imagine befalling such a man? For the one who
says, "I have forestalled you, O Fortune, and blocked off every avenue of approach for you," fortified himself not with bars or locks or walls, but with convictions and reasonings that are available to all who wish them. And one must neither despair of nor disbelieve such sayings, but, admiring and emulating and sharing their enthusiasm, at the same time make trial of oneself and gain understanding through the lesser occasions in preparation for the
greater, neither fleeing nor pushing away the soul's attention to them, nor escaping into the thought "perhaps nothing more difficult will occur"; for such sweet complacency of soul, which always spends its time on what is easiest and retreats from unwelcome things toward what is most pleasant, produces weakness and an unexercised softness. But the soul that practices facing the prospect of sickness and toil and exile, and forces
itself by reasoning to confront each of these, will find much that is false and hollow and unsound in the things that seem harsh and fearful, as the argument shows in each particular case. And yet many shudder even at that saying of Menander, "It is not possible for a living person to say, 'This I shall not suffer,'" not realizing how great a good it is for freedom from pain to be able to look Fortune in the eye with open eyes,
and not to make the images within oneself untried and soft, as though nurtured in the shade, always yielding to many hopes and resisting nothing. Yet this much we may say in reply to Menander: it is not possible for a living person to say "this I shall not suffer," but it is possible to say while living, "this I shall not do — I shall not lie, I shall not act unscrupulously, I shall not defraud, I shall not plot against another"; for this, being within our own power,
contributes not a small but a great share to tranquility of mind. Just as, conversely, the awareness that comes from knowing one has done terrible things leaves behind, like a wound in the flesh, remorse forever bloodying and stabbing at the soul; for reason removes other griefs, but repentance is produced by the mind itself, as the soul is bitten with shame and punishes itself. For just as those shivering
with chills and burning with fevers are more troubled and worse off than those who suffer the same heat or cold from an outside source, so too the sufferings that come from fortune have lighter griefs, since they are borne as coming, so to speak, from outside; but the thought "no one else is to blame for this but I myself" — lamented over one's own wrongdoing, welling up from within oneself — makes the pain heavier through shame. Hence neither a costly house, nor
an abundance of gold, nor distinction of birth, nor greatness of office, nor grace of speech, nor cleverness, provides such calm weather and tranquility for life as a soul kept pure of wicked deeds and designs, and possessing an untroubled and undefiled character as the very source of its life; from this source flow noble actions, giving one's activity an inspired and joyful quality along with a sense of high purpose, and
a memory sweeter and more secure than Pindar's "nurse of old age," hope. For it is not the case, as Carneades used to say, that only "frankincense boxes, even when emptied, continue for a long time to give off their fragrance" — for in the soul of the person of understanding, noble deeds too leave behind a recollection that is forever pleasing and fresh, from which one's joy is watered and flourishes, and one looks with contempt on those who lament and
revile life, as though it were some region of evils or a place of exile assigned here to souls. I admire, too, that saying of Diogenes, who, seeing a stranger in Sparta preparing himself and making a great show for some festival, said: "Does not a good man consider every day a festival?" — and indeed a very splendid one, if we are in our right minds; for the universe is a most holy and god-befitting temple, and
into this temple a human being is brought through birth to be a spectator not of statues made by hand and motionless, but, as Plato says, of the sensible likenesses of intelligible things which the divine mind has revealed as possessing an innate principle of life and motion — the sun and moon and stars, and rivers ever pouring forth fresh water, and the earth sending up nourishment for plants and animals. Since life is an initiation
into these things, and a most perfect rite, it ought to be full of cheerfulness and joy — not as most people do, waiting for days like the Cronia and the Diasia and the Panathenaea and other such festivals, so that they may take pleasure and let out purchased laughter, paying wages to mimes and dancers. Then there we sit in reverent silence and good order — for no one laments while being initiated, nor grieves while watching the Pythian games or drinking at the Cronia — yet
But the festivals that god provides for us, and initiates us into as into mysteries, these people dishonor, spending most of their time in lamentations, heavy-heartedness, and burdensome anxieties.
They delight in instruments that produce pleasant sounds, and in birds that sing, and they gladly watch animals at play and frisking about, while conversely they are distressed at those that howl, roar, and look sullen. Yet they see their own life as mirthless and downcast, always oppressed and crushed by the most joyless feelings, affairs, and cares that have no end — and not only do they fail to procure for themselves any breathing space or relief from any source, but they will not even accept the argument, when others urge it upon them, that by making blameless use of what is present and gratefully remembering what has happened, they will fare well, and will approach what remains with a hope that is gracious and bright, holding it without fear and without suspicion.

======== Moralia: Epitome Argumenti Stoicos ========

Pindar's Caeneus underwent his trial by being made, implausibly, unbreakable by iron and impervious in body, and then, unwounded, sank down beneath the earth, "splitting the ground with upright foot." But the Stoic Lapith, forged as it were out of adamantine matter by their own doctrine of impassivity, is not in fact unwoundable, nor immune to disease, nor without pain; rather he remains fearless and free from grief and unconquered and unconstrained, even while being wounded, feeling pain, being racked—amid the razing of his homeland, amid such sufferings.
So while Pindar's Caeneus, when struck, is not wounded, the Stoic sage, when shut up, is not hindered, and when thrown down a precipice is not compelled, and when racked on the wheel is not tortured, and when maimed is not harmed, and when he falls in wrestling he remains unconquered, and when walled in under siege he is unbesieged, and when sold he is unconquerable by his enemies—no different from those ships inscribed "Fair Voyage" or "Providence the Savior" or "Good Care," which nevertheless are caught in storms and wrecked and capsized. ("The Stoics say more absurd things than the poets.")
Euripides' Iolaus, from being feeble and past his prime, by some prayer suddenly became young and strong for battle; but the Stoic sage, who yesterday was the most shameful and the most wicked of men, today has suddenly changed and become, out of one
wrinkled and pallid and, in Aeschylus's words, out of a wretched old man racked with pain in the loins and limbs, a comely, godlike, beautifully formed being—just as Odysseus's wrinkles and baldness and unsightliness were stripped away by Athena so that he might appear handsome. But the sage of these philosophers, though old age has not left his body but has rather added to it and heaped further burdens upon it—remaining, as it may happen, bent, toothless, one-eyed—is nevertheless neither shameful nor ill-formed
nor ugly of face. For the Stoic form of love, just as dung-beetles are said to shun perfume and pursue foul odors, so, consorting with the ugliest and most misshapen, turns away from them precisely when they change into beauty and comeliness through wisdom. The man who was, among the Stoics, the most wicked, if it should so happen, in the morning, becomes by evening the best: and though he lay down struck senseless and ignorant and unjust and undisciplined and
yes, by Zeus, a slave and poor and destitute, he rises the very same day having become a king and rich and blessed, both temperate and just and steadfast and free of false opinion: not by growing a beard, nor youthful vigor in a body young and tender, but in a soul weak and tender and unmanly and unsteady having acquired perfect understanding, the height of prudence, a godlike disposition, knowledge free of false opinion, and
an unshakable condition—with wickedness having yielded nothing to him beforehand, but suddenly, I might almost say, becoming some hero or spirit or god out of the worst of beasts. For it is possible to say that one who receives virtue from the Stoa may pray for whatever he wishes, and everything shall come to him: it brings wealth, it holds kingship, it grants good fortune, it makes men blessed in fortune and self-sufficient and wanting nothing—though not possessing so much as a single drachma from home—
for the mythic account of the poet, keeping to what is reasonable, nowhere leaves Heracles in want of necessities, but as if from a spring it flows to him and to those with him; whereas the man who has received the Stoic Amaltheia has become rich, yet he begs his food from others: and he is a king, yet works out syllogisms for hire, and he alone possesses everything, yet pays rent
and buys his barley meal, often borrowing or begging from those who have nothing themselves. And whereas the king of the Ithacans begs in order to conceal who he is, wishing and contriving to make himself as much as possible "like a wretched beggar," the man from the Stoa, shouting loudly and crying out, "I alone am king, I alone am rich," is often seen at other men's doors saying, give
me a cloak, Hipponax, for I am terribly cold and my teeth are chattering.

======== Moralia: Epitome Libri De Animae Procreatione ========

The treatise entitled 'On the Generation of the Soul in the Timaeus' reports everything that Plato and the Platonists have zealously contended for. It also introduces certain geometrical analogies and likenesses, which, as its author supposes, bear upon the contemplation of the soul, and indeed musical and arithmetical theorems as well. He says that matter was given its form by the soul, and that the soul is given both to the universe as a whole and to each living creature, as the power that governs it; and in one respect he represents this soul as ungenerated, in another as subject to becoming, while matter is eternal and was given its shape by the divine through the soul. He also says that vice arose as an offshoot of matter, so that, as he puts it, the divine should not be thought the cause of evils.
Next, that the followers of Posidonius did not remove the soul far from matter, but, having accepted that the substance of the limits is spoken of, in the case of bodies, as divisible, and mixing this with the intelligible, they declared the soul to be an idea of that which is extended in every direction, constituted according to number and containing a harmony within it. For the objects of mathematics are ranked between the primary intelligibles and the objects of perception; and since the soul has, through the intelligible, the eternal, and through its perceptive part, the passible, it is fitting that its substance should occupy an intermediate position.
For it escaped their notice too that god, in shaping matter, made use of the limits of bodies only later, after the soul had already been fashioned, defining and enclosing matter's scattered and unconnected character by means of the surfaces fitted together out of triangles. But it is still more absurd to make the soul an idea; for the one is ever in motion, the other unmoved, and the one is unmixed with the perceptible, the other bound up with body. Moreover, god became an imitator of the idea, as of a model, but a craftsman of the soul, as of a product that he brought to completion. That Plato does not posit number as the substance of the soul, but rather something ordered by number, has been said before.
Common to both of these views is this: that neither in the limits nor in numbers is there present any trace of that faculty by which the soul is naturally suited to judge the perceptible. For its participation in the intelligible principle has produced in it mind and the capacity for thought; but opinions, beliefs, imagination, and passibility come from the qualities connected with body - something no one could simply conceive as arising out of monads, lines, or surfaces.
Moreover, not only the souls of mortal creatures possess the power of knowing the perceptible, but also, he says, 'the soul of the universe,' revolving upon itself, whenever it comes into contact with something whose substance is scattered, and whenever with something indivisible, is said, moving through the whole of itself, to declare with what a thing is the same and from what it is different, and in what respect especially, and where, and how this comes about, and how the things that come to be stand, and are affected, in relation to each thing.
In these words, while at the same time sketching an outline of the ten categories, he makes the matter still clearer in what follows. 'For when an account,' he says, 'concerns the perceptible, and the circle of the Different, moving rightly, carries the report through the whole soul, then opinions and beliefs become firm and true; but again, when it concerns the rational, and the circle of the Same, running smoothly, makes them known, knowledge is necessarily brought to completion. And as for that in which these two come to be present among existing things - if anyone should ever call it anything other than soul, he would say anything rather than the truth.'
Whence, then, did the soul acquire this power of apprehending and forming opinion about the perceptible - a motion distinct from that intellective motion which culminates in knowledge? It is hard to say, unless one firmly grants that here he is constructing, not soul in the simple sense, but the soul of the universe, out of an underlying substance that is both superior and indivisible, and an inferior substance, which he has called, in relation to bodies, divisible - this being none other than the opinative, imaginative, and sympathetic motion directed toward perceptible things, a motion not generated but subsisting eternally, just like the other.
For nature, in possessing the intellective, possessed the opinative as well; but the former is unmoved and unaffected, established around a substance that remains forever the same, while the latter is divisible and wandering, inasmuch as it comes into contact with matter that is being borne along and scattered. For the perceptible had not yet obtained order but was shapeless and indeterminate, and likewise the faculty ordered in relation to it had neither articulate opinions nor all its motions in order, but for the most part dream-like, distracted motions that disturbed the corporeal element, except insofar as some of them chanced by luck to fall in with the better. For it was situated midway between the two and had a nature sympathetic and akin to both, clinging by its perceptive part to matter and by its discriminative part to the intelligibles.
In this way, too, Plato somehow makes the matter clear by his very terminology. 'For let this account,' he says, 'reckoned according to my vote, be given in summary: that being, and space, and becoming are three, in three distinct ways, even before the heaven came to be.' For he calls matter 'space,' as it were a seat, and at times also a 'receptacle'; by 'being' he means the intelligible; and by 'becoming,' since the universe had not yet come to be, he means no other substance than that which exists in changes and motions, ranked between that which imprints and that which is imprinted, transmitting to this place the images from that other realm.
For these reasons, then, it was called 'divisible,' and also because that which perceives must necessarily be distributed together with, and coextend with, the perceptible, and that which imagines with the imagined; for the perceptive motion, being proper to the soul, moves toward the perceptible, which lies outside it. Mind, however, by itself and in itself, was stable and unmoved; but having come to be present in the soul and having gained mastery over it, it turns the soul back upon itself and brings to completion the circular motion, a motion which, revolving around what remains, most of all touches upon being. For this reason their union proved difficult to blend, mixing the divisible with the indivisible, and the wholly mobile with what is in no way moved, and forcing the one to come together with the other.
Now the Different was not motion, just as the Same was not rest, but rather a principle of difference and dissimilarity. For each of the two descends from a different first principle: the Same from the One, the Different from the Dyad; and it is here, in the region of the soul, that they are first mixed, bound together by numbers, ratios, and harmonic means. And the Different, coming to be present in the Same, produces difference, while the Same, present in the Different, produces order - as is clear in the primary faculties of the soul, which are the discriminative and the motive.
Motion at once displays itself in the heavens: as difference within sameness, through the revolution of the fixed stars, and as sameness within difference, through the order of the planets; for in the former the Same prevails, but in the region around the earth the opposite holds. Judgment, in turn, has two principles: mind, proceeding from the Same toward universals, and sense-perception, proceeding from the Different toward particulars. Reason is a mixture of both, becoming intellection among the intelligibles and opinion among the perceptibles, and employing as intermediate instruments imaginations and memories, of which some produce the Different within the Same, and others the Same within the Different.
For intellection is a motion of the intelligizing subject around what remains fixed, while opinion is a resting of the perceiving subject around what is in motion; and imagination, being an intertwining of opinion with sense-perception, is fixed in memory by the Same, while the Different, in turn, sets it moving again in the difference between before and now, touching upon otherness and sameness at once.
Now the blending that occurred with respect to the body of the universe must be taken as an image of the proportion by which god fitted the soul together. There, in the body, fire and earth stood at the extremes, having a nature difficult to blend with one another - or rather wholly unmixable and unstable. For this reason he placed between them air, before fire, and water, before earth, and first blended these with one another, and then, through them, mixed and fitted together the extremes both with these intermediates and with each other.
Here again, in the case of the soul, he brought together the Same and the Different - opposing powers and rival extremes - not directly through themselves, but through another substance placed between them: the indivisible before the Same, and the divisible before the Different, each ranked suitably in relation to the other. Then, mixing yet further with these once they had been blended, he wove together the entire form of the soul, so far as this was possible, fashioning something alike out of things different, and one thing out of many.

======== Moralia: Instituta Laconica ========

When each newcomer enters the common messes, the eldest man present points to the doors and says, "Through these no word goes out." Among them the so-called black broth was especially prized, so that the older men had no need of meat, but yielded it to the young men. It is said that Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, for this reason bought a Laconian cook and ordered him to prepare it, sparing no expense; but when he tasted it he was disgusted and spat it out, and the cook said, "Your Majesty, this broth needs to be seasoned by one who has exercised the Laconian way and bathed in the Eurotas." After drinking moderately at the common messes, the Spartans depart without a torch; for it is not permitted to walk toward a light on that road or on any other, so that they may become accustomed to travel through darkness and night with courage and without fear. They learned letters only for practical use.
Of all other kinds of learning they made a wholesale expulsion, no less of the men who taught them than of their teachings. Their education aimed at learning to obey well, to endure hardship, and, in fighting, to conquer or die. They went about continually without a tunic, receiving a single cloak for the year, keeping their bodies unwashed and for the most part abstaining from baths and ointments. The young men slept together,
by troop and by company, on pallets which they gathered themselves, breaking off with their bare hands, without iron, the tips of the rushes growing by the Eurotas. In winter they added in the so-called "wolf's-bane" and mixed it into their bedding, since this material was thought to have some warming quality. It was permitted to love the boys who were noble in soul; but to have carnal relations with them was considered shameful, on the ground that
the lovers were lovers of the body and not of the soul; and one accused of approaching a boy for shameful purposes was disgraced for life. It was also customary for the younger men to be asked by their elders where they were going and for what purpose, and for one who did not answer, or who wove excuses, to be reproved; and one who failed to reprove a wrongdoer in his presence was liable to the same penalty as the wrongdoer
himself. And one who resented being reproved was held in great disgrace. If anyone was caught doing wrong, he had to go around a certain altar in the city, singing a song of blame composed against himself, which was nothing other than reproving himself to himself. The young men were taught to revere not only their own fathers and be obedient to them, but also all
the older men, giving way to them on the roads, yielding their seats, and falling silent in their presence. For this reason each man exercised authority not merely, as in other cities, over his own children, slaves, and property, but as over his own and his neighbor's alike, so that they might share in and care for them as far as possible as their own kin. If a boy was punished by someone and reported it to his father, it was disgraceful
for the father not to inflict further punishment upon hearing of it; for they trusted one another, on the basis of their ancestral upbringing, never to order their children to do anything shameful. The young men also steal whatever food they can, learning to attack cleverly those who are asleep or keep careless watch; the penalty for one caught was blows and going hungry. For their dinner is meager, so that by their own efforts, defending themselves against
want, they might be compelled to be bold and resourceful. This was the purpose of the scanty rations: it was meant both to make them thin and to accustom them never to become full, but to be able to endure hunger; for they believed that in this way they would also be more useful in war, if they could endure hardship even while unfed, and more self-controlled and frugal, if they could get by for a longer time on little expense; and that enduring a lack of relish, so that they consumed
whatever food came to hand, made their bodies healthier, produced from a deficient diet, since they believed that bodies pressed by effort toward depth and breadth were thereby raised up in height, and also became more shapely; for lean and empty frames yielded readily to proper articulation, while overfed ones resisted it because of their weight. They also took no less trouble over their songs and odes,
for these had a goad that roused spirit and high resolve and stirred an enthusiastic and effective impulse to action. And their diction was plain and unadorned, containing nothing but praises of those who had lived nobly and died for Sparta, and were called blessed, and blame of those who had shown cowardice, as living a painful and ill-starred life, along with promises and boasts of valor fitting to
their several ages. There were three choruses corresponding to the three ages, formed at the festivals: the chorus of old men began by singing, "We once were valiant young men"; then the chorus of men in their prime answered, "We are that now; if you wish, put us to the test"; and the third, the chorus of boys, sang, "But we shall be far mightier still." And the marching
rhythms were such as to spur men on to courage, boldness, and contempt of death, which they used both in choruses and, to the accompaniment of the flute, as they advanced against the enemy. For Lycurgus yoked love of music to training for war, so that the excess of the warlike spirit, tempered by what was harmonious, might have concord and balance; and this is why the king, before battles, sacrificed to the Muses, so that
those fighting might perform deeds worthy of note and of glorious remembrance. And if anyone transgressed at all against the ancient music, they would not allow it; indeed, even Terpander, though a rather archaic figure and the finest lyre-player of his day and a celebrator of heroic deeds, was nonetheless fined by the ephors, who carried off and nailed up his lyre, because he had strung one extra string beyond what was needed for
variety of tone; for they approved only the simpler kinds of songs. And when Timotheus was competing at the Carneia, one of the ephors took a knife and asked him from which side he should cut off the greater number of the seven strings. Lycurgus also did away with all superstitious fear surrounding burials, permitting the dead to be buried within the city and their monuments to be kept close to the temples. He also did away with
pollutions connected with burial. He allowed nothing to be buried with the dead, but ordered that the body be wrapped, alike for all, in a scarlet cloth and olive leaves. He also abolished inscriptions on tombs, except for those who died in war, and did away with mourning and lamentation. They were not permitted to travel abroad, so that they might not partake of foreign customs and undisciplined ways of life. He also introduced
the expulsion of foreigners, so that those who slipped into the city might not become teachers of any evil to the citizens. Any citizen who did not endure the training of the boys had no share in the rights of the city. Some say that any foreigner too who endured such training in accordance with the wish of Lycurgus shared in the portion of citizenship established from the beginning. It was not permitted
to sell land. It was customary to use one's neighbors' servants as if they were one's own, if there was need, and likewise their dogs and horses, unless the owners themselves needed them; and in the countryside, if anyone lacking something had need of it, he would open another man's stores, take what was needed, and, after marking the seals, leave them so. In wars they used scarlet cloaks, partly because
the color seemed to them manly, and partly because the bloody hue causes greater fear in the inexperienced, and also because it is not easily detected by the enemy if one of them is wounded, its being of the same color being useful in that respect. Whenever they defeated the enemy by stratagem, they sacrifice an ox to Ares; but when they win in open battle, a cock, thereby accustoming their leaders to be not merely warlike but
also skilled in generalship. To their prayers they add the request to be able to endure being wronged. Their prayer is to grant good things in return for good deeds, and nothing more. They worship Aphrodite armed, and they make all the gods, female and male alike, bear spears, on the view that all of them possess warlike valor. And those given to proverbs also say that the hand that is extended calls fortune to itself, meaning that one
ought to call upon the gods only along with setting one's hand to some undertaking and acting, and not otherwise. They used to make the helots drunk and display them to the boys, as a deterrent against excessive drinking. It was their custom not to knock on the outer doors but to call out from outside. They used strigils not of iron but of reed. They did not attend comedies or tragedies, so that they might hear the words of those who spoke against the laws neither in earnest nor in jest. Archilochus
the poet, when he came to Lacedaemon, they expelled that very hour, because they learned that he had written that it is better to throw away one's shield than to die: "Some Saian now delights in the shield I left, unwillingly, blameless, beside a bush; but I myself escaped the end of death: let that shield go; I shall get another no worse." Girls and boys share the same religious rites. The ephors fined Sciraphidas,
because he was wronged by many people. They put to death Saccophorus, because he sewed a purple border onto his cloak. They rebuked the young man from the gymnasium, because he knew the road to Pylaea. They expelled Cephisophon, who said that about anything at all he could speak for a whole day, saying that a good speaker ought to make his speech match the subject matter. Among them the boys, whipped throughout the whole
day at the altar of Artemis Orthia, often endure it, sometimes to the point of death, cheerfully and proudly, competing with one another for victory as to which of them can hold out longer and better under the blows; and the one who prevails is especially renowned. This contest is called the diamastigosis, and it takes place every year. Lycurgus was thought to have provided the citizens with one of the finest and most blessed of things,
an abundance of leisure: for it was altogether forbidden to engage in any menial craft, and there was no need at all to concern themselves with the laborious business of amassing wealth, since he had made riches wholly unenviable and dishonored. The helots worked their land for them, paying over the fixed rent from above. It was accursed to hire out a helot at a higher rate, so that
the helots might serve willingly, gaining thereby, while the masters might not seek more than was fixed. They were forbidden to be sailors or to fight at sea; later, however, they did fight at sea, and having gained mastery of the sea, they gave it up again, seeing that the character of the citizens was being corrupted. But again they changed back, as in all other matters; and indeed, when money had been collected for the Lacedaemonians, those who had collected it were condemned to death. For to Alcamenes and Theopompus, the kings, an oracle was given:
"Love of money will destroy Sparta, and nothing else." Yet nonetheless Lysander, after conquering the Athenians, brought in much gold and silver, and they accepted it and honored the man. So then, as long as the city used the laws of Lycurgus and abided by its oaths, it held first place in Greece for good order and reputation for five hundred years; but as these were gradually transgressed and greed and love of wealth crept in, its power was diminished
and its allies for this reason grew ill-disposed toward it. Yet even in this condition, after Philip of Macedon's victory at Chaeronea, when all the Greeks proclaimed him leader by land and sea, and in the interval also proclaimed his son Alexander leader after the overthrow of the Thebans, the Lacedaemonians alone, although they had an unwalled city and were very few in number because of their
continual wars, and had become much weaker and easier to overcome, still preserving certain very small sparks of the legislation of Lycurgus, neither campaigned together with these kings nor with the Macedonian kings who came between them, nor entered any common council, nor paid tribute; until at last, having utterly disregarded the legislation of Lycurgus, they were made subject to tyranny by their own citizens, no longer preserving anything of their ancestral training, and, becoming like all the rest,
they cast aside their former good repute and freedom of speech and passed into slavery, and now they have become subject to the Romans, just like the other Greeks.

======== Moralia: Lacaenarum Apophthegmata ========

Argileonis, the mother of Brasidas, when her son had died and some of the Amphipolitans came to Sparta and visited her, asked whether her son had died nobly and in a manner worthy of Sparta. When they extolled him and said he was the best of all the Lacedaemonians in such deeds, she said, "Strangers, my son was indeed fine and good, but Sparta has many men better than he."
Gorgo, daughter of King Cleomenes, when Aristagoras of Miletus was urging her father to make war against the Great King on behalf of the Ionians, and promising a great quantity of money and adding still more each time Cleomenes objected, said, "Father, this little stranger will ruin you, unless you throw him out of the house quickly." And when her father once ordered her to give a man grain in payment for a service,
and the man added, "for he taught me to make good wine," she said, "Well then, father, the more wine there is, the more will be drunk, and the drinkers will become softer and worse." And seeing Aristagoras being fitted with sandals by one of his servants, she said, "Father, the stranger has no hands." And when another stranger approached her softly and at leisure, she pushed him away and said,
"Won't you get away from here, since you can't even do a woman's work?" When asked by an Athenian woman, "Why is it that you Spartan women alone rule your men?" she replied, "Because we alone give birth to men." And when she was urging her husband Leonidas, as he set out for Thermopylae, to show himself worthy of Sparta, she asked what she should do; he replied, "Marry a good man and bear good children." Once when Gyrtias's grandson Acrotatus
had received many blows in a fight among the boys and was carried home for dead, and her household and acquaintances were weeping, she said, "Won't you be quiet? For he has shown what blood he is of." And she said that brave men ought not to cry out but to be healed. When a messenger came from Crete announcing the death of Acrotatus, she said, "Was he not bound, on going against the enemy,
either to be killed by them himself or to kill them? I hear more gladly that he died in a manner worthy of himself, of the city, and of his ancestors, than if he had lived for all time being a coward." Damatria, on hearing that her son was a coward and unworthy of her, killed him when he arrived; and this is the epitaph on her: "Damatrius, who transgressed the laws, his Lacedaemonian mother slew, she a Lacedaemonian."
Another Spartan woman killed her son for deserting his post, as unworthy of his country, saying, "He is no offspring of mine." On her is this epitaph: "Begone, evil offspring, into darkness, where through hatred the Eurotas may not flow even for cowardly deer. Worthless whelp, wretched portion, go to Hades, go: I did not bear a thing unworthy of Sparta." Another woman, hearing that her son had fallen in battle, said,
"Let cowards be wept for; but you, my child, I bury without tears, you who are both mine and Lacedaemon's." A woman who heard that her son had been saved and had fled from the enemy wrote to him, "An evil report of you has spread abroad: either wipe it out now, or cease to be." Another woman, when her sons fled from battle and came to her, said, "Where have you come running to, deserting like this, wretched slaves? Or is it here that you mean
to crawl back into where you came from?" and she pulled up her garment and showed herself to them. Seeing her son approaching, another woman asked, "How does our country fare?" And when he said, "All are dead," she snatched up a roof tile and hurled it at him and killed him, saying, "So they sent you to bring us the bad news?" When someone was telling a mother about her brother's noble death, she said, "Is it not shameful, then, to have missed sharing in such a fellowship?" A woman who had sent out her five sons
to war stood in the outskirts of the city waiting to learn what would come of the battle. When someone arrived and, in answer to her question, reported that all her sons had died, she said, "That is not what I asked, you wretched slave, but how our country fares." And when he said that it was victorious, she said, "Then gladly do I accept even the death of my sons."
A woman burying her son, when a poor old woman came up to her and said, "O woman, what a misfortune," replied, "No, by the two gods, rather what good fortune; for this is what happened to me — that I bore him for the very purpose that he should die for Sparta." When an Ionian woman was priding herself on one of her own weavings, being a costly one, a Spartan woman, pointing to her four sons, who were most well-behaved, said, "Such ought to be the works
of a good and noble woman, and it is in these that she should take pride and boast greatly." Another woman, on hearing about her son that he was behaving badly abroad, wrote, "An evil report of you has spread abroad: put it away from you, or cease to be." In the same way, when Chian exiles came to Sparta and made many accusations against Paedaretus, his mother Teleutia sent for them, and having heard their charges, since it seemed to her that
her son was in the wrong, she wrote, "The mother to Paedaretus: either do better, or stay where you are, having given up hope of return to Sparta." Another woman, when her son was on trial for wrongdoing, said, "Child, free yourself either from the charge or from life." Another woman, sending off her lame son to battle, said, "Child, remember your valor at every step." Another woman, when her son came to her from battle wounded in the
foot and in great pain, said, "If you remember your valor, child, you will feel no pain and will be brave." A Spartan man, wounded in war and unable to walk, made his way on all fours. Ashamed at being a figure of ridicule, he was told by his mother, "How much better, child, to rejoice in your courage than to be ashamed at foolish laughter?" Another woman, handing her son his shield
and exhorting him, said, "Child, either with this or on this." Another woman, as her son was setting out for war, handed him his shield and said, "This your father always kept safe; you too, then, either keep it safe, or cease to be." To another woman's son, who complained that his sword was short, she said, "Add a step to it." Another woman, hearing that her son had died in battle
having played the brave man, said, "For he was mine." But on learning of the other son, that he had turned coward and was safe, she said, "For he was not mine." Another woman, hearing that her son had died in battle at the post assigned to him, said, "Lay him down, and let his brother fill his place." Another woman, celebrating a public festival, heard that her son was winning in the contest, but was dying of the many wounds he had received.
She did not take off her garland, but with dignity said to the women near her, "How much finer, my friends, is it to die victorious in battle than to live on having won at the Olympic games." When someone was telling a woman's sister about the noble death of her son, the sister said, "As much as I rejoice for him, so much do I grieve for you, left behind from so virtuous a company." Someone sent word to a Spartan woman asking whether she would consent
to being seduced. She replied, "As a girl I learned to obey my father, and this I did; as a wife, my husband. If then he urges what is right, let him first make this clear to my husband." A poor girl, asked what dowry she would give to her bridegroom, said, "My ancestral chastity." A Spartan woman, asked whether she had come to her husband, said, "No, but he to me." A certain woman who had been
secretly deflowered and had destroyed the infant endured it so steadfastly, uttering not a single sound, that even her father and others nearby were unaware that she had given birth; for the greatness of her pain was overcome by her sense of propriety in the face of disgrace. A Spartan woman being sold, when asked what she knew, said, "To be trustworthy." Another woman, taken captive and asked the same thing, said, "To manage a household well." A woman, asked by someone whether she would be
good, if he bought her, said, "Yes, even if you don't buy me." Another woman being sold, when the herald asked what she knew, said, "To be free." And when her purchaser ordered her to do something not fitting for a free woman, she said, "You will regret grudging yourself the use of such a possession," and put herself to death.

======== Moralia: Maxime Cum Princibus Philsopho Esse Diserendum ========

...to embrace Hyrcanus, and to honor friendship, and to pursue it, welcome it, and cultivate it — since it will prove useful and fruitful to many privately and to many publicly as well — belongs to men who love what is noble, who are political and humane, not, as some suppose, to lovers of glory. On the contrary, it is the man who flees and is afraid to be called a persistent, obsequious attendant upon those in power who is really the lover of glory, and a coward. For what does
a man who attends and courts power, yet needs philosophy, say? Am I then to become Simon the shoemaker, or Dionysius the schoolteacher, rather than a companion of Pericles or Cato, so that Socrates might converse and sit with me as he did with Simon? And Ariston of Chios, when he was reproached by the sophists for conversing with anyone who wished it, said, "Would that even wild beasts could understand words that move them toward
virtue!" Shall we then shrink from becoming familiar with the powerful and the ruling class, as though they were wild, untamed beasts? The philosopher's teaching is not a "statue-maker," "making figures that stand idle upon the same base," in Pindar's phrase; rather it wishes to make active whatever it touches — practical and animate — and it implants impulses that move men and judgments that lead them toward what is beneficial, and toward
purposes that love what is noble, and high thinking and greatness joined with gentleness and security — qualities by which statesmen more eagerly associate with those who are eminent and powerful. Indeed, if a physician loves what is noble, he will more gladly heal an eye that sees on behalf of many and watches over many; and a philosopher will more eagerly attend to a soul which he sees caring for many, and which is bound to think, be prudent, and act justly on behalf of many.
For if someone were skilled in the search for and gathering of water, as they say Heracles and many of the ancients were, he would not delight in digging wells on some remote frontier, "by the Raven's Rock," that swineherd's little Arethusa, but would rather uncover the ever-flowing springs of some river for a city, for armies, for the plantations of kings, and for their groves. We hear indeed that Homer calls
Minos "the companion of great Zeus"; and this means, as Plato says, his associate and pupil. For men did not think it fitting that private individuals, homebodies, or people of no action should be pupils of the gods, but kings — men in whom, once good counsel, justice, decency, and greatness of mind had taken root, all who dealt with them were bound to be benefited and to enjoy the advantage. They say that when a single goat takes eryngo into its mouth,
that goat itself, and then the whole herd besides, comes to a standstill, until the goatherd approaches and pulls it out; such is the sharpness with which the emanations of its power spread, like fire, to what lies near and scatter outward. So too the philosopher's teaching, if it takes hold of a single private man who delights in inactivity and confines himself, as with a compass-point and a fixed geometric radius, to the needs of his own body,
does not spread to others, but having produced calm and quiet in that one man, withers away and dies out along with him. But if it lays hold of a ruling man, one active in politics and public affairs, and fills him with nobility and goodness, it benefits many through one — as Anaxagoras did by his association with Pericles, and Plato with Dion, and Pythagoras with the leading men of the Italian Greeks. Cato himself sailed away from his army to visit Athenodorus, and Scipio sent for
Panaetius, when the Senate dispatched him to observe the arrogance and the lawful order of mankind, as Posidonius says. What then should Panaetius have said? "If you were Baton, or Polydeuces, or some other private person, wishing to flee the centers of cities, resolving syllogisms quietly in some corner and trailing about in a philosopher's cloak, I would gladly have welcomed you and kept your company.
But since you are the son of Aemilius Paulus, twice consul, and the grandson of Scipio Africanus, who conquered Hannibal the Carthaginian, shall I not converse with you?" As for the claim that there are two kinds of reason — the one internal, a gift of Hermes the guide, the other expressed in speech, a messenger and an instrument — this is stale, and let it fall under the reproach, "This I knew before Theognis
was born." But this observation would not be out of place: that friendship is the end of both the internal reason and the spoken — of the one toward oneself, of the other toward another. For the man who arrives at virtue through philosophy always renders himself in harmony with himself, blameless in his own eyes, and full of peace and goodwill toward himself; there is in him no discord, no
"ruinous strife within his limbs," no passion disobedient to reason, no battle of impulse against impulse, no clash of reasoning against reasoning — not, as it were, on the borderline between desire and regret, the harsh and turbulent set against the pleasurable — but everything in him is benevolent and friendly, and each part causes him to attain the greatest goods and to take joy in itself. As for the Muse of spoken reason, Pindar
says she was "not greedy for gain" nor "a hired laborer" in former times, and I think not now either, but that through lack of culture and taste the common Hermes has become a thing bought and sold, hired out for pay. For it is not the case that Aphrodite raged against the daughters of Propoetus because they were the first to contrive to pour scorn upon young men, while Urania, Calliope, and Clio delight in those who corrupt speech for money. But
it seems to me rather that the works and gifts of the Muses are truer tokens of friendship than the amorous gifts of Aphrodite. Indeed the reputation that some make the very end of oratory was originally cherished only as the beginning and seed of friendship; or rather, most people altogether base reputation on goodwill, believing that we do not praise only those whom we love. But these men, like Ixion,
who, pursuing Hera, slipped instead into embracing a cloud, likewise seize upon a deceptive, showy, ever-circulating phantom in place of friendship. But the man of sense, if he moves among political affairs and actions, will need only so much reputation as gives him power in his undertakings through being trusted; for it is neither pleasant nor easy to benefit people against their will, and it is trust that makes them willing — just as
light is a good more for those who see than for those who are seen, so reputation is a good more for those who perceive it than for those merely looked upon. But the man who has withdrawn from public affairs and lives with himself, placing the good in quiet and freedom from business, avoids the reputation that is common and open to crowds and theaters, just as
Hippolytus, "being chaste, greets Aphrodite from afar" — yet even he does not despise the good report of decent and distinguished men. He does not pursue wealth, commanding reputation, and power in his friendships, but neither does he flee them when they attach to a moderate and cultivated character; for just as he does not pursue the handsome and youthful among the young, but rather the teachable, the well-ordered, and the eager to learn, so too he does not pursue those to whom beauty and
charm and youthful bloom attend; nor does mere beauty frighten the philosopher off, or drive him away from those worthy of his attention. So too, when high office and power attach to a moderate and cultivated man, the philosopher will not refrain from loving and cherishing him, nor will he fear to be called courtierlike and obsequious. For those who flee Aphrodite altogether are as sick as those who chase after her to excess; and likewise those who avoid men of reputation
are as unhealthy as those who court such friendship with rulers too eagerly. The philosopher who avoids public life will not shun such men; but the political philosopher will actively seek their company — not troubling them against their will, nor billeting himself upon their ears with untimely, sophistical discourses, but rejoicing to converse, spend leisure, and associate eagerly with those who are willing. "I sow a field, the Berecynthian land, a twelve days' journey across": this man, were he not only a lover of farming
but also a lover of mankind, would more gladly have sown a field able to feed so many than that little plot of Antisthenes, which would scarcely have sufficed for Autolycus to wrestle upon. But if you asked me to turn the whole inhabited world to farming, I would beg to be excused. And yet Epicurus, who places the good in the deepest quiet, as in a harbor sheltered from waves and silent, still says that doing good is not
only nobler but also more pleasant than receiving it. For nothing is so productive of joy as a favor freely given. Whoever gave the Graces their names — Splendor, Mirth, and Good Cheer — was wise; for the exultation and joy felt by the one who confers the favor is greater and purer. This is why men are often ashamed at being benefited, but always take pride in doing
good. Those who make good men of those on whom many depend thereby benefit many; and, on the contrary, those who continually corrupt rulers, kings, or tyrants — slanderers, false accusers, and flatterers — are driven off and punished by everyone, as though they had cast a deadly poison not into a single cup but into a spring flowing for public use, from which they see everyone drawing. So just as people laugh at the flatterers of Callias mocked in comedy,
whom, as Eupolis says, neither fire nor iron nor bronze could keep from frequenting a dinner, so people used to club to death, torture, and burn the friends and associates of the tyrants Apollodorus, Phalaris, and Dionysius, and declared them accursed and under a curse — on the grounds that those tyrants themselves wronged only one man at a time, while these men, through a single ruler, wronged many. In this way, those who keep company with private individuals make
themselves harmless, unhurtful, and agreeable only to themselves; but the man who removes a ruler's depraved character, or helps guide his judgment toward what is right, in a sense practices philosophy publicly and corrects the common government by which everyone is administered. Cities grant priests reverence and honor because they ask the gods for good things not only for themselves, their friends, and their households, but in common for all the citizens.
And yet the priests do not make the gods givers of good things — they merely call upon gods who are already such; whereas philosophers, by associating with rulers, actually make them more just, more moderate, and more eager to do good, so it stands to reason that they should take even greater pride in this. It seems to me that a lyre-maker, too, would fashion a lyre more gladly and more eagerly, on learning that the man who was to acquire it was going
to wall the city of Thebes with it, as Amphion did, or to quiet the factional strife of the Spartans by singing and offering consolation, as Thales did; and likewise a shipwright would take more pleasure in fashioning a rudder, on learning that it would steer the flagship of Themistocles as it fought in the front line for Greece, or Pompey's ship as it defeated the pirates in a sea battle. What then do you suppose a philosopher thinks about his own teaching, knowing that the statesman who receives it,
once ruling and in power, will become a common benefit — dispensing justice, making laws, punishing the wicked, and exalting the decent and the good? It seems to me that a skilled shipwright, too, would more gladly build a rudder on learning that it would steer the Argo, "the ship that concerned all"; and a carpenter would not construct a plow or a wagon with such eagerness as he would the tablets on which Solon was to inscribe his laws.
Indeed, the arguments of philosophers, if they are inscribed firmly in the souls of rulers and statesmen and take hold there, acquire the force of laws; it was for this very reason that Plato sailed to Sicily, hoping to turn his doctrines into laws and deeds amid the affairs of Dionysius. But he found Dionysius to be like a palimpsest already full of stains, whose dye of tyranny would not fade, since over a long time
it had become fast and hard to wash out. Young men, while still in their prime, ought instead to take hold of sound teachings.

======== Moralia: Mulierum Virtutes ========

On the excellence of women, Clea, I do not hold the same opinion as Thucydides. He declares that woman to be best about whom there is the least talk, whether of blame or of praise, among people outside her household—as though he thought that a good woman's body, and her name as well, ought to be kept shut in and never go abroad. To us Gorgias seems the more refined, when he bids that not a woman's appearance but her reputation be known to many. But best of all, I think, is the practice of the Romans, who, like men, give women too a public eulogy of the honors due them after death. That is why, when the excellent Leontis died, you and I straightaway had a long conversation, one not without the comfort that philosophy affords; and now, as you wished, I have set down for you in writing the rest of what was said then, in support of the claim that the virtue of a man and of a woman is one and the same. The essay is argumentative in its use of history, and it is not composed for the pleasure of the ear; yet if the delight natural to the examples themselves attends the process of persuasion, my argument does not shrink from accepting the Graces as helpers toward proof, nor is it ashamed to mingle the Graces with the Muses in that loveliest of unions, as Euripides calls it, drawing its credibility above all from the soul's love of beauty.
Consider: if, in maintaining that the art of painting is the same for men and for women, we were to produce such paintings of women as Apelles or Zeuxis or Nicomachus have left us, would anyone find fault with us for aiming more at charm and entertainment than at persuasion? I think not. What then? If, in turn, declaring that poetry or prophecy is not one thing for men and another for women but the very same thing, we were to set the songs of Sappho beside those of Anacreon, or the oracles of the Sibyl beside those of Bacis, would anyone be justified in faulting the proof on the ground that it brings the hearer to conviction by way of pleasure and delight? You could not say that either.
And indeed there is no better way to learn the likeness and the difference between the courage of women and that of men than by comparing lives with lives and deeds with deeds, as one sets side by side the works of a great art, and asking whether the greatness of Semiramis' achievements bears the same character and stamp as that of Sesostris, or the wisdom of Tanaquil the same as that of king Servius, or the high spirit of Porcia the same as that of Brutus, and that of Timocleia the same as that of Pelopidas—judging by the most essential common quality and power. For the virtues do indeed take on certain other differences, like distinctive colorings, from the natures that bear them, and they come to resemble the underlying customs, bodily temperaments, upbringings, and ways of life: Achilles was brave in one way, Ajax in another; the good sense of Odysseus was not like that of Nestor; Cato and Agesilaus were not just in the same fashion; Irene did not love her husband as Alcestis did, nor was Cornelia high-minded as Olympias was. But we ought not, on this account, to make courage and good sense and justice into many different things, so long as the particular differences in each case do not carry them away from the sense proper to the word itself.
The most celebrated deeds, then, and those histories which I think you already know well and with certainty from your reading, I shall pass over—except for any that may have escaped the notice of those who wrote before us on subjects common and widely known. Since many notable things have been done by women both collectively and individually, it will do no harm to give a brief preliminary account of some of the collective ones.
Of those who escaped from Troy at its capture, most encountered a storm, and, through inexperience of the voyage and ignorance of the sea, were carried off to Italy; and having with difficulty put in near the river Tiber, at anchorages and havens forced upon them by necessity, the men themselves wandered about the countryside in need of guides, while into the women's minds came the thought that any settlement on land whatsoever is better, for people faring well and happily, than all this wandering and seafaring, and that they must make a homeland for themselves, since they could not recover the one they had lost. Acting on this thought, they agreed together and burned the ships, one woman—Roma, as they say—having begun it. Having done this, they went to meet their men, who were hurrying to the shore in anger; and fearing their wrath, some clasping their husbands, others their kinsmen, and kissing them fervently, they softened them by this show of affection. That is why it has become, and still remains, a custom among Roman women to greet their male relatives with a kiss. For the Trojans, understanding, it seems, the necessity of the case, and at the same time finding the local people kindly and humane in receiving them, welcomed what the women had done and settled there together with the Latins.
The affair of the Phocians has not found a distinguished historian, yet it is inferior in courage to none of the deeds performed by women, and it is attested by great rites which the Phocians still perform to this day around Hyampolis, and by ancient decrees, of which the particulars concerning the men's action are recorded in the Life of Daiphantus; the women's part was as follows. There was an implacable war between the Thessalians and the Phocians: the latter had killed all the rulers and tyrants set over them in the Phocian cities in a single day, while the former had beaten to death two hundred and fifty of their hostages, and then invaded in full force through Locris, having passed a decree to spare none of military age, but to enslave the children and women. Daiphantus, son of Bathyllius, one of three chief magistrates, persuaded the Phocians that the men themselves should go out and meet the Thessalians in battle, while the women, together with the children, should be gathered from all Phocis into a single place, surrounded with a pile of wood, and left under guard, with orders that, if it were perceived that the men were being defeated, the wood should be kindled at once and the bodies burned. When the rest voted for this, one man stood up and said it was only just that the women too should be consulted about it; if they did not agree, they should be let alone and not compelled. When this proposal reached the women, they met together by themselves and voted the very same thing, and crowned Daiphantus for having counseled the best course for Phocis; and it is said that the children too, holding an assembly of their own, voted the same. When this had been done, the Phocians engaged the enemy near Cleonae in the territory of Hyampolis and won. The Greeks called this decree of the Phocians the Desperate Resolve, and to this day they celebrate the Elaphebolia, the greatest of all festivals, in honor of Artemis at Hyampolis for that victory.
The Chians colonized Leuconia for the following reason. A man of Chios who was thought to be of good family was marrying; and as the bride was being conveyed on a wagon, King Hippoclus, who was a friend of the bridegroom's and present like the rest, in the midst of the drinking and laughter, jumped up onto the wagon, meaning nothing outrageous but following common custom and playful jest; but the friends of the bridegroom killed him. When signs of divine wrath appeared to the Chians, and the god commanded that those who had killed the killers of Hippoclus should themselves be put to death, everyone claimed to have killed Hippoclus. The god then ordered all of them to leave the city, since all shared in the pollution. So they exiled to Leuconia those responsible for the murder and those who had taken part in it or in any way approved of it—no small number, and not weak men either. This was a place the Coroneans had earlier taken from others and settled together with the Erythraeans. Later, when a war broke out between them and the Erythraeans, then the most powerful of the Ionians, and the Erythraeans marched against Leuconia, the Chians there, unable to hold out, agreed to leave under truce, each man permitted only a single cloak and one other garment, and nothing more. The women reviled them for this, saying that it was shameful to give up their arms and go out naked through the enemy; and when the men said they were bound by oath, the women told them not to leave behind their weapons, but to say to the enemy that the spear was their cloak, and the shield their tunic, for a man of spirit. The Chians, persuaded by this, spoke boldly to the Erythraeans and displayed their weapons; and the Erythraeans, fearing their daring, sent no one against them and raised no hindrance, but were glad to see them depart. These men, then, taught to be bold by their women, were saved in this way.
An achievement no less than this in courage, though occurring many years later, was performed by the women of Chios, when Philip, son of Demetrius, besieging their city, issued a barbarous and arrogant proclamation, inviting the household slaves to desert to him on promise of freedom and marriage to their mistresses, as though he would settle them together with the wives of their masters. At this the women, seized with a terrible and fierce anger, together with the household slaves themselves—who shared their indignation and stood by them—rushed to mount the walls, bringing up stones and missiles, cheering on and clinging close to the fighters, and finally, defending themselves and hurling weapons at the enemy, they drove Philip back, not a single slave having deserted to him at all.
No less renowned than these collective achievements of women is the struggle against Cleomenes for Argos, which the women fought, urged on by Telesilla the poetess. It is said that she, though of a distinguished family, was sickly in body, and sent to the god concerning her health; and the oracle given her was to cultivate the Muses. Obeying the god, and applying herself to song and music, she was quickly freed of her ailment and came to be admired by the women for her poetic skill. When Cleomenes, the king of the Spartans, having killed many men—though not, as some fabulously relate, seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven—was advancing on the city, an extraordinary impulse and daring came upon the women in the prime of life, to defend their fatherland against the enemy. With Telesilla leading them, they took up arms, and standing at the battlements, ringed the walls all about, so that the enemy marveled. Cleomenes they repulsed, with many of his men falling; and the other king, Demaratus, as Socrates says, who had gotten inside and seized the Pamphyliacum, they drove out; and the city being thus saved, they buried the women who had fallen in the battle along the Argive road, and gave to the survivors, as a memorial of their valor, the privilege of setting up a statue of Enyalius. The battle, some say, took place on the seventh of the month then rising, others on the new moon of the month now called the fourth, but anciently the month of Hermes among the Argives, on which day to this present they celebrate the Hybristica, dressing the women in men's tunics and cloaks, and the men in women's robes and veils. And to remedy the shortage of men, they did not, as Herodotus relates, give the women to their slaves, but made citizens of the best of the perioeci and married the women to them; and these men, it seems, the women thought slighted and looked down upon in the marriage bed as inferior to themselves. Hence they made a law requiring married women, when they lay down with their husbands, to wear a false beard.
When Cyrus led the Persians in revolt from Astyages, king of the Medes, he was defeated in battle, and as the Persians fled into the city, with the enemy close behind about to burst in with them, the women came out before the city and, lifting their garments from below, said, "Where are you fleeing to, basest of all men? You cannot sink down here and hide, back to the place you came from." Shamed at once by this sight and by these words, the Persians reproached themselves, turned back, and, joining battle anew, routed the enemy. From this arose the custom, established by law of Cyrus, that whenever the king rode into the city, each woman received a gold piece. Ochus, they say, who besides his other faults was the most avaricious of kings, always rode around the city and never entered it, so as to deprive the women of the gift; but Alexander entered it twice, and to women who were pregnant gave a double portion.
Among the Celts, before they crossed the Alps and settled in that part of Italy which they now occupy, a terrible and hard-to-quell civil strife broke out and grew into civil war. The women, placing themselves in the midst of the armed men, took up the quarrels and arbitrated and judged them so blamelessly that a wonderful friendship arose among all, both between cities and between households. From that time on, the Celts continued to take counsel with the women about war and peace, and to refer through them any disputed matters with their allies. Indeed, in their treaty with Hannibal they wrote it down that, if the Celts had a grievance against the Carthaginians, the governors and generals of the Carthaginians in Spain should be the judges; but if the Carthaginians had a grievance against the Celts, the judges should be the women of the Celts.
The Melians, wanting land in abundance, made Nymphaeus, a young man outstanding in beauty, the leader of their colony. The god commanded them to sail and settle wherever they should lose their conveyances; and it happened that, putting in at Caria and disembarking, their ships were destroyed by a storm. Of the Carians, those who dwelt at Cryassus, either pitying their difficulty or fearing their boldness, invited them to settle among them and gave them a share of the land. But then, seeing them growing greatly in a short time, they plotted to destroy them, preparing a certain feast and banquet. Now it happened that a maiden of Caria, named Caphene, was in love with Nymphaeus, without the others knowing it. When these plans were being carried out, unable to bear seeing Nymphaeus destroyed, she disclosed to him the citizens' intention. So when the men of Cryassus came to invite them, Nymphaeus said it was not the custom of the Greeks to go to dinner without their women; and the Carians, hearing this, told them to bring the women too. Having thus reported what had happened, he directed the Melians to go themselves unarmed, in their cloaks, but each of the women was to carry a sword hidden in her bosom and to sit beside her own man. When, in the middle of the dinner, the signal was given to the Carians and the Greeks perceived the moment, all the women at once opened their bosoms, and the men, seizing the swords, fell upon the barbarians and destroyed them all together. Having thus gained possession of the land, and razing that city, they founded another, which they called New Cryassus. Caphene, married to Nymphaeus, received honor and gratitude fitting for her services. It is worth admiring, then, both the silence and the courage of the women, and the fact that not one of so many, even against her will, turned coward through fear.
As for the Tyrrhenians who held Lemnos and Imbros, they carried off the Athenian women from Brauron, and children were born of them, whom the Athenians drove out from the islands as being of mixed barbarian blood. These, putting in at Taenarum, made themselves useful to the Spartans in the war against the helots, and for this were granted citizenship and marriages; but, not being thought worthy of magistracies or of a place in the council, they came under suspicion of gathering together with a view to revolution and of plotting to overturn the established order. The Lacedaemonians accordingly arrested them...
confined them and kept close guard over them, seeking to convict them on clear and certain evidence. But the wives of the imprisoned men came to the prison and, after many entreaties and supplications, were allowed by the guards to go in far enough to embrace and speak to their husbands. Once inside, they told the men to change clothes with them quickly, to leave their own garments behind for the women, and to put on the women's clothes and go out with their heads covered.
When this had been done, the wives themselves remained there, facing whatever terrors might come, while the guards, deceived, let the men pass out as women. After this the men seized Mount Taygetus, stirred the helots to revolt, and welcomed them to their side; the Spartans, thrown into great fear, sent heralds and came to terms, on condition that the men should recover their wives, and that they themselves should take money and ships,
embark, and, on obtaining land and a city elsewhere, be reckoned as colonists and kinsmen of the Lacedaemonians. This the Pelasgians did, taking as leaders Pollis, Delphus, and Crataidas, all Lacedaemonians; part of them settled on Melos, but the majority, under Pollis, sailed to Crete to test an oracle. For it had been prophesied to them that when they lost the goddess and the anchor,
they should cease their wandering and found a city there. So when they had anchored off the place called Chersonesus, panic uproars fell upon them by night, and in their terror they leapt into the ships in disorder, leaving behind on the shore a wooden image of Artemis, an ancestral possession which had been brought to them from Brauron to Lemnos, and had been carried about with them everywhere from Lemnos onward. When the uproar had subsided and they longed for it again on the voyage, at the same time
Pollis noticed that the anchor's fluke was missing — for, it seems, it had been torn off unnoticed while being hauled up by force in a rocky spot — and, declaring that the oracle from Pytho was now fulfilled, he gave the signal to turn back, and took possession of the land. After prevailing in many battles against those who opposed him, he settled Lyctus and brought other cities under his power. For this reason they consider themselves related by descent to the Athenians through their mothers,
and to be colonists of the Spartans. What is said to have happened in Lycia is legendary, yet it carries a certain report that lends it some corroboration. For Amisodarus — whom the Lycians call Isaras — came, they say, from the Lycian colony near Zeleia, bringing pirate ships under the command of Chimarrus, a warlike man but savage and beastlike. He sailed in a ship bearing a lion as figurehead at the prow,
and a serpent at the stern, and did the Lycians much harm; it was impossible to sail the sea or even to live in the cities near the coast. Bellerophon killed him after pursuing him in his flight on Pegasus, and also drove out the Amazons, yet received none of the justice due him — indeed Iobates treated him with the utmost injustice. So Bellerophon went down to the sea and prayed against Iobates to
Poseidon that the land might become barren and unprofitable. Then he went away after uttering this curse, and a wave rose and flooded the land; it was a terrible sight, as the sea followed after him, lifted high, and hid the plain from view. When the men begged Bellerophon to stop and could not persuade him at all, the women pulled up their tunics and went to meet him; and then, as he withdrew backward in shame, the
wave is said to have withdrawn along with him. Some, softening the mythical element of this story, say that he did not drive back the sea by curses, but that the richest part of the plain lay lower than the sea, and that Bellerophon breached a ridge of shore that had held the sea back; and as the sea came on with force and flooded the plain, the men, though they begged him, accomplished nothing, but the
women poured around him in a body and won his reverence and made him cease his anger. Others say quite simply that the so-called Chimaera was a mountain facing the sun, which in summer produced harsh, fiery reflections that scattered over the plain and withered the crops, and that Bellerophon, understanding this, cut through the smoothest part of the cliff, the part that most sent back the reflections; but when
he received no thanks for it, he turned in anger to take vengeance on the Lycians, and was persuaded to relent by the women. The cause that Nymphis, in the fourth book of his work On Heraclea, gives is the least mythical of all: he says that Bellerophon killed a wild boar that was ravaging the animals and crops in the territory of the Xanthians, and received no reward for it; and when the Xanthians called down a curse on him to Poseidon, the whole
plain broke out in a salty efflorescence and was utterly ruined, the soil having turned bitter — until, moved to reverence for the women who begged him, he prayed to Poseidon to release his anger. For this reason it was the custom among the Xanthians to be named not after their fathers but after their mothers. As for Hannibal, son of Barca, before he campaigned against the Romans, while he was attacking the great city of Salmantica in Spain, at first those under siege were afraid and
agreed to do what was commanded, giving Hannibal three hundred talents of silver and three hundred hostages. But when he relaxed the siege, they changed their minds and did none of what they had promised. So when he turned back against them again and ordered his soldiers to attack the city for plunder, the barbarians, utterly terrified, agreed to let the free citizens go out wearing only a single garment, leaving behind their weapons, money, slaves, and the city
itself. But the women, thinking that the enemy would search each man as he came out but would not touch them, took swords, hid them, and rushed out along with the men. When all had come out, Hannibal stationed a guard of Masaesylians in the suburb to hold them there, while the rest fell upon the city in disorder and plundered it. As many were being carried off, the Masaesylians could not bear to watch,
nor did they keep their minds on guard duty, but grew indignant and drew back, wishing to share in the plunder themselves. Meanwhile the women, crying out to their men, handed over the swords; some even attacked the guards themselves; one woman, snatching a spear from Banon the interpreter, struck him with it, but he happened to be wearing a breastplate. Of the rest, some they struck down, others
they put to flight, and they broke through together with the women, all in a body. When Hannibal learned of it and gave chase, he captured those who had been left behind; but those who reached the mountains escaped for the moment, and later, sending a supplication to the city, were restored by him, receiving safety and kind treatment. Once a terrible and strange affliction seized the young unmarried women of Miletus, from some unclear cause; it was conjectured most of all
that the air had taken on some ecstatic and poisonous quality, and produced in them a disturbance and derangement of the mind. For suddenly a desire for death and a mad impulse toward the noose fell upon them all, and many hanged themselves secretly; the words and tears of their parents and the consolations of their friends accomplished nothing, but the girls outdid every device and cunning of those who watched over them, and did away with themselves. The affliction seemed to be something divine
and beyond human help, until, on the judgment of a sensible man, a decree was written that women who hanged themselves should be carried out naked through the marketplace for burial. Once ratified, this not only checked the practice but stopped it completely, by shaming the young women even in death. It is indeed a great proof of natural excellence and virtue that this concern for disgrace, and the fearlessness they showed toward the most terrible of things, death and pain,
meant that they could not bear even the mere image of shame, nor endure a disgrace that would come after death. Among the girls of Ceos it was customary to go together to the public shrines and spend the whole day there with one another, while their suitors watched them playing and dancing; in the evening they would go in turn to each other's houses and wait upon one another's parents and brothers, even to the point of washing their feet. Often several men loved the same girl, and their love was so orderly
and lawful that, once the girl was betrothed to one of them, the others immediately ceased their courtship. The chief proof of the good order of these women is that in seven hundred years no case of adultery or seduction of an unmarried girl is remembered as having occurred among them. When the tyrants of Phocis had seized Delphi, and the Thebans were waging against them the war called the Sacred War, the women devoted to Dionysus, whom they call the Thyiads, fell into a frenzy and
wandered about at night until, without realizing it, they found themselves in Amphissa. Utterly exhausted, and not yet in possession of their senses, they gave themselves up to sleep, lying scattered about in the marketplace. The women of Amphissa, fearing that because their city was allied to the Phocians and many soldiers of the tyrants were present, the Thyiads might be treated with cruelty, ran out into the marketplace, all of them together, and stood around them in a circle,
in silence — they did not approach those who were still sleeping, but when the Thyiads rose, different women attended to different ones, tending them and bringing them food; and finally, having persuaded their own husbands, they escorted the Thyiads safely all the way to the borders. Tarquinius Superbus, seventh king of the Romans after Romulus, was driven out because of the outrage and the virtue of Lucretia, a woman married to a distinguished man who was himself related by birth to the kings. For she was violated by one
of Tarquin's sons, who had been received as a guest in her house; and after telling her friends and family what had happened, she at once stabbed herself to death. Having lost his throne, Tarquin fought many other wars in his attempt to recover his rule; and finally he persuaded Porsenna, the ruler of the Etruscans, to march against Rome with a great force. As the war went on, and famine also assailed the Romans, learning that
Porsenna was not only a warlike man but also a just and decent one, they wished to make him arbitrator against Tarquin. But when Tarquin obstinately refused, and Porsenna declared that unless Tarquin remained a firm ally he could not be a fair judge either, Porsenna abandoned him and set about arranging to depart as a friend of the Romans, recovering the land the Etruscans had been cut off from and the captives. On these terms,
hostages were given to him — ten boys and ten girls, among whom was Valeria, daughter of the consul Publicola — and he at once relaxed all his preparations for war, although the agreement was not yet fully completed. The girls went down to the river, as if to bathe, a little way from the camp; and when one of them, named Cloelia, urged them on, they bound their tunics up around
their heads and ventured into a strong current with deep eddies, swimming and crossing while holding on to one another, with great toil and difficulty. Some say that Cloelia had the good fortune to find a horse, mounted it, and rode calmly across, while guiding and encouraging the others as they swam and helping them along. What evidence is used for this we shall say shortly. When the Romans saw that they were safe, they
admired their courage and daring, but were not pleased with their return, and would not consent to appear less trustworthy than a single man in keeping faith. So they ordered the girls to go back again, and sent escorts with them; but as they were crossing the river, Tarquin set an ambush for them, and came very close to capturing the girls. Valeria, the consul Publicola's daughter, escaped ahead of the rest with three servants
to Porsenna's camp, but the rest were rescued from the enemy by Arruns, Porsenna's son, who quickly came to their aid. When they were brought to him, Porsenna, on seeing them, ordered them to say which of them had been the one who urged the plan and began it. The others, out of fear for Cloelia, kept silent, but when Cloelia herself said it was she, Porsenna, filled with admiration, ordered that a horse
be brought, splendidly adorned, and, having given it to Cloelia as a gift, sent all of them home with kindness and goodwill. Most people take this as evidence that Cloelia rode a horse across the river; but others deny it, saying instead that Porsenna, admiring her strength and daring as surpassing what was fitting for a woman, judged her worthy of a gift suited to a warrior. At any rate, an equestrian statue of a woman stood on the road called the Sacred Way,
which some say represents Cloelia, others Valeria. Aristotimus, who rose up as tyrant over the Eleans, held power through the support of King Antigonus, but used his power for nothing decent or moderate — for he himself was by nature savage, and, enslaved by fear to the mixed barbarians who guarded his rule and his person, he allowed his citizens to suffer many outrageous and brutal things
at their hands. Such was the suffering of Philodemus. He had a beautiful daughter named Micca, and one of the tyrant's mercenary captains, named Leucius, attempted to have her, out of insolence rather than love; he sent for the girl and summoned her. Her parents, seeing the necessity, told her to go; but the girl, being noble and high-minded, begged
her father, clinging to him and entreating him, that he would rather look upon her dead than see her maidenhood taken from her shamefully and unlawfully. While this delay went on, Leucius, swelling with lust and drunkenness, rose up in anger in the midst of his drinking, and, finding Micca with her head in her father's lap, ordered her to come with him; and when she refused, he tore off her tunic and whipped her naked, while she
bore the pain in silence and endurance; but her father and mother, when their entreaties and tears accomplished nothing, turned to calling upon gods and men, as people suffering terrible and lawless things. The barbarian, utterly maddened by rage and drunkenness, cut the girl's throat as she lay, as it happened, with her face in her father's lap. But not even by this was the tyrant
moved to relent; he put many to death and drove many more into exile. Eight hundred, at any rate, are said to have fled as suppliants to the Aetolians, begging that their wives and infant children be recovered for them from the tyrant. A little later he himself proclaimed that any women who wished might go to their husbands, taking with them as much of their own property as they wished. When he perceived that all of them had received the proclamation with joy — for there were
more than six hundred of them in all — he ordered them to set out together on an appointed day, promising that he himself would provide for their safety. When the day arrived, they gathered at the gates with their belongings packed, some carrying their children in their arms, others having them on the wagons, and they waited for one another; but suddenly many of the tyrant's men bore down on them, shouting from far off for them to stay
where they were. As they drew near, they ordered the women to move back, and, turning the teams and wagons around, drove them into the crowd and pressed ruthlessly through the middle of them, allowing them neither to follow nor to stay nor to help their infants as they perished — for some fell from the wagons and others were trampled underfoot and killed — while the mercenaries, with shouting and whips, like sheep, drove on the overturned
...at one another's hands, until they threw them all into the prison, and the money was carried off to Aristotimus. The Eleans took this hard, and the sacred women of Dionysus, whom they call the Sixteen, taking up suppliant branches and the wreaths belonging to the god, went to meet Aristotimus in the marketplace; and when his spearmen, out of respect, drew apart, the women at first stood in reverent silence, holding out their suppliant branches.
But when it became plain that they were begging and pleading with him to relent from his anger against the women, he flew into a rage at the spearmen, shouting that they had let the women approach him, and had them driven out of the marketplace, some shoved and some struck, and fined each of them two talents. After this had happened, Hellanicus organized a conspiracy against the tyrant within the city—a man whom, because of his age and the death of his two sons, Aristotimus paid no attention to, thinking he could accomplish nothing. Meanwhile the exiles, crossing over from Aetolia, seized Amymone, a stronghold in the countryside well suited for making war, and were receiving many citizens who fled there from Elis. Frightened by this, Aristotimus went in to the women, and thinking he could achieve his purpose through fear rather than through goodwill,
ordered them to send letters to their husbands telling them to leave the country; otherwise, he threatened, he would torture and slaughter them all, after first killing their children. Now the rest of the women, though he stood over them a long time commanding them to say whether they would do any of this, made no answer to him at all, but only looked at one another in silence and nodded, agreeing among themselves not to show fear nor to be terrified by the threat.
But Megisto, the wife of Timoleon, who by virtue of her husband and her own excellence held a position of leadership, did not think it fit to rise, nor did she let the others rise; but remaining seated she answered him: "If you were a sensible man, you would not be discussing husbands with their wives, but would have sent to those men themselves, as our lords, having found better arguments than the ones by which you deceived us; but if, having given up hope of persuading them yourself, you are trying to trick them through us, do not expect to deceive us again, nor let them be so foolish as to sacrifice their country's freedom out of concern for their little children and their wives. For it would not be so great an evil for them to lose us, even though we are all they have left, as it would be a good thing for the citizens to be rescued from your cruelty and insolence." While Megisto was saying this, Aristotimus,
unable to bear it any longer, ordered that her child be brought before her eyes, so that he might kill it. While the attendants were searching for the boy, who was mixed in among the other children at play and wrestling, his mother called him by name and said, "Come here, child; before you become aware and understand, be freed from this bitter tyranny; for it is harder for me to watch you living in slavery unworthy of you than to watch you die." And when Aristotimus drew his sword
against her and rushed at her in fury, one of his intimates, a man named Cylon, who was thought to be loyal but in fact hated him and shared in the conspiracy with Hellanicus's party, stood in his way and turned him back, begging him and saying it was base and womanish, unworthy of a leader who had learned to conduct affairs of state, to do such a deed—so that Aristotimus, barely coming to his senses, withdrew. And a great sign was given to him:
for it was midday, and he was resting with his wife while the servants were preparing dinner, when an eagle was seen circling high above the house, and then, as if by design and calculation, let fall a great stone onto exactly that part of the roof under which lay the chamber in which Aristotimus happened to be reclining. At once, along with the great crash from above and
the outcry from those outside who had seen the bird, he was thrown into a panic, and when he learned what had happened, he sent for the seer whom he regularly consulted in the marketplace, and, deeply disturbed, questioned him closely about the sign. The seer urged him to take heart, telling him that Zeus was rousing and aiding him, but to those citizens whom he trusted he declared that justice, hanging over the tyrant's head, would fall upon him at any moment. For this reason
Hellanicus's party decided not to delay, but to strike the next day. That night Hellanicus dreamed that the younger of his dead sons stood beside him and said, "Why do you sleep, father? Tomorrow you must lead the city." Made confident by this vision, he called his companions together; and Aristotimus, upon learning
that Craterus was coming to help him and was encamping at Olympia with a large force, grew so bold that he went out into the marketplace without his bodyguard, accompanied only by Cylon. When Hellanicus saw his opportunity, he did not give the signal that had been agreed upon with those preparing to make the attack, but cried out in a loud voice, stretching out both his hands, "Why do you hesitate, good men? Here is a fine
arena in the very heart of our country in which to contend." Cylon was the first to draw his sword and strike down one of those accompanying Aristotimus; and as Thrasybulus and Lampis rushed at him from the front, Aristotimus managed to flee first into the temple of Zeus, but there they killed him, and, casting his body out into the marketplace, called upon the citizens to rise up for their freedom.
They were not much ahead of the women, however: for the women at once ran out with joy and shouts of triumph, and, surrounding the men, bound wreaths on them and crowned them. Then, when the crowd streamed toward the tyrant's house, his wife shut herself in her chamber and hanged herself. He had two daughters, still virgins but very beautiful, already of an age for marriage; these the crowd seized
and dragged outside, resolved certainly to kill them, but first to abuse and violate them. But Megisto came to meet them with the other women and cried out that it was a dreadful thing for them to do, if a people who claimed to be free dared to commit such outrages, acting like tyrants themselves. Many were moved to respect by the woman's dignity as she spoke out boldly and wept, and it was decided to remove the outrage and simply let the girls die by their own hands.
So when the men turned back and went inside and ordered the girls to die at once, the elder, Myro, loosened her girdle and made a noose; and embracing her sister, she urged her to pay attention and to do exactly as she saw her doing, "so that," she said, "we may not meet our end in a manner base or unworthy of ourselves." When the younger sister begged to be allowed to die first, and took hold of the girdle, Myro said, "I have never before
refused you anything you asked, not even once; take this favor too, then: I will endure and bear something heavier than death itself—the sight of you, dearest, dying before me." After this, she herself taught her sister how to place the noose about her neck, and when she perceived that she was dead, she took her down and covered her; and she then called upon Megisto to look after her own body, and not to let it be exposed indecently once she had died,
laid out in such a way that not one person present, however bitter or hostile to tyranny, failed to weep and pity the girls' nobility. Now of the deeds accomplished by women acting together, though there are countless examples, these are sufficient; but the virtues belonging to individual women I shall record as they occur to me, scattered without order, thinking that the history before us has no need of chronological arrangement. Among the Ionians who came to Miletus,
some, having fallen into factional strife with the sons of Neleus, withdrew to Myus and settled there, suffering many hardships at the hands of the Milesians, who made war on them because of their revolt. Yet the war was not one of complete estrangement and no contact at all; rather, at certain festivals the women used to come from Myus to Miletus. Among them was a prominent man named Pythes, who had an Iapygian wife, and a daughter
named Pieria. Now there was a festival of Artemis and a sacrifice among the Milesians, which they call the Neleid festival, and he sent his wife and daughter, who had asked to take part in the festival. The most powerful of the sons of Neleus, named Phrygius, fell in love with Pieria and wondered what he might do that would please her most. When she said, "If you would arrange for me to be able to come here often, and with many companions," Phrygius,
understanding that she was asking for friendship and peace for his fellow citizens, put an end to the war. So there arose in both cities honor and renown for Pieria, so much so that even now the Milesian women pray that their husbands may love them as Phrygius loved Pieria. War broke out between the Naxians and the Milesians over Neaera, the wife of Hypsicreon of Miletus. She
had fallen in love with Promedon of Naxos and sailed away with him; he was a guest-friend of Hypsicreon, but once Neaera had fallen in love with him he took her, and fearing her husband, brought her to Naxos and seated her as a suppliant at the shrine of Hestia. When the Naxians would not surrender her, for Promedon's sake, but made the suppliant claim a pretext instead, war broke out. On the Milesian side many others fought, and most eagerly among the Ionians
the Erythraeans, and the war dragged on and brought great disasters; but then it was ended by the virtue of a woman, just as it had begun through the wickedness of one. For Diognetus, the Erythraean general, who commanded and was entrusted with a stronghold well built and well provisioned against the city of the Naxians, drove off a great deal of plunder from the Naxians, and took free women and maidens captive, among whom he fell in love with one, Polycrite, and kept her
not as a captive but in the position of a wedded wife. When a festival came due for the Milesians in the camp, and all had turned to drinking and revelry, Polycrite asked Diognetus whether there was anything to prevent her from sending portions of cake to her brothers. When he consented and gave leave, she put a little lead tablet inside a cake, instructing the man who carried it to tell her brothers that they alone
should eat what she had sent. Her brothers, coming upon the lead tablet and reading Polycrite's message, which urged them to attack the enemy that night, since everyone would be careless due to drunkenness on account of the festival, reported it to their generals and urged them to go out with them. When the stronghold was captured and many of the enemy destroyed, Polycrite begged the citizens for Diognetus's life and saved him.
But when she herself, arriving at the gates, was met by the citizens, who received her with joy and garlands and admiration, she could not bear the intensity of her own joy, but died on the spot, falling beside the gate; there she is buried, and the place is called "the tomb of envy," since Polycrite, it is said, was begrudged by some envious fate the enjoyment of the honors paid to her. This is how the Naxian historians tell the story; but Aristotle says
that Polycrite was never taken captive at all, but that Diognetus, having seen her some other way, fell in love and was ready to give and do anything; and that she agreed to come to him, but on one condition only, concerning which, as the philosopher says, she required an oath from Diognetus; and when he had sworn it, she asked that Delium be given to her—for that was the name of the place—declaring that otherwise she would not
consent to come to him. And he, driven both by his desire and by his oath, gave way and handed the place over to Polycrite, and she in turn handed it over to the citizens. After this, the two sides, restored to equal footing, came to terms with the Milesians on conditions of their own choosing. From Phocaea, of the line of the Codridae, there were twin brothers, Phobus and Blepsus, of whom Phobus was the first to leap from the Leucadian rocks
into the sea, as Charon of Lampsacus has recorded. Having power and royal standing, he sailed along the coast to Parium on some business of his own, and, becoming a friend and guest-friend of Mandron, king of the Bebryces who are called the Pityoessenians, he came to their aid and fought alongside them when they were harassed by their neighbors. Mandron, in return, showed Phobus much kindness as he sailed away, and promised to give him a share of the
land and of the city, if he would bring Phocaean settlers to Pityoessa. So Phobus persuaded his fellow citizens and sent out his brother leading the settlers. And what Mandron had promised was made good to them, as they had expected; but as they took great profits and spoils and plunder from the neighboring barbarians, they became first objects of envy, then
objects of fear, to the Bebryces. Wishing therefore to be rid of them, they could not persuade Mandron, a good and just man toward the Greeks, to join them, but when he was away from home, they prepared to destroy the Phocaeans by treachery. But Mandron's daughter Lampsake, still a maiden, learned of the plot beforehand, and first tried to dissuade her friends and family, teaching them that what they were undertaking to do was a terrible and
impious act, killing men who were their benefactors and allies and now also their fellow citizens. When she could not persuade them, she secretly told the Greeks what was being done and urged them to be on guard. They prepared a sacrifice and a feast and invited the Pityoessenians out to the suburb; then, dividing themselves in two, some seized the walls while the others killed the men. Having thus
taken over the city, they sent for Mandron, inviting him to rule jointly with them; and Lampsake, who died of an illness, they buried in the city with great honor, and named the city Lampsacus after her. But when Mandron, avoiding suspicion of treachery, declined to live among them, but asked to receive back the children and wives of those who had died, they sent these away readily, without doing them any wrong;
and to Lampsake they at first rendered the honors of a heroine, but afterwards voted to offer sacrifice to her as to a god, and they sacrifice in that manner still. Aretaphila of Cyrene belongs not to antiquity but to the era of the Mithridatic wars, yet in courage and in deed she proved herself a match for the counsel of the heroines of old. She was the daughter of Aeglator and the wife of Phaedimus, men of standing; lovely to look upon, she was also held to be exceptional in understanding and by no means without a gift for affairs of state. But it was the common fortunes of her native city that brought her into the light. For Nicocrates, having made himself tyrant over the people of Cyrene, put many of the citizens to death, and after slaying with his own hand Melanippus, the priest of Apollo, he seized the priesthood; he also did away with Phaedimus, Aretaphila's husband, and took Aretaphila in marriage against her will. To his countless other outrages he added this: he posted guards at the gates who defiled the dead as they were borne out, pricking them with daggers and pressing hot irons against them, lest any citizen slip out unnoticed by being carried forth as a corpse. Her own household griefs, then, were hard enough for Aretaphila, even though the tyrant, out of love for her, yielded her the fullest enjoyment of his power; for he was overcome by her, and to her alone
he showed himself tame, though in everything else he was unyielding and beastly. But what pained her more was that her country was suffering pitifully, beyond what it deserved. For one citizen after another was being butchered, and no hope of vengeance could be expected from anyone; for even the exiles, utterly weak and thoroughly frightened, had scattered. So Aretaphila, setting herself alone as the only hope for the common good, and emulating the famous, celebrated exploits of the Theban woman of Pherae, since she lacked
trustworthy allies and kinsmen such as that woman's circumstances had provided her, being without support, undertook to destroy her husband by poison. But while she was preparing and procuring the poison and testing many of its potencies, she did not go unnoticed but was informed against; and when the proofs came to light, Calbia, the mother of Nicocrates, a woman naturally murderous and implacable, at once thought she should kill Aretaphila after torturing her. But
in Nicocrates, love produced hesitation and weakness toward his anger, and the fact that Aretaphila met the accusations vigorously and defended herself head-on gave his passion some pretext. But when she was caught out by the proofs and saw that the evidence of her preparation of the poison would not admit denial, she confessed — but said that what she had prepared was not a deadly poison: "No," she said, "husband, I am contending for great things — for your
goodwill toward me, and for the reputation and power which I enjoy because of you, being envied by many wicked women; fearing their potions and their plots, I was persuaded to counter-plot against them — foolishly perhaps, and in a woman's way, but not deserving of death, unless in your judgment it seems right to kill a woman for using love-charms and sorcery, when all she wanted was to be loved more than you wish to love her." As Aretaphila made her defense in this way, it seemed
good to Nicocrates to put her to torture; and with Calbia standing over her, unyielding and implacable, he examined her under torment. And she kept herself unconquered through the ordeal, until even Calbia grew weary of it against her will. Nicocrates was persuaded and let her go, and repented of having tortured her; and after not much time had passed, he came back to her again, carried away by his passion, and lived with her once more, restoring her favor with honors and displays of affection.
But she was not about to be won over by kindness, having already mastered tortures and hardships; instead, since her love of honor was now joined by rivalry, she took hold of another scheme. For she had a daughter who was of marriageable age and attractive to look at; this daughter she offered as bait to the tyrant's brother, a youth easily susceptible to pleasures. There is much talk that Aretaphila, using sorcery and drugs on account of the girl, gained mastery
over the young man and corrupted his judgment; his name was Leander. When he had been captivated and, by entreating his brother, had obtained the marriage, the girl, for her part, coached by her mother, kept working on him and persuading him to free the city — arguing that not even he could live as a free man under a tyranny, nor be secure in keeping or having obtained his marriage while under another's power — while, for their part, his friends, currying favor with Aretaphila,
kept fabricating slanders and suspicions against him with his brother. When Leander perceived that Aretaphila too was planning and pursuing the same thing, he took up the deed himself, and, inciting a servant named Daphnis, had Nicocrates killed through him. But for the rest, he no longer paid heed to Aretaphila; instead he immediately showed by his actions that he had become a fratricide, not a tyrannicide — for he ruled recklessly and foolishly.
Nevertheless Aretaphila still had some honor and power with him, since she was neither hostile to him nor openly at war with him, but secretly arranged affairs. First she stirred up a Libyan war against him, persuading a certain chieftain named Anabus to overrun the country and march against the city; then she slandered his friends and generals to Leander, saying they were not eager to fight but rather wanted peace
and quiet — a peace which, she said, both the state of affairs and his own tyranny longed for too, since he wished to hold firm mastery over the citizens. She herself, she said, would arrange the settlement and bring Anabus into a conference with him, if he gave the order, before the war did irreparable damage. When Leander gave the order, she first went to speak with the Libyan herself, asking him to seize the tyrant, in return for great gifts and money,
when he came to the conference. The Libyan agreed; but Leander hesitated, though out of shame before Aretaphila, who declared she herself would be present, he went out unarmed and unguarded. But when he drew near and saw Anabus, he again grew uneasy and wanted to wait for his bodyguards; Aretaphila, who was present, partly encouraged him and partly reproached him for cowardice; and finally,
after some delay, she seized him boldly and confidently by the hand and led him up to the barbarian and handed him over. At once he was seized and bound, and was kept guarded by the Libyans until his friends, bringing the money to Aretaphila, arrived together with the rest of the citizens. For most of the people, on learning of it, ran out at her summons, and when they saw Aretaphila, they very nearly forgot
their anger at the tyrant, and regarded his punishment as a secondary matter; their first task and their chief enjoyment of freedom was to embrace her with joy and tears, falling before her as before a statue of a god. As people kept streaming in one after another, they only barely managed, by evening, to take Leander along and return to the city. When they had had their fill of honoring and praising Aretaphila, they then
turned against the tyrants: they burned Calbia alive, and sewed Leander into a leather sack and drowned him. They wished Aretaphila to share in the government and administer the state together with the best men. But she, as though she had acted out some intricate, many-scened drama down to the moment of receiving the victor's crown, once she saw the city free, at once withdrew into the women's quarters, and, having no further part in any public affairs,
spent the rest of her life quietly at the loom among her friends and household. In Galatia there were two of the most powerful tetrarchs, related to each other by kinship as well: Sinatus and Sinorix. Sinatus had for his wife a young woman named Camma, admired for her beauty and bloom of body, but admired still more for her virtue; for she was not only chaste and devoted to her husband,
but also intelligent, high-minded, and dearly loved by her people because of her kindness and goodness. What made her still more distinguished was that she was priestess of Artemis, whom the Galatians especially revere, and she was always to be seen magnificently adorned at processions and sacrifices. Sinorix fell in love with her, and being unable, while her husband lived, either to persuade or to force her, he did a terrible
deed: he killed Sinatus by treachery, and not long afterward began to court Camma, who was spending her time in the temple, bearing her grief not pitifully or abjectly but with a spirit that kept its wits about it and waited for the right moment to punish Sinorix's crime. He was persistent in his entreaties, and seemed not entirely without arguments that had a certain plausibility — that in other respects
he had shown himself better than Sinatus, and that he had killed him out of love for Camma, not from any other wickedness. At first the woman's refusals were not too harsh; then little by little she seemed to soften, for her relatives and friends too pressed her, courting the favor and goodwill of Sinorix, who had very great power, persuading and pressuring her; finally she gave in and sent for him to come to her,
since the agreement and pledge of trust were to be made in the presence of the goddess. When he came, she received him warmly, led him to the altar, and poured a libation from a cup; part of it she drank herself, and part she bade him drink — it was honeyed milk mixed with poison. When she saw that he had drunk it, she cried out loud in triumph and, bowing before the goddess, said, "I call you to witness, most honored deity, that I have lived on for the sake of this day
since the murder of Sinatus, gaining no good from my life all this time except the hope of justice, which I now carry with me as I go down to my husband. As for you, most impious of all men, let your kinsmen prepare you a tomb instead of a bridal chamber and a wedding." When the Galatian heard this, and, as the poison was already taking effect and beginning to convulse his body, he perceived what had happened, he got into a carriage
thinking he would find relief from the jolting and shaking of the ride, but he collapsed at once, and, being moved into a litter, died by evening. Camma, having endured the night and learning that he was dead, died herself cheerfully and gladly. Galatia also produced Stratonike, wife of Deiotarus, and Chiomara, wife of Ortiagon, women worthy of remembrance. Stratonike, knowing that her husband needed
legitimate children to succeed to the kingdom, and since she herself bore none, persuaded him to father a child by another woman and allow it to be substituted as her own. When Deiotarus admired her resolve and left the whole matter in her hands, she procured a comely young captive woman named Electra and brought her together with Deiotarus, and she raised the children born of that union as her own, with tender affection and in royal style. As for Chiomara, wife of Ortiagon, it happened that
she was taken captive along with the other women, when the Romans under Gnaeus defeated the Galatians in Asia in battle. The centurion who took her charge of her used his good fortune in soldierly fashion and violated her; he turned out to be, as it happened, an ignorant and intemperate man where pleasure and money were concerned. He was overcome all the same by love of money, and once a large sum of gold had been agreed upon for the woman, he brought her to be ransomed,
a river running between them and dividing the two parties. When the Galatians had crossed and given him the gold and were taking Chiomara in charge, she, by a nod, ordered one of them to strike down the Roman as he was embracing her and bidding her a friendly farewell; and when he had done so and cut off the man's head, she took it up, wrapped it in the folds of her garment, and rode off. When she came to her husband and threw the head before him,
and he, astonished, said, "Wife, loyalty is a fine thing," she replied, "Yes — but finer still that only one man who has known me should be left alive." Polybius says that he himself, conversing with her at Sardis, admired both her spirit and her intelligence in this matter. When Mithridates summoned sixty of the leading Galatians to Pergamum as friends, and seemed to treat them insolently and despotically, all of them were indignant,
and Poredorix — a man powerful in body and outstanding in spirit, tetrarch of the Tosiopes — undertook that when Mithridates was transacting business on the platform in the gymnasium, they would seize him and hurl him, together with themselves, down the ravine. But as chance would have it, on that day Mithridates did not go up to the gymnasium, but instead summoned the Galatians to his house; Poredorix urged them to keep their courage, saying that when they were together with him again
they would tear his body apart and destroy him, falling upon him from every side. This did not escape Mithridates' notice; information was given, and he began handing the Galatians over one by one to be slaughtered. Then, recalling a young man far surpassing the others of his age in beauty and grace, he pitied him and had a change of heart; he was clearly distressed, as if the young man were already lost among the first to die, but nonetheless he sent word that, if he were found alive, he should be released. The young man's
name was Bepolitanos. And a strange stroke of fortune befell him: he had been seized wearing fine and costly clothing, and the executioner, wishing to keep it unstained by blood and clean for himself, was slowly stripping the young man, when he saw the king's men running up and shouting the youth's name at the same time. So Bepolitanos, unexpectedly, was saved by the very love of money that had destroyed so many others. But
Poredorix, cut down, was cast out unburied, and none of his friends dared approach him; but a Pergamene woman, who had known him from the days of his youthful beauty when he was alive, risked burying and laying out the corpse. The guards noticed and, seizing her, brought her before the king. It is said that Mithridates himself was moved somewhat at the sight of her, since the girl appeared altogether young and innocent; and still
more, it seems, when he learned that her motive was love, he was touched, and allowed her to take up and bury the body, giving her clothing and adornment from Poredorix's own belongings for the purpose. Theagenes the Theban, who shared with Epaminondas and Pelopidas and the noblest men the same devotion to the cause of his city, met his end amid the common disaster of Greece at Chaeronea, while he was already winning and pursuing those
arrayed against him. It was he who, when someone shouted, "How far will you pursue?" answered, "As far as Macedonia." When he died, he left behind a sister who bore witness that he too had become a great and illustrious man by the virtue and nature of his family; but it fell to her alone to derive some good benefit from his virtue, so that she bore what befell her of the common disasters more lightly. For when
Alexander conquered the Thebans, and various soldiers, on entering, plundered various parts of the city, it happened that a man took possession of Timocleia's house — a man neither decent nor gentle, but violent and foolish; he commanded a Thracian squadron and shared the king's name, though he was nothing like him. For he showed no respect either for the woman's family or her manner of life; once he had filled himself with wine, after dinner he summoned her to share his bed. And
this was not the end of it, but he also demanded gold and silver, if any were hidden by her — partly meaning to take it, partly meaning to keep her, as it were, permanently in the position of his woman. She, seizing the opening he gave her, said, "I wish I had died before this night rather than live, so that I might at least have kept my body untouched by outrage, when everything else was being destroyed —
but since things have turned out this way, if I must consider you my guardian, master, and husband, I will not deprive you of what is yours, now that fortune has granted it, for I see myself become whatever you wish me to be. I had ornaments for my person, and silver in drinking cups, and some gold and coin as well. When the city was being captured, I ordered my maidservants to gather everything and I threw it — or rather
I deposited it — into a well that has no water and that few even know of; for a lid covers it, and around it dense woodland has grown up in a circle. Take these things and may you have good fortune with them; for me they will be witnesses and tokens, in your eyes, of the prosperity and splendor that once belonged to my household." When the Macedonian heard this, he did not wait for daylight, but set out at once for the place, with Timocleia
leading the way. He ordered the garden shut off so that no one would notice, and climbed down in his tunic. Hateful Clotho was leading him to his punishment, with Timocleia standing above. When she perceived by his voice that he had reached the bottom, she herself hurled down many of the stones, and the maidservants rolled down many more, large ones, until they had battered him to pieces and buried him. When the Macedonians learned of it and
they took up the corpse — for it had already been proclaimed that no Theban was to be killed — they seized her and led her before the king, and reported what she had dared to do. He, discerning in the set of her face and the deliberate pace of her walk something noble and dignified, first asked her who among women she was. And she, quite unterrified and with full confidence, said, "Theagenes was my brother, who as general fought against you at Chaeronea for the freedom of the Greeks, and fell there, so that we might suffer nothing of this kind. But since we have in fact suffered things unworthy of our lineage, we do not shrink from dying; nor indeed would it perhaps be better for me to live and risk enduring another such night, unless you prevent it."
At this the most decent of those present wept, but Alexander felt no impulse to pity the woman, since her spirit seemed too great for pity; rather, admiring her courage and her words, which had taken firm hold of him, he ordered his officers to be watchful and to see that no such outrage should again be done to a distinguished household. As for Timocleia, he released her, along with all who were found to be related to her by blood.
Arcesilaus, son of Battus surnamed the Fortunate, was in no way like his father in character. Even while his father was still alive, he was fined a talent by him for putting up battlements around his own house; and after his father's death, being by nature harsh — which was in fact the very reason for his nickname — and moreover keeping company with a wicked friend, Laarchus, he became a tyrant instead of a king.
Laarchus, plotting against the tyranny and driving out or murdering the best of the Cyrenaeans, turned the blame onto Arcesilaus; and finally, having thrown him into a wasting and severe illness by making him drink a sea-hare, he destroyed him, while he himself took over the rule, professing to be guarding it for Arcesilaus's son Battus. The boy was held in contempt both because of his lameness and because of his youth, but many attached themselves to his mother, for she was prudent and kind, and had many powerful relatives.
For this reason Laarchus, courting her favor, sought her in marriage, and asked that Battus be made his adopted son once he married her, and that he be declared partner in the rule. Eryxo — for that was the woman's name — after deliberating with her brothers, told Laarchus to negotiate with them, as though she herself were willing to accept the marriage. But when Laarchus approached the brothers, they deliberately put him off and kept postponing.
So Eryxo sent a servant girl of her own to tell him that at present her brothers were objecting, but that once the meeting took place they would cease their opposition and consent; therefore he should, if he wished, come to her by night, for once the arrangement was made everything else concerning the rule would go well. This was entirely to Laarchus's liking, and, utterly enraptured by the woman's friendliness, he agreed to come whenever she should summon him.
Eryxo was carrying out this plan together with Polyarchus, the eldest of her brothers. When the time for the meeting had been fixed, Polyarchus was secretly brought into his sister's chamber, having with him two young men armed with swords, bent on avenging their father's murder, whom Laarchus had recently killed. When Eryxo sent for Laarchus, he came in without his bodyguards, and when the young men fell upon him, he died, struck through with their swords.
They threw the corpse over the wall, and, bringing Battus forward, proclaimed him king according to ancestral custom, and Polyarchus restored to the Cyrenaeans their original form of government. Now it happened that many soldiers of Amasis, king of Egypt, were present, whom Laarchus had used as his trusted men, and it was chiefly through them that he had been feared by the citizens.
These men sent envoys to Amasis to accuse Polyarchus and Eryxo. He was angered, and was intending to make war on the Cyrenaeans, when it happened that his mother died; and while he was conducting her funeral rites, messengers arrived from Amasis. Polyarchus therefore resolved to go and defend himself; and since Eryxo would not be left behind but wished to accompany him and share the danger, her mother Critola, though an old woman, was not left behind either.
She was a woman of the highest standing, being the sister of Battus the Fortunate. When they arrived in Egypt, the rest of the court marveled greatly at their action, and Amasis himself was not moderate in his admiration for the woman's prudence and courage; honoring them with gifts and royal hospitality, he sent Polyarchus and the women back to Cyrene.
One might no less admire Xenocrite of Cumae for what she accomplished against Aristodemus the tyrant, whom some suppose to have gotten the nickname Malacus ("the Soft") for a false reason, not knowing the truth. In fact he was called Malacus by the barbarians, a term meaning "still a boy," because while still a mere youth, among his coevals who still wore their hair long — men whom, it seems, they called "corontists" from their hair — he distinguished himself, brilliant in the wars against the barbarians, not only for daring and feats of the hand but for showing exceptional intelligence and foresight.
Hence he rose to the highest offices, admired by his fellow citizens, and was sent to bring aid to the Romans when they were being attacked by the Tyrrhenians, who were trying to restore Tarquinius Superbus to the throne. In the course of this long campaign, by yielding in every way to please the citizen-soldiers under his command, courting popular favor rather than commanding as a general should, he persuaded them to join him against the senate and to help him expel the best and most powerful men.
Having thus become tyrant, in his crimes against women and freeborn children he outdid even himself in wickedness. It is recorded that he trained the male children to wear their hair long and to deck themselves in gold, while he compelled the girls to have their hair cropped round and to wear the short cloaks and sleeveless tunics of youths.
Moreover, having fallen especially in love with Xenocrite, he kept her though her father was in exile, neither restoring him nor persuading him to return, but supposing in some fashion that the girl was content to live with him, since she was envied and counted blessed by the citizens for it. These things did not overawe her; rather, resentful of living with him, unwed and unbetrothed, she longed no less than those the tyrant hated for the freedom of her homeland.
Now it happened at that time that Aristodemus was having a trench dug all around the countryside — a task neither necessary nor useful, but meant simply to wear down and exhaust the citizens with labor and lack of leisure, since each man had been assigned a set quota of earth to bring out of the ground. And a certain woman, seeing Aristodemus approaching, turned aside and covered her face with her tunic.
When Aristodemus had passed by, some young men, mocking and joking, asked her why it was that only from Aristodemus, out of shame, she turned away, while toward others she felt nothing of the kind. She answered, with great earnestness, "Because," she said, "Aristodemus alone of the Cumaeans is a man."
This remark, once spoken, touched everyone, and spurred the noble-minded, out of shame, to lay hold of freedom. It is said too that Xenocrite, on hearing it, said that she herself would rather carry earth on behalf of her father, were he present, than share in Aristodemus's luxury and so great a power. This strengthened the resolve of those conspiring against Aristodemus, whose leader was Thymoteles;
and since Xenocrite's access to him gave them a safe entry and left Aristodemus unarmed and unguarded, they slipped in without difficulty and killed him. Thus the city of the Cumaeans was liberated through the virtue of two women — the one having instilled in the conspirators the idea and impetus for the deed, the other having lent her help toward its completion.
When great honors and gifts were offered to Xenocrite, she declined them all and asked for one thing only: to bury the body of Aristodemus. This, then, they granted her; and they also chose her as priestess of Demeter, believing that this honor would be no less pleasing to the goddess than it was fitting for her.
It is said also that the wife of Pythes, who lived in the time of Xerxes, was a wise and good woman. Pythes himself, it seems, having come upon gold mines and grown fond of the wealth from them, not moderately but insatiably and to excess, spent his own time occupied with this, and, dragging all the citizens down to it equally, forced them to dig or carry or refine the gold, doing and working at nothing else whatsoever.
As many perished and all cried out against it, the women came as suppliants and set up a supplication at the doors of Pythes's wife. She bade them go away and take heart; and she herself summoned the craftsmen most skilled in working gold, in whom she placed the greatest trust, and, shutting them up in private, ordered them to make loaves of gold, and cakes of every kind, and fruits — everything, in short, that she knew Pythes took the greatest pleasure in eating and enjoying.
When everything had been made, Pythes returned from abroad, for he happened to be traveling; and when he asked his wife for dinner, she set before him a golden table holding nothing edible at all, but everything made of gold. At first Pythes was delighted with the imitations, but once he had had his fill of looking at them, he asked to eat. She, whatever he desired, brought it to him in gold.
When he grew exasperated and cried out that he was hungry, she said, "But it is of these very things that you have provided us an abundance, and of nothing else; for all skill and all craft has vanished — no one farms any longer, but leaving behind what the earth sows, plants, and nourishes, we dig for useless things and search for them, wearing ourselves and the citizens out." This moved Pythes, and though he did not put an entire stop to the business of the mines, he ordered a fifth part of the citizens to work them in rotation, and turned the rest to farming and to their crafts.
When Xerxes was marching down against Greece, Pythes, having been most magnificent in his receptions and gifts, asked a favor of the king: since he had several sons, that one be allowed to remain behind from the campaign and be left to care for him in his old age. But Xerxes, in anger, slaughtered this one son alone — the very one he had asked for — cut him in two, and ordered the army to march between the pieces, while he took the rest of the sons with him; and all of them perished in the battles.
At this Pythes, losing heart, suffered what happens to many foolish and unhappy men: he feared death, yet was weary of life. Wishing not to live, yet unable to let go of living, since there was a great mound in the city with a river flowing through it, which they called the Pythopolites, he built a monument within the mound, and diverted the river's course so that it would flow through the mound, touching the tomb.
Once this had been accomplished, he himself went down into the monument, and, having handed over the rule and the entire city to his wife, ordered that no one approach him, but that his dinner be sent to him each day placed in a boat, until the boat should pass the tomb with the meal untouched — at which point they were to stop sending it, as a sign that he had died. He himself thus spent the rest of his life in this way, while his wife administered the rule well and brought about a change of fortunes for the people.

======== Moralia: Non Posse Suaviter Vivi Secundum Epicurum ========

Colotes, the companion of Epicurus, published a book entitled "That According to the Doctrines of the Other Philosophers It Is Not Even Possible to Live." Now whatever occurred to us to say against him on behalf of the philosophers was written down earlier. But since, after our school session broke up, there arose further conversation in the Peripatos concerning the sect, it seemed good to me to take these up as well, if for no other reason than as a demonstration to those who censure others, that one ought to go through the arguments and writings of anyone he refutes not superficially, nor by dragging out phrases from elsewhere and, fastening upon mere words apart from the matters at hand, deceive the inexperienced.
For when we had gone forward into the gymnasium, as we were accustomed to do after our discussion, Zeuxippus said, "To me the argument seems to have been stated much more mildly than the frankness proper to the occasion demanded: the followers of Heraclides go off blaming us, since we, who bear no responsibility, have attacked Epicurus and Metrodorus too boldly." And Theon said, "Then did you not say that, compared with those men, Colotes appears the most decorous of men? For the most shameful words used among men — buffooneries, vulgar theatricalities, boastings, harlotries, murders, heavy-groaning, much-corrupting, thick-headed — they gathered together and poured down upon Aristotle and Socrates and Pythagoras and Protagoras and Theophrastus and Heraclides and Hipparchus — indeed, on which of the eminent men did they not? — so that, even if everything else about them were wise, on account of these slanders and accusations they would be shut out very far from wisdom: 'for envy stands outside the divine chorus,' and jealousy, unable through weakness to conceal its pain."
Then Aristodemus, taking up the point, said, "Heraclides, then, being a grammarian, pays these thanks to Epicurus instead of for poetic tumult, as they say, and for the follies of Homer — or because Metrodorus in so many writings has reviled the poet. But let us leave those men aside, Zeuxippus: as for what was said at the beginning of our discussion against these men, that it is not possible to live according to their views, why should we not rather, now that he has grown weary, carry it through ourselves on our own account, taking Theon along with us as well?"
And Theon said to him, "But this contest has already been completed by others before us. Now let us again, if you think fit, set up a different mark and in some such trial as this pursue the case on behalf of the philosophers against these men: let us attempt to show, if indeed it is possible, that it is not even possible to live pleasantly according to them." "Well well," I said, laughing, "you seem to be leaping at the men's belly, and about to bring on the topic of meats, taking away the pleasure of men who cry out, 'For we are not blameless boxers, nor orators, nor leaders of the people, nor magistrates, but always dear to us is the feast and every delightful motion through the flesh sent up toward some pleasure and joy of the soul.' You seem to me, then, not to be taking away the spring, as they say, but to be taking away life itself from these men, if you will not leave them the living pleasantly."
"What then," said Theon, "if you approve the argument, will you not yourself make use of it now that it is at hand?" "I will make use of it," I said, "as a listener and answerer, if you need me; but I hand over the leadership to you." When Theon had made a brief excuse, Aristodemus said, "How short and smooth a road you have dug for us toward the argument, not allowing the sect first to render an account concerning the good! For it is not easy to drive men who posit pleasure as the end away from living pleasantly; but once they have fallen from the fair and good, they fall at the same time from the pleasant as well, since living pleasantly without living nobly is nonexistent, as they themselves say."
And Theon said, "But this, if it seems good, we shall reserve for later as the argument proceeds; for now let us make use of what is granted by them. They hold that the good lies in the belly and in all the other channels of the flesh, through which pleasure and the absence of pain make their entry; and that all the fine and wise inventions exist for the sake of the pleasure connected with the belly and the good hope concerning it, as the wise Metrodorus has said.
"From the very outset, then, my friend, they appear to be taking as the cause of the good something paltry, rotten, and insecure; and moreover, these channels through which pleasures are introduced are likewise perforated for pains as well — or rather, they admit pleasure in only a few parts but pain in all the parts alike. For every pleasure is confined to the joints and sinews and feet and hands, in which dwell the terrible and grievous afflictions — gout and rheumatism and gangrene and corrosions and putrefactions; whereas if you bring the sweetest of scents and flavors to the body, you will find only a small region in it that is moved altogether smoothly and gently, while the rest is often vexed and indignant; but to fire and iron and biting and to the surgeon's instruments no part is unaffected or insensible to pain, but both heat and cold sink into every part, and fever too; whereas the pleasures, like breezes, spread laughingly over one extremity of the body after another, and their duration is not long, but, like meteors darting past, they take on kindling and quenching together in the flesh.
"One sufficient witness to pain is Aeschylus's Philoctetes: for it was not the serpent, he says, that let go, but implanted a dread growth of mouths to seize upon the foot. May pain slip away that stirs and tickles no such other parts of the body! But just as the seed of alfalfa is many-bent and uneven and takes root in the earth and remains a long time because of its roughness, so pain, scattering hooks and roots and interlacing itself with the flesh and remaining not only days and nights but even for the years and Olympiads of some men's lives, is with difficulty driven out and departs, dislodged as if by other, more violent nails. For who has ever drunk or eaten for as long a time as the feverish thirst or the besieged hunger? And where is there relaxation and fellowship with friends for as long as tyrants punish and rack their victims?
"And this too belongs to the poorness and ineptitude of the body with respect to living pleasantly, that it endures pains rather than pleasures, and has strength and power for the former, while in the latter it is weak and quickly sated. As for living pleasantly, if one lays hold of it, they do not allow us to say much more about it, since they themselves admit that the pleasure of the flesh is small, or rather momentary, if indeed they are not talking empty nonsense and boasting — Metrodorus, on the one hand, saying that 'often we have spat upon the pleasures of the body,' and Epicurus, on the other, saying that 'the wise man often laughs at the extremities of bodily illness when he is suffering.' If, then, the pains of the body are so light and easy for these men, how can there be anything of consequence in the pleasures?
"For even if they do not fall short in duration or magnitude of the pains, still, in respect to their compass they hold pains in common, and Epicurus has set up their common limit as the removal of all that pains, on the view that nature increases pleasure only until it has dissolved the painful, and does not allow it to proceed further in magnitude, but admits certain unnecessary variations once one has reached the state of freedom from pain; and the approach to this, made with desire, being the measure of pleasure, is altogether brief and short-lived.
"Hence, perceiving the paltriness here, as if moving from a barren plot of ground, they transfer the end from the body to the soul, as though there they will possess grazing-grounds and broad meadows of pleasures — 'but in Ithaca there are neither wide race-courses nor any meadow,' nor is the enjoyment concerning this poor bit of flesh smooth, but rough, mixed with much that is alien and throbbing."
Taking this up, Zeuxippus said, "Then do you not think the men do well, beginning from the body, in which coming-into-being first appeared, and then proceeding to the soul as something more secure, and bringing the whole to completion there?" "Well, by Zeus," I said, "and according to nature, if in going to that region they discover something better and more perfect, as the contemplative and political sort of men do. But if you hear them testifying and shouting that by nature it is not possible to rejoice and be at peace over anything that exists except over pleasures of the body, present or expected, and that this is its very good — do they not seem to you to be using the soul as a mere channel for the body, and, as though someone were pouring wine from a bad and unaged vintage, thinking they are doing something more solemn and honorable?
"Do they not, using a vessel that does not hold, pour the pleasure into it and disperse it there? And yet time preserves wine once it has been poured out, and even sweetens it further; but of pleasure the soul, receiving only the memory, as it were a scent, and nothing else, guards it; for having boiled up over the flesh it is quenched, and what is remembered of it is dim and reeking, like the leftovers of what someone has eaten or drunk, when he stores them up and lays by notions within himself and evidently makes use of these when fresh ones are not at hand.
"Observe how much more moderate the Cyrenaics are, even though they have drunk from the same wine-jar as Epicurus: they do not think it right even to have intercourse with the pleasures of Aphrodite by daylight, but set darkness before them, so that the images of the act, being taken up vividly by the mind through sight, may not repeatedly rekindle desire. But those who think the wise man differs chiefly in this — in remembering vividly and holding fast within himself the phantoms and affections and movements connected with pleasures — if they are counseling nothing worthy of wisdom, letting the washings-off of pleasure remain, as it were, in the household of the body, within the soul of the wise man, let us not speak of it; but that it is not possible to live pleasantly from these things is at once self-evident.
"For it is not likely that what is remembered of the pleasure is great, if what was present seemed small; nor that men who were only moderately delighted by things as they occurred should afterward exult over them once they are past — since not even in those who were struck with amazement and wonder at bodily things does the joy remain once it has ceased, but a kind of shadow and dream is left behind in the soul once the pleasure has flown away, like a kindling-material for the desires — just as in sleep the unfulfilled pleasures and enjoyments of one who thirsts or is in love arouse more sharply what is unrestrained in him. So for these men the memory of things once enjoyed is not delightful; rather, out of a dim and empty remainder of pleasure it brings back much of the goading and stinging of vivid desire; nor is it likely that men of moderation and self-control should linger in thinking over such things, nor do what they used to mock Carneades for doing — namely, reckoning up, as though from a diary, how many times he met with Hedeia and Leontion, or where he drank Thasian wine, or on what twentieth-of-the-month feast he dined most extravagantly. For such great revelry of the soul itself toward its memories reveals a terrible and beastly turmoil and frenzy concerning the actual and anticipated works of pleasure.
"Hence these men themselves seem to me, perceiving these absurdities, to take refuge in painlessness and the settled stability of the flesh, on the view that living pleasantly consists in conceiving this state as belonging, in the case of some, to what will be and what has been: 'for the settled condition of the flesh, and the trustworthy hope concerning it, hold the highest and most secure joy for those capable of reasoning it out.' Observe, then, first of all, what they do, shifting this thing — whether one should call it pleasure or painlessness or settled stability — up and down, from the body to the soul, and then again back from the soul to the body, being compelled, since it does not hold but flows away and slips out of the one, to attach it back to its starting point, 'supporting,' as he says, 'the pleasure of the flesh by the joy of the soul,' and again ending from the joy of the soul back to the pleasure of the flesh by way of hope.
"And how is it possible, while the base is being shaken, for what stands upon it not to be shaken together with it; or for hope and joy to be firm and unshaken concerning a thing that has so much tossing and change as the body — subject as it is to many external necessities and blows, while it also has within itself the origins of evils, which reasoning cannot turn aside? For otherwise afflictions of the bladder and dysentery and consumption and dropsy would not have befallen men of sound mind — maladies with which Epicurus himself was afflicted, Polyaenus with others, and which carried off Neocles and Agathobulus. And we do not reproach them for this, knowing that Pherecydes too and Heraclitus fell into grievous illnesses; but we require of them, if they wish to be consistent with their own experiences and not, by brazening it out with empty words and playing to the crowd, incur a charge of boastfulness, either not to take the beginning of all joy to be the settled stability of the flesh, or else not to deny that they rejoice and are outraged when they fall into excessive pains and diseases.
"For a settled condition of the flesh often comes about, but a trustworthy and firm hope concerning the flesh cannot arise in a mind possessed of reason; rather, just as at sea, according to Aeschylus, 'night brings forth labor-pains even for the skillful helmsman when it is calm' — for the future is unclear — so too it is not possible for a soul that is settled in a well-conditioned body, and that places the good in its hopes concerning the body, to pass its course free of fear and free of waves. For the body does not have its storms and squalls only from without, as the sea does, but produces from itself still more and greater disturbances; and one might sooner hope for a calm in winter to abide with him steadfastly than for the flesh's freedom from harm.
"For to call life ephemeral and insecure and unstable, and to liken it to leaves that come into being and wither with the season of the year — what else has furnished this to the poets except the perishable and much-afflicted and disease-prone nature of the flesh, whose very highest good they counsel us to fear and to curtail? 'For extreme good conditions of the body are treacherous,' says Hippocrates; and he who but now flourished in flesh, like a star fallen from heaven, is extinguished, as Euripides says. And they think that the beautiful are harmed by envy and ill-will when they are looked upon, because that which is at its peak most quickly undergoes change of body through weakness.
"And that their affairs are altogether ill-suited for a life free of pain, consider also from what they say to others. They say that those who act unjustly and lawlessly live wretchedly and in constant fear all the time, because, even if they are able to escape detection, it is impossible for them to gain assurance of having escaped detection; hence the ever-present fear of the future does not allow them to rejoice or to feel confident about the present. But in saying this they have failed to notice that they are saying it against themselves as well. For it is possible often to be in a settled and healthy bodily condition, but to gain assurance about its continuing is impossible; there must, then, be turmoil and travail
...always anxious about the future on the body's account, since they can never acquire a trustworthy and firm hope regarding it. And doing no wrong is nothing toward confidence; for it is not suffering justly but suffering itself that is frightening. Nor is it only being involved in one's own wrongdoing that is distressing, while falling victim to the wrongdoing of others is not hard to bear — no, if it is not a greater evil, it is certainly no less — as the harshness of Lachares was to the Athenians, or of Dionysius to the Syracusans, a greater evil to those tyrants themselves than to their victims; for in causing turmoil they were themselves thrown into turmoil, and expected to suffer badly in return for having wronged and injured those they dealt with beforehand. As for the rages of mobs, the cruelty of pirates, the injustices of heirs, and further the plagues in the air and the rough sea under which Epicurus, as he himself writes, very nearly went down while sailing to Lampsacus — what need is there to speak of these? The nature of the flesh itself suffices, since it holds within itself the material of diseases and, like that game of taking straps cut from an ox's hide, draws its pains from the body, making life precarious and fearful alike for the base and for the decent, provided only they have learned to place their rejoicing and confidence in the flesh and in hope concerning the flesh, and in nothing else — as Epicurus has written in many other places, and in these very words, in his work On the End.
So then, they take as the starting point of pleasant living something not only untrustworthy and unstable but altogether contemptible and small, if indeed for them the joy and the good is simply escape from evils, and they say they conceive of nothing else, nor does their account of nature have any place at all to put the good, except only the point from which its evil is driven out — as Metrodorus says in his work Against the Sophists: “So that this very thing is the good: the fleeing of evil. For there is no place to put the good, once nothing painful or distressing any longer withdraws.” And Epicurus says similar things, holding that the nature of the good is generated out of the very flight from evil, together with the memory, the reckoning, and the gratitude that this has happened to him; for, he says, the feeling that produces unsurpassable joy at having escaped from something is itself a great evil, and this is the nature of the good, if one grasps it correctly — and then stands firm, and does not walk about idly babbling about “the good.”
Ah, what great pleasure and blessedness these men enjoy, rejoicing that they suffer no ill, feel no grief, and endure no pain! Is it not fitting, on the strength of this, that they should both think and say what they do say — calling themselves imperishable and equal to the gods, and, through the excess and extremity of their goods, breaking out into shouts and cries of ecstasy under the influence of pleasure, on the ground that, looking down on everyone else, they alone have discovered a divine and great good in having nothing bad? So that they fall short neither of pigs nor of sheep in happiness, counting it blessed to be adequately provided for in flesh, and in soul with regard to the flesh.
Since indeed, for the more refined and graceful among animals, escape from evil is not the end. Rather, once sated, a creature turns to song and delights in swimming and flying, and out of pleasure and high spirits it even attempts, playfully, to imitate all sorts of sounds and noises; and creatures use displays of affection and frolicking toward one another once they have escaped evil, since they are naturally disposed to seek the good — or rather, in general, to thrust away every pain and everything alien to them, as being an obstacle to the pursuit of what is their own and better, a pursuit that belongs to their nature.

“For what is merely necessary is not the good; rather, beyond the flight from evils lies what is desirable and choiceworthy and, by Zeus, what is pleasant and akin to us,” as Plato used to say; and he forbade regarding the mere removal of pains and toils as pleasures, calling that instead a kind of sketch-outline, or a mixture of the akin and the alien — as when white and black, moving up from below toward the middle, are, through ignorance of what lies below and above, mistaken for the topmost point and limit by those who do not know better. This is just what Epicurus and Metrodorus suppose, positing that the essence and the summit of the good is the flight from evil, and taking delight in a kind of joy fit for slaves, or for prisoners released from confinement who gladly anoint and bathe themselves after their beatings and their whippings — strangers, untasting and unbeholding, to a joy that is free, pure, unmixed, and unmarked by any scar.
For it is not the case that, if having mangy flesh or bleary eyes is bad, then scratching or wiping them clean is therefore wonderful; nor, if feeling pain and fearing the divine and being disturbed by the terrors of Hades is an evil, is escape from these things therefore blessed and enviable. No — they thereby reveal joy to be a small and meager plot of ground, on which it turns and rolls about, extending no further than the not-being-disturbed by the evils in Hades that come from empty beliefs, and they make this the end of wisdom, a thing that would seem, on the face of it, to belong to creatures without reason anyway.

For if, with respect to the body's freedom from pain, it makes no difference whether the body is free from toil through itself or by nature, then likewise, with respect to the soul's freedom from disturbance, it is no greater thing to be undisturbed through the soul's own effort than to be so constituted by nature as not to be disturbed at all. And yet one might reasonably say that the disposition which by nature does not admit disturbance is a sturdier one than that which escapes it only through care and reasoning.
But let it stand that the two are on an equal footing; for even so, they will be shown to have no advantage over the beasts in the matter of not being disturbed by what is said about Hades and about the gods, since the beasts do not even expect pains and griefs as a limit to remove. Epicurus himself, at any rate, having said that “if the suspicions we entertain about celestial phenomena, and those about death and pain, did not trouble us at all, we would never have needed the study of nature,” supposes that this reasoning brings us to the very condition in which the beasts are constituted by nature; for a beast has neither base suspicions about the gods, nor is it troubled by empty opinions about what comes after death, nor does it conceive of anything dreadful in these matters at all, nor does it even know of them.

And yet, if they had left providence within their preconception of god, the wise would appear to have the advantage over the beasts, through good hopes, for living pleasantly. But since the goal of their doctrine about the gods was not to fear god but to cease being disturbed, I think this holds more securely for those who have no conception of god at all than for those who have learned to conceive of a god that does no harm; for the latter has not been freed from superstition — rather, he has not even fallen into it in the first place, nor has he laid aside the disturbing notion about the gods, since he never took it up at all.
The same must be said about the things in Hades: neither party has any hope of good from that quarter, but a smaller share of suspecting and fearing what comes after death belongs to those in whom no preconception of death arises at all, than to those who take up the preconception that death is nothing to us — for this holds true of the latter only insofar as they reason and reflect about it, whereas the former are entirely free of any concern for what does not pertain to them; and in fleeing blows, wounds, and violent deaths, a beast fears just that aspect of death which is also fearful to the Epicureans.

Such, then, are the things they say they have provided themselves by their wisdom. Let us now consider the things from which they cut themselves off and drive themselves away.
As for the effusions of the soul that arise from bodily well-being, if they are moderate, they contain nothing great or worth mentioning; but if they are excessive, then besides being empty and unstable they appear vulgar and reckless, and one would call them not psychic pleasures or joys at all, but bodily pleasures — mere smirks and simperings, so to speak, of the soul. But the delights and joys that deserve rightly to be so regarded are pure of their opposite, containing no mixed throb of pain, no sting, and no regret; their good is proper to the soul, truly psychic and genuine and not imported from outside, nor irrational, but arises most reasonably from the contemplative and knowledge-loving, or the practical and beauty-loving, part of the mind.
No one, however eager, could manage to go through how many and how great are the pleasures each of these two yields; but let me briefly recall them. History is at hand, offering many delightful pastimes, yet always leaving the desire for truth unsated and insatiable for pleasure; and because of this, even fiction is not without its charm, but in fabrications and poems, even where the element of being believed is absent, there is still something that persuades.

“For consider how, feeling the pinch of it, we read Plato's Atlantis-story and the final books of the Iliad, longing for the rest of the tale, as if a temple were closing or a theater emptying. The learning of truth itself is so lovable and longed-for that living and being are bound up with knowing; and the grimmest features of death are forgetting, ignorance, and darkness.”
And, by Zeus, nearly everyone contends against those who would strip the dead of all sensation, on the ground that it is precisely in the sentient and knowing part of the soul that living, being, and rejoicing are located. For even things that distress us can be heard with a certain pleasure; and often, disturbed by what is said and even weeping, we nonetheless bid the speaker go on — as this man does. Yet this seems to be a kind of incontinence in the pleasure of coming to know everything, a flood that overpowers reason by force.

But when history and narrative, containing nothing harmful or distressing, deal with fine and great deeds and gain, besides, a style with power and charm — such as Herodotus's account of Greek affairs, or Xenophon's of Persian affairs, or the wondrous things Homer knew and proclaimed, or Eudoxus's Circuits of the Earth, or Aristotle's Foundations and Constitutions, or the Lives of Men that Aristoxenus wrote — then the delight is not only great and abundant but also pure and free of regret.

Who, hungry, would eat, or thirsty, would drink among the Phaeacians with more pleasure than he would take in going through Odysseus's tale of his wanderings? Who would be more delighted by resting beside the most beautiful woman than by staying up late over what Xenophon wrote about Pantheia, or Aristobulus about Timocleia, or Theopompus about Thebe?
“But these,” it will be said, “are pleasures of the soul” — and yet they also drive out those that come from the mathematical sciences. And yet, while history offers something simple and smooth, the pleasures deriving from geometry, astronomy, and harmonics have a keen and varied bait that yields to none of the alluring pleasures, drawing men in with their diagrams as if with magic wheels; and whoever has tasted of them, if he has real skill, goes about singing Sophocles's lines: “my mind, music-mad, is driven, biting at its neck; I pray from the lyre, and from the strains that Thamyras wondrously composes” — and, by Zeus, so did Eudoxus, Aristarchus, and Archimedes.

For where painters who love their art are so carried away by the plausibility of their works that Nicias, while painting his Nekyia, would often ask his household slaves whether he had had lunch, and when King Ptolemy sent him sixty talents for the finished painting, he neither took the money nor sold the work — what pleasures, and how great, do we suppose Euclid reaped from geometry when writing his Optics, or Philip when demonstrating the shape of the moon, or Archimedes when he discovered, by means of an angle, that the diameter of the sun subtends so large a portion of the greatest circle as is equal to the angle formed by four right angles? Or Apollonius and Aristarchus, who became discoverers of other such things, the contemplation and understanding of which now instills great pleasures and a wonderful pride of mind in those who learn them?

And it is in no way fitting to compare those pleasures from the kitchen and the brothel with these, and thereby to disgrace Helicon and the Muses, where no shepherd deigns to pasture his flocks and no iron has yet come; these are truly untouched pastures of bees, while those others are like the itchings of pigs and goats, further defiling the most passion-ridden part of the soul.
Now the love of pleasure is a varied and reckless thing; yet no one, on approaching his beloved, has ever, out of joy, sacrificed an ox, nor has anyone, gorged with delicacies or royal pastries, prayed to die on the spot. But Eudoxus, standing before the sun and having learned the shape, size, and form of that heavenly body, prayed that he might be burned up as Phaethon was; and Pythagoras, upon his discovery, sacrificed an ox, as Apollodorus says: “When Pythagoras discovered that far-famed figure, for the sake of which he led a splendid ox-sacrifice” — whether it concerned the hypotenuse being equal in power to the sides containing the right angle, or a problem about the area of the parabola.

As for Archimedes, his attendants would drag him by force from his diagrams and anoint him with oil; but he would go on drawing figures with the scraper on his own oiled belly, and once, while bathing, having conceived from the overflow the way to measure the crown, he leapt up as if possessed or inspired, shouting “Eureka!” and went on repeating this again and again as he walked along. Yet we have never heard of any glutton crying out with such passion, “I have eaten!”, nor of any lover crying, “I have kissed!” — though countless thousands upon thousands of licentious men have lived and do live.

On the contrary, we feel disgust at those who recall their dinners with too much passion, as though they were taking excessive delight in small pleasures worth nothing; but we share in the enthusiasm of Eudoxus, Archimedes, and Hipparchus, and we are persuaded by Plato concerning the mathematical sciences — how, though neglected through ignorance and inexperience, they nevertheless grow, by sheer force of their charm.
Yet these men divert and turn away pleasures so great and so many, as though damming an ever-flowing stream, and they do not let those who come near them taste of it; instead they bid them hoist their little sails and flee from these studies. All the men and women of their circle beg and beseech Pythocles, through Epicurus, not to aspire to the education called “liberal”; and, admiring and lavishly embracing a certain Apelles, they write that by abstaining from the mathematical sciences from the very start he kept himself pure.

As for history, to pass over their other ignorance, I will cite only the words of Metrodorus, who writes in his work On Poems: “So do not be alarmed at declaring that you do not even know which side Hector was on, or the opening lines of Homer's poem, or again what came in the middle.”
That the pleasures of the body, like the etesian winds, wither and cease after their prime, has not escaped Epicurus's notice. At any rate he raises the question whether the wise man, when old and no longer able to approach the touch of beautiful bodies, still takes delight in and enjoys their caresses — not thinking the same as Sophocles, who gladly escaped this pleasure as though escaping a wild and raging master. But surely the devotees of pleasure ought, seeing that old age withers many of the pleasures, and…
...Aphrodite, as Euripides says, is displeased with old men — and it is above all these pleasures they store up, as though laying by imperishable, unspoiling provisions against a siege; and then they treat the erotic season of life as already past and spend their time, belated celebrants, occupied with histories and poems or with problems of music and geometry. For it would never occur to them to set their minds on those blind, toothless gropings and pouncings of the licentious man, once they have learned, if nothing else, to write about Homer and about Euripides, as Aristotle and Heraclides and Dicaearchus did. But I think that, having taken no thought for such resources, and finding the rest of their own occupation joyless and dry — as they themselves say virtue is — while wanting above all to feel pleasure, and the body refusing them, they confess to doing shameful and unseasonable things, reminding themselves of earlier pleasures and using their old ones, for lack of fresh ones, as though they were salted meats, and stirring up again, against nature, other pleasures now dead and buried, as it were in cold ashes, rekindling them in the flesh, since they have nothing native and pleasant, nothing worthy of joy, laid up ready in the soul.
"And yet," he says, "we have spoken of the rest as they occurred to us; but as for music, how many pleasures and graces of what kind it brings, which they turn away from and flee — no one seeking the reason could forget it, given the strangeness of what Epicurus says." He declares the wise man, in his Difficulties, to be a lover of spectacle and to take more delight than anyone else in performances and Dionysiac shows, yet he gives no room, even over wine, to musical problems or to the learned inquiries of critics; indeed he even urges music-loving kings to put up with soldiers' tales and vulgar buffoonery at their symposia rather than with discourses on musical and poetic questions carried through to their conclusion. This is what he had the audacity to write in his book On Kingship — as though writing for Sardanapalus, or for Nanarus who governed Babylon as satrap. For not even Hiero, nor Attalus, nor Archelaus would have been persuaded to rouse Euripides and Simonides and Melanippides and the Crateses and Diodotuses from their couches at table in order to recline instead with Cardacians and Agrianians, and buffoons like Callias, and certain Thrasonideses and Thrasyleons, making them howl and clap uproariously. And if Ptolemy, the first man to gather together the Museum, had come upon these fine, royal precepts, would he not have said, "Muse, what grudge do we bear the Samians?" For it befits no Athenian to be so hostile to the Muses and to make war on them — those whom Zeus has not loved shudder to hear the cry of the Pierides ringing in their ears.
What do you say, Epicurus? You go off to the theater at dawn to listen to lyre-players and flute-players, yet at a dinner party, when Theophrastus discusses concords, or Aristoxenus discusses modulations, or Aristotle discusses Homer, will you clap your hands over your ears in disgust and revulsion? Then do they not more fittingly display the Scythian Ateas, who, when the flute-player Ismenias was taken captive and played the flute over wine, swore he would rather listen to his horse neighing? Do they not thereby confess to waging implacable, unheralded war on the beautiful? And if there is no pleasure in it, what solemn and pure thing, in heaven's name, do they embrace and love? Would it not have been more reasonable, for the sake of living pleasantly, to be revolted by perfumes and incense like dung-beetles and vultures, than to loathe and flee the talk of critics and musicians?
For what flute, or lyre tuned to song, or chorus sending forth a wide-voiced strain, breaking clear and skillful from many mouths, ever so delighted Epicurus and Metrodorus as the discourses on choruses and productions, and the problems of flutes and rhythms and harmonies, delighted Aristotle and Theophrastus and Dicaearchus and Hieronymus? Such questions as: why, among flutes of equal length, does the narrower sound the deeper note? And why, when the reed of the pipe is drawn upward, does it sharpen in every note, but when it is lowered, it deepens again — and when the pipes are drawn together they sound deeper, when pulled apart, sharper? And why, whenever you scatter chaff or dust over the orchestra of the theaters, does the audience find its hearing dulled? And why did the craftsman not allow the bronze statue of Alexander at Pella to be set up on the proscenium, since it would ruin the actors' voices? And why does the chromatic genus diffuse the sound, while the harmonic mode draws it together? The characters of poets, and their fictions, and the differences of style, and the resolutions of difficulties — possessing, in what is fitting and polished, both what is proper to them and what is persuasive — seem to me like that saying of Xenophon's, and to make the lover forget himself, so much do they master him with pleasure.
"In which pleasure these men have no share, and, as they themselves say, do not even wish to share; instead, straining their contemplative faculty down toward the body and dragging it, as with leaden weights, by the desires of the flesh, they leave nothing to distinguish themselves from grooms or shepherds who toss down hay or straw or some grass, as though it were fitting for their charges to graze and chew on such things. Do they not, in fact, expect the soul to wallow in the body's pleasures no less than a pig in its sty, hoping for something concerning the flesh, or experiencing it, or recalling it with delight, while allowing it to take or seek nothing proper or sweet or pleasant from itself? And yet what could be more unreasonable than this: that of the two things of which a human being is composed, body and soul, the soul holding the more governing rank, the body should have some good proper to it, in accordance with its nature and its own, while the soul has none — but instead sits gazing upon the body, smiling along with its passions, sharing its pleasure and rejoicing with it, while the soul itself remains from the start unmoved and unaffected, having nothing at all choiceworthy or desirable or a cause for joy? Either they ought simply to have laid the matter bare and made the whole human being flesh, as some do who do away entirely with the substance of the soul, or, having left two distinct natures within us, they ought to have left each its own good and evil, its own and its alien — just as, indeed, each of the senses is by nature disposed toward some object proper to itself, even though they are all in great sympathy with one another. Now the soul's own organ of perception is the mind, to which nothing proper is supposed to underlie it — no sight, no motion, no experience akin to it in which, when it obtains it, it naturally rejoices — this is of all things the most unreasonable, unless, by Zeus, I have unwittingly been joining in slandering these men."
And I said to him, "Not, at any rate, as far as we are your judges; rather you are released from all charge of malice, so take courage and finish the rest of your argument." "How so?" he said. "Will not Aristodemus take over from us, if you have altogether given up?" "Certainly," said Aristodemus, "whenever you tire, as this man has — but while you are still in your prime, my good friend, make use of yourself, so that you may not seem to be growing soft." "Well then," said Theon, "what remains is quite easy. What is left is to go through how many pleasures the active life affords. They themselves say, surely, that 'doing well is more pleasant than faring well'; and doing well is possible, of course, through words as well, but for the most part and in the greatest degree it lies in action — as the very word 'benefaction' suggests, and as they themselves bear witness. For we heard just a little before, from this man here, what sort of things Epicurus exclaimed, and what sort of letters he sent to his friends, hymning and magnifying Metrodorus, saying, 'How well and youthfully he went down from the city to the sea to help Mithres the Syrian' — and this though Metrodorus had actually done nothing at the time. What, then, are we to suppose were the pleasures of Plato, and how great, when Dion, setting out under his guidance, overthrew Dionysius and freed Sicily? What were those of Aristotle, when he raised up again his fatherland, which lay leveled to the ground, and brought its citizens home? What were those of Theophrastus and Phanias, who cut down the tyrants of their fatherland? For, privately, to how many men they gave aid — not sending them wheat, nor a bushel of barley meal, as Epicurus sent to some — but arranging for exiles to return home, for the imprisoned to be freed, for those bereft of children and wives to recover them — what need to speak precisely to you who already know it well? But it is impossible, even for one willing to pass over it, to let go the man's absurdity: trampling underfoot and belittling the deeds of Themistocles and Miltiades, while writing such things as this about himself to his friends — 'Wonderfully and magnificently have you taken care of us in the matter of the grain supply, and you have shown signs, sky-high, of your goodwill toward me.' So that, if one removed the little bit of grain from the philosopher's letter, the words would give the impression of gratitude such as would be written for one who had freed or saved the whole of Greece, or the people of Athens."
"That nature, then, requires costly provision even for the pleasures of the body, and that the sweetest thing is not found in barley cake and lentils, but that the appetites of the pleasure-lovers seek relishes and Thasian wine and perfumes and pastries and cakes lavishly steeped in the honey of the tawny-winged bee, and, besides these, fair young women such as Leontion and Boidion and Hedeia and Nicidion who fed about the Garden — let us set that aside. Yet it must be granted that beneath the joys of the soul there must lie, admittedly, greatness of action and beauty of noteworthy deeds, if they are to be not empty nor ignoble and girlish, but weighty and steadfast and magnificent. As for exulting over comforts, sailor-fashion, as men busy with love-making do, and priding oneself that 'though sick with the disease of dropsy he gathered certain gatherings of friends for feasting, and did not begrudge the intake of fluid brought on by the dropsy, and, remembering his last words to Neocles, melted with a strange pleasure mixed with tears' — no one in his right mind would call these things true joys or true delights; but if there is such a thing as a Sardonic laughter of the soul too, it is found in these forced grins and this laughing-through-tears. If, then, someone will call these things joys and delights, consider by contrast the surpassing pleasures of those other men: 'By our counsels Sparta shorn of glory,' and 'This is that great star of Rome, O stranger, his country's star,' and 'I wonder whether I should divine you a god or a man.' But whenever I set before my eyes the successes of Thrasybulus and Pelopidas, and Aristides at Plataea or Miltiades at Marathon, then, in the words of Herodotus, I am compelled to declare my judgment: that in the life of action the pleasant exceeds the noble. Epaminondas too bears witness for me, when he said, as they report, that the sweetest thing that ever befell him was to see his parents still living to behold the trophy he himself had set up as general at Leuctra. Let us, then, compare with Epaminondas's mother the mother of Epicurus, rejoicing that she saw her son sunk deep in his little garden, jointly begetting children with Polyaenus on the Cyzicene courtesan."
For how greatly the mother and sister of Metrodorus rejoiced over his marriage and over the letters exchanged with his brother is plain, no doubt, from the books themselves. "But," they cry out, proclaiming that they have lived pleasantly and are bursting with joy and singing hymns to their own life" — why, even household slaves, when they feast at the Cronia or go about the countryside celebrating the Dionysia, you could not endure their whooping and their uproar, doing and shouting such things out of sheer delight and vulgarity as: "Lie down and let us drink; are there not viands here too, poor wretch? Do not grudge yourself." And at once they raised the ululation, and the wine was mixed; someone came bearing a garland and set it on him; there was hymning, disgracefully, of "a fair branch of laurel — Phoebus does not favor such music"; and someone struck up a song for the bastard mistress kept in the stable. Are not the words of Metrodorus, writing to his brother, just like these? "There is no need to save the Greeks, nor to win crowns from them for wisdom, but to eat and drink wine, Timocrates, harmlessly and agreeably to the belly." And again, somewhere in the same letters, he says, "And I rejoiced, and I took courage, because I learned from Epicurus to gratify the belly rightly." And, "For the good, O natural philosopher Timocrates, lies around the belly."
"And, in short, men mark out the magnitude of pleasure, as with a center and a radius, by the belly; and it is impossible for a life that is unpolitical, without civic action, without love of humanity, and without enthusiasm to have a share of that bright and kingly joy — the joy that truly produces greatness of mind and light and a calm poured out over all men — when men take up such a life for the sake of honor and gratitude. For the soul is no mean or small or ignoble thing, nor does it, like the octopus, extend its desires only as far as things edible; rather, the keenest satiety cuts off that appetite, once it has flourished but a brief portion of an hour, but for those impulses toward the noble, and the honor and gratitude that attend the noble, the measure of them is not the span of one's lifetime — rather, laying hold of the whole of eternity, the love of honor and the love of humanity vie with each other in deeds and in acts of grace that carry pleasures beyond reckoning, which even good men, though they flee them, cannot escape, meeting them from every side and being embraced by them, whenever, by their benefactions, they bring joy to many: 'and as he goes through the city they gaze on him as on a god.' For the man who so disposes others that they rejoice and are gladdened and long to touch him and to greet him is plainly, even to a blind man, possessed within himself of great pleasures which he reaps, so that such men do not grow weary in doing good, nor do they give up, but we hear such words spoken of them as: 'Much to mortals does your father beget you worth,' and 'may we never cease from doing good to men.'
And what need is there to speak of those supremely good? For if to one of the moderately mean, about to die, the master — whether god or king — should grant one hour, on condition that, having used it for some noble action or for enjoyment, he must die at once, who, in that span of time, would rather be with Lais and drink Ariusian wine than, by killing Archias, set Thebes free? I, for one, think no one would. Indeed, I observe that even gladiators who are not utterly savage but Greek, when they are about to go in to fight, though many costly dishes are set before them, more gladly, in that time, entrust their women to their friends and set free their household slaves than gratify their bellies. But even if there is something great in bodily pleasures, this surely is shared also by men of action: 'for they too eat bread and drink flaming wine,' and feast with friends — far more eagerly, I think, after their contests and their labors, as did Alexander and Agesilaus and, by Zeus, Phocion and Epaminondas, than men like these, who anoint themselves by the fire and are gently jolted about in their litters; rather, being engaged in those greater pursuits, they hold such things in contempt. What need to speak of Epaminondas, who refused to dine, seeing that the...
the meal, but said to his friend, "I thought you were sacrificing, not committing an outrage?" So too Alexander drove away Ada's cooks, saying that he himself had better chefs for breakfast a night march, and for dinner a light breakfast; and when Philoxenus wrote asking whether he should buy some handsome boys, Alexander very nearly removed him from his position of trust though who had a better right to indulge? But, as Hippocrates says, of two pains the lesser is obscured by the greater, and in the same way the bodily pleasures are blotted out and extinguished by the practical and ambitious pleasures, through the excess and greatness of the joy that accompanies them, in the one who rejoices in his soul.
"If, then, as they say, the remembrance of past goods is of the greatest importance for living pleasantly, not one of us would believe Epicurus when he says that, dying amid the greatest pains and sicknesses, he offset them by the memory of the pleasures he had previously enjoyed. For one could more readily imagine, in a sea stirred up and surging, an image of calm water than a smiling memory of pleasure amid such throbbing and such wrenching of the body. But no one, even if he wished, could banish from himself the memories of his actions. For how, or in what way, could Alexander have forgotten Arbela, or Pelopidas forgotten Leontiades, or Themistocles forgotten Salamis?
The Athenians to this day celebrate the battle of Marathon, the Thebans that of Leuctra, and we ourselves, by Zeus, celebrate the victory of Daiphantus near Hyampolis, as you know, and Phocis is filled with sacrifices and honors for it; and there is not one of us who takes as much pleasure in what he himself has eaten or drunk as in what those men achieved. One may consider, then, how great a gladness and joy and delight lived on together with the very authors of those deeds, a delight which, in more than five hundred years, memory has not cast away.
Moreover, Epicurus himself admitted that certain pleasures arise from reputation. Why, then, would he not himself have been so wildly and frantically aflame and convulsed with desire for reputation, that he not only disowned his own teachers, and quarreled over syllables and accents with Democritus, from whom he had lifted his doctrines word for word, but declared that no one had ever been wise except himself and his pupils and wrote how Colotes fell at his feet in worship of him while he was lecturing on nature, and how his brother Neocles used to declare from childhood that no one had ever been or would be wiser than Epicurus and how his mother had within her so many atoms of such a kind that, coming together, they produced a sage!
Then, just as Callicratidas used to say that Conon committed adultery with the sea, might one not likewise say that Epicurus courted reputation shamefully and secretly, and forced himself upon her, not enjoying her openly but rather being in love with her and straining after her? For just as bodies, when starved of food, are compelled by hunger to feed upon themselves against nature, so love of reputation produces this same evil in souls: when they are starved of praise from others, they praise themselves."
"But those who hold such views about praise and reputation do they not in fact admit that they forgo great pleasures out of weakness or softness, when they avoid positions of power or political careers or the friendships of kings from which, as Democritus said, great and splendid things come into life? For no one could be persuaded by a man who sets such store by and so cherishes the testimony of Neocles and the worship of Colotes, that he would not have gone mad and cried aloud with joy if applauded by the Greeks at Olympia rather he would have been altogether lifted up by delight, like an old thistle-down puffed about, as Sophocles says. If indeed to be well thought of is pleasant, then surely to be ill thought of is painful;
and nothing is more disreputable than friendlessness, inactivity, atheism, self-indulgence, and indifference. And all men, except those very Epicureans themselves, believe that these things belong to their creed. 'Unjustly,' someone will say. But we are examining their reputation, not the truth of the matter. And let us not even mention the books and the abusive decrees of cities that have been written against them, for that would be quarrelsome. But if oracles and divination and the providence of the gods,
and the affection and love of parents for their children, and political life and leadership and rule are things held in honor and glory, then it necessarily follows that those who say, 'one need not save the Greeks, but eat and drink harmlessly and agreeably to one's belly,' are held in low repute and are considered wicked and that, being thought such, they are distressed and live joylessly if indeed they hold that the honorable is pleasant, and that good repute is honorable."
When Theon had said this, it seemed good to break off the walk, and, as was our custom, we sat down on the benches and remained silent for a while in company with what had been said. For Zeuxippus, reflecting on what had been said, spoke up: "Who," he said, "will supply what is still lacking to the argument? For it does not yet have its proper conclusion the points which Zeuxippus himself just now, in mentioning divination and providence, has put forward. For the men themselves say that these things provide them, not least of all, with pleasure and calm and confidence for their life; so something must be said about these matters too."
Aristodemus took up the discussion and said, "But concerning pleasure, it has been said, more or less, that when their doctrine succeeds and prospers it removes a certain fear and superstition, but it does not grant joy and gladness that come from the gods rather it makes them feel toward the gods as we feel toward the Hyrcanians or the Scythians, expecting from them neither anything good nor anything bad. But if something must be added to what has been said, this is the first point I think I would take from them: that in denying the value of grief, tears, and groaning at the deaths of friends,
they fight against those who say, 'the freedom from grief that consists in an absence of feeling comes from a still greater evil namely cruelty or an unrestrained madness for reputation; wherefore it is better to feel something, and to grieve, and, by Zeus, to moisten the eyes and to melt in tears,' and all the other things that men, when moved to passion and writing about it, seem to be tender-hearted and affectionate for saying. Epicurus himself has said such things in many other places
and also concerning the death of Hegesianax, writing to his father Sosytheus and to Pyrson, the brother of the deceased for I recently happened to read through his letters. And I say this in imitation of him: that atheism is no less an evil than cruelty and love of reputation, into which those who take away from god both his favor together with his anger lead us. For it is better that there be present and mingled with our belief about the gods a common feeling of reverence and fear,
than that, in fleeing this, we should be left with neither hope nor gratitude toward ourselves nor confidence in present blessings nor any refuge, when we are in misfortune, toward the divine." Indeed one must, no doubt, remove from our belief about the gods, as one removes rheum from the eye, the element of superstition; but if that is impossible, one must not, along with it, cut out and blind the faith which most people hold about the gods.
This faith is not something fearful or grim, as these men fashion it, slandering providence, as though presenting it to children as a bogey or an avenging Fury, malignant and tragic. But few among men fear god, and for them it would be no better not to fear him for, fearing him as they would a ruler gentle to the good but oppressive to the wicked, by this one fear, through which they do no wrong, they are freed from many of the troubles that come from wrongdoing; and having their wickedness kept quietly in check within themselves, as though withering away, they are less disturbed than those who indulge it and dare to act on it, and then are immediately afraid and change their ways.
But the disposition of the many, ignorant and not altogether wicked, toward god has, to be sure, mingled in it, for the one who reveres and honors him, a certain throbbing fear, and this is called superstition; yet many thousand times greater and stronger than this in them is their hopefulness and their exceeding joy, as they pray for and receive every benefit of good fortune as coming from the gods. This is clear from the strongest evidence: for no pastimes in temples, no festival seasons, no actions, no sights delight us more than those which we see or ourselves perform in connection with the gods,
whether taking part in mystic rites, or dancing in choruses, or attending sacrifices or initiations. For at such times the soul is not, as one might expect if it were consorting with tyrants or harsh punishers, filled with grief and lowliness and despondency rather, where it most believes and imagines the god to be present, there most of all, having driven away griefs and fears and anxious care, it gives itself over to pleasure, even to the point of drunkenness and laughter and play,
in matters of love, as the poet has said: 'both old man and old woman, when they call to mind golden Aphrodite, their dear heart is lifted up'; and in processions and sacrifices not only the old man and the old woman, nor the poor man and the commoner, but even the thick-legged woman grinding at the mill, and household slaves and hired laborers, are carried away by gladness and joy while for the rich and for kings there are always banquets and feasts of every kind available. But the pleasures that come from sacred rites and offerings, and whenever, in their conception, men seem to come nearest to touching the divine with honor and reverence, bring a pleasure and grace far superior. Of this a man who has renounced providence has no share whatsoever. For it is not abundance of wine nor the roasting of meats that gladdens men at festivals, but
good hope as well, and the belief that the god is present, gracious, and receives what is done with favor. For we take away the flute and the garland from other festivals, but when the god is absent from a sacrifice, as though a shrine lacked its host, what remains is godless, unfestive, and without inspiration indeed it is wholly joyless and grievous to the celebrant himself: for he acts out prayers and acts of worship while needing nothing from them, out of fear
of the multitude, and utters words contrary to what he actually believes as a philosopher; and while sacrificing he stands beside the priest who slays the victim as though beside a butcher, but once he has sacrificed he goes away repeating the line of Menander: 'I sacrificed, but the gods pay no attention at all to me.' For this is how Epicurus thinks one ought to conduct oneself, so as not to provoke the ill will and hostility of the multitude, who take pleasure in doing things at which the philosophers themselves feel distaste for, as Evenus says, 'every necessary thing is by nature irksome.'
In this respect they think that the superstitious, too, do not rejoice but rather fear when they engage in sacrifices and rites, and that they themselves differ in no way from such people if indeed they do the same things out of fear, without sharing even as much good hope as the superstitious do, but only fearing and being disturbed lest they be caught out deceiving and cheating the multitude and it is for this purpose that their books about the gods and about piety have been composed convoluted, and containing nothing sound, but entirely wrapped and hidden all around, concealing out of fear the opinions which they actually hold.
And indeed, after considering the wicked and the multitude, let us now, in the third place, examine the finest and most god-beloved class of men, and in what great pleasures they live, associating with pure beliefs about god that he is the leader of all good things and the father of all noble things, and
that it is not lawful for him to do, any more than to suffer, anything base. For he is good, and toward the good no envy attaches to anyone, nor fear, nor anger, nor hatred for it does not belong to what is hot to cool things, but to warm them, just as it does not belong to what is good to harm; whereas anger is opposed to grace, and wrath to kindness, and the malevolent and disturbing is set as far as possible by nature from what is benevolent and kindly disposed. For
the one set belongs to virtue and power, the other to weakness and baseness. The divine, then, is not held together at once by both wraths and graces, since it is its nature to show favor and to help, but it is not its nature to grow angry and to do harm; rather, 'great Zeus in heaven, driving his winged chariot, goes forth first, ordering and caring for all things,' while among the other gods one is
Epidotes, another Meilichios, another Alexikakos, and Apollo, as Pindar says, 'was appointed to be most gentle to mortals.' 'And all things belong to the gods,' as Diogenes says, 'and the goods of friends are held in common, and the good are friends to the gods'; and it is impossible for the one beloved by god not to fare well, or for the temperate and just man not to be beloved by god. Do you think that those who do away with providence need any other punishment,
or that it is not enough that they are cutting away from themselves so great a pleasure and joy as attends those of us who are so disposed toward the divine? Or that for Epicurus, Metrodorus, Polyaenus, and Aristobulus were his sources of encouragement and gladness, most of whom he continued to tend when sick, or to lament when dying while Lycurgus, addressed by the Pythia as
'dear to Zeus and to all who dwell in the Olympian halls,' and Socrates, believing that the divine sign spoke to him personally out of its kindness toward him, and Pindar, on hearing that one of his own songs was being sung by Pan, took a modest delight in it or Phormio believing that he entertained the Dioscuri, or Sophocles believing that he entertained Asclepius himself, and others too holding such beliefs because of a manifestation that had occurred and the opinions Hermogenes held
about the gods deserve to be recalled in his very words: 'For these gods,' he says, 'who know all things and are able to do all things, are so kindly disposed toward me that, because they care for me, I am never unnoticed by them, neither by night nor by day, wherever I set out to go or whatever I intend to do; and because they foreknow what will result from each action, they signal it to me,
sending messengers omens, dreams, and birds.' It is likely, then, that the things which come from the gods are good; but the very fact that they come through the agency of the gods produces great pleasure, and irresistible confidence, and high spirit, and a joy like a beam of light smiling upon good fortune. But those who hold otherwise curtail the sweetest part of good fortune, while to misfortunes
they leave no refuge instead, faring badly, they look to a single haven of escape dissolution and the loss of all sensation as though someone standing by a ship in a storm at sea, trying to encourage the crew, should say that the ship has no helmsman at all, nor will the Dioscuri come to their aid 'to calm the violent sea as it advances, and the swift blasts of the winds' yet that there is nothing terrible in this, except that the ship is on the very point
of being swallowed up by the sea, or of being swiftly dashed to pieces on the rocks after running aground. For this is the Epicurean argument in terrible illnesses and overwhelming pains: 'Do you hope for some good from the gods because of your piety? You are deluded: for what is blessed and imperishable is held together neither by wraths nor by graces. Do you imagine something better than the things of this life, after this life? You have been deceived: for the
...you have deceived yourself: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us." How then, man, do you bid me "eat and rejoice"? Because, by Zeus, for one caught in a storm shipwreck is near, for the excessive suffering will join with death. And yet a passenger cast out of a ship that has broken up rides on some hope of reaching land with his body and swimming to shore; but for the soul, this philosophy of theirs shows no way out "from the gray brine" — it vanishes at once, is scattered, and perishes even before the body does. So the soul, having received this all-wise and divine doctrine, is supposed to rejoice exceedingly that the end of its suffering is to perish, be destroyed, and become nothing.
"But," he said, looking at me, "it is foolish for us to speak about this too, since we recently heard you argue quite sufficiently against those who claim that Epicurus' account makes us calmer and happier in the face of death than Plato's account of the soul." Zeuxippus then took up the point: "Then will the discussion remain incomplete because of him, and shall we be afraid to go on speaking against Epicurus?" "Not at all," I said. "For, as Empedocles says, it is good to hear twice what needs to be said. So we must call on Theon again: I do not think he was absent when this was discussed before, and besides he is young, and need not fear being called to account by the young for forgetting."
Theon, as though compelled, said: "Well, if it is decided that I should do this, I will not imitate you, Aristodemus — for you were afraid to state his arguments, whereas I will use your own. You seemed to me right in dividing mankind into three classes: the unjust and wicked; second, the many and the ordinary; and third, the decent and sensible.
"Now the unjust and wicked, fearing the judgments and punishments in Hades and afraid to do wrong, and for this reason keeping themselves more quiet, will live more pleasantly and with less disturbance — for Epicurus thinks that men should be restrained from injustice by nothing other than fear of punishment. So superstition must actually be heaped upon such people, and the terrors and chasms and fears and suspicions from heaven and earth must be stirred up against them, if they are to be struck with fear and thereby become more decent and gentle. For it profits them more to refrain from injustice out of fear of what comes after death than, by doing wrong, to live their life insecurely and in constant dread.
"But for the majority, even apart from fear about what is in Hades, the hope born of the myth-like notion of eternity, and the longing to exist — which is the oldest and greatest of all desires — surpass in pleasure and sweetness that childish dread. That is why, even when they lose children, wives, and friends, people would rather that the dead still exist somewhere and continue on, suffering hardship, than that they be utterly removed, destroyed, and become nothing at all. And they gladly hear and use the words 'the dying man departs' and 'passes on' and whatever else signifies that death is a change in the soul's condition and not its destruction, and they speak in this way: 'yet even there I will remember my dear companion,' and 'what shall I say to Hector or to your aged husband on your behalf?'
"And from this turn of thought comes the practice of burying with the dead their accustomed weapons, vessels, and clothing, and, as Minos did for Glaucus, Cretan flutes and the limbs of a dappled fawn — burying these along with the dead brings them comfort. And if it seems that the dead ask for or long for something, people are glad to give it, just as Periander burned his wife's jewelry along with her, since she seemed to need it and said she was cold. Figures like Aeacus, Ascalaphus, and the rivers of Acheron do not disturb them very much, since to those who delight in such things people have assigned choruses, theaters, and every kind of music once they have passed on.
"But everyone dreads that face of death which is fearful, grim, and dark — the face of unconsciousness, forgetfulness, and unknowing. They are troubled and cannot bear it when it is said of someone, 'he has perished,' 'he has been destroyed,' 'he is no more' — as though what follows were: 'he will lie in the deep-wooded earth, having no share in banquets, the lyre, or the all-delightful sound of flutes; and a man's soul cannot be seized or captured to come back again, once it has passed the barrier of his teeth.'
"In just this way those who say things like 'we have been born once, and it is not possible to be born twice, and for eternity we must no longer exist' deal themselves a fatal blow in advance. For, disdaining the present as something small — or rather as nothing at all compared with the whole of things — they let it pass by unenjoyed, and they grow careless of virtue and action, becoming despondent and contemptuous of themselves, as if they were creatures of a day, unstable, and born for nothing of any worth.
"For the saying that 'what is dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us' does not remove the fear of death but, as it were, adds a proof of it — for this very thing is what nature fears: the dissolution of the soul into something that neither thinks nor perceives, so that you all become 'water and earth.' And Epicurus, by turning this dissolution into a scattering into void and atoms, cuts off the hope of immortality even more completely. Because of this hope, I would almost say that all men and women are eager to be torn apart by Cerberus and carried into the unfathomable pit, just so that they may remain in existence and not be utterly destroyed.
"And yet, as I said, not very many people fear these particular things, since they are the doctrines and mythical tales of mothers and nurses; and those who do fear them believe, in turn, that certain initiations and purifications help, by which, once purified, they will spend their time in Hades playing and dancing in places that have light, pure air, and sound.
"But it is the deprivation of life itself that troubles both young and old alike; for, as Euripides says, we are shown to be unhappily in love with 'whatever it is that gleams here upon the earth,' nor do we hear without pain and distress the words 'so speaking, the far-shining, immortal face of swift-horsed day left him.' Therefore, along with the belief in immortality, they destroy the sweetest and greatest hopes of most people.
"What then do we suppose is the case for good people who have lived piously and justly, who expect no evil but rather the fairest and most divine things? For in the first place, athletes do not receive the crown while still competing, but after they have competed and won; in the same way, believing that the prizes of victory in life belong to the good only after life, they take a wonderful pride in their virtue in view of those hopes — among which is the hope of seeing those who now behave insolently because of wealth and power, and who foolishly mock their betters, pay a fitting penalty.
"Then too, no one who longs for truth and for the vision of reality has ever satisfied himself with it fully in this life, using as he does a reasoning faculty that is moist and disturbed, as if through a mist or cloud cast by the body; but instead, looking upward like a bird as though about to fly out of the body into something great and bright, they make the soul trim and light, freed from mortal things, by using philosophy as a practice of dying. So great and truly perfect a good do they consider death to be, since there the soul will live a true life, whereas now it lives not in waking reality but experiences things like dreams.
"If, then, 'the memory of a dead friend is sweet from every point of view,' as Epicurus said, one may already grasp how great a joy such people deprive themselves of — supposing that they receive and pursue only phantoms and images of their dead companions, things with neither mind nor sensation, while not expecting truly to be with their beloved father and mother again, or to see a good wife somewhere, and having no hope of that companionship and affection which belongs to those who hold the same beliefs about the soul as Pythagoras, Plato, and Homer.
"Homer has shown what an experience like theirs is: he threw down a phantom of Aeneas amid the fighters as though he were dead, and then later revealed the man himself, 'coming alive and unharmed, possessed of noble might,' to his friends; 'and they rejoiced,' he says, and letting go of the phantom, they embraced him. So too we, when reason shows that it is possible truly to meet with the dead, and for the one who loves to touch and be together with the very thinking and loving part of the beloved, should not remain like those unable even to cast off all the images and outer husks, in which they persist grieving and suffering emptily.
"Apart from this, those who regard death as the beginning of a different, better life take more pleasure even when their present circumstances are good, since they look forward to something greater; and if things here do not turn out as they wish, they are not greatly distressed, but rather their hopes for the good and beautiful things after death, bringing immeasurable pleasures and expectations, erase and wipe away every deficiency and every setback of the soul — as though the soul, on a journey, or rather on a brief detour from its journey, bore what it encountered easily and with moderation.
"But for those for whom life ends in unconsciousness and dissolution, death, bringing not a change from evils but also a loss of goods, is painful to both kinds of people — yet more so to the fortunate than to those who live in hardship; for from the latter it cuts off only the uncertain hope of faring better, but from the former it takes away a sure good, namely living pleasantly. And just as, I think, drugs that are not beneficial but merely necessary, while not relieving the sick, wear down and harm the healthy, so too the doctrine of Epicurus, to those who live wretchedly, promises the dissolution and destruction of the soul as no fortunate end; while for the wise and prudent, teeming with good things, it altogether cuts short their good cheer, turning their existence from a blessed life into not living and not being at all.
"It is clear at once, then, that the very thought of the loss of goods is naturally painful, in proportion as sure hopes and present enjoyments give pleasure.
"Nevertheless, they also say that the removal of the suspicion of endless and unending evils leaves them the surest and sweetest good — namely, the very thought of having been released; and that this is what Epicurus' doctrine does, fixing the fear of death upon the dissolution of the soul. If, then, release from the expectation of unending evils is most pleasant, how is it not painful to be deprived of the hope of eternal goods and to lose the highest happiness? For not-being is a good to neither kind of person, but is contrary to nature and alien to all existing things; but those from whom death's evil removes the evils of life have, as it were, unconsciousness itself as a comfort, as if they were escaping something; whereas, on the contrary, those for whom the change is from good things to nothing see the most fearful of ends, one in which their happiness will cease.
"For nature does not fear unconsciousness as the beginning of something else, but because it is a deprivation of present goods; for that which becomes 'nothing to us' only by the removal of everything that is ours is, by the very conception, already something to us. And unconsciousness does not pain those who no longer exist at that later time, but rather those who now exist, as they are being plunged by it into non-existence and yet, even so, are unwilling to be extinguished.
"That is why it was not Cerberus or Cocytus that made the fear of death boundless, but the threat of not existing, which offers those who have perished no possibility of changing back into existence — 'for it is not possible to be born twice, and for eternity one must not be,' as Epicurus says. For if not-being is the limit of being, and this limit is itself unending and unchangeable, then the deprivation of good things turns out to be an eternal evil — an unconsciousness that will never cease.
"And Herodotus was wiser when he said that 'god, having given life a taste of sweetness, shows himself to be envious in it' — especially to those who seem to be happy, for whom pleasure is a bait of pain, since they taste what they will be deprived of. For what joy or enjoyment or exuberance would not be knocked down and brought low by the thought, constantly recurring, of the soul pouring itself out, as it were, into the vast, boundless sea — for those who place the good and blessed life in pleasure? And if, indeed, as Epicurus himself thinks, most people happen to perish in pain, then the fear of death is altogether beyond consolation, leading through evils to the deprivation of good things."
"And against these points they will not tire of fighting and forcing all people to consider the avoidance of evils a good, but to no longer regard the deprivation of goods as an evil; yet this much they admit: that death holds no hope and no joy, but that all that is pleasant and good has been cut off — at just the time when those who think the soul is imperishable and indestructible expect many fine, great, and divine things, or expect the soul to circle through long periods of time, now on earth, now in heaven, until it is dissolved together with the cosmos, kindled into intelligent fire along with the sun and moon.
"Such a vast region of so many pleasures Epicurus cuts away; and, since the hopes and favors coming from the gods have been removed, as has been said, blinding the love of learning that belongs to the contemplative part and the love of honor that belongs to the practical part, he has compressed and cast down our nature into something altogether narrow and not even pure — the soul's rejoicing that is fixed on the flesh — as though it had no greater good than the mere avoidance of evil."

======== Moralia: Parallela Minora ========

Most people, because of the strangeness of the exploit, think that the ancient histories are inventions and myths. But since I myself have found that similar things have happened even in modern times — events that occurred in the Roman period — I have gathered them, and to each ancient deed I have appended a similar, more recent narrative, recording also the men who reported them.
Datis, the satrap of the Persians, arrived at Marathon with three hundred thousand men, pitched camp in the plain of Attica, and declared war on the inhabitants. The Athenians, scorning the barbarian horde, sent out nine thousand men, appointing as generals Cynegirus, Polyzelus, Callimachus, and Miltiades. When the battle was joined, Polyzelus, having beheld a superhuman apparition, lost his sight and became blind; Callimachus, pierced through by many spears, remained standing even in death; and Cynegirus, seizing hold of a Persian ship as it was putting out to sea, had his hand cut off.
King Hasdrubal seized Sicily and declared war on the Romans. Metellus, chosen general by the Senate, gained the mastery in this victory. In it Lucius Glaucus, a man of noble birth, seizing hold of Hasdrubal's ship, lost both his hands — as Aristides of Miletus records in the first book of his Sicilian History, from which Dionysius of Sicily took his subject matter. Xerxes, with five million men, anchored off Artemisium and declared war on the inhabitants.
The Athenians, thrown into confusion, sent out as a spy Agesilaus, the brother of Themistocles, even though his father Neocles had seen in a dream that he would lose both his hands. Arriving among the barbarians in Persian dress, he killed Mardonius, one of the royal bodyguards, mistaking him for Xerxes. He was seized by the men round about and led as a prisoner before the king. As the aforesaid king was about to sacrifice an ox at the altar of the Sun, Agesilaus laid his right hand upon it, and having endured the torture without a groan, he was freed from his bonds, saying, "All we Athenians are of this sort; and if you disbelieve it, I will lay down my left hand as well." Xerxes, seized with fear, ordered him to be kept under guard — so Agatharchides of Samos records in the second book of his Persian History.
Porsenna, king of the Tuscans, campaigned across the river Thymbris and made war on the Romans, and by seizing the abundance of provisions on which they depended, he wore them down with famine. When the Senate was thrown into confusion, Mucius, a man of distinction, took four hundred of his contemporaries of consular rank and, in the dress of a private citizen, crossed the river. Seeing the tyrant's bodyguard distributing provisions to the generals, he mistook him for Porsenna himself and killed him. Led before the king, he laid his right hand upon the sacrificial fire, and enduring the pain with steadfast spirit, he smiled and said, "Barbarian, I am set free, even against your will; and know that we are four hundred strong against you in the camp, seeking to kill you." The king, seized with fear, made a truce with the Romans — so Aristides of Miletus records in the third book of his History.
While the Argives and the Lacedaemonians were at war over the territory of Thyrea, the Amphictyons decided that both sides should fight it out and that the land should belong to the victors. The Lacedaemonians made Othryades their general, the Argives Thersander. When the fighting was over, only two of the Argives were left, Agenor and Chromius, who carried word of the victory back to their city. In the quiet that followed, Othryades, though still alive, propped himself up on broken spear-shafts and stripped the shields from all the dead, then set up a trophy inscribed, in his own blood, "To Zeus, giver of trophies."
When the two sides disputed the outcome, the Amphictyons, having witnessed it themselves, judged in favor of the Lacedaemonians — as Chrysermus records in the third book of his Peloponnesian History. The Romans, at war with the Samnites, chose as general Misthynius Amblirenus. This man, ambushed at the place called the Caudine Forks — a very narrow passage — lost three legions, and he himself, mortally wounded, fell. Living on a little while in the deep of the night, he stripped the shields from the slain enemy,
dipped his hand in their blood, and set up a trophy inscribed, "The Romans against the Samnites, to Zeus giver of trophies." Maius, surnamed Laemargus, sent out as general and arriving at the place, saw the trophy and gladly welcomed the omen. Joining battle, he won, and taking the king captive, he sent him to Rome — so Aristides of Miletus records in the third book of his Italian History.
When the Persians were advancing on Greece with five million men, Leonidas was sent to Thermopylae by the Lacedaemonians with three hundred men. While they were feasting there, the barbarian horde bore down upon them, and Leonidas, seeing the barbarians, said, "Eat your breakfast as men who will dine in Hades." And charging against the barbarians, though pierced through by many spears, he made his way up to Xerxes himself and tore off his diadem.
When he had died, the barbarian cut open his heart and found it shaggy — as Aristides records in the first book of his Persian History. The Romans, at war with the Carthaginians, sent out three hundred men and, as general, Fabius Maximus. Joining battle, he lost all his men, and he himself, mortally wounded, charged with a rush against Hannibal, and tearing off his diadem, died together with him — so Aristides of Miletus records. Near the city of Celaenae in Phrygia
a chasm opened up together with water and dragged many households, occupants and all, down into the depths. King Midas received an oracle that if he cast in the most precious thing he had, the chasm would close up. He cast in gold and silver, but it did no good. His son Anchurus, reasoning that nothing in life is more precious than a human soul, embraced his father and his wife Timothea, and mounted on horseback rode into
the place of the chasm. When the earth closed over him, Midas made a golden altar, dedicating it by touching it with his own hand to Zeus of Ida. This altar, at the time when the chasm occurred, turns to stone; but when the appointed period has passed, it is seen to be golden — so Callisthenes records in the second book of his Metamorphoses. The Tiber, flowing through the middle of the marketplace, through the wrath of Zeus of Tarsus, tore away
a great embankment and submerged many houses. An oracle was given that the calamity would cease if they cast in what was most precious. When people cast in gold and silver, Curtius, a young man of distinction, understanding the oracle and reckoning the soul more precious, hurled himself on horseback into the chasm and saved his kinsfolk from disaster — so Aristides records in the fortieth book of his Italian History. While the captains feasting together with Polynices were at their meal, an eagle
swooped down, snatched up Amphiaraus's spear, carried it aloft, and let it fall; and where it stuck fast in the ground, it became a laurel tree. The next day, when the fighting resumed, Amphiaraus was swallowed up on that very spot together with his chariot, where now the city called Harma stands — so Trisimachus records in the third book of his Foundations. When the Romans were at war with Pyrrhus of Epirus, Aemilius Paulus received an oracle that he would win if he built an altar wherever he saw hidden in a chasm
a man of distinction together with his chariot. Three days later Valerius Conatus, having seen in a dream that he should put on the priest's regalia — for he was skilled in divination — after serving as general and killing many, was swallowed up beneath the earth. Aemilius, having set up the altar, won the victory and sent one hundred and sixty tower-bearing elephants back to Rome. This altar gives oracles at the very time of year in which Pyrrhus was defeated — as
Critolaus records in the third book of his Epirote History. Pyraechmes, king of the Euboeans, made war on the Boeotians. Heracles, while still a young man, defeated him, and binding Pyraechmes to colts and tearing him in two, cast him out unburied. The place is called "the Colts of Pyraechmes"; it lies by the river Heracleus, and it emits a whinnying sound when horses drink from it — as recorded in the third book On Rivers. Tullus Hostilius, king of the Romans, made war on the Albans,
whose king was Mettius Fufetius, and he kept putting off the battle again and again. His men, thinking him defeated, turned to feasting; and while they were drunk with wine, he attacked them, and yoking the king to two colts, tore him apart — so Alexarchus records in the fourth book of his Italian History. Philip, wishing to sack Methone and Olynthus, and forcing his way across the river Sandanus, was struck in the eye by an arrow shot by one of the Olynthians, a man named Aster, who said as he shot,
"Aster sends a deadly shaft to Philip." Philip swam back to his own men and was saved, though he lost his eye — so Callisthenes records in the third book of his Macedonian History. Porsenna, king of the Tuscans, campaigned across the river Thymbris and made war on the Romans, and by seizing the abundance of provisions on which they depended, he wore them down with famine. Horatius Cocles, chosen general, held the wooden bridge and checked the barbarian horde
that wished to cross. Being overpowered by the enemy, he ordered his men to cut away the bridge, and so prevented the barbarian multitude from crossing. Struck in the eye by a missile, he threw himself into the river and swam back to his own men — so Theotimus records in the second book of his Italian History. The tale of Icarius, whose guest Dionysus became — as Eratosthenes tells it in his Erigone. Cronus, made a guest
of a farmer who had a beautiful daughter named Entoria, forced himself upon her and fathered sons, Ianus, Hymnus, Faustus, and Felix. Having taught the manner of drinking wine and the cultivation of the vine, he saw fit to share it also with the neighbors. When they did so and drank contrary to their custom, they fell into a heavier sleep than usual; and thinking themselves poisoned, they stoned Icarius to death and killed him.
His granddaughters, in despair, ended their lives by hanging themselves. When a plague seized the Romans, the Pythian oracle declared that it would cease if they propitiated the wrath of Cronus and the spirits of those who had died unlawfully. Lutatius Catulus, a man of distinction, built a sacred precinct for the god situated close to the Tarpeian rock, and set up on it an altar with four faces, either on account of the granddaughters, or because
the year has four parts; and he established the month of January. Cronus turned them all into stars, and they are called "the fore-vintagers," while Ianus rises before them; the star is seen before the feet of the Virgin — so Critolaus records in the fourth book of his Phenomena. While the Persians were plundering Greece, Pausanias, general of the Lacedaemonians, having received five hundred talents of gold from Xerxes, was about to betray Sparta.
When this was discovered, his father Agesilaus pursued him as far as the temple of Athena of the Bronze House, and blocking up the doors of the sanctuary with brick, killed him by starvation; his mother even cast him out unburied — so Chrysermus records in the second book of his History. The Romans, at war with the Latins, chose as general Publius Decius. A certain young man of distinction, poor, named Cassius Brutus, wished for an agreed price to open the
gates by night. Discovered, he fled into the temple of Athena the Helper. His father, Cassius Signifer, shut him in and killed him by starvation, and cast him out unburied — so Cleitonymus records in his Italian History. Darius the Persian, having fought Alexander at the Granicus and lost seven satraps and five hundred and two scythed chariots, was about to join battle on the following day. Ariobarzanes, his son, being sympathetic toward
Alexander, promised to betray his father. His father, enraged, cut off his head — so Aretades of Cnidus records in the third book of his Macedonian History. Brutus, elected consul by all, drove into exile Tarquin the Proud, who had been behaving tyrannically. He went to the Tuscans and made war on the Romans. His sons wished to betray their father to him. When they were caught, their heads were cut off — so Aristides of Miletus records in his Italian History. Epaminondas, general of the Thebans,
being at war with the Lacedaemonians, and while the elections were being held, went home, instructing his son Stesimbrotus not to engage in battle. The Lacedaemonians, learning of his absence, reviled the young man as unmanly; he, enraged, and forgetting his father's order, joined battle and won. His father, taking it hard, crowned him and then cut off his head — so Ctesiphon records in the third book of his Boeotian History. The Romans, at war with the Samnites, chose as general Mallius,
surnamed Epitactes. Traveling to Rome for the consular election, he instructed his son not to engage in battle. The Samnites, learning of this, reviled the young man with insults; he, provoked, won the battle, and Mallius cut off his head — so Aristides of Miletus records. Heracles, failing to win the hand of Iole in marriage, sacked Oechalia. Iole threw herself from the wall, but it happened that, her garment billowing out
in the wind, she suffered no harm — so Nicias of Mallos records. The Romans, at war with the Tuscans, chose as general Valerius Torquatus. Having seen the daughter of the king, named Clusia, he asked the Tuscan for his daughter's hand; failing to obtain her, he besieged the city. Clusia threw herself from the towers, and by the providence of Aphrodite, her garment billowing out, she reached the ground safely. Her
the general then violated, and for all these deeds he was banished by common decree of the Romans to the island of Corsica off Italy — so Theophilus records in the third book of his Italian History. When the Carthaginians and Sicilians were preparing an alliance against the Romans, the general Metellus alone failed to sacrifice to Hestia, and she sent a wind against his ships. Gaius Julius, a seer, said the wind would cease if he sacrificed his daughter beforehand.
Compelled, he brought forward his daughter Metalia; but Hestia, taking pity, substituted a heifer in her place, and carried the girl off to Lamusium, and appointed her priestess of the serpent worshiped there — so Pythocles records in the third book of his Italian History. The story of Iphigenia at Aulis in Boeotia is told similarly by Menyllus in the first book of his Boeotian History. Brennus, king of the Gauls, while plundering Asia, came to Ephesus, and fell in love with a maiden, Demonice,
who promised to unite with him if he would give her the bracelets and ornaments of the women, and would betray Ephesus to him. He bade his soldiers throw into her lap, in her greed for gold, all the gold they had. When they did so, she was buried alive beneath the abundance of gold — so Cleitophon records in the first book of his Galatian History. Tarpeia, one of the well-born maidens who guarded the Capitoline,
when the Romans were at war with the Sabines, promised Tatius she would give him entry to the Tarpeian rock if she received as payment the armlets which they wore as ornament. The Sabines did so, and buried her alive — so Aristides of Miletus records in his Italian History. When a long war arose between the Tegeans and the Pheneans, it was decided to send triplet brothers to fight for the victory. The Tegeans put forward the sons of Rheximachus, the Pheneans
the sons of Demostratus. When battle was joined, two of Rheximachus's sons were killed; the third, named Critolaus, got the better of the remaining two by a stratagem — feigning flight, he killed each of his pursuers one by one. When he returned, everyone else rejoiced, but his sister Demodice alone did not rejoice, for he had killed her betrothed, Demodicus. Critolaus, resenting this injustice, killed
...only the sister Horatia did not join in the rejoicing over him for having killed Curiatius, her betrothed husband; and he killed his sister, as Aristides of Miletus says in his Italian Histories.
When the temple of Athena at Troy caught fire, Ilus ran up and seized the Palladium that had fallen from the sky, and was struck blind—for it was not permitted to be seen by a man—but afterward, having propitiated the goddess, he regained his sight, as Dercyllus says in the first book of his Foundations.
Antylus, a man of distinction, was on his way to the suburb when he was stopped by crows striking him with their wings. Frightened by the omen, he turned back to Rome. There he saw the precinct of Vesta on fire, and when he snatched up the Palladium he was struck blind; but afterward, having made atonement, he regained his sight, as Aristides of Miletus says in his Italian Histories.
The Thracians, at war with the Athenians, received an oracle that they would win if they spared Codrus. But he, taking a sickle, went among the enemy in the guise of a common man, and after killing one man was slain by another. Thus the Athenians won the victory, as Socrates says in the second book of his Thracian History.
Publius Decius, while at war with the Albans, saw in a dream that if he died, he would win Rome for the Romans. He charged into the midst of the enemy, killed many, and was slain. In like manner his son Decius, in the war against the Gauls, saved the Romans, as Aristides of Miletus records.
Cyanippus, a Syracusan by birth, alone refused to sacrifice to Dionysus. The god, angered, cast a fit of drunkenness upon him, and in a dark place he raped his own daughter Cyane. She removed his ring and gave it to her nurse, to serve later as a token of recognition. When a plague struck the city and the Pythia declared that the impious man must be sacrificed to the gods who avert evil, and the rest did not know who was meant by the oracle, Cyane, who did know, seized him by the hair and dragged him forth, slaughtered her father with her own hands, and then killed herself, as Dositheus says in the third book of his Sicilian History.
When the festival of Dionysus was being celebrated in Rome, Aruntius, a lifelong water-drinker, scorned the power of the god. The god cast drunkenness upon him and he raped his daughter Medullina. She, recognizing his identity from a ring, and showing a wisdom beyond her years, made her father drunk, crowned him with a garland, led him to the altar of the Lightning-goddess, and in tears killed the man who had plotted against her virginity, as Aristides says in the third book of his Italian Histories.
Erechtheus, at war with Eumolpus, learned that he would win if he sacrificed his daughter beforehand, and after consulting his wife Praxithea he sacrificed the girl. Euripides mentions this in his Erechtheus.
Marius, at war with the Cimbri and being defeated, saw in a dream that he would win if he sacrificed his daughter beforehand—her name was Calpurnia. Valuing his fellow citizens above his own natural feeling, he did the deed and won the victory. And even now there stand two altars in Germany which, at that same hour each year, send forth the sound of trumpets, as Dorotheus says in the fourth book of his Italian Histories.
Cyanippus, a Thessalian by birth, was constantly going out hunting; and his newly wed wife, suspecting that because he so often stayed away in the woods he must be keeping company with another woman, followed his tracks. Hiding herself in a thicket, she waited to see what would happen. When the branches stirred, the dogs, supposing it to be a wild beast, rushed at her and tore apart the loving wife as though she were an irrational animal. Cyanippus, having witnessed with his own eyes this unlooked-for deed, killed himself, as the poet Parthenius records.
In Sybaris, a city of Italy, there was a young man, Aemilius, remarkable for his beauty and fond of hunting; and his newly wed wife, thinking he was keeping company with another woman, went into the glen to watch. When the trees stirred, the dogs ran at her and tore her apart, and he killed himself, as Clitonymus says in the second book of his Sybaritic History.
Smyrna, daughter of Cinyras, because of the wrath of Aphrodite fell in love with her own father, and revealed to her nurse the compulsion of her passion. The nurse led her master on by a trick, saying that a young neighbor woman was in love with him but was too ashamed to approach him openly. He agreed to the meeting. But once, wishing to know who his lover was, he called for a light, and on seeing her he drew his sword and pursued the shameless girl. By the providence of Aphrodite she was transformed into the tree that bears her name, as Theodorus relates in his Metamorphoses.
Valeria of Tusculum, because of the wrath of Aphrodite, fell in love with Valerius, her father, and confided in her nurse. The nurse deceived her master, telling him that the girl was too ashamed to be intimate face to face, and that the maiden was one of the neighbors. Once made drunk with wine, the father asked for a light, but the nurse got ahead of him and roused him first—the nurse who, out on the farm, happened to be pregnant herself; and once, when she had thrown herself down over a cliff, the infant survived; and coming down from there she found herself pregnant again, and at the appointed time gave birth to Aegipan, called in the Roman tongue Silvanus. Valerius, in despair, threw himself down from that same cliff, as Aristides of Miletus says in the third book of his Italian Histories.
After the sack of Troy, Diomedes was cast ashore in Libya, where Lycus was king and had the custom of sacrificing strangers to his father Ares. Callirhoe, his daughter, fell in love with Diomedes, betrayed her father, and saved Diomedes by loosing his bonds; but he, showing no regard for his benefactress, sailed away, and she ended her life by hanging herself, as Juba says in the third book of his Libyan History.
Calpurnius Crassus, a man of distinction serving with Regulus, was sent against the Massylians to storm a hard-to-take fortress named Garaetium. Taken captive, he was about to be sacrificed to Cronus. But Bisaltia, the king's daughter, fell in love with him, betrayed her father, and made him victorious. But when he sailed back home, the girl killed herself, as Hesianax says in the third book of his Libyan History.
Priam sent Polydorus away to Thrace, along with gold, to his son-in-law Polymestor. When the city was on the verge of being sacked, Polymestor, after its fall, killed the boy in order to gain the gold. Hecuba, coming to that region and craftily pretending that she would give him gold along with the captive women, blinded him with her own hands, as Euripides the tragic poet relates.
When Hannibal was ravaging Campania, Lucius Thymbris placed his son Rustius, along with money, in the care of his son-in-law Valerius Gestius. Gestius won out—but when the Campanian heard of the money, greed led him to violate the claims of nature, and he murdered the boy. Thymbris, traveling through the countryside, came upon his son's body and sent word to his son-in-law, as though he would show him buried treasure; and when Gestius came, Thymbris blinded him and crucified him, as Aristides says in the third book of his Italian Histories.
Phocus, born to Aeacus by Psamathe, was much loved by him; Telamon took him hunting, and when a boar appeared, he hurled his spear instead at the brother he hated, and killed him. Their father banished him for it, as Dorotheus says in the first book of his Metamorphoses.
Gaius Maximus had two sons, Similius and Rhesus; the latter he had fathered by Ameria of the hounds. This Rhesus, while hunting, killed his brother, and on returning claimed it had happened by mischance, not by design. But when the father learned the truth he banished him, as Aristocles says in the third book of his Italian Histories.
Ares lay with Althaea and fathered Meleager, as Euripides relates in his Meleager.
Septimius Marcellus, having married Silvia, devoted himself much to hunting; his newly wed wife, in the guise of a shepherd, was raped by Ares and made pregnant. Ares revealed who he was and gave her a spear, saying that the fortune of the child yet to be born rested within it. Thus Septimius came to kill Tuscinus. Mamercus, when sacrificing to the gods for a good harvest, neglected Demeter alone; and she sent a boar against him. Gathering many huntsmen, he killed it, and gave its head and hide to the woman betrothed to him. But Scymbrates and Muthias, her maternal uncles, took the trophies away from the girl. Enraged, Mamercus killed his kinsmen; and the mother burned the spear, as Menyllus says in the third book of his Italian Histories.
Telamon, son of Aeacus and Endeis, went to Euboea and by night eloped with a girl. Her father, discovering this and suspecting one of the citizens, handed his daughter over to one of his guards to be drowned at sea. But the guard, taking pity on her, sold her instead; and when the ship put in at Salamis, Telamon bought her, and she bore Ajax, as Aretades of Cnidus says in the second book of his Island History.
Lucius Troscius had a daughter, Florentia, by his wife Patris. Calpurnius, a Roman, seduced her. Troscius handed the girl over to be drowned; but the guard took pity on her and sold her instead. By chance the ship put in at Italy, and Calpurnius bought her and fathered by her a son, Contruscus.
Aeolus, king of Tyrrhenia, had by Amphithea six daughters and an equal number of sons. Macareus, the youngest, in his passion seduced one of his sisters, and she conceived a child. When it happened, and their father sent a sword, she judged herself guilty of a lawless act and took her own life; and Macareus did likewise, as Sostratus says in the second book of his Tyrrhenian History.
Papirius Tolucer married Julia Pulchra and had six daughters and an equal number of sons. The eldest of these, Papirius Romanus, fell in love with his sister Canulia and got her with child. When their father learned of it, he sent a sword to his daughter; she killed herself with it, and Romanus did the same, as Chrysippus says in the first book of his Italian Histories.
Aristonymus of Ephesus, son of Demostratus, hated women and instead had intercourse with a she-ass; in time she bore a most beautiful daughter named Onoscelis, as Aristotle says in the second book of his Wonders.
Fulvius Stellus, hating women, had intercourse with a mare; in time she bore a beautiful girl whom he named Epona, who is a goddess who watches over horses, as Agesilaus says in the third book of his Italian Histories.
The Sardians, at war with the Smyrnaeans, encamped around their walls, and sent word by envoys that they would not withdraw unless the women of the city were handed over to them to lie with them. Since the Smyrnaeans, under this compulsion, were about to suffer terribly, one of the household's maidservants, a woman of good character, ran to her master Philarchus and said that they should dress up the maidservants and send them in place of the free women—which indeed they did. The enemy, worn out by the servant women, were captured. Hence even now among the Smyrnaeans a festival called the Eleutheria is held, in which slave women wear the finery of free women, as Dositheus says in the third book of his Lydian History.
Atepomarus, king of the Gauls, at war with the Romans, declared he would not withdraw unless the women were handed over to him for intercourse. On the advice of the maidservants, the Romans sent the slave women instead; and the barbarians, worn out by unceasing intercourse, fell asleep. Then Retana—for she was the one who had given this advice—took hold of a wild fig tree, climbed up the wall, and gave word to the consuls, who then attacked and won. From this the festival of the maidservants takes its name, as Aristides of Miletus says in the first book of his Italian Histories.
When the Athenians were at war with Eumolpus and their food supply proved insufficient, Pyrandrus, the steward of the public funds, reduced the ration in order to economize; but his fellow citizens, suspecting him of treachery, stoned him to death, as Callisthenes says in the third book of his Thracian History.
When the Romans were at war with the Gauls and their food supply proved insufficient, Cinna reduced the people's grain ration; and the Romans, suspecting he was aiming at kingship, stoned him to death, as Aristides says in the third book of his Italian Histories.
In the Peloponnesian War, Pisistratus of Orchomenus hated the nobly born and favored the common people. The members of the council plotted to murder him, and having cut him to pieces they threw the parts into their robes, and scraped the ground clean to hide the blood. The common crowd, growing suspicious, ran to the council chamber. But Tlesimachus, the king's younger son, who knew of the conspiracy, drew the crowd away from the assembly, telling them he had seen his father rushing off with great speed to Mount Pisaeus, having taken on a form larger than any man's. And so the crowd was deceived, as Theophilus says in the second book of his Peloponnesian History.
On account of the wars with neighboring peoples, the Roman Senate withdrew the people's grain ration. King Romulus, taking this badly, restored it to the people, and punished many of the great men. These men murdered him in the Senate house, cut him to pieces, and hid the parts in their robes. The Romans then rushed toward the Senate house with fire. But Proclus, a man of distinction, who was responsible for the deed, declared that he had seen Romulus on a mountain, grown larger than any man and become a god. The Romans, believing him, withdrew, as Aristobulus says in the third book of his Italian Histories.
Pelops, son of Tantalus and Euryanassa, married Hippodamia and had by her Atreus and Thyestes; and by the nymph Danais he had Chrysippus, whom he loved more than his legitimate sons. Laius the Theban, desiring him, carried him off. Seized by Thyestes and Atreus, he received mercy from Pelops on account of his love for the boy. Hippodamia tried to persuade Atreus and Thyestes to kill Chrysippus, knowing he would be a rival claimant to the throne; but when they refused, she stained her own hands with the crime. In the dead of night, while Laius slept, she drew a sword, wounded Chrysippus, and left the sword planted in the wound. Laius, suspected because of the sword, was cleared when the half-dead Chrysippus confessed the truth. And Pelops, after burying Chrysippus, banished Hippodamia, as Dositheus says in his Pelopidae.
Hebius Tolieix married Nuceria and had two sons by her; he also had, by a freedwoman, a son named Firmus, remarkable for his beauty, whom he loved more than his legitimate sons. Nuceria, hating this stepson for his wickedness, tried to persuade her own sons to kill him. When they piously refused, she herself carried out the murder, and at night, taking the sword of the bodyguard, dealt the sleeping boy a fatal wound, leaving the sword behind. When the bodyguard came under suspicion, the boy—before dying—told the truth. Hebius buried him and banished his wife, as Dositheus says in the third book of his Italian Histories.
Theseus, in truth a son of Poseidon, who had by the Amazon Hippolyta a son, Hippolytus, married as a second wife Phaedra, daughter of Minos, who fell into desire for her stepson and sent her nurse to him. Hippolytus, however, left Athens, went to Troezen, and devoted himself there to hunting. The shameless woman, failing in her intent, wrote false letters accusing the chaste young man and hanged herself. Theseus, believing them, asked Poseidon to destroy Hippolytus, using one of the three wishes he held from the god. Poseidon sent a bull against him as he happened to be driving his chariot along the shore, and terrified the horses, which dashed Hippolytus to pieces.
Comminius Super Laurentinus, who had a son named Comminius by the nymph Egeria, brought in a stepmother, Gindica; she fell in love with her stepson, and when she failed to win him, ended her life by hanging herself, leaving behind false letters. Comminius, reading the accusations and believing them in his jealous rage, called upon Poseidon, who showed a bull to the boy as he rode along in his chariot, and the horses dragged the young man to his death and destroyed him, as Dositheus says in the third book of his Italian Histories.
When a plague gripped Lacedaemon, the god declared by oracle that it would cease if they sacrificed a nobly born maiden each year. Once, when Helen was chosen by lot and led forth adorned for the sacrifice, an eagle swooped down, snatched away the sacrificial knife, and carried it to the cattle herds, where it dropped it upon a heifer; from that time they abstained from the killing of maidens, as Aristodemus says in the third book of his Mythical Collection.
When plague seized Falerii and destruction spread, an oracle was given that the calamity would abate if they sacrificed a virgin to Hera every year. As the superstition persisted, a woman chosen by lot, Valeria Luperca, was being led to the sacrifice. But when she drew her sword, an eagle swooped down, snatched it, and set upon the sacrificial fire a little rod topped with a hammer, while it cast the sword onto a heifer that was grazing near the temple.
The girl understood, sacrificed the heifer, took up the hammer, and went about from house to house, gently striking those who were sick and rousing them, saying to each one, "Be well." From this the mystery rite is still performed today, as Aristides records in the nineteenth book of his Italian History.
Philonome, daughter of Nyctimus and Arcadia, used to hunt together with Artemis. Ares, taking the form of a shepherd, made her pregnant. When she had borne twin sons and feared her father, she threw them into the river Erymanthus. By providence they were carried along unharmed and were brought to rest inside a hollow oak, where a she-wolf denning there threw her own cubs into the stream and offered her teat to the infants instead. A shepherd named Tyliphus, who witnessed this, took up the boys and raised them as his own, naming one Lycastus and the other Parrhasius; these succeeded to the kingship of the Arcadians, as Zopyrus of Byzantium records in the third book of his Histories.
Amulius, who treated his brother Numitor tyrannically, killed his son Aenitus while hunting and made his daughter Silvia a priestess of Hera at Julia. Ares made her pregnant, and she bore twins and confessed the truth to the tyrant. He, in fear, drowned both children, casting them in beside the banks of the Thymbris.
They were carried to a place where a she-wolf that had just given birth was denning; she threw away her own cubs and nursed the infants instead. A shepherd named Faustus, who witnessed this, raised the boys, and named the one Remus and the other Romulus — the founders of Rome, as Aristides of Miletus records in his Italian History.
After the fall of Troy, Agamemnon was killed together with Cassandra. Orestes, raised by Strophius, avenged his father's murderers, as Pyrander records in the fourth book of his Peloponnesian History.
Fabius Fabricianus, a kinsman of Fabius the Great, sacked Tuxium, the chief city of the Samnites, and sent to Rome the image of Victorious Aphrodite honored among them. His wife Fabia, seduced by a handsome young man named Petronius Valentinus, murdered her husband by treachery.
Fabia saved her brother Fabricianus, still an infant, from the danger and sent him away to be raised in secret. When the young man reached manhood he killed both his mother and her lover, and was acquitted by the Senate, as Dositheus relates in the third book of his Italian History.
Busiris, son of Poseidon and Anippe daughter of the Nile, used to sacrifice travelers under a treacherous show of hospitality; but the vengeance owed to the dead pursued him, for Heracles set upon him with his club and killed him, as Agathon of Samos records.
As Heracles was driving the cattle of Geryon through Italy, he was received as a guest by King Faunus, son of Hermes, who used to sacrifice his guests to his father. When he attempted this against Heracles, he was killed, as Dercyllus records in the third book of his Italian History.
Phalaris, tyrant of the Acragantines, savagely tortured and punished the strangers who passed through his land. Perillus, a bronze-worker by trade, fashioned a bronze bull and gave it to the king, so that he might burn strangers alive within it.
But the king, becoming just for that one occasion only, cast Perillus himself into it; and the bull was said to give out a bellowing sound, as is told in the second book of the Causes. In the city of Aegesta in Sicily there arose a certain savage tyrant, Aemilius Censorinus. This man used to reward those who devised newer instruments of torture. One man, Aruntius Paterculus, fashioned a bronze horse and gave it as a gift to the aforesaid tyrant, so that he might use it to hurl his victims.
The tyrant, then behaving justly for the first and only time, seized the very man who had given him the gift and hurled him in it, so that the torture he had devised for others he himself might suffer first. Seizing him, he then threw him from the Tarpeian Rock. And it seems that those who ruled cruelly afterward were called "Aemilii" after him, as Aristides records in the fourth book of his Italian History.
Evenus, son of Ares and Sterope the daughter of Oenomaus, married Alcippe and fathered a daughter, Marpessa, whom he guarded as a virgin. But Idas, son of Aphareus, seeing her, snatched her from a dance and fled. Her father pursued but, failing to catch him, threw himself into the river Lycormas and became immortal, as Dositheus records in the first book of his Italian History.
Annius, king of the Tuscans, had a beautiful daughter named Salia, whom he kept guarded as a virgin. Cathetus, one of the notable men,
seeing the girl at play, fell in love with her, and unable to contain his passion, seized her and carried her off to Rome. Her father pursued but, failing to catch him, leapt into the river Pareusius, which was renamed the Annio after him. Cathetus, uniting with Salia, fathered Latinus and Salius, from whom the noblest families traced their descent, as Aristides of Miletus and Alexander Polyhistor record in the third book
of his Italian History. Hegesistratus, a man of Ephesus, having committed murder within his own family, fled to Delphi and asked the god where he should settle. Apollo answered that it should be wherever he saw rustic people dancing, crowned with olive branches. Coming to a certain place in Asia and seeing farmers crowned with olive leaves and dancing, he founded a city there and named it Elaeus, as Pythocles of Samos records in the third book
of his Georgics. Telegonus, son of Odysseus and Circe, was sent out to search for his father, and was told to found a city wherever he saw farmers crowned and dancing. Coming to a certain place in Italy and seeing rustic people crowned with branches of holm-oak and given over to dancing, he founded a city, naming it Prinistus after the occasion, which the Romans, by alteration, call Praeneste, as Aristocles records in the third book of his Italian History.

======== Moralia: Platonicae Quaestiones ========

Why in the world did the god command Socrates to serve as midwife to others but forbade him to give birth himself, as is said in the Theaetetus? For he would not, without irony or playfulness, have made use of the god's name in this way. And elsewhere too, in the Theaetetus, Plato has attributed to Socrates many lofty and haughty claims, among which are also these: "For indeed, my remarkable friend, many have been so disposed toward me that they are simply ready to bite me, whenever I take away some piece of nonsense of theirs, and they do not think I do this out of goodwill, being far from knowing that no god is ill-disposed toward men; nor do I do any such thing out of ill will, but it is in no way right for me to concede a falsehood and suppress the truth."
Did he then call his own nature a god because it was more discerning or more productive — as Menander says, "our mind is our god," and Heraclitus, "a man's character is his daimon"? Or did he mean to indicate that something truly divine and daimonic was the cause for Socrates of this kind of philosophy, by which, in examining others, he freed them always from conceit and error and pretension, and from being burdensome first to themselves and then to those they spent time with? For indeed, as if by chance, there occurred at that time a great abundance of sophists in Greece, and the young men, paying them a great deal of money, were filled with self-conceit and with the appearance of wisdom, and they aspired to leisure devoted to argument and to unproductive pursuits spent in contentiousness and rivalry for honor, but nothing noble or useful whatever. So Socrates, possessing his refutative style of argument as a kind of purgative medicine, was trustworthy in refuting others because he asserted nothing himself, and he took hold of people all the more because he seemed to be seeking the truth in common, not defending some private opinion of his own.
Then again, since judging is beneficial, begetting is an impediment to it. For what loves is blinded concerning what it loves, and nothing of one's own is so loved by the one who begot it as his opinion and argument. For the so-called fairest distribution of children is, when applied to arguments, most unfair; for there one must take what is one's own, but here, even if it belongs to another, one must take the best. Hence the one who begets his own arguments becomes a worse judge than others. And just as one of the wise men said that the Eleans would make better judges of the Olympic games if not a single Elean were a contestant, so the man who is going to preside rightly over arguments and adjudicate them has no right himself to be a lover of crowns or to compete against those being judged. And indeed the generals of the Greeks, when casting their votes for the prize of valor, all judged themselves to be the best; and there is no philosopher who has not experienced this same thing, apart from those like Socrates who confess to asserting nothing of their own. These alone present themselves as pure and incorruptible judges of the truth. For just as the air within the ears, if it is not steady and free of its own sound but full of ringing and rushing noise, does not accurately receive the sounds spoken to it, so too that which judges arguments in philosophy, if it clatters and echoes from within, will be hard put to understand what is said from outside. For one's own opinion, being a housemate, will not admit what disagrees with it, as is attested by the multitude of philosophical schools, of which, if philosophy is doing at its best, only one is on the right track, while all the others suppose themselves to be so and are in fact fighting against the truth.
Further, then, if nothing is graspable and knowable by man, the god quite reasonably prevented him from begetting things airy and false and unstable, but compelled him to refute others who held such opinions. For this was no small benefit but the greatest, this argument that delivered men from the greatest of evils, deception and empty-headed conceit — a benefit which not even the sons of Asclepius could give. For Socrates' healing was not of the body but a purification of a soul that was corrupt and diseased. And if there is knowledge of the truth, and the truth is one, the one who learns it has no less than the one who discovered it, from the one who discovered it; indeed the one who is not convinced that he already possesses it grasps it all the more, and grasps the best of everything, just as one who has not himself begotten a child adopts the best one there is. But consider whether it is not the case that everything else — poems and branches of learning and the speeches of rhetoricians and the doctrines of sophists, which the daimonic sign prevented Socrates from begetting — was worth no serious effort at all; whereas that which Socrates alone considered wisdom, concerning the divine and the intelligible, which he himself called "erotic" wisdom, has for men no coming-into-being or discovery, but only recollection. Hence Socrates taught nothing, but by supplying the starting points of perplexities, as if of birth pangs, he roused and stirred up and helped draw out the innate thoughts in the young; and this he called the art of midwifery, which does not implant intelligence from outside, as others pretended to do, in those they met, but shows that they have it as their own within themselves, though incomplete and confused, and in need of one to nourish and confirm it.
Why in the world did he call the highest god the father and maker of all things? Is it because he is father of the begotten gods and of men, as Homer calls him, but maker of things irrational and inanimate? For Chrysippus says that not even the one who supplies the seed is called the father of the afterbirth, although it too comes from the seed. Or is he using metaphor, as he is accustomed to do, and has called the cause "father" of the cosmos — just as in the Symposium he called Phaedrus "father" of erotic discourses, since he was their originator, while in the dialogue named after him he called him "father of beautiful children," because many beautiful arguments in philosophy came into being once he had supplied their starting point? Or does "father" differ from "maker," and does begetting differ from making? For just as what has been begotten has also been made, but not the reverse, so too what has begotten has also made; for begetting is the making of something ensouled. And of a maker — such as a builder, a weaver, a craftsman of a lyre or of a statue — the work, once it comes into being, is separated off from him; but the origin and power that comes from the begetter is blended into the offspring and holds its nature together, since it is a fragment and a part of the one who begot it. Since, then, the cosmos does not resemble things molded or fitted together as artifacts, but there is in it a great portion of life and divinity, which god sowed into it from himself and mixed with matter, he is fittingly called, since the cosmos has become a living creature, both father of the cosmos and its maker.
Since these considerations especially touch on Plato's own view, consider whether this too might plausibly be said: that, there being two things of which the cosmos is composed, body and soul, the one — the body — the god did not beget, but rather, matter supplying it, he shaped and fitted it together, binding the unlimited with its proper limits and shapes; whereas the soul, having a share in mind and reasoning and harmony, is not merely a work of god but also a part of him, having come to be not only by him but also from him and out of him.
"In the Republic, having divided the whole, as it were, into a single line cut into unequal segments, and then cutting each segment again into two according to the same ratio," he made, concerning all things, both the class of the visible and the class of the intelligible; and of the intelligible he declares the primary sort to be that which concerns the first forms, the second the mathematical; and of the sensible, the first to be solid bodies, the second their images and likenesses; and he assigns to each of the four its own proper criterion — mind to the first, understanding to the mathematical, belief to sensible things, and conjecture to those concerned with likenesses and images. What then was he thinking when he cut the whole into unequal segments, and which of the segments — the intelligible or the sensible — is the greater? He himself has not made this clear. It will seem at first glance that the sensible is greater; for indivisible being, ever remaining the same and in the same state, belongs to the intelligibles, drawn together into something small and pure, whereas the scattered kind, spread about among bodies and wandering, has furnished the sensible. Further, the incorporeal is proper to limit, while body is, in respect of matter, unlimited and indeterminate, but becomes sensible when it is bounded by participation in the intelligible. Further, just as each of the sensible things itself has many images and shadows and likenesses, and in general it is possible, both by nature and by art, for very many imitations to come from a single model, so it is necessary that the things here differ in multitude from the things there, since Plato posits the intelligibles as models and forms, and the sensibles as their images or reflections, so to speak. Further, he derives the understanding of the forms from abstraction and the excision of body, bringing it down through the order of the mathematical disciplines, from arithmetic to geometry, then after this to astronomy, and setting harmonics above all of these. For the objects of geometry come to be when magnitude is added to quantity, and solids when depth is added to magnitude; and the objects of astronomy, when motion is added to the solid; and the objects of harmonics, when sound is added to the moving body. Hence, if we take away sound from moving things, motion from solids, depth from plane figures, and magnitude from quantities, we shall find ourselves among the intelligible forms themselves, which have no difference from one another except in respect of the one and only thing conceived. For a unit does not make a number unless it comes into contact with the indefinite dyad; and having thus made number, it proceeds to points, then to lines, and from these to surfaces and depths and bodies, and to the qualities of bodies as they occur in their affections. Further, of intelligible things there is one criterion, the mind — for understanding too is a kind of mind — since intelligibles are reflected in mathematical objects as in mirrors; but for the knowledge of bodies, because of their multitude, nature has given us five powers and distinct organs of sense; and not everything is detected by these, but much escapes perception because of its smallness. Further, just as each of us, being composed of soul and body, has the ruling and intellective part small and hidden within the great bulk of flesh, so it is likely that the intelligible stands to the sensible in the universe as a whole; for indeed the intelligibles rule over the corporeal, and what proceeds from any principle is less and smaller than the principle itself.
On the other hand, one might say the opposite first, that in comparing the sensible to the intelligible we in a way equate mortal things to the divine, for god is among the intelligibles. Next, everywhere, surely, what is contained is less than what contains it, and the nature of the universe contains the sensible within the intelligible; for god, "having placed the soul in the middle, stretched it through the whole and wrapped the bodies around it from outside." And the soul is invisible and "imperceptible to all the senses," as is said in the Laws; and this is why each one of us is perishable, while the cosmos is not going to perish: for in each of us the mortal and dissoluble element contains within it the living power, but in the cosmos it is the opposite — the corporeal is always kept safe, contained in the middle, by the more sovereign principle which remains ever the same and in the same state. And indeed body is said to be without parts and undivided in the sense of smallness, while the incorporeal and intelligible is so as being simple and unmixed and pure of all solidity and difference. And besides, it is foolish to make inferences about the incorporeal from bodily things. The "now," at any rate, is called without parts and undivided, yet it is present everywhere at once, and no part of the inhabited world is bereft of it, but all affections and actions and all destructions and comings-into-being that occur beneath the cosmos are contained within the "now." And the sole criterion of the intelligible is mind, as sight is of light, on account of simplicity and likeness; but bodies, having many differences and dissimilarities, are naturally apprehended, different ones by different criteria, as by different instruments. But indeed people are not right to despise the intelligible and intellective power within us either; for being great and vast, it surpasses the whole of the sensible and reaches even to things divine. And the greatest point is this: Plato himself, in the Symposium, teaching how one ought to make use of erotic love, leading the soul up from beautiful sensible things to the intelligible, urges that one be subject and enslaved to the beauty neither of some one body, nor of some one pursuit, nor of some one branch of knowledge, but, standing apart from pettiness about these things, "turn toward the great sea of beauty."
Why in the world, having declared the soul to be always older than the body and the cause and origin of its coming-into-being, does he again say that soul could not come to be without body, nor mind without soul, but soul in body, and mind in soul? For it will seem that the body both is and is not, existing together at once with the soul and yet also being generated by the soul. Is what is often said by us true? For the mindless soul and the unformed body coexisted with one another always, and neither of them had a coming-into-being or a beginning; but when the soul partook of mind and harmony, and, having become intelligent through this concordant change, became a cause of change for matter, and, prevailing by its own motions, drew to itself and turned about the motions of that matter, thus the body of the cosmos acquired its coming-into-being from the soul, being given shape and being made to resemble it. For the soul did not fashion the nature of the body out of itself, nor out of what does not exist, but out of a body disordered and unshaped it produced a body ordered and obedient. So then, just as, if one were to say that the power of the seed always exists together with body, yet that the body of the fig tree or of the olive came to be from the seed, he would be saying nothing inconsistent — for the body itself, motion and change having arisen in it from the seed, grew and developed to be of such a kind — so too the shapeless and indeterminate matter, having been given shape by the soul present within it, took on such a form and disposition.
Why, given that of bodies and figures some are rectilinear and some circular, did he take as the starting points of the rectilinear ones the isosceles triangle and the scalene triangle — of which the one constituted the cube, being the element of earth, and the scalene the pyramid and the octahedron and the icosahedron, the one becoming the seed of fire, the other of air, the other of water — while he left aside altogether the circular figures, even though he had mentioned the spherical, in the passage where he says that each of the enumerated figures is capable of dividing a rounded body into equal parts? Did he, as some suspect, assign the dodecahedron to the spherical, saying that with this...
the divine artisan put to use in fashioning that model of the universe." For indeed it is chiefly by the multitude of its elements, and by the obtuseness of its angles, which allows it to escape straightness, that the dodecahedron is easily bent, and by its tension, like the twelve-piece leather balls, becomes rounded and all-enclosing; for it has twenty solid angles, each of which is bounded by three obtuse plane angles, each being one right angle and a fifth. And it has been fitted and compacted together out of twelve equilateral, equiangular pentagons, each of which is composed of thirty of the primary scalene triangles. For this reason it is thought to imitate both the zodiac and the year at once, since its divisions equal them in number.
Or is the straight prior by nature to the curved, or rather wholly so? Is the curved simply an affection of the straight? For the "right" is said to be "bent," and the circle is drawn by a center and a radius; and this radius is a region of a straight line, by which the circle is also measured, for the circumference is everywhere equally distant from the midpoint. A cone and a cylinder are also generated from rectilinear figures: the cone from a triangle carried around one side that remains fixed, together with the other side and the base; the cylinder from a parallelogram undergoing this same process.
Further, of the two the lesser is nearer to the origin, and the straight line is the least of all lines; for of the curved line, the inner part is concave and the outer convex. Further, numbers are prior to figures, for the unit is prior to the point; the point is simply a unit having position. And indeed the unit is triangular, for every triangular number, when multiplied eightfold and increased by a unit, becomes a square number; and this holds true of the unit as well. Therefore the triangle is prior to the circle; and if this is so, the straight line is prior to the curved as well.
Further, the element is not divisible into any of the things composed from it, whereas for other things dissolution proceeds down to the element. If, then, the triangle dissolves into nothing curved, while the two diameters cut the circle into four triangles, then the rectilinear figure would be prior by nature and more elemental than the circular one. That the rectilinear is indeed the antecedent, and the circular something that comes to be afterward, and is a mere attribute, Plato himself indicated: for having constituted the earth out of cubes, each of which is bounded by rectilinear surfaces, he says that its shape has nevertheless become spherical and round.
So there was no need to make some special element for curved things, if this shaping is naturally apt to arise even when rectilinear figures are somehow fitted together with one another. Further, a straight line, whether longer or shorter, preserves the same straightness, but the arcs of circles, when they are smaller, we observe to be more curved and more tightly drawn by their convexity, while when the circles are larger, the arcs are more relaxed; certainly, when people stand upon a convex surface, some touch the underlying plane at a point and others along a line, so that one might suspect that many small straight lines, put together, produce the curved line.
But take care lest none of the circular and spherical things found here in our world is truly exact, but rather, through the tautness and tension of rectilinear elements, or through the smallness of their parts making the difference imperceptible, the round and circular appearance emerges — which is why, of the bodies here, none by nature moves in a circle, but all move in straight lines. But that which is truly spherical: is it not, rather than belonging to any perceptible body, an element of soul and mind, to which he assigns the circular motion as properly belonging by nature?
"How, then, in the Phaedrus, is it said that the nature of the wing, by which what is weighty is lifted upward, has the greatest share in what pertains to the body of the divine?" Is it because the discussion there concerns love, and love concerns bodily beauty, and beauty, by its likeness to things divine, moves and reminds the soul? Or rather should one not labor over this at all, but simply understand that, of the soul's powers relating to the body, since there are several, it is the reasoning and thinking power that has the greatest share in the divine — the power which he said belonged to things divine and heavenly, and which he not inappropriately called a "wing," as lifting the soul up from things lowly and mortal.
"How can Plato ever say that the mutual replacement of motion, on account of there being no void anywhere, is the cause of the effects connected with medical cupping-vessels, and of those connected with swallowing, and with hurled weights, and with the currents of waters, and with thunderbolts, and with the attraction apparently exerted toward amber and the Heraclean stone, and with the concords of musical sounds?" For it will seem strange to assign a single cause to the origin of so many and such dissimilar effects. Now the matter of respiration, as to how it occurs by the mutual replacement of air, he himself has adequately demonstrated;
but as for all the rest, having said that they are wrought as if by wonder-working, and that, there being no void, things push one another around and exchange places, moving toward their own proper seats, he has left the working-out of each case to us. First, then, the matter of the cupping-vessel is as follows: the air enclosed by it next to the flesh, having been set aflame along with heat and having become rarer than the pores of the bronze,
escapes not into an empty space — for there is none — but into the air surrounding the cupping-vessel from outside, and pushes that air away, and that air in turn pushes the air before it; and undergoing and doing this continually, the air in front retreats, grasping after the vacated space which the first air has left; and thus, falling upon the flesh which the cupping-vessel has seized, and seething at the same time, it squeezes out
the moisture into the cupping-vessel. Swallowing occurs in the same manner: for the cavities around the mouth and the throat are always full of air; whenever, then, the food is pressed by the tongue, and the muscles around the tonsils are tensed at the same time, the air, being squeezed out toward the palate, clings to the air retreating before it and pushes the food along with it. As for hurled weights,
the missile splits the air with a blow as it falls upon it and forces it apart, and the air flowing around behind, since it is its nature always to pursue and fill up the space being vacated, follows along with the object released, speeding its motion further. The fall of thunderbolts also resembles a hurling: for the fiery substance, under a blow that occurs within the cloud, leaps out into the air; and that air, breaking back against it, retreats, and again,
colliding with itself from above, thrusts the thunderbolt downward, forcing it against its nature. As for amber, it draws none of the things lying near it, any more than does the lodestone, nor does anything leap toward these of its own accord from what is nearby; but the stone sends out certain heavy and wind-like effluences, by which the contiguous air, being pushed back, thrusts the air before it; and that air, circling around
and flowing back again toward the vacated space, is forced along and drags the iron with it. Amber, on the other hand, has something flame-like or wind-like in it, and it expels this by the friction of its surface, once its pores have been opened up; and while what escapes from it produces the same effect as that of the lodestone, it draws to itself the lightest and driest of the things nearby, because of their thinness and weakness — for such things are not strong,
nor do they have weight or force enough to expel a quantity of air sufficient to overpower larger objects, as the lodestone does. Why, then, does the air push neither stone nor wood, but only iron, and drive it toward the lodestone? This is a difficulty common both to those who suppose the composition occurs by an attraction from the stone, and to those who suppose it occurs by a movement of the iron —
a difficulty which Plato thus works his way around. Iron is neither too rarefied, like wood, nor too dense, like gold or stone, but has pores and channels and roughnesses, on account of its irregularities, that are commensurate with the air, so that it does not slip away but, being held fast by certain seats and counter-pressures possessing a proportionate interlocking, whenever it falls into the current moving toward the stone,
is forced along and driven onward as iron. Such, then, would be the account of these matters. But the flow of waters upon the earth does not offer so easily surveyable a manner of the mutual displacement of the air. Rather, one must observe that still and standing waters, in lakes, remain motionless because the air is poured around them and gathered together on every side by them, motionless, leaving no space anywhere empty. The water on the surface, at any rate, in
lakes and in open seas, is stirred and swells into waves whenever the air takes on a heaving motion; for it follows immediately upon the air as it shifts and flows along with it because of the irregularity — for the downward blow makes the hollow of the wave, and the upward blow makes its swell, until the air settles and comes to rest, the space that encloses the liquids growing still. The currents of things in motion, then, always
pursuing the air that yields before them, and being driven on by the air pressing back around them, possess this continuous and unceasing quality — which is why rivers flow faster when they are swollen; but when the flow is meager and shallow, the water moves sluggishly from weakness, since the air does not yield nor undergo much mutual displacement. In the same way, spring waters too must necessarily be borne upward, as the outside air is carried down into
the spaces being emptied at depth, and in turn sends the water forth to the outside. And in a deeply shaded room enclosing still, windless air, a floor sprinkled with water produces a breath and a wind, as the air, shifting from its seat because of the liquid falling into it and receiving blows, is by nature made in this way to be thrust out by, and to yield in turn to, other air, there being no void in which the one, once settled, would fail to share in the change undergone by the other.
And indeed, as for the matter of concord, he himself has explained the manner in which sounds are made alike to one another. For the swift sound becomes high-pitched, and the slow becomes low; wherefore also the high-pitched sounds move the sense of hearing first; and whenever the low sounds, just beginning, fall upon these already fading and dying away, the blend of the two, through a sympathetic likeness of affection, produces a pleasure in the hearing, which men call concord.
That the air is the instrument of these effects is easy to see from what has already been said. For sound is a blow delivered to the sense of hearing through the ears by means of the air; for the air, having been struck by the thing that set it in motion, itself strikes in turn — sharply, if the blow is forceful, more gently, if it is faint. The air, then, that has been struck forcefully and intensely, reaches the hearing first, and then, circling round again and overtaking the slower air,
follows and escorts the sensation along with it. "How does the Timaeus mean that souls were sown into the earth, the moon, and all the other bodies that are instruments of time?" Did Plato move the earth in this way, just as the sun, the moon, and the five planets, which he called instruments of time on account of their revolutions, and was it necessary to conceive of the earth, "winding about the axis stretched through the universe," not
as fashioned bound and remaining fixed, but as turning and revolving — as later Aristarchus and Seleucus demonstrated, the one merely proposing it as a hypothesis, but Seleucus even asserting it as fact? Theophrastus further records that Plato, when he had grown old, regretted having assigned to the earth the central place in the universe, as not being fitting for it. Or do many of the doctrines generally agreed to be Plato's own stand opposed to this view? Should one instead emend the text,
reading "to time" in place of "of time" — taking the dative instead of the genitive — and understand that the "instruments" spoken of are not the stars but the bodies of living creatures? Just as Aristotle defined the soul as "the first actuality of a natural body possessing organs and having life potentially." So that the statement would mean this: souls were sown, in time, into the bodily organs suited to them. But this too is contrary to what he actually held,
for not once but many times he has called the stars instruments of time, where indeed he says that the sun itself, together with the other planets, "came to be for the marking off and safeguarding of the numbers of time." It is best, then, to understand the earth as an instrument of time, not as moving like the stars, but as, by remaining fixed about itself, always providing to those bodies as they move their risings and settings, by which the first
measures of time, days and nights, are marked off; wherefore he also called it "the fashioner and guardian, exact and unfailing, of night and day." For indeed the gnomons of sundials, not shifting along with the shadows but standing fixed, have become instruments and measures of time, imitating the earth's blocking of the sun as it is carried around it — just as Empedocles said: "and night the earth makes, by standing before the light."
This point, then, admits of such an explanation; but the following one might rather cause one to suspect that it is not reasonably or fittingly said that the sun, together with the moon and the planets, came to be for the marking off of time. For otherwise the dignity of the sun is great, and by Plato himself, in the Republic, it has been proclaimed king and lord of everything perceptible, just as the
Good is of everything intelligible; for the sun is said to be the offspring of the Good, furnishing to visible things, along with their appearing, their coming to be, just as from the Good, being and being known belong to intelligible things. That a god possessing such a nature and so great a power should have come to be merely an instrument of time, and a plain measure of the difference in slowness and swiftness among the eight spheres relative to one another, does not seem altogether fitting, nor
reasonable in any other way. One must say, then, that those who are troubled by these considerations suppose, out of ignorance, that time is "the measure of motion, and a number reckoned according to before and after," as Aristotle said, or "the quantity present in motion," as Speusippus said, or "an interval of motion" and nothing else, as some of the Stoics say, defining it by an accident and failing to grasp
its essence and power — which Pindar seems, not ineptly, to have divined when he called time "the lord that surpasses all the blessed gods," and Pythagoras too, when asked what time was, answered that it was the soul of the universe. For time is not a passive attribute nor an accident of whatever motion it happens to attend, but is the cause, the power, and the source of the proportion and order that holds together all things that come to be — the order by which the
nature of the whole, being ensouled, is moved; or rather, being itself motion and order and proportion, it is called time; for "passing along a path without sound, it drives all mortal things according to justice." And indeed the essence of soul, according to the ancients, "was a number moving itself"; wherefore Plato too said that "time came to be together with the heaven," and that motion existed even before
...before the coming-into-being of heaven. But time did not yet exist; for there was neither order nor measure of any kind nor definition, but a movement without limit, like an unshaped and unformed matter of time. When this movement had, so to speak, flooded over and been cast in color and form -- shaping the matter into figures and the movement into periods -- it made the world and time together. Both are images of God: the world is an image of his being, and time, moving, is an image of his eternity, just as the world, in its coming-to-be, is an image of God. Hence he says that they came into being together and will likewise be dissolved together, should any dissolution ever overtake them; for it is not possible for what has come into being to exist apart from time, any more than for what is intelligible to exist apart from eternity, if the one is to remain forever and the other, though it comes into being, is never to be dissolved.
Since, then, time has this necessary connection and coherence with heaven, it is not simply movement, but, as has been said, movement within an order that has measure and limits and periods; and of these the sun, standing as overseer and watchman, marks off, presides over, brings to light, and displays the changes and the seasons which, in Heraclitus's phrase, "bring all things," no small or trivial matters but the greatest and most sovereign -- and in this the sun becomes a fellow-worker with the ruling and first god.
On the powers of the soul in Plato's Republic, where he likens the concord of the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive parts to the harmony of the lowest, the highest, and the middle string -- most aptly -- one might raise the difficulty: which did he assign to the middle string, the spirited or the rational part? For he himself, at least in that passage, has not made this clear. Now, in terms of the spatial arrangement of the parts, the spirited is placed in the region of the middle, and the rational in the region of the highest string; for the ancients called the upper and first position "hypate" (highest), which is why Xenocrates too calls that Zeus who is among the things that remain constant and unchanging "Hypatos," and the one beneath the moon "Neatos" (lowest). And even earlier Homer addressed the god who is ruler of rulers as "most high of the mighty."
And rightly has nature assigned the upper region to what is most powerful, establishing reason, like a helmsman, in the head, while she has settled the appetitive part far off, in the last and lowest place. For the lower rank is called "lowest" (neate), as is shown by the names given to the dead, who are called "the netherworld ones" and "those below"; and some say that even the wind which blows from below, out of the unseen, is named notos ("south wind") for this reason. As, then, the relation which the last bears to the first, and the lowest to the highest, is the same relation that the appetitive part bears to the rational, it is not possible for the rational part to be uppermost and first without also being "highest," and not something else. Those who assign to it, as its proper power, the position of the middle string fail to see
that they are taking away from it the more sovereign position, that of the highest string, which belongs neither to spirit nor to appetite; for each of these is by nature suited to be ruled and to follow, and neither of them is naturally fit to rule or to lead the rational part. It will appear all the more, from its very nature, that the spirited part occupies by position the rank of the middle string among these: since to the rational belongs ruling, and to the spirited belongs both being ruled
and ruling, in accordance with nature -- being obedient to reason, yet mastering and chastising appetite whenever it disobeys reason. And just as, among letters, the semivowels stand midway between the mutes and the vowels, sounding more than the former but less than the latter, so too in the human soul the spirited part is not purely a passion, but often carries within it an impression of what is noble, mingled with an irrational craving for retribution. And Plato himself, likening the form of the soul to a paired team and its charioteer, made the rational part, as is plain to everyone, the charioteer; and of the horses, the one concerned with the appetites is utterly disobedient and unmanageable, "shaggy about the ears, deaf, hardly yielding even to whip together with goad," while the spirited part is for the most part tractable
to reason and its ally. Just as, then, in a pair yoked together, it is not the charioteer who is intermediate in excellence and power, but rather, of the two horses, the one that is worse than the charioteer but better than its yoke-fellow -- so too, of the soul's parts, it was not to the part that has mastery that Plato assigned the middle rank, but to the part that shares less in passion than the third but more than the first, and shares more in reason than the third but less than the first.
For this arrangement also preserves the proportion of the musical concords: the spirited part stands to the rational as the highest string to the fourth interval, and to the appetitive as the lowest string to the fifth interval, while the rational stands to the appetitive as the highest to the lowest string, that is, the octave. But if we draw reason toward the middle, spirit will be found to be more distant from appetite -- spirit, which some philosophers, because of a certain resemblance, consider identical with appetite. Or rather, it is absurd to assign "first," "middle," and "last" strictly according to spatial position, when we can see that the "highest" string itself, on the lyre, occupies the topmost and first place, but on the pipes occupies the lowest and last place,
while the middle string, wherever on the lyre one places it and tunes it accordingly, sounds higher than the highest and lower than the lowest. So too the eye does not occupy the same position in every animal, yet, wherever and however it is placed, it is by nature fitted to see equally well. Just as the paidagogos (attendant) is said to "lead" the child not by walking in front but by walking behind,
and just as the Trojan commander is now seen among the foremost, now giving his orders among the last -- yet on either occasion he held the first place and the chief power -- so too the parts of the soul must not be judged by their position or by their names, but their power and proportion must be examined. For that the rational part is established, by position, first in the human body is merely incidental; but it holds the first and most sovereign power as the middle string does relative to the highest -- namely the appetitive part -- and to the lowest -- the spirited part -- by relaxing and tightening and, in general, bringing both into concord and harmony, removing the excess of each and yet not permitting either to be altogether slackened or to fall silent; for what is measured and proportionate is defined by a mean.
Rather, this is the very end of the power of reason: to produce means among the passions, which some call "sacred substances," possessing, through reason, a blending of the extremes both with reason and with one another. For the pair yoked together does not have as its mean the better of the two beasts of burden; nor should the art of driving be regarded as an extreme, but rather as a mean between the excess of swiftness and the excess of slowness in the horses -- just as
the power of reason, laying hold of the passions as they move irrationally, and fitting them to itself, establishes a mean between deficiency and excess.
"Why did Plato say that speech is blended out of nouns and verbs?" For it seems that all the other parts of speech, except these two, are nothing, though Homer, in a youthful display, crams them all into a single line, this one: "Go to his tent, your prize, that you may know it well."
For indeed pronoun, participle, noun, verb, preposition, article, conjunction, and adverb are all present in it: the particle "-de" is here set in the place of the preposition "eis" ("into"), for "klisiende" ("tent-ward") is of the same kind as "Athenaze" ("to Athens"). What, then, must be said on Plato's behalf? Perhaps that the ancients called what is now termed a "proposition" -- then called a "protasis" -- the primary form of speech, since it is in first uttering it that people speak truly or falsely;
and this is composed of a noun and a verb, of which the dialecticians call the one the "subject" and the other the "predicate." For on hearing that "Socrates philosophizes," and again that "Socrates flies," we shall say that the one statement is true and the other false, without needing anything further. And indeed
it is likely that human beings, when they first had need of speech and of articulate voice, wanted above all to make clear to one another actions and those who perform them, experiences and those who undergo them. Since, then, we adequately signify actions and experiences by the verb, and those who perform or undergo them by the noun, as Plato himself has said, these are held to signify,
while one might say that the rest do not signify -- just as the groans and wailings of actors, and often, by Zeus, a smile or a silence, make speech more expressive, yet do not have the necessary power to signify that the verb and the noun have, but rather serve as a kind of ornament varying speech, just as the aspirates and roughenings
and their lengthenings and shortenings vary the letters, in the view of those who set them down as elements in their own right, though they are rather affections and accidents and differentiations of the elements, as the ancients showed when they made do with the sixteen letters for speaking and writing adequately. Then consider whether we are not misreading Plato: he said that speech is blended out of these, not that it is composed of nothing but these. It is as though someone claiming that a drug is compounded
of wax and galbanum were slandering the one who says this because he left out the fire and the vessel, without which the compounding could not occur -- and we would likewise be at fault in charging Plato with omitting conjunctions and prepositions and the like; for speech is not made out of these, but, if anything, through these and not without these that it naturally comes to be blended. For it is not the case, as with one who utters "strikes" or "is struck," and again
"Socrates" or "Pythagoras" -- each of which somehow enables one to conceive and think of something -- that in the same way, when "men" or "gar" or "peri" is uttered by itself, one can grasp some notion of a thing or a body; rather, unless these are uttered concerning those things and along with them, they resemble empty noises and echoes, since by themselves they are naturally fitted to signify nothing, neither alone nor combined with one another;
but however we may weave or mix conjunctions, articles, and prepositions together, trying to make some single thing common out of them, we shall seem to be twittering rather than speaking -- whereas when a verb is combined with a noun, what results is at once a dialect and a speech. Hence it is reasonable that some regard only these as parts of speech; and Homer too, it seems, means to indicate this whenever he says "he spoke a word and named it by name" -- for he is accustomed to call the verb a "word,"
as in these lines: "O wife, truly this is a word that grieves the heart, which you have spoken," and "hail, father, O stranger"; and again, "if a dread word has been spoken, may the storm-winds snatch it up and carry it away." For neither conjunction, article, nor preposition can be called dread or grievous to the heart, but only a verb expressive of some shameful action
or some unfitting experience. This is why we are accustomed to praise or blame poets and prose writers by saying things like "so-and-so uses Attic nouns," "fine verbs," or again "plain ones" -- but no one would say that so-and-so has "conversed in plain" or "fine and Attic articles." One might therefore ask: do these other parts contribute nothing at all to speech? I would say, for my part,
that they contribute as salt contributes to a relish, or water to barley cake -- though Evenus used to say that fire too was the best of seasonings. But we do not say that water is part of the barley cake or the bread, nor that fire or salt is part of the boiled dish or the food, even though we are always in need of them, since speech, unlike these, is often independent of them -- as seems to be the case with the Roman tongue, which nearly
all men now use together: it has done away with nearly all prepositions save a few, and admits nothing whatsoever of what are called articles, but uses its nouns, so to speak, without fringes. And this is no wonder, when even Homer, excelling in the "ordering of words," attaches articles to only a few of his nouns, like handles to cups that need them, or crests to helmets; hence such lines, where he does this, have become notable, as "but Ajax the wise-hearted, the son of Telamon, was stirred most of all in spirit," and "they kept watch, that the sea-monster, escaping, might not elude them," and a few brief others besides these. In the countless remaining lines, though no article is present, the diction loses nothing in clarity or beauty.
And indeed neither animal, nor instrument, nor weapon, nor anything else that exists is by nature made more beautiful, more effective, or more pleasing by the removal and privation of a part proper to it; but speech, when its conjunctions are removed, often has a more emotional and more moving power, as in the line: "one lying newly wounded, another unwounded, another dead, he dragged by the feet through the tumult of battle"; and these words of Demosthenes: "For a man who strikes might do many things which the one who has suffered them could not even report
to another -- by his bearing, by his look, by his voice: when he acts insolently, when he is hostile, with his fists, with a blow to the face -- these are the things that stir, these unsettle men unaccustomed to being treated with outrage." And again: "But not Meidias! No -- from that very day he speaks, he reviles, he shouts. Is someone being elected to office? It is Meidias. Is a man from Anagyrus put forward as candidate? He acts as patron for Plutarchus, he knows the secrets, the city cannot contain him."
This is why the asyndetic (unconjoined) figure is held in especially high esteem among those who write on rhetorical technique, while they find fault with those who are overly rule-bound and who never let go of a single conjunction demanded by custom, on the grounds that they make their diction sluggish, unfeeling, and wearisome through its unvarying sameness. As for the claim that dialecticians have the greatest need of conjunctions for the connecting, combining, and disjoining of propositions -- like charioteers of their yoked teams --
and that the Odysseus in the cave of the Cyclops, binding the rams together with withies, shows the conjunction to be not a part of speech but a kind of connecting instrument, just as it is named, and one that binds together not everything but only what is not expressed simply -- unless indeed they would also claim that the strap of a burden and the glue of a book are parts of them, and that the distributions of the state's funds, as Demades called them, glueing together
the democracy's theoric fund. But what conjunction so binds one proposition together out of many, weaving and joining them, as the loadstone binds iron that has been softened together by fire? Yet it is not, and is not called, a part of the iron; and yet these things, entering into and fusing with what is being blended, do and undergo something in common, forming a single thing out of several. But there are those who do not think that conjunctions are one
...but that speech is a mere enumeration, as when archons are listed in succession, or days are catalogued one after another. And indeed, of the remaining parts of speech, the pronoun is plainly a kind of noun, not only because it shares in cases, but also because, together with its utterance, it makes the most proper indication of some things among those already defined. And I do not see that one who utters the name 'Socrates' has thereby indicated the person any more clearly than one who says 'this man.'
As for the so-called participle, it is a mixture of verb and noun and does not exist on its own, just as the common terms for feminine and masculine do not; rather, it is arranged together with those, touching the verbs in its tenses and the nouns in its cases. The dialecticians call such forms 'derivatives' -- for instance, 'thinking' from 'prudent,' and 'being temperate'
from 'temperate,' since they have the force of nouns and appellatives. As for prepositions, one might liken them to capitals and bases and pedestals, on the ground that they are not words in themselves but rather pertain to words. But see whether they do not instead resemble clippings and fragments of nouns, like the fragments of letters and abbreviated strokes used by those who write in haste: for 'to step in' and 'to step out' are plainly abbreviations of
'to step to the inside' and 'to step to the outside,' and 'to come before' is an abbreviation of 'to come earlier,' and 'to sit down' of 'to sit below' -- just as, of course, people say 'to stone' and 'to breach a wall' instead of 'to throw stones' and 'to dig through walls,' hastening and compressing their speech. Hence each of these forms supplies some use to discourse, but is no part of speech and no element of it, except
as has already been said, the verb and the noun, which together produce that first composition capable of admitting truth and falsehood -- the thing that some call a proposition, others an axiom, and Plato called a statement.

======== Moralia: Praecepta Gerendae Reipublicae ========

If it were fitting to use for some other purpose, Menemachus, the words “no one of all the Achaeans will fault your speech, nor will he speak against it in turn; yet you have not reached the end of your speech,” I would say them to those philosophers who exhort but teach nothing and lay down no precepts: for they are like men who trim the wicks of their lamps but pour in no oil. Seeing you, then, roused as befits your noble birth in your homeland
“to be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds,” and since you have no time to observe at close range, in the open air of practical affairs and public contests, the life of a philosophical man, and to become a spectator of examples brought to completion in deed and not merely in word, but ask instead to receive precepts for political life—I think it in no way fitting for me to refuse, and I pray that the work may prove worthy both of your zeal and of my own eagerness. As you requested, I have made use of rather varied examples.
First, then, let it be laid down, as a foundation for a constitution like the one set out in these “Precepts for the Conduct of Public Affairs,” that one's choice of a political career rest on a ground firm and strong—namely a judgment and reasoning that has its origin in decision, and not a headlong impulse born of empty ambition or some love of contention, or of a lack of other occupations. For just as those who have nothing worthwhile to do at home spend most of their time in the marketplace even when they have no need to,
so too some people, having no worthy private business of their own to pursue, throw themselves into public affairs, treating political life as a pastime. And many who have laid hold of public business by chance, and become filled with it, are no longer easily able to withdraw, suffering the same fate as those who board a ship for a pleasure sail and are then swept out to sea: they look outward, seasick and troubled,
while being compelled to remain and make use of what is at hand—“above a calm sea's surface the fair-faced Loves of the ship's cable, cleaver of the deep, passed by them, to their divine ruin.” It is these men above all who bring the profession into disrepute through their regret and vexation, whenever, having hoped for reputation, they fall instead into disrepute, or, having expected to become objects of fear to others through their power, they are instead led into affairs full of dangers and turmoil. But the man who,
as is most fitting for him, begins to conduct public business as the noblest of tasks, from settled judgment and reasoning, is not struck with dismay by any of these things, nor does he change his mind. For one should not enter public affairs for the sake of business and profit, as did the associates of Stratocles and Dromoclides, who used to summon one another to what they jokingly called “the golden harvest,” meaning the speaker's platform; nor should one enter it as though suddenly overcome
by some passion, as Gaius Gracchus did, who, in the heat of his grief over his brother's misfortunes, had set his life at the furthest remove from public affairs, but then, inflamed with anger at the insolence and abuse of certain men toward him, plunged into politics; and quickly he was filled to overflowing with business and reputation, but when he sought to stop and desired change and quiet, he could not find a way to lay down his power, because of its very greatness, but was destroyed before he could do so:
and those who, out of rivalry or love of reputation, fashion themselves like actors for the stage, are bound to feel regret—either enslaved to those they claim to rule, or offending those they wish to please. But just as, I think, those who fall into a well by accident and without forethought are thrown into confusion and regret it, while those who climb down deliberately and with reasoning make calm use of the circumstances, and are moderate,
and are vexed at nothing, since they have the good itself, and nothing else, as the end of their actions—so too, once a man has firmly fixed his resolve within himself and made it unchanging and hard to alter, he must then turn to the study of the character of the citizens, which appears and holds sway most of all when blended together from all of them. For it is neither easy nor safe for a man straightaway to attempt to shape and remold the
nature of the people, but this requires much time and great power as well. Rather, just as wine at first is mastered by the temperament of the drinker, but gradually, as it warms and blends with him, itself shapes and transforms the drinker, so the statesman, until he has built up an influence that carries conviction from reputation and trust, must be well attuned to the dispositions that already exist, and
aim at these, understanding what the people delight in and by what they are naturally led: for instance, the Athenian people are easily moved to anger, easily turned to pity, wishing rather to suspect quickly than to be instructed calmly; just as among individuals they are more eager to help the obscure and lowly, so among speeches they welcome and prefer the playful and the amusing. Those who praise them they especially
delight in, while those who mock them they resent least; they are fearsome even to their own magistrates, yet humane even toward their enemies. Different is the character of the Carthaginian people: harsh, sullen, submissive to their rulers, oppressive to their subjects, most base in fear, most savage in anger, tenacious of decisions once made, unresponsive to play and charm, and hard. These people would never—when Cleon asked them, since he had made sacrifice and was about to entertain guests,
to postpone the assembly—have laughed and applauded and risen to their feet, nor, when a quail escaped from Alcibiades' cloak while he was speaking, would they have joined eagerly in the hunt and given it back to him; rather they would even have killed him, as one guilty of insolence and self-indulgence—seeing that they even drove out Hanno, on the charge of harboring tyrannical designs, merely for using a lion to carry his baggage on campaigns. Nor, I think, would the Thebans have refrained from reading letters
of the enemy, had they gained possession of them, as the Athenians did when they captured Philip's letter-carriers bringing a letter addressed to Olympias: they did not open it or reveal the private affectionate message of a man abroad to his wife. Nor again would the Athenians have easily borne the arrogance and pride of Epaminondas, when, refusing to defend himself against the accusation, he rose from his seat and walked out through the assembly to the gymnasium, as they in fact did bear it with ease:
and it would have taken much more still for even the Spartans to endure the insolence and buffoonery of Stratocles, who persuaded them to offer sacrifices of good news as though they had won a victory, and then, when the true report of their defeat arrived and they grew indignant, asked the people what wrong had been done to them, since they had been happy for three days on his account. Now the flatterers at court, like bird-catchers imitating the cry of their prey and making themselves resemble it, insinuate themselves most effectively
and win access to kings through deception; but it is not fitting for the statesman to imitate the temper of the people—rather he must understand it and know how to use it toward each end by which it can be won over: for ignorance of character brings about failures and disasters in political life no less than in the friendships of kings. The character of the citizens, then, once a man has gained influence and is already trusted, he must
try gently to reshape, drawing them gradually toward what is better and handling them mildly; for the transformation of the masses is a difficult undertaking. And he himself, as one who will live the rest of his life as it were in a theater open on every side, must train and adorn his own character; and if it is not easy to rid the soul entirely of its faults, at least he should remove and curtail whatever failings bloom most conspicuously and are most likely to come to light. For you have heard that
Themistocles, when he resolved to enter public life, gave up drinking parties and revelry, and, being sleepless, sober, and full of care, used to say to his companions that Miltiades' trophy would not let him sleep; and Pericles changed even his bodily bearing and manner of life—he walked gently, spoke mildly, always kept his countenance composed, and kept his hand
drawn in beneath his cloak, and walked always by the one path leading to the speaker's platform and the council chamber. For it is neither easy to manage nor simple to achieve that saving capture of the multitude by just anyone; rather one must be content if, by being startled by neither sight nor sound, as a wild and unpredictable beast might be, one can win the people's confidence in one's leadership. If, then, even these outward matters must not be neglected carelessly, how much less
should one neglect one's life and character, so that they may be pure of all reproach and slander? For those engaged in public affairs give an account not only of what they say and do in public, but their dinners too are pried into, and their bed and their marriage and their amusements and every serious pursuit. Why need one even speak of Alcibiades? Though the most energetic of all in public affairs and an undefeated general,
it was his unrestrained and reckless manner of living that destroyed him, and made his city unable to profit from his other good qualities, because of his extravagance and licentiousness. Even Cimon's fondness for wine was held against him by these same men, and the Romans, having nothing else to say against Scipio, blamed him for his fondness for sleep; and Pompey the Great was reviled by his enemies, who noticed him scratching his head with a single finger. For just as a mole
or a wart on the face causes more displeasure than scars, blemishes, or wounds on the rest of the body, so small faults appear great when seen in the lives of rulers and statesmen, on account of the reputation that most people attach to power and public office, as though it were a great matter that ought to be free of every impropriety and error. It was fitting, then, that Livius Drusus the popular leader won esteem because, when
many parts of his house lay open to the view of his neighbors, and one of the builders offered to screen them off and rearrange them for only five talents, he said, “Take ten, and make my whole house visible, so that all the citizens may see how I live”—for he was in truth a temperate and orderly man. Yet perhaps he had no need of this exposure at all: for the multitude discern
even the characters, plans, actions, and lives of statesmen that seem very deeply concealed, loving and admiring one man and resenting and despising another, no less on account of their private than their public conduct. What then? Do not cities also make use of men who live licentiously and dissolutely? Indeed, just as pregnant women crave stones and
seasick people often crave briny foods and the like, then a little later spit them out and turn away in disgust, so too the people, through luxury and insolence, for lack of better leaders make use of whoever is at hand, loathing and despising them all the while, and yet delight in having such things said to them as Plato the comic poet makes the People itself say: “Take hold, take hold of my hand as quickly as you can, for I am about to
appoint Agyrrhius general”; and again, asking for a basin and a feather so that it may vomit, saying, “Mantias stands before me at the platform and feeds Cephalus, that most hateful disease.” And the Roman people, when Carbo made some promise and added an oath and a curse besides, swore back in unison that they did not believe him. And in Sparta, when a certain Demosthenes, a licentious man, spoke an opinion that happened to be sound, the people rejected it,
but the ephors, choosing one of the elders by lot, ordered him to speak that very same proposal, as though pouring it from a foul vessel into a clean one, so that it might become acceptable to the many. So great is the weight that trust in one's character carries in public life—and its opposite as well. Not that, on this account, one should neglect the charm and power of speech, while placing the whole of virtue in conduct;
rather, holding rhetoric to be not the creator but the helper of persuasion, one should correct Menander's saying: “It is the speaker's character, not his speech, that persuades—” for both character and speech together do the work, unless indeed someone will say, as one might claim that it is not the rudder that steers the ship, and not the bridle that turns the horse, so too
it is not by speech but by character, used as a rudder and bridle, that political virtue persuades a city—virtue being, as Plato says, the most easily turned of all creatures, guided as it were by the stern and steered aright. For where even those great kings, sprung from the gods, as Homer says, magnify themselves with purple robes and scepters and spearmen and oracles of the gods, and hold the multitude in subjection by their majesty as being their superiors,
nevertheless they wished to be “speakers of words” as well, and did not neglect the grace of speech, nor of assemblies, “by which men become distinguished”; nor did they seek only Zeus the Counselor, nor Ares the War-god and Athena the Warrior-goddess, but they also called upon Calliope, “who attends upon reverend kings,” soothing with persuasion and charming away the people's stubbornness and violence. How indeed could it be
possible for a private individual, from a common cloak and a plebeian bearing, wishing to lead a city, to prevail and gain mastery over the multitude, unless he possessed speech that could win them over and draw them along? For those who pilot ships employ other men as boatswains to call the time, but the statesman must have within himself both the mind that steers and the speech that gives the command, so that he has no need of a foreign voice, nor, like
Iphicrates, out-argued by the followers of Aristophon, must he say, “The actor of my opponents is better, but my own drama is better”; nor need he often resort to those famous lines of Euripides: “Would that the race of wretched mortals were voiceless, and, alas, alas, that men's affairs have no voice of their own, so that clever speakers would count for nothing.” These sentiments perhaps may be left to Alcamenes and Nesiotes and Ictinus
and to all craftsmen and artisans who disclaim any ability to speak—just as at Athens, once, when two architects were being examined for a public work, the one, smooth and clever in speech, moved the people by delivering a well-rehearsed speech about the construction, while the other, better in his craft but unable to speak, came forward and said only, “Men of Athens, whatever this man has said,
I will actually do.” For only those honor Athena Ergane alone, as Sophocles says, who work “beside the anvil, with heavy hammer,” fashioning lifeless matter that submits to their blows; but the prophet of Athena Polias and of Themis the Counselor, “who both dissolves and convenes the assemblies of men,” employing a single instrument, speech, molding and fitting some things together, and softening and smoothing
other things that resist his work, like knots in wood or flaws in iron, thereby adorns his city. It was for this reason that the government under Pericles was, as Thucydides says, “in name a democracy, but in fact rule by the first man”—because of the power of his speech. For Cimon too was a good man, and so were Ephialtes and Thucydides, but
when this last Thucydides was asked by Archidamus, king of the Spartans, whether he or Pericles wrestled better, he replied, “One could not say: for whenever I throw him in wrestling, he claims he was not thrown at all, and he wins the argument and convinces the onlookers.” This brought fame not to that man alone, but salvation to the city as well: for by trusting and obeying him, the city preserved its existing prosperity, the
...but kept himself out of everything else. Nicias had the same policy, but lacked that kind of persuasive power, and, trying to turn the people away with an argument as blunt as a dull bit, he could not restrain or master them, but was swept along by force into Sicily and dragged down along with them. They say, indeed, that no one can hold a wolf by the ears, but a people and a city must above all be led by the ears—not, as some untrained speakers do, hunting for coarse and inartistic handles on their arguments, tugging the crowd along by the belly, feasting them or handing out money, or by staging gladiatorial shows and pyrrhic dances, always currying favor with the people, or rather flattering the mob. For leadership of the people is persuasion through speech, whereas such taming of the masses differs in nothing from the hunting and herding of irrational animals.
The statesman's speech, however, should be neither youthful and theatrical, as though he were weaving garlands for a festival out of soft and flowery words, nor again, as Pytheas said of Demosthenes' style, smelling of the lamp-wick and of sophistic over-elaboration, with bitter figures of thought and periods measured out with ruler and compass. Rather, just as musicians insist that the touch of the strings should show itself expressive of character, not merely percussive, so in the speech of the man engaged in politics, advising, and ruling, there should appear neither cleverness nor cunning; nor should he pride himself on speaking in a habitual, technical, or overly analytical manner. Instead, his speech should be full of unaffected character, genuine high-mindedness, a father's frankness, forethought, and caring intelligence, having along with the good the quality of being pleasing and persuasive, drawn both from dignified words and from ideas that are original and convincing.
Political speech admits more readily than forensic oratory the use of maxims, historical illustrations, fables, and metaphors, by which those who employ them in moderation and at the right moment are especially effective—as the man who said, "Do not make Greece one-eyed," and Demades, who said the city was governing itself by shipwrecks, and Archilochus, "let not the stone of Tantalus hang over this island," and Pericles bidding them remove the "bleariness" from the Piraeus; and Phocion, at the time of Leosthenes' victory, saying that the sprint was fine, but that he feared the long-distance race of the war. In general, weight and grandeur suit the statesman better; examples are the Philippic speeches, and among Thucydides' set speeches, Sthenelaidas' as reported by Ephorus, and that of King Archidamus at Plataea, and Pericles' speech after the plague. But as for the rhetorical displays and periods of Ephorus, Theopompus, and Anaximenes, which they draw out after arming and drawing up their armies in battle formation, one may say of them, "none of that dulls the edge of steel nearby."
Nevertheless, wit and jest sometimes properly form part of political oratory, provided it is not used for insolence or buffoonery but is spoken usefully, in rebuke or in exposing folly. Such things are best received when used in exchanges and responses; for a jest that is premeditated and initiated unprovoked smacks of buffoonery and carries a reputation for malice, as attached to the jests of Cicero and of Cato the Elder and of Euxitheus, the companion of Aristotle—for these men often mocked others when they themselves began the exchange. But when a man is defending himself, the occasion grants him both pardon and goodwill at once, as it did Demosthenes against the man who accused him of theft while mocking his habit of writing by lamplight at night: "I know I annoy you by burning my lamp." And against Demades shouting that "Demosthenes wants to correct me—the sow correcting Athena!" Demosthenes replied, "Yet this very Athena was caught committing adultery last year." Charming too was Xenainetus' reply to the citizens who reviled him because, though a general, he had fled: "Yes, together with you, dear friends."
One must be very much on guard, however, against excess in jesting, and against whatever pains the hearers unseasonably or makes the speaker himself appear ignoble and mean, as happened with Democrates' sayings: when he went up to the assembly he said that, like the city, he was weak in strength but strong in bluster; and again, at the time of the Chaeronea disaster, coming before the people, he said, "I would not have wished the city to have fared so badly that you should be listening even to my advice." The first remark was rather petty, the second nearly insane, and neither is fitting for a statesman. Phocion's terseness of speech, on the other hand, was much admired: Polyeuctus used to declare that Demosthenes was the greatest orator, but that Phocion was the most powerful speaker, since his speech packed the most sense into the fewest words. And Demosthenes himself, contemptuous of the others, used to say, whenever Phocion rose to speak, "Here comes the cleaver of my speeches."
You should try, above all, to use speech that is well considered and not empty when addressing the masses, and to do so with security, knowing that even the great Pericles used to pray, before addressing the people, that no word irrelevant to the matter at hand might occur to him. Nevertheless one's speech must also be kept versatile and well-exercised for exchanges, since the occasions in political life are sharp and often bring sudden emergencies. This is why Demosthenes, they say, was outdone by many speakers when it came to unforeseen occasions, since he shrank back and hesitated; whereas Theophrastus records of Alcibiades that he not only knew what needed to be said but also how it should be delivered, though often, in the very act of speaking, while searching for and composing his words, he would falter and break down. But the man who rises to speak prompted by the actual circumstances and by the pressing occasion has the greatest power to strike his audience with amazement, win them over, and change their minds—as, for instance, Leon of Byzantium, who once came to address the Athenians while they were in the midst of civil strife. Seen to be short of stature and laughed at, he said, "What would you say if you saw my wife, who barely reaches my knee? Yet small as we are, when we quarrel with each other, the city of Byzantium cannot contain us." This produced even greater laughter. And Pytheas the orator, when he was speaking against the honors proposed for Alexander, and someone said to him, "How dare you, so young, speak on matters of such magnitude?" replied, "Why, Alexander himself is younger than I am, and you are voting to make him a god."
One needs, too, soundness of voice and strength of breath for the contest of politics, which is not a trivial bout but an all-out fight, so that his speech, thus trained, will not repeatedly give out and fail, letting some raucous bawler with a voice like a roaring torrent overpower him. Cato, on matters where he had no hope of persuading the people or the senate because they had been won over beforehand by favors and canvassing, would simply rise and speak for the whole day, thereby using up the time allotted for the vote. On the preparation and use of speech, then, this much should suffice for one able to work out the rest for himself.
There are two ways of entering upon political life: the one is quick and brilliant in reputation, though not without danger; the other is more pedestrian and slower, but has the advantage of greater safety. Some men, as though setting out at once on some grand, conspicuous action performed on the open sea, one that demands boldness, launch themselves straight into politics, believing Pindar to be right when he says that at the beginning of a task one must set up a shining façade. For the multitude receive more readily, out of a certain satiety and surfeit with the familiar, a man who is just beginning—as spectators do a new contestant—and offices and powers that show a brilliant and rapid rise dazzle envy itself. As Ariston says, fire does not produce smoke, nor does glory produce envy, if it blazes up at once and quickly; but things that grow little by little and slowly are overtaken bit by bit by one rival after another from every side—which is why many men have withered away around the speaker's platform before they ever came into bloom. But wherever, as they say of Ladas the runner, "the sound of the starting-gate was still in his ears" when he was already being crowned as ambassador, or celebrating a triumph, or commanding gloriously, there neither the envious nor the contemptuous have equal power against him. It was in this way that Aratus came into fame, having made the overthrow of the tyrant Nicocles the starting-point of his political career; it was in this way that Alcibiades rose, by organizing the Mantinean coalition against the Lacedaemonians. Pompey, too, thought fit to celebrate a triumph before he had ever even entered the senate, and when Sulla would not allow it, said, "More people worship the rising sun than the setting one"—and Sulla, on hearing this, yielded. And the Roman people did not, from some office that came his way by chance, suddenly appoint Cornelius Scipio consul in defiance of the law while he was seeking the aedileship; rather, they did so because they had already admired, when he was a mere youth, his single combat and victory in Spain, and, a little later, his exploits as military tribune at Carthage—exploits about which the elder Cato himself exclaimed, "He alone has wisdom; the rest flit about like shadows."
Now, however, since the affairs of our cities no longer involve commands in wars, nor the overthrow of tyrannies, nor dealings with allies, what conspicuous and brilliant beginning to a political career could a man still find? There remain the public lawsuits and embassies to the emperor, which require a man of fervent spirit who combines both courage and good sense. There is also much that has been allowed to lapse among the noble practices of our cities, and much that has crept in through base custom to the city's shame or harm, which a man can take up, correct, and thereby turn attention toward himself. Indeed, a great case well argued, trustworthy advocacy on behalf of a weak party against a powerful opponent, and outspokenness on behalf of justice against a wicked governor have established some men at the outset of their political career in high repute. Not a few, too, have risen to prominence through enmity, by attacking men who held a position that was both envied and feared; for at once the strength of the man overthrown passes to the victor, along with an even better reputation. To attack a good man who holds the first place through his own virtue, out of envy—as Simmias attacked Pericles, Alcmaeon attacked Themistocles, Clodius attacked Pompey, and Meneclides the orator attacked Epaminondas—is neither good for one's reputation nor otherwise advantageous. For whenever the multitude, having wronged a good man, then quickly (as commonly happens) repent in their anger, they consider the easiest defense also the most just: to destroy the man who persuaded and instigated them. But to rise up against a base man who has made the city subject to himself through recklessness and cunning—such as Cleon was at Athens, and Cleophon—and to overthrow and humble him, makes for a brilliant entrance onto the stage of political life, as it were the opening scene of a drama.
I am not unaware that some men, by curbing an oppressive and oligarchic council—as Ephialtes did at Athens and Phormio among the Eleans—have gained both power and reputation at once; but this course carries great danger for a man just beginning his political career. That is why Solon took the safer path, when the city was divided into three factions, that of the so-called Men of the Hills, that of the Men of the Plain, and that of the Men of the Coast: by attaching himself to none of them, but remaining common to all, and saying and doing everything toward concord, he was chosen lawgiver to reconcile their differences, and thus established his own leadership. Such, then, in number and kind, are the beginnings available for the more conspicuous entrance into political life; but the safe and unhurried path was the one chosen by many famous men—Aristides, Phocion, Pammenes the Theban, Lucullus at Rome, Cato, Agesilaus the Lacedaemonian. Each of these, like ivy climbing and rising together with the strong trees it entwines, attached himself while still young and unknown to an older man already famous, and, gradually lifted up by that man's influence and growing along with him, fixed and rooted himself firmly in political life. Thus Aristides was raised up by Cleisthenes, Phocion by Chabrias, Lucullus by Sulla, Cato by Maximus, Epaminondas by Pammenes, and Agesilaus by Lysander—though this last man, out of untimely ambition and jealous rivalry for glory, insolently and quickly cast off the very guide of his actions. The others, however, served their patrons well and in a truly political spirit to the very end, and added luster to them in return—just as bodies exposed to the sun, while receiving its brightness, also increase and share back that same brightness. Those, at any rate, who envied Scipio used to declare that he was merely the actor of his exploits, and that Laelius, his companion, was their true author; yet Laelius himself was never puffed up by any of this, but continued always to compete jointly for glory with Scipio's virtue and reputation. Afranius, again, a friend of Pompey, though a man of quite humble standing, was nonetheless expected to be elected consul; yet when Pompey was working for others, he withdrew his candidacy, saying that attaining the consulship would not be as glorious for him as it would be painful and awkward if it came about without Pompey's willingness or cooperation. So, having waited patiently for just one year, he neither missed the office nor lost the friendship. Those who are thus led by the hand of others toward reputation gain the further advantage of winning the gratitude of many, and, if something unpleasant should occur, of incurring less hostility for it themselves—which is why Philip advised Alexander to make friends, while it was still possible, by associating pleasantly and showing kindness while another man was still king.
One must choose, as leader when beginning a political career, not simply the man who is famous and powerful, but the man who is such through virtue. For just as not every tree is willing to receive and support a clinging vine, but some choke and destroy its growth, so too in our cities, men who are not lovers of what is noble, but only lovers of honor and of power, do not offer young men opportunities for action, but, as though the young man's reputation were food taken from their own mouths, they crush him down through envy and wither him—as Marius did in Africa, and again in Gaul, where, after achieving many successes through Sulla's help, he ceased to employ him, resentful of his growing fame, and, using the seal-ring as his pretext, cast him off. For Sulla, when he was serving as quaestor under Marius's command in Africa, had been sent by him to Bocchus and brought back Jugurtha as a prisoner; and being a young man eager for honor, only just having tasted glory, he did not bear his good fortune with moderation, but had an image of the deed engraved on a signet ring, showing Jugurtha being handed over to him, and wore it constantly. Marius, taking offense at this, cast him off; whereupon Sulla went over to Catulus and Metellus, good men and opponents of Marius, and soon drove Marius out and crushed him in the civil war that came within a hair of overturning Rome itself. Sulla, on the other hand, promoted Pompey from his youth, rising from his seat and uncovering his head whenever Pompey approached, and gave the other young men too a share in commanding enterprises, even spurring some on against their will, and filled his armies with ambition and rivalry; and he prevailed over everyone because he wished to be not merely first alone, but first and greatest among many great men.
One must, therefore, hold fast to such men and attach oneself to them, not—like Aesop's wren, which, carried up on the eagle's shoulders, suddenly flew off and got ahead of him—snatch away their glory for oneself, but rather receive it from them together with goodwill and friendship, since, as Plato says, those who have not first learned rightly how to be ruled cannot themselves rule well either.
...capable of it. Next in order comes the question of the choice of friends, which endorses neither Themistocles' way of thinking nor Cleon's. For Cleon, when he first resolved to take up public affairs, gathered his friends together and dissolved his friendship with them, on the ground that friendship softened and distorted much of what should be a straight and just course of policy. But he would have done better to cast the love of money out of his soul and to purge himself of contentiousness, envy, and malice: for cities need not men without friends and companions, but men who are good and self-controlled. As it was, he drove away his friends, but a hundred heads of fawning flatterers, as the comic poets say, wound themselves whimpering around him; and though he was harsh and heavy toward decent men, he in turn made himself subject to the many, currying favor with them like an old nurse, giving them pay they had not earned, and courting the basest and most diseased element of the populace against the best citizens.
Themistocles, on the other hand, replied to the man who declared that he would rule well by showing himself impartial to all: "Never may I sit on such a throne, on which my friends would have no more from me than strangers." Nor was this man right either, in pledging that public policy and the common, public interest would follow friendship, and in subordinating them to private favors and personal zeal. And yet, to Simonides, when he asked for something unjust, he said, "Neither is a poet good who sings out of tune, nor a ruler decent who grants favors against the law." For it is truly dreadful and outrageous if a helmsman chooses sailors, and a shipowner chooses a helmsman, who know well how to set the tiller at the stern and the yard-arm well when the wind rises, and if some master-builder chooses assistants and craftsmen who will not ruin his work but will help bring it to its best completion — yet the statesman, who is, in Pindar's phrase, a supreme craftsman and a maker of good order and justice, will not at once choose as friends, helpers, and fellow-enthusiasts for the good men who share his temperament, but instead others who, for the sake of one need after another, bend him unjustly and by force.
He will appear no different from some builder or carpenter who through inexperience and error uses corners, rulers, and levels by which his work is bound to be thrown out of true; for friends are the living and thinking instruments of statesmen, and one must not slip along with them when they go astray, but must take care that they do not make mistakes even unwittingly. This, indeed, is what disgraced Solon and brought him into disrepute with the citizens: for when he had conceived the plan of lightening debts — the seisachtheia, as it was euphemistically called, meaning the cancellation of debts — and shared the plan with his friends before introducing it, they did a most unjust thing: they anticipated the law and borrowed large sums of money, and a short time later, when the law was brought to light, they were revealed to have bought splendid houses and much land with the money they had borrowed, while Solon incurred the charge of sharing in wrongdoing though he himself had been wronged.
Agesilaus, in his zeal for his friends, became weakest and most abject toward himself, like the Pegasus of Euripides, "cowering, yielding all the more, the more one wished it"; and by helping their misfortunes more eagerly than he ought, he seemed to make himself an accomplice in their injustices. Indeed, he saved Phoebidas when he was on trial for having seized the Cadmea without orders, saying that such things ought to be done on one's own initiative; and when Sphodrias was facing prosecution for a lawless and terrible act — for he had invaded Attica though the Athenians were friends and allies — Agesilaus, softened by the amorous pleading of Sphodrias' son, contrived to have him acquitted. And a letter of his to a certain ruler is reported in these words: "If Nicias is not guilty, acquit him; but if he is guilty, acquit him for my sake; in any case, acquit him."
Phocion, however, did not even join his own son-in-law Chares in the trial concerning the Harpalus affair, but said, "I made you my son-in-law for all just purposes," and went his way. And Timoleon of Corinth, when he could not persuade or dissuade his brother from his tyranny by teaching and entreaty, joined those who killed him. For one ought not to be a friend only up to the altar, in the sense of not joining in perjury, as Pericles once put it, but up to the point of all law, justice, and advantage — for to overlook this brings great harm both to oneself and to the community, as was shown by the failure to punish Sphodrias and Phoebidas: for it was they, not least, who plunged Sparta into the war of Leuctra. For in the case of moderate faults of friends, the reasoning proper to a statesman does not compel one to trample heavily upon them, but rather allows one, once the greatest matters of the state have been placed in safety, to help friends out of one's surplus, to stand by them, and to labor together on their behalf.
There are also favors that arouse no envy: to help a friend to office rather than merely assisting him personally; to entrust him with some distinguished administration or a benevolent embassy, one carrying, say, the honors of a governor, or a mission to a city concerning friendship and concord. But if some task is difficult yet distinguished and important, one should first assign oneself to it, and only then choose one's friend for it, as Diomedes says: "If indeed you bid me choose a companion myself, how then could I forget godlike Odysseus?" — and Odysseus in turn fittingly repays the compliment: "These horses, old man, are newcomers, Thracian, whom you ask about; their lord good Diomedes slew, and beside him twelve companions, all the best."
This is the yielding proper toward friends: it adorns those who praise no less than those who are praised; whereas self-will, as Plato says, dwells with solitude. Further, one must also let one's friends share in fine and generous favors, and bid those who have been benefited praise and love them too, as having been both the cause and the counselors of the benefit; but base and improper requests one must brush aside, not harshly but gently, teaching and consoling, explaining that they are not worthy of the friend's virtue and reputation. Best of all men in this was Epaminondas, who, when Pelopidas asked him to release the tavern-keeper from prison, refused, but shortly afterward, when his own beloved asked the same thing, released the man,
saying, "Such favors, Pelopidas, are fit to be received from little mistresses, not from generals." Cato, however, acted with heavy-handed self-will when Catulus the censor, who was among his closest friends and intimates, sought the release of one of the men being tried under Cato's quaestorship; Cato said, "It is shameful that you, whose duty it is to make us young men behave, should be thrown out by our own attendants." For in fact it was possible for him to refuse the favor while still stripping the roughness and bitterness from his words, so as not to inflict the pain willingly but only as compelled by the law and by justice.
There are also, in public life, not ignoble ways of assisting friends toward making money, when they are in need — as Themistocles did, who, after the battle, seeing a corpse wearing gold torques and a necklace, passed by himself, but turning to his friend said, "Take these for yourself; for you are not Themistocles." For public affairs often give the statesman this opportunity too, to benefit his friends. Not all men, of course, are Menemachuses: to one, then, entrust a paid advocacy on behalf of justice; to another, introduce a rich man who needs care and patronage; to another, join in some contracting venture or a lease that carries profit.
Epaminondas, when a friend approached a certain rich man and asked him for a talent, bade him say that it was by Epaminondas' own order that he gave it; and when the man who was asked came and inquired the reason, Epaminondas said, "Because this man, though honest, is poor, while you are rich, having embezzled much from the city." And Xenophon says that Agesilaus took pride in enriching his friends while remaining himself superior to money.
But since, as Simonides says, "every lark must grow a crest," and every political community brings with it certain enmities and disputes, it is especially fitting that the statesman should have thought this matter through as well. Most people, then, praise Themistocles and Aristides for laying aside their enmity at the borders whenever they went out on an embassy or a military command, and taking it up again on their return.
Some are extraordinarily pleased, too, by the example of Cretinas of Magnesia. Opposing in politics Hermeas, a man of no great power but ambitious and brilliant in spirit, when the Mithridatic War broke out and he saw the city in danger, Cretinas told Hermeas to take over the government and manage affairs himself, while he would withdraw; but if Hermeas preferred that he himself command, then Hermeas should get out of the way, so that by rivaling one another in ambition they should not destroy the city.
The proposal pleased Hermeas, and saying that Cretinas was more skilled in war than himself, he withdrew quietly with his children and wife. Cretinas escorted him on his way, giving him from his own money whatever would be more useful to a man in exile than to one under siege, and then, commanding the city most excellently, preserved it against all hope when it had come within a hair's breadth of destruction.
For if it is noble and a mark of a great spirit to proclaim, "I love my children, but I love my country more," how is it not more fitting for each man to say instead, "I hate so-and-so and wish to do him harm, but I love my country more"? For unwillingness to be reconciled with an enemy, for the sake of the very things for which one ought even to give up a friend, is savage and beastly in the extreme. Better, however, were the followers of Phocion and Cato, who did not treat political disagreements as personal enmity at all, but were formidable and unyielding only in public contests, refusing to give up what was advantageous, while in private matters they behaved without rancor and with kindness even toward those with whom they had differed in the public sphere.
For one ought to regard no citizen as an enemy, unless someone, like Aristion or Nabis or Catiline, becomes a disease and an abscess of the state; but those who are merely out of tune otherwise should be brought gently into harmony, as a musician tightens and loosens strings, not falling upon their errors with anger and insult, but rather, in Homer's more moral vein: "My friend, I did think you were wise in judgment beyond others, yet you know how to think of a better plan than this"; and whenever they say or do something good, one should not be vexed at the honors they receive, nor stingy with kind words for their fine deeds.
For in this way blame, where it is needed, will carry conviction, and we shall drive them toward vice while praising their virtue, comparing this conduct with the other as worthier and more fitting. I hold, too, that the statesman ought to bear witness to what is just even for his opponents, to help them when they are on trial against false accusers, and to distrust slanders directed at them, if these are alien to their known character — as that famous Nero did, who, shortly before he killed Thrasea, though he hated and feared him above all, nevertheless, when someone accused Thrasea of having judged a case badly and unjustly, said, "I could wish that Thrasea loved me as much as he is an excellent judge."
It is no worse, too, in rebuking others who by nature are more prone to wrongdoing, to recall the character of some more refined enemy and say, "But that man would not have said or done this." One should also remind some men of their good fathers, when they go astray — as Homer says, "Tydeus begot a son little like himself"; and Appius, contending against Scipio Africanus in the elections, said, "How you would groan, Paulus, beneath the earth, if you perceived that your son, going down to canvass for the censorship, is escorted by Philonicus the tax-farmer!"
For such remarks admonish wrongdoers and at the same time do credit to those who administer the admonishment. And Sophocles' Nestor answers in a statesmanlike way when reviled by Ajax: "I do not blame you; for though you speak ill of me, you act well." And Cato, when he had quarreled with Pompey over the matters in which Pompey and Caesar together were coercing the city, nevertheless, once they had come to war, urged that the supreme command be handed over to Pompey, adding that it belongs to the same men both to cause great evils and to put an end to them.
For blame mixed with praise, containing no insolence but frankness, producing not anger but a sting and repentance, appears kindly and therapeutic; abuse least of all becomes statesmen. Consider what was said against Aeschines by Demosthenes, and what Aeschines said against him in return, and again what Hyperides wrote against Demades — would Solon have said such things, or Pericles, or Lycurgus the Spartan, or Pittacus of Lesbos?
And yet even Demosthenes has abusive language only in his forensic speeches, while his Philippics are free of both mockery and buffoonery of every kind: for such things shame the speakers more than those who hear them, and moreover they produce confusion in affairs and throw councils and assemblies into disorder. Hence Phocion acted best of all, yielding to a man who was reviling him and ceasing to speak; and when the man had at last, with difficulty, fallen silent, Phocion came forward again and said, "Well then, you have heard about the cavalry and the hoplites; it remains for me to go through the matter of the light troops and the peltasts."
But since for many the thing is hard to restrain, and often revilers are usefully silenced by retorts, let the retort be brief in phrasing and show no anger or hot temper, but rather gentleness combined with playfulness and charm, biting in some fashion nonetheless; for it is retorts of this kind that turn back most sharply upon the one who provoked them. For just as, of missiles, those that are hurled back at the one who threw them seem to do so by some strength and solidity of the one struck deflecting them, so too what is said, spoken with the strength and intelligence of the one reviled, seems to turn back upon the revilers — as when Epaminondas answered Callistratus, who reproached the Thebans and Argives with the patricide of Oedipus and the matricide of Orestes, "When we drove out the men who did these things, you took them in."
And as the Spartan Antalcidas answered the Athenian who said, "We have often driven you from the Cephisus," "But we have never driven you from the Eurotas." And Phocion too spoke gracefully when Demades shouted, "The Athenians will kill you!" — "Yes, if they go mad; but you, if they come to their senses." And Crassus the orator, when Domitius said to him, "Did you not weep for a lamprey you kept in a fishpond, when it died?" retorted, "Did you not bury three wives without shedding a tear?"
These things, then, have some use in the rest of life as well. As for participation in public affairs, some men enter into every branch of it, as Cato did, holding that a good citizen ought, so far as he is able, to leave no concern or care unattended to; and they praise Epaminondas because, when he was appointed to the post of telearch out of envy and as an insult by the Thebans, he did not neglect it, but said,
...that not only does office reveal the man, but the man also ennobles the office: he raised the post of street-inspector to a great and dignified rank, though it had previously been nothing but a certain oversight of clearing dung from the alleys and diverting the flow of water. And I myself, to be sure, provide amusement to visitors, being seen often in public occupied with such things; but the saying remembered of Antisthenes helps me. When someone marveled that he carried salt-fish through the marketplace himself, he said, "For myself." I, on the contrary, say to those who reproach me, if I stand by while tile is being measured out, or clay and stones are being carried in, that I am not managing these things for myself but for my country. In many other matters a person might indeed seem petty and stingy, managing for himself and busying himself on his own account; but if it is done publicly and for the sake of the city, it is not ignoble — rather, care and zeal extending even to small things is the greater thing.
Others, however, think the practice of Pericles more dignified and magnificent. Among them is Critolaus the Peripatetic, who holds that, just as the ship Salaminia and the Paralus at Athens were launched not for every task but were drawn down only for necessary and great enterprises, so too a man should keep himself for the most authoritative and greatest matters, as the king of the universe does; for god concerns himself with great things, but lets the small things go, leaving them to chance, as Euripides says. Nor indeed do we praise the excessive ambition and contentiousness of Theagenes, who, having won not only the circuit of the great games but also many other contests — not only in the pancratium but also in boxing and the long race — in the end, dining at a funeral banquet, as was his custom, when the portion had been served out to everyone, leapt up and fought a pancratium bout, as if no one ought to win while he was present. Hence he amassed twelve hundred wreaths, most of which one might consider mere rubbish.
Those who strip for every political contest are no different from this man; rather, they quickly make themselves objects of blame to the many, become burdensome, and are envied even when they succeed, and if they stumble they become objects of mockery — and the admiration they enjoyed at the outset of their zealous activity gradually subsides into ridicule and laughter. Such is the point of the saying: "Metiochus commands the army, Metiochus oversees the roads, Metiochus watches the bread, Metiochus watches the meal, Metiochus mends everything, and Metiochus will come to grief." This man was one of Pericles' companions, and it was, it seems, through the power he derived from him that he acted so as to provoke envy, and to excess.
It is necessary, as they say, for the statesman to conduct himself toward the people as toward a lover, and not to leave behind, in his absence, a longing for himself. This is what Scipio Africanus used to do, living for long stretches in the countryside, at once relieving the weight of envy and giving breathing room to those who felt oppressed by his reputation. Timesias of Clazomenae, in other respects, was a good man with regard to the city, but because he did everything himself he was envied and hated without realizing it, until something of this sort happened to him. Some boys were in the road digging a knucklebone out of a pit as he was passing by; some of them said to leave it, but one of them, striking it, said, "So may I knock out Timesias' brain, as this thing has been knocked out." Timesias, hearing this and understanding that envy of him pervaded everyone, turned back, told the matter to his wife, and, bidding her pack up and follow him, set out at once from his own doorway and left the city. Themistocles too, it seems, when something similar was directed at him by the Athenians, said, "Why, my good fellows, do you grow weary of being repeatedly well treated?"
Of such sayings, some are rightly said and some not well. In goodwill and solicitude one must hold aloof from none of the public business, but must attend to everything and know each matter, and not, like a sacred vessel on a ship, lie stored away, waiting for the city's utmost needs and crises. Rather, as pilots do: some things they perform themselves with their own hands, while others they direct through other instruments, sitting apart and, through other people, turning and guiding them; they also make use of sailors, look-outs, and boatswains, and often summon some of these back to the stern and put the rudder into their hands. So it is fitting for the statesman to yield office to others and invite them to the speaker's platform with goodwill and kindness, and not to move everything in the city by his own speeches, decrees, or actions, but, having trustworthy and capable men, to fit each one to each task according to his aptitude — as Pericles employed Menippus for military commands, brought low the council of the Areopagus through Ephialtes, got the decree against the Megarians ratified through Charinus, and sent out Lampon as founder of Thurii.
For it is not only that, when power appears to be distributed among many, the weight of envy troubles one less; it is also that the business at hand is more fully accomplished. Just as the division of the hand into fingers has not weakened its use but made it skillful and versatile, so too the man who shares public business with others makes the joint action more effective. But the man who, out of an insatiable desire for glory or power, takes the whole city upon himself, and applies himself to something for which he is neither naturally suited nor trained — as Cleon did toward generalship, Philopoemen toward naval command, Hannibal toward public speaking — has no excuse when he fails, but hears applied to himself the words of Euripides: "though a carpenter, you were doing work not of carpentry," or "though unpersuasive, you served as envoy," or "though lazy, you managed the finances," or "though ignorant of accounts, you served as treasurer," or "though old and feeble, you commanded the army."
Pericles, moreover, divided power with Cimon as well: he himself ruled in the city, while Cimon manned the ships and made war on the barbarians, for the one was better suited to statesmanship, the other to war. They also praise Eubulus of Anaphlystus, because, although he possessed trust and power in the highest degree, he took no part in the affairs of Greece and did not seek generalship, but, devoting himself to the finances, increased the public revenues and greatly benefited the city through them. Iphicrates, by contrast, was mocked for practicing rhetorical exercises at home before many onlookers; for even had he been a good speaker rather than a poor one, he ought, since he cherished the reputation he had won under arms, to have left that pursuit to the sophists.
Since every populace harbors a streak of malice and a readiness to find fault with those engaged in politics, and suspects many useful measures — if they meet with no opposition or debate — of being carried out by secret conspiracy (and this above all brings political associations and friendships into disrepute), one must leave oneself no genuine enmity or quarrel with anyone. So Onomademus, the popular leader of the Chians, after prevailing in civil strife, would not allow all their opponents to be expelled, "lest," he said, "we begin to quarrel with our friends, once we are altogether rid of our enemies." That remark, however, is naive. But when the people at large regard some matter with suspicion, however great and salutary it may be, it is not right for everyone, as though arriving by prior arrangement, to voice the same opinion; rather, two or three of one's friends should stand apart and mildly speak against it, then, as though being won over by argument, change their position — for in this way they draw the people along, since the people seem to be guided by their own advantage rather than compelled.
In lesser matters, however, that touch nothing important, it is no worse — indeed truer to life — to let one's friends genuinely disagree, each employing his own judgment, so that on the most weighty and important matters they may appear to agree on the best course not by prearrangement. Now the statesman is by nature always the ruler of his city, like a leader among bees, and, bearing this in mind, he must keep public affairs constantly in hand. But as for the offices that go by the name of "authorities," to which men are elected, he should neither pursue them excessively or repeatedly — for love of office is neither dignified nor democratic — nor decline them when the people lawfully offer and summon him to them; rather, even if they fall short of his reputation, he should accept them and share in the ambition to hold them, for it is right that a man honored by the greater offices should in turn honor the lesser ones. As for the weightier offices — such as the generalship at Athens, the prytany at Rhodes, and the Boeotarchy among us — one should relax a little and give way with moderation, while adding dignity and weight to the lesser ones, so that we may be neither despised in the latter nor resented in the former.
When entering upon any office, moreover, one must have ready not only those considerations with which Pericles used to remind himself as he took up his cloak — "Take heed, Pericles: you rule free men, you rule Greeks, you rule Athenian citizens" — but must also say to himself, "You rule as one who is himself ruled, in a city subject to proconsuls, to Caesar's agents. This is not the plain of the spear," nor the ancient Sardis, nor that famed Lydian power. He must make his cloak more modest, and look from the general's headquarters toward the speaker's platform, and not think too highly of the garland or place too much trust in it, seeing the soldiers' boots above his head. Rather, he must imitate actors, who bring their own feeling, character, and dignity to the contest, yet listen to the prompter and do not overstep the rhythms and measures of the authority granted them by those who hold power. For a false step here brings not hissing, mockery, or catcalls, but for many it has brought the dread punisher, the axe that severs the neck — as it did to those associated with your own Pardalas, who forgot their proper bounds — while another, cast out onto an island, has become, in Solon's phrase, "a man of Pholegandros or Sicinus," having exchanged his Athenian homeland for that.
When we see small children trying on their fathers' sandals and putting on their garlands in play, we laugh; but when rulers in our cities foolishly urge the multitude to imitate the deeds, ambitions, and actions of their ancestors — actions ill-suited to present circumstances — they stir the masses up, and, having made themselves ridiculous, suffer things no longer merely laughable, unless indeed they are treated with utter contempt. For there are many other things from the earlier Greeks which, when recounted to men of today, can shape character and instill moderation — as at Athens, reminding people not of matters of war, but of things such as the decree of amnesty concerning the Thirty; the fining of Phrynichus for staging in tragedy the capture of Miletus; the fact that, when Cassander was refounding Thebes, the Athenians wore garlands in celebration; that, on learning of the club-massacre at Argos, in which the Argives had killed fifteen hundred of their own citizens, they ordered a purification offering to be carried around the assembly; and that during the house-searches in the affair of Harpalus, they passed over only the house of a man newly married.
These are things it is even now possible to emulate, thereby making oneself like one's ancestors. But Marathon, and the Eurymedon, and Plataea, and all such examples as make the multitude swell up and bristle with empty pride, should be left behind in the schools of the sophists. It is not enough merely to keep oneself and one's country blameless before those in power; one must also always have some friend among those highest in authority, as a firm ballast for one's political career. For the Romans themselves are most eager to support the political ambitions of their friends, and it is a fine thing to turn the fruit one gains from a great man's friendship — as Polybius and Panaetius did through Scipio's goodwill toward them, greatly benefiting their own countries — to the public happiness.
And Caesar, when he took Alexandria, kept Areius by the hand, and, conversing with him alone among his companions, rode into the city with him; then, when the Alexandrians expected the worst and begged for mercy, he said he was reconciled to them both because of the greatness of the city and because of its founder Alexander, "and thirdly," he said, "as a favor to this friend of mine." Is it really worth comparing to this favor the many-talented stewardships and administrations of provinces which most men, in pursuing them, grow old waiting at another man's door, having abandoned their own affairs at home? Or must we correct Euripides, who sings and says that if one must keep vigil and haunt another's gate and submit oneself to intimacy with the powerful, it is most noble to do so on behalf of one's country, while for other purposes one should embrace and preserve friendships based on equality and justice?
Yet in doing this, and in rendering one's country obedient to those in power, one must not further humble it, nor, when the leg is already bound, submit the neck as well — as some do, who by carrying matters both small and great to their rulers bring reproach on their own servitude, or rather destroy the political order altogether, rendering it terrified, timid, and powerless in everything. Just as those who have grown accustomed to neither dine nor bathe without a doctor's supervision do not even enjoy the health that nature grants them, so too those who bring every decree, every council session, every grant of favor, and every administrative matter before the ruling power force those in authority to be their masters more than the rulers themselves wish. The chief cause of this is the greed and contentiousness of the leading men: either, in matters where they harm their lesser fellow citizens, they are driven to force them out of the city, or, in disputes among themselves, unwilling to accept a lesser standing among their fellow citizens, they bring in their superiors to intervene. From this, the council, the people, the courts, and every office lose their authority.
One must, by soothing ordinary citizens with equal treatment and powerful men with mutual concession, hold them within the bounds of civic life and dissolve their disputes, treating this as a kind of secret political remedy for diseases — being willing oneself to be worsted among one's fellow citizens rather than to conquer through insolence and the overturning of the rights that belong to one's own country, begging each of the disputants for further concessions and teaching them how great an evil contentiousness is. As it is, rather than yield with honor and grace to fellow citizens, tribesmen, neighbors, and colleagues in office at home, men carry their quarrels off to the doors of orators and men of affairs, with great harm and shame. For physicians, in the case of diseases they cannot remove entirely, divert them out to the surface of the body; so too the statesman, if he cannot keep his city entirely free of trouble, will at least try, by concealing what is disturbed and factious within it, to heal and manage it, so that it may need outside doctors and remedies as little as possible.
Let the statesman's guiding policy, then, be one that holds fast to safety and flees the disturbing madness of empty glory, as has been said; yet in his disposition there should abide an undaunted, bold-hearted, high-spirited resolve, of the sort that enters men who, on behalf of their fatherland, stand firm against hostile men, difficult circumstances, and adverse times, and fight to the end. For he must not himself stir up storms, but must not abandon ship when they fall upon it; nor stir the city into peril, yet when it stumbles...
and to help it when it is in danger, taking up frank speech from it as a sacred anchor in the greatest crises — such as the troubles that overtook the people of Pergamum under Nero, and the Rhodians recently under Domitian, and the Thessalians earlier under Augustus, when they burned Petraeus alive. On such occasions you would not see the true statesman drowsing or cowering, nor blaming others while setting himself outside the danger, but
going on embassies, sailing, and speaking first, not saying, “We who did the killing have come — turn away destruction, Apollo!” but rather, even if he had no share in the wrongdoing of the many, taking the risks upon himself on their behalf. For this is a noble thing, and beyond its nobility the admired virtue and high spirit of a single man has often dimmed the anger felt against everyone and dissolved the fearsome bitterness of a
threat — as seems to have happened to the Persian king in his dealings with Bulis and Sperthias the Spartans, and as happened to Pompey in his dealings with Sthenno, when Pompey was about to punish the Mamertines for their revolt, and Sthenno told him he would not be acting justly if he destroyed many innocent people for the sake of one guilty man; for he himself, the one who had led the city to revolt, was the one who had persuaded his friends and forced
his enemies. This so affected Pompey that he not only let the city go but treated Sthenno with kindness. Sulla's guest-friend, faced with a like virtue but an unlike outcome, met a noble end: for when Sulla had captured Praeneste and was about to slaughter all the rest, he was ready to release that one man alone on account of their guest-friendship, saying that he did not wish to owe his safety
to the murderer of his country — and the man mingled himself among the citizens and was cut down together with them. Such crises, then, one must pray to avoid, and hope for better things. Every office is a sacred and great thing, and one must honor the officeholder above all; and the honor due to office is harmony and friendship toward one's colleagues in office far more than crowns and the purple-bordered robe. Those who suppose that serving in the army together and being young men together
is the beginning of friendship, but that holding a joint command or joint magistracy is a cause of enmity, have not escaped one of three faults: either they regard their colleagues as equals and so quarrel with them, or they envy those who are superior, or they despise those who are lowlier. One ought instead to court the superior, adorn the inferior, and honor the equal, and to greet and love them all, on the ground that they have become friends not through the dinner table or the wine-cup
or the hearth, but through a common and public vote, and in a sense possess, as an inheritance from their fatherland, this goodwill toward one another. Scipio, at any rate, got a bad name at Rome because, when he was entertaining friends at the dedication of the temple of Hercules, he did not invite his colleague in office, Mummius; for even if in other respects they did not consider themselves friends, in matters of this sort they thought it right to honor
and show courtesy on account of the office. Since, then, so small a lapse of kindness brought a reputation for arrogance upon a man otherwise as admirable as Scipio, surely anyone who diminishes the dignity of a colleague in office, or maligns his ambitious undertakings, or, in short, appropriates everything to himself out of self-will while stripping his colleague of it, could hardly appear reasonable and moderate. I remember that when I myself was still young and had been sent as an envoy along with another man
to the proconsul, and my colleague had somehow been left behind, so that I alone met with him and transacted the business, when I was about to return and report on the embassy, my father stood up and told me privately not to say “I went” but “we went,” and not “I said” but “we said,” and in general to associate my colleague with the report and share the credit in giving my account. For such conduct is not only fair and humane, but it also removes the envy that
causes pain from one's reputation. This is why great men attribute their successes to a divine power or to fortune as well — as Timoleon, who put down the tyrannies in Sicily, founded a shrine to Automatia; and Pytho, admired and honored by the Athenians for killing Cotys, said, “God did this, using my hand.” And Theopompus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, said to the man who claimed
that Sparta was kept safe because its kings knew how to rule, “Rather because the people know how to obey.” Now both of these things come about through each other. Most people say and believe that it is the work of political education to produce citizens who are governed well; for in every city the governed body is greater than the governing one, and each man rules for only a short time, while he is
governed for his whole life as a participant in a democracy. So it is the finest and most useful lesson to obey those in authority, even if they happen to be inferior in power and reputation. For it is absurd that the leading actor in tragedy, a Theodorus or a Polus, though a hired performer, should often follow and address humbly the man who speaks the third-rate parts, if that man wears the diadem and holds the scepter,
while in real actions and in political life the rich and famous man should slight and despise a magistrate who is a private citizen and a poor man, insulting and undermining, by his own personal standing, the dignity of the city, rather than increasing and adding his own reputation and power to that of the office. Just as in Sparta both the kings rose up before the ephors, and any other citizen who was summoned
did not obey by walking but ran, displaying his ready obedience to the citizens through the marketplace at a run and in haste, taking pride in honoring the magistrates — not like some tasteless and boorish people who, priding themselves as it were on a surplus of their own strength, abuse umpires at the games and revile chorus-sponsors at the Dionysia and mock generals and gymnasiarchs, not knowing or realizing that honoring others
is often more glorious than being honored oneself. For a man of great power in the city, a magistrate who serves as his bodyguard and escort brings him greater distinction than one who himself serves as bodyguard and escort to another; rather, the latter brings unpleasantness and envy, while the former brings true glory, the glory that comes from goodwill: a man seen at another's doors, greeting him first sometime, and taking him by the arm in a walk, loses nothing of himself and confers
adornment upon the city. It is also popular-minded to endure a magistrate's abuse or anger, or to quote the line of Diomedes — for glory will follow this man too — or the saying of Demosthenes, that the man in question is now not merely Demosthenes but also a lawgiver, or a chorus-sponsor, or a crowned official. One should therefore put off retaliation to a later time; for either we will call him to account once he has left office, or
we will gain by waiting for his anger to subside. Yet with zeal and forethought for the common good, and with concern for every office, one must always compete: if the officials are agreeable men, by guiding them in what needs doing, pointing it out, and letting them act on well-considered plans, while contributing to the good repute of the community; but if there is some hesitation, delay, or ill nature among them regarding
action, then he must be present in person and speak before the people, and not neglect or slacken his concern for public affairs on the ground that it is not fitting, since another holds office, to meddle and administer in his stead. For the law always gives the first rank in the constitution to the man who does what is just and understands what is advantageous. “There was a certain man,” it says, “in the army, Xenophon, who was neither
general nor captain,” but by understanding what needed to be done and daring to establish himself in a position of command, he saved the Greeks. And among the deeds of Philopoemen the most famous is this: when Nabis had seized Messene and the general of the Achaeans was unwilling to help and shrank back in cowardice, Philopoemen himself set out with the most eager men, without a formal decree, and rescued the city. Yet one should not
introduce innovations for trivial and chance reasons, but only in cases of necessity, as Philopoemen did, or for noble ends, as Epaminondas did when he extended his term as Boeotarch by four months beyond the law, during which he invaded Laconia and accomplished what he did concerning Messene — so that, if anyone should bring accusation or blame against him for this, the necessity of the act, or the greatness and nobility of the deed, might serve
as a defense against the charge, or as consolation for the risk. They record a saying of Jason, the monarch of the Thessalians, which he used to repeat whenever he used force or gave someone trouble: that it is necessary for those who want to act justly in great matters to commit small injustices. Now this maxim one could immediately recognize as the language of a despot; but the following is a more statesmanlike precept: to yield small matters to the many, granting them as favors,
in order to stand firm on greater matters and prevent them from going wrong. For the man who is excessively precise and severe about everything, yielding and giving way in nothing but always harsh and inexorable, accustoms the people to contend against him and grow resentful, when he might, by giving way a little — like a foot yielding before the great force of a wave — indulge and play along in some matters, graciously, as at sacrifices, games, and theatrical shows, while in others
pretending, as one does with the faults of the young in a household, not to see or hear — so that the power of admonishing and speaking frankly, like that of a medicine not worn out or stale but still at its full strength and credibility, may take firmer hold and bite more deeply on the greater occasions. Alexander, for instance, on hearing that his sister had taken up with one of the handsome young men, was not angry, saying that she too
should be allowed to enjoy some benefit from his kingship — though in conceding such things he was not acting rightly, nor in a manner worthy of himself; for one must not regard the dissolution of authority and its abuse as the enjoyment of it. Toward the people, the true statesman will not permit, so far as he is able, any abuse against citizens, nor confiscation of others' property, nor distribution of public funds, but by persuading, teaching, and warning he will fight against such desires as those who fed and increased
the great drone with a sting that they created in the city around Cleon, as Plato says. But if the people, taking a traditional festival and the honor of a god as their occasion, set out toward some spectacle, or a light distribution, or some act of kindness, or a display meant to win favor, let them enjoy on such occasions the pleasure that comes both from freedom and from prosperity. Indeed, in the policies of Pericles and
of Demetrius there is much of this sort, and Cimon adorned the marketplace with plantings of plane trees and covered walks; and Cato, seeing the people stirred up by Caesar in the affair of Catiline and dangerously inclined toward a change of constitution, persuaded the senate to vote distributions of money to the poor, and this gift put a stop to the disturbance and quelled the uprising. For just as a physician, after drawing off
a great deal of corrupted blood, brings in a little harmless nourishment, so the statesman, after removing something great that was disgraceful or harmful, soothes the discontented and complaining spirit with a light and kindly favor in return. It is no bad thing, too, to redirect the people's zeal toward other useful objects, as Demades did when he had control of the city's revenues: for when the people were eager to send out triremes to help
those revolting from Alexander, and were ordering him to supply the money, he said, “You have money: for I have made preparations for the Choes festival, so that each of you may receive a half-mina; but if you would rather have it for this purpose, use your own funds for it yourselves.” And in this way, so that they should not be deprived of the distribution, they let the expedition drop, and he thereby dissolved the people's grievance against Alexander. For many things
cannot be pushed away from unprofitable courses by a direct approach, but require some sort of roundabout turn and redirection, such as Phocion also used: when ordered to invade Boeotia at an inopportune time, he immediately proclaimed that all men from youth up to sixty years of age should follow him; and when the older men raised an outcry, he said, “What is so terrible? For I, your general, who am eighty years old, will be with you.” In this same way
one must also cut off untimely embassies, by enrolling among their number many of those who are unsuited for the task, and useless building projects, by ordering that everyone contribute to them, and unseemly lawsuits, by requiring that people attend and travel abroad together for them. And those who propose and instigate such measures must be the first ones dragged in and made to take part; for either, by shrinking back, they will themselves seem to be dissolving the undertaking, or, by being present, they will share in its difficulties. Where, however, something great and useful needs to be accomplished,
something that requires much contest and effort, there try to choose the best of your friends, or, among the best, the gentlest; for these will least oppose you and will most cooperate, since they possess good sense without love of contention. Furthermore, being experienced in one's own nature, one must, in matters where one is by nature weaker than another, choose those who are more capable rather than one's equals, as
Diomedes, for his reconnaissance mission, chose the prudent man to accompany him, passing over the brave ones. For undertakings are more evenly balanced, and rivalry does not arise between men who compete for honor on the basis of different virtues and abilities. So take on as a partner in a lawsuit, and as a companion in an embassy, if you are not capable of speaking, the man skilled in rhetoric — as Pelopidas took Epaminondas — and if you are unpersuasive in addressing
the crowd and are lofty in manner, as Callicratidas was, take the man who is charming and attentive; and if you are weak and ill-suited for hard work in body, take the industrious and vigorous man, as Nicias took Lamachus. For in this way Geryon would have been enviable, with his many legs, hands, and eyes, if he had directed them all with a single soul. Statesmen have the privilege of combining not only bodies and money, but also fortunes and
powers and virtues, if they are of one mind, into a single service, and thereby gain greater renown from another's contribution in the same undertaking — unlike the Argonauts, who, having left Heracles behind, were forced, sung and drugged as they passed through the women's quarters, to save themselves and steal the fleece. Entering certain temples, men leave gold outside, but they bring in iron for practically nothing at all. Since
the speaker's platform is a common shrine belonging alike to Zeus of the Council, Zeus of the City, Themis, and Justice, from the very outset strip off love of wealth and love of money, like iron thick with rust and a disease of the soul, and cast it away into the marketplaces of shopkeepers and moneylenders; keep yourself apart from it, holding that the man who profits from public funds is stealing from temples, from tombs, from friends, from
perjured testimony, that he is an untrustworthy counselor, a perjured judge, a bribe-taking magistrate — in short, a man clean of no injustice whatsoever. Hence there is no need to say much more about this. But love of honor, though a more high-spirited vice than love of gain, brings no fewer disasters in political life; for boldness attaches to it even more, since it is engendered not in idle or lowly natures but chiefly in vigorous and youthful ambitions, and the
the swelling of crowds often joining in raising it up and pushing it along with their praises makes it uncontrollable and hard to manage. Just as Plato said that the young should be told, from childhood on, that it is not right for them to wear gold about themselves or to possess it, since they already have an inborn kind mingled in their soul — hinting, I think, at the virtue that runs down to their natures from their lineage — so let us console ambition, telling it that we have within ourselves gold uncorrupted and unmixed and unstained by envy and blame: an honor that grows together with the reasoning and the review of what we have done and administered in public life. For this reason there is no need of honors painted, or molded, or wrought in bronze, in which even what is admired belongs to someone else; for it is not the man for whom the statue was made who is praised, but the one by whom it was made — as with the trumpeter and the bodyguard.
And Cato, when Rome was already by then being filled up with statues, would not allow one to be made of himself, saying, “I would rather have people asking why there is no statue of me than why there is one.” For such things bring envy, and most people think that they owe gratitude to those who have not received honors, while regarding those who have received them as burdensome, as though they were demanding repayment for their services with interest. Just as the man who has sailed safely past the Syrtis and then capsizes near the strait has accomplished nothing great or admirable, so too the man who has kept himself safe from the treasury and the public revenue office, but is then caught up over the front seat of honor or the prytaneum, has struck upon a lofty headland but is submerged all the same. The best man, then, is the one who needs none of these things,
but flees and declines them; but if it is not easy to reject some favor from the people, and their goodwill flowing toward this end, then — since the contest of public life is, for those who compete in it, not one fought for silver or for gifts, but truly a sacred one and a crown-contest — an inscription suffices, and a tablet, and a decree, and a branch of olive, as Epimenides took when he purified the city, from the acropolis. Anaxagoras, for his part, declined the honors offered him
and asked instead that on the day of his death the children be let off from their lessons to play and have a holiday. To the seven Persians who killed the Magi, they and their descendants were given the privilege of wearing the tiara tilted forward over the legs joined to the head; for this, it seems, they made into a token as they went forth to the deed. There is also something civic in
the honor paid to Pittacus: for of the land he had won, when the citizens told him to take as much as he wished, he took only as much as his javelin reached when he threw it; and the Roman Cocles took only as much as he, lame as he was, could plow around in a single day. For the reward for such a deed ought not to be payment but a token of honor, so that it may endure a long time, just as those tokens endured. As for
the three hundred statues of Demetrius of Phalerum, not one of them gathered rust or grime, but all of them were taken down while he was still alive; and the statues of Demades were melted down into chamber pots. Many such honors have suffered this fate, not only because of the baseness of the recipient but also because of the very greatness of what was given. Hence the finest and most secure safeguard of honor is modesty in its scale; while great, excessive, and weighty honors, like
disproportionate statues, are quickly overturned. I speak now of the honors which most people, following Empedocles, do not call ‘right’ but which I too, by custom, call ‘honor’; since the true honor and gratitude, founded in the goodwill and disposition of those who remember, a political man will not despise, nor will he scorn reputation by fleeing ‘to please one’s neighbors,’ as Democritus thought one should. For
not even the affection of dogs or the goodwill of horses is something to be cast aside by hunters and horse-breeders, but it is both useful and pleasant to work such a disposition toward oneself in creatures raised and familiar with us — of the kind that the dog of Lysimachus displayed, and that the poet describes concerning the horses of Achilles and Patroclus. And I think the bees too would do better if they were willing to greet and welcome those who feed and tend them
rather than sting them and grow fierce; but as it is, people subdue the bees with smoke, and lead violent horses and runaway dogs, forced, with collars and bridles; but nothing except trust in goodwill, a reputation for honorable character, and a belief in justice can make one human being gentle and tractable toward another, willingly. And Demosthenes rightly declares that the greatest safeguard for cities against tyrants is distrust; for this
above all is the part of the soul by which we are captured, the part in which we place our trust. Just as, when Cassandra was held in no repute, her prophecy was of no use to the citizens — for she says, ‘the god has set me to prophesy in vain, and among those who have suffered and lie in troubles I am called wise, but before they suffer I am thought mad’ — so too the trust placed in Archytas and the goodwill shown toward Battus greatly benefited
those who made use of them, because of their reputation. And this is the first and greatest good inherent in the reputation of statesmen: the trust which grants entry to public action. Second, that the goodwill of the many serves as a weapon for good men against the envious and the wicked — as when ‘a mother wards a fly from her child, when he lies in sweet sleep,’ warding off envy
and, in relation to positions of power, leveling the low-born with the well-born, the poor with the rich, the private citizen with the rulers; and in general, whenever truth and virtue are added to it, it becomes a fruitful and steady wind behind a political career. Consider, by contrast, the opposite disposition, as you study it in the examples. The children and wife of Dionysius were prostituted and then killed by the people of
Italy, who then burned their bodies and scattered the ashes from a ship over the sea. But when a certain Menander, who had ruled reasonably well in Bactria, died in camp, the cities held the rest of his funeral rites in common, but when it came to a contest over his remains they only with difficulty came to an agreement, so that, dividing an equal share of the ashes among themselves, they went away, and there came to be
memorials to the man among all of them. Again, the people of Acragas, once freed from Phalaris, voted that no one should wear a grey-blue cloak, because the tyrant’s bodyguards wore grey-blue loincloths. And the Persians, because Cyrus had a hooked nose, even now are enamored of hooked noses and consider them the most beautiful. Thus the strongest and at the same time most divine of all forms of love is the one that cities and peoples come to feel toward a single man on account of his virtue;
whereas the falsely-named honors that come from theaters, or distributions, or gladiatorial games, and their false witnesses, resemble the flatteries of courtesans toward crowds, always smiling upon whoever gives and grants favors — a fleeting and unstable kind of reputation. Well did the man who first said that a democracy is destroyed by the first man who bribes it understand this, namely that the many lose their strength once they become susceptible to receiving gifts; and it is necessary that
those who bribe should also think that they are destroying themselves, whenever, by purchasing reputation at great expense, they make the many strong and bold, as though the many were masters able both to give something great and to take it away. Yet this does not mean that one should be stingy in the customary forms of public generosity, since circumstances make it plain that the many hold in greater hatred a rich man who does not share his private wealth than a poor man who steals from the public treasury,
regarding the former as arrogance and contempt toward themselves, but the latter as a matter of necessity. Let acts of generosity, then, be, first, given for nothing in return — for in this way they astonish and win over recipients all the more; and next, let them come with a fitting and honorable occasion, one bound up with the honoring of a god that leads everyone toward piety; for at the same time a strong disposition and belief arises among the many that the divine is great
and majestic, whenever they see the men whom they themselves honor and consider great behaving so lavishly and eagerly toward the divine. Just as Plato removed from the young being educated the Lydian and Ionian modes of music — the one because it stirs up the mournful and grieving part of our soul, the other because it fosters what is slippery and unrestrained toward pleasures — so too you
should, of the forms of public generosity, most of all drive out of the city whichever ones stir up and nourish what is murderous and bestial, or scurrilous and unrestrained; if that is not possible, avoid them and fight hard against the many when they demand such spectacles. Always make the occasions for your expenditures decent and temperate, ones that have as their end what is honorable or necessary, or at least what is pleasant and gratifying without
harm or accompanying outrage. And if one’s means are modest, circumscribed by a fixed center and radius appropriate to need, there is nothing ignoble or base in openly admitting one’s poverty and standing apart from the public generosities of the wealthy, and in not borrowing money — which would be both pitiable and ridiculous — in order to perform public services; for such men do not escape notice as they grow weak, or trouble their friends, or flatter their creditors, so that they gain
from such expenditures neither reputation nor strength, but rather shame and contempt. For this reason it is always useful, in such matters, to remember Lamachus and Phocion: the latter, when the Athenians asked him at a sacrifice to make a contribution and kept applauding him, said, “I would be ashamed to give to you while not repaying this man, Callicles,” pointing to his creditor. Lamachus,
for his part, in the accounts of his generalships always entered a charge for money spent on shoes and a cloak for himself; and the Thessalians voted to give Hermon, who was declining office because of poverty, a jar of wine each month and a bushel of barley meal every four days. Thus it is no disgrace to admit poverty, nor are poor men left behind, in proportion to their means, by those in cities who hold feasts and finance choruses, provided they have the frankness
and trust that come from virtue. In such matters one must above all master oneself, and neither go down onto the plain as a foot-soldier to fight against cavalry, nor compete on the racetrack of reputation and power, but always try, relying on virtue and high purpose together with reason, to lead the city — men in whom there resides not only what is honorable and dignified but also what is
“more desirable than staters of Croesus’ gold,” something winning and attractive. For the good man is not stubborn or overbearing, nor is the moderate man blunt and abrupt, nor does he “walk among the citizens with a look bitter to behold”; rather, he is, first of all, approachable and accessible to all who wish to come near and address him, keeping his house unlocked, like a harbor of refuge, always open to those in need, and displaying his solicitude and kindness not only in matters of need and in actions,
but also by grieving with those who stumble and rejoicing with those who succeed; nowhere burdensome or troublesome with a crowd of servants at the baths or by seizing seats at the theaters, nor conspicuous for the sort of luxury and extravagance that provokes envy, but equal and uniform in dress and manner of life and in the upbringing of his children and the care of his wife, as one who wishes to live among the people and share their common humanity. Then, by offering himself as a well-disposed counselor and an unpaid advocate
and a kindly reconciler between husbands and wives and between friends with one another, spending no small part of the day engaged in public affairs on the platform or in the assembly hall, and then drawing to himself, for the rest of his life, all the other business and household concerns of people, from every side, like clouds driven by the northwest wind — always making himself public property through his cares — and regarding political life as a way of living and acting, not, as most do, as a burden and a public service to be discharged, by all
these things and their like he turns the attention of the many toward himself and draws them in, since they see that the flatteries and lures offered by others are counterfeit and adulterated in comparison with this man’s solicitude and good sense. For the flatterers of Demetrius did not deign to address the other kings by the title ‘king,’ but called Seleucus ‘master of elephants,’ Lysimachus ‘keeper of the treasury,’
Ptolemy ‘admiral,’ and Agathocles ‘lord of the islands’; but the many, even if at first they reject the good and sensible man, later, on coming to learn the truth about him and his character, consider this man alone to be truly political, truly a man of the people, and a ruler, while they merely regard and call the others a chorus-sponsor, a host, or a gymnasium-director. Then, just as at
banquets, when Callias or Alcibiades is footing the bill, it is Socrates who is listened to, and it is toward Socrates that everyone looks, so too in healthy cities Ismenias may give and Lichas may host dinners and Niceratus may sponsor choruses, but it is Epaminondas, Aristides, and Lysander who rule, engage in politics, and command armies. Looking to these examples, one must not be humbled or overawed by the reputation that arises among the crowds from theaters, banquet-halls, and public burial monuments,
regarding it as something that lives only a short time and dissolves together with the gladiators and the stage-sets, possessing nothing honorable or dignified. Those experienced in the tending and rearing of bees consider the hive that buzzes loudest and is fullest of commotion to be thriving and healthy; but the man to whom god has given care over the rational and political swarm judges its well-being above all by the calm
and gentleness of the people. He will, for the rest, accept and imitate, as far as he is able, the practice of Solon, but he will be at a loss and astonished at what possessed that man to write that a citizen who, in a civic faction, attaches himself to neither side should be disfranchised. For a sick body does not begin its change toward health from the parts that are sick together with it, but rather when the constitution that has grown strong in the healthy parts
drives out what is contrary to nature; so too in a people torn by faction, when the strife is not so terrible or fatal but is one that will eventually cease, what is needed is for the element unaffected and sound to be mixed in abundantly and to remain and dwell among them; for from it what is proper to health flows in from those of sound mind and passes through what is diseased. But cities that have been thrown into disorder throughout are utterly ruined, unless they meet with some external force
and, chastised by their sufferings, are forced into moderation. Yet it is not fitting to sit unmoved and unfeeling amid factional strife, hymning one’s own freedom from disturbance and the untroubled, blessed life, taking delight in the affairs of others while remaining indifferent; rather, one must at this point especially put on the buskin of Theramenes, associating with both sides and attaching oneself to neither; for you will seem, not by refusing to share in wrongdoing, to be an outsider, but by helping, to belong
to all; and your not sharing in their misfortune will incur no ill-will, if you appear to grieve equally with everyone. But the strongest course is to take precautions in advance so that factions never arise at all, and to hold this to be the greatest and finest part of the political art, as it were. For observe that, of the greatest goods for cities — peace, freedom, prosperity, abundance of men, and concord — as regards peace, at least for the present, the people have no need at all of politicians,
at the present time — for war, whether Greek or foreign, has fled from us and vanished — but of freedom they have as much as their rulers allot to the people, and perhaps more would not even be better for them; while for abundance of crops, a kindly blending of seasons, and for their wives to bear "children like their parents," and for safety for those born to them, the prudent man will pray to the gods on behalf of his own citizens.
What remains, then, for the statesman alone, out of the tasks now before him — and it is second to none of these blessings — is to instill concord and friendship always among those who dwell together, and to remove every kind of strife, faction, and ill will, treating the matter as one does in quarrels between friends: first joining company with the side that thinks itself more wronged, sharing its sense of grievance and its indignation, and then setting about to soften and instruct it,
explaining that among those who contend to force their will and win, it is those who yield who are superior not only in fairness and character but also in high-mindedness and greatness of soul, and that by conceding a little they win in the things that are finest and greatest; and further, teaching both individually and collectively, and pointing out the weakness of Greek affairs — of which it is better for sensible men to partake in only one respect —
namely to live out their lives in quiet and concord, since fortune has left no prize remaining in the middle to contend for. For what leadership, what glory, is there now for the victors? What power is there, which some trivial edict of a proconsul can dissolve or transfer to another, possessing nothing worth the effort even if it should remain? Since, then, just as a conflagration does not often begin from sacred or public places, but some lamp neglected in a house,
or some heap of rubbish that has caught fire, sends up a great flame and works public destruction, so too it is not always public rivalries over common affairs that kindle civil strife in a city; often it is private matters and personal collisions that, having advanced into the public sphere, throw the whole city into confusion. It falls to the statesman no less than to anyone to heal these things and to forestall them, so that some may not come into being at all, others may cease
quickly, and yet others may not gain magnitude or touch upon public affairs, but remain confined to the very parties in dispute — the statesman himself paying attention and pointing out to others how private matters become the causes of public ones, and small matters of great ones, when overlooked and not given care and consolation at the outset. For instance, at Delphi the greatest revolution is said to have arisen because of Crates: when Orsilaus, son of Phalis,
was about to marry his daughter, then, the mixing-bowl having spontaneously cracked in the middle during the libations, he took it as an omen, left the bride, and departed with his father. But Crates, a little later, when they were offering sacrifice, planted some gold from the sacred treasury on them and had Orsilaus and his brother hurled from the cliff without trial, and again put to death some of their friends and relatives who had taken refuge as suppliants in the temple of Athena Pronaia. After many
such deeds had occurred, the Delphians killed Crates and his fellow conspirators, and with the money — the men being called "accursed" — rebuilt the lower temples. And at Syracuse, of two intimate young men, one, having taken charge of the other's beloved to guard while he was away, corrupted him during his absence, and the other, in turn as if repaying the outrage, seduced that man's wife. One of the elders, coming before the council, urged that both be driven
out, before the city should taste of their enmity and be filled with it; he did not, however, persuade them, and as a result they fell into civil strife, and amid great disasters overturned the finest constitution. And you yourself, I daresay, have examples close to home: the enmity of Pardalas against Tyrrhenus, which came within a little of destroying Sardis, casting it, from small and private causes, into revolt and war. Therefore one must not
let the statesman despise such things — just as, in the body, there are quick spreadings of minor injuries — but must take hold of them, press on them, and give aid; for by attentiveness, as Cato says, even the great is made small, and the small is brought to nothing at all. And there is no greater device toward persuasion in these matters than for a man to offer himself, in private disputes, as a gentle and unresentful mediator, standing by the
original causes and adding to no one's contentiousness, nor anger, nor any other passion that produces harshness and bitterness in necessary disputes. Those who wrestle in the palaestra bind their hands round with soft gloves, so that their contest may not fall into anything irreparable, the blow being made gentle and painless; but in trials and lawsuits against fellow citizens it is better to contend using charges that are
clean and unadorned, and not, like arrows, to notch and poison one's dealings with slanders, malicious insinuations, and threats, making them irreparable, great, and public matters. For the man who conducts himself this way toward those under him will have the rest as well obedient to him; whereas rivalries over public affairs, once private hatreds are removed, become slight and bring
nothing that is either harsh or irreparable.

======== Moralia: Quaestiones Convivales ========

"Hating a mindful drinking-companion" — Sossius Senecio, some say this proverb was originally said of billeted soldiers, who are fairly boorish and ill-mannered when they drink; for the Dorians of Sicily, it seems, called a billeted lodger a "mnamon," a rememberer. Others think the proverb enjoins amnesty for what is said and done over wine; that is why our ancestral traditions consecrate both Forgetfulness and the fennel-stalk to the god, on the ground that either nothing that goes wrong under the influence of wine deserves to be remembered, or that it deserves only a light, childlike admonition, at most.
But since you too think that forgetting what is out of place is, as Euripides truly says, wise, whereas altogether failing to remember what happens over wine not only conflicts with the table's reputation for fostering friendship, but also has against it the testimony of the most distinguished philosophers — Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Speusippus, Epicurus, Prytanis, Hieronymus, and Dio of the Academy — men who thought it a task worthy of some effort to record conversations that took place over wine; and since you thought we ought to gather together what is useful from the discussions scattered often, now in Rome with you, now among us in Greece, when table and cup were both present and literary talk went on — with this in view I have already sent you three of the books, each containing ten questions, and I shall send the rest quickly too, if these seem not entirely lacking in taste or unfit for the god of wine.
First of all is placed the question of philosophizing over wine. For you remember that, when a debate arose at Athens after dinner as to whether philosophical talk should be used over wine, and to what measure, if it is used, Ariston, who was present, said, "Are there really people, in the gods' name, who refuse philosophy a place at wine?" And I said, "But indeed there are, my friend — people who, putting on a very solemn ironic air, say that philosophy, like a proper mistress of the house, ought not to raise her voice over wine, and that the Persians are right not to get drunk and dance with their wedded wives
but with their concubines instead. In just the same way, they think we ought to bring music and play-acting into our drinking parties, but not stir up philosophy — on the ground that she is not suited to playing along, nor are we, at such a time, disposed to be serious. They point out that even Isocrates the sophist, when pressed to say something over wine, could not bring himself to do more than this: "In the things I am skilled at,
this is not the occasion; and in the things suited to this occasion, I am not skilled." And Cato cried out and said, "Well said, by Dionysus!" — he swore off the discussion, since it was going to run through such periods as would have thrown the party of the Graces into an uproar. Yet I do not think it is the same thing to banish a rhetorical speech from a symposium and to banish a philosophical one; philosophy's is a different kind of discourse, one which,
being concerned with living, is not likely to hold itself aloof from any occasion of play or any pastime of pleasure, but to be present in all things, bringing with it measure and timeliness; or else we must suppose that neither temperance nor justice ought to be admitted into our drinking either, mocking their dignity with irony. Now if, like those who entertained Orestes, we were going to eat and drink in silence in the Thesmotheteion, that would be
no unfortunate consolation for our ignorance. But if Dionysus is, in all respects, Lysius and Lyaeus — the Looser and the Releaser — and above all he removes the bit from the tongue and gives the voice the greatest freedom, then I think it foolish and senseless, when the occasion for talk abounds, to deprive it of the best kind of talk — to inquire, in our lecture-rooms, into the duties proper to a fellow drinker and what makes a good table-companion and
how wine should be used, and yet to banish philosophy from the actual drinking parties themselves, as though it were unable to confirm in practice what it teaches in theory." And when you said it was not worth arguing further with Cato about these matters, but that some boundary and character should be sought for the kind of philosophizing proper at wine, escaping this very charge — playfully, and not without wit — leveled against wranglers and would-be sophists, you said, "But now, let us go to
dinner, so that we may join in the fray of Ares" (as Homer says), and you called us on to the discussion. I said, first, that I thought we should consider who is present: "If the party has a good many literary people in it, like the Socrateses, Phaedruses, Pausaniases, and Eryximachuses at Agathon's table, or the Charmideses, Antisthenese, and Hermogeneses at Callias's, and others like them, we shall let them philosophize as they please, no less
mixing Dionysus with the Muses than with the Nymphs; for the Nymphs make him gracious and gentle for the body, but the Muses truly gentle and gift-giving for the soul. And even if a few ordinary people are present, they will, like mute letters set among the vowels of a crowd of educated men, share in some utterance that is not wholly inarticulate, and in some understanding. But if there should be a great number
of people of the sort who put up with the sound of any bird, any bowstring, or any piece of wood sooner than the voice of a philosopher, then Pisistratus's expedient is useful. When he had a quarrel with his sons and perceived that his enemies were rejoicing at it, he called an assembly and said that he himself wished to persuade his sons, but since they were being stubborn, he would himself yield to them and follow their wishes. In just this way
a philosophical man, among drinking companions who will not accept his kind of talk, will change his tune, fall in with them, and be content with their entertainment, so long as it does not overstep propriety; knowing that men engage in rhetoric through speech, but philosophize even while keeping silent, and playing, and, by Zeus, even while being mocked and mocking in turn. "For it is not only," as Plato says, "the height of injustice to seem just without being so,"
but it is also the height of good sense to philosophize without seeming to philosophize, and, while playing, to accomplish what serious people accomplish. For just as Euripides's maenads, unarmed and without weapons of iron, wound their assailants merely with their light thyrsus-wands, so too the jests and laughter of true philosophers move and turn about, in some fashion, even those who are not entirely invulnerable." "I think, too, that there is a certain kind of narrative fit for a drinking party,
some of which history supplies and some of which can be drawn from matters close at hand, containing many examples useful for philosophy and many for piety, some inducing emulation of brave and high-minded deeds, others of kind and humane ones. If someone uses these unobtrusively to guide the drinkers along, he will remove no small part of the evils of drunkenness. Now those who
mix borage into the wine, and sprinkle the floor with infusions of vervain and maidenhair fern, thinking that these things instill cheerfulness and friendliness in their guests, imitating the Homeric Helen who drugged the unmixed wine, fail to notice that even that myth, after making its long way round from Egypt, ends up meaning nothing more than fitting and becoming conversation; for Helen, as they are drinking, tells them
about Odysseus: "Such a deed that steadfast man endured and performed, subduing his very self with shameful blows" — for this, it seems, was the drug that banished grief and pain: a story with a timeliness suited to the feelings and circumstances at hand. And people of taste, even when they philosophize directly, at such a time lead their discourse through what is persuasive rather than through the compulsion of formal proofs. For you see
that even Plato, in the Symposium, when discussing the end of life and the first good and theology in general, does not strain his proof or raise a cloud of dust, making his grip forceful and inescapable as is his usual habit, but instead wins the men over with gentler premises, examples, and myths." "And the inquiries themselves ought to be gentler too, and the problems familiar, and the questions
reasonable and not petty, so as not to choke the less intelligent or drive them away. For just as it is customary for the bodies of drinkers to be set in motion through dancing and choral movement, but if we force them to get up and fight in armor, or throw the discus, the party will be not only unpleasant but harmful — so too, of inquiries into the soul, the light ones stir it fittingly and beneficially, while the kind Democritus calls "contentious and
constricting" arguments must be dismissed, since they strain those engaged in them over knotty and hard-to-view matters, and vex the bystanders as well; for talk, like wine, ought to be common property, in which all will share. Those who introduce such problems would show themselves no more accommodating to fellowship than Aesop's crane and fox: the fox
poured out a rich broth over a flat stone and offered it to the crane, who was not feasted but rather made a fool of, for the broth's wateriness eluded the thinness of her mouth. In turn, the crane, inviting her to dinner, set out food for her in a narrow-necked jar, which, having a thin and long neck, allowed her to lower her own mouth easily and enjoy it, but the fox could not get her fair share. So too, then,
whenever philosophers, sinking into subtle and dialectical problems over wine, trouble the majority who cannot follow, and those in turn throw themselves into songs and silly stories and vulgar, market-place talk, the whole purpose of table-fellowship is lost and Dionysus is dishonored. Just as, when Phrynichus and Aeschylus advanced tragedy into myths and sufferings,
the saying was uttered, "What has this to do with Dionysus?" — so it has often occurred to me to say to those who drag "The Ruling Argument" into drinking parties: "My good man, what has this to do with Dionysus?" For to sing the so-called skolia, when the mixing-bowl is set in the middle and garlands are being handed round — which the god, in freeing us, sets upon our heads — perhaps that is fitting; but the other thing is neither becoming nor suited to a party. Indeed,
they say that the skolia are not, in fact, a class of songs composed obscurely, but rather this: first, everyone together sang a hymn to the god with a single voice, as in a paean; then, second, a myrtle branch was passed on to each in turn — which they called, I think, the "aisakos," because whoever received it had to sing; and after that, a lyre was passed around, and the educated man took it and sang in tune, while those without musical skill declined,
and so what was not common to all and not easy was called "skolion" — crooked. Others say that the myrtle did not go around in order, but was carried across from couch to couch to each man individually: the first singer sent it to the first man of the second couch, he to the first man of the third, then the second singer likewise to the second man, and so the crooked, much-winding path of its circuit, it seems, is what got the song called "skolion."
My brother Timon, when giving a feast, used to tell each guest to sit down wherever he wished among those arriving, since both foreigners and citizens, intimates and family members — guests of every sort, in short — were invited. Once, when many guests were already present, a certain stranger, got up like some over-dressed character out of comedy, with excessive finery and a retinue of slave-boys rather affectedly, came as far as the door of the men's dining room,
and, casting his eyes around in a circle at those already reclining, refused to go in, but turned and went away; and though many ran after him, he said he saw no place there worthy of himself. The company reclining, laughing heartily, told them to see him off from the house with good wishes; for indeed many of them had already had a fair amount to drink. But when the dinner was over, my father, addressing me as I lay reclining rather far off,
said, "Timon, you have made me and yourself judges in a dispute, since I have long had a poor reputation with him on account of that stranger. If the placing of couches had been arranged from the start, as I urged, we would not now be paying the penalty for disorder to a man skilled 'in marshaling both horses and shield-bearing men.' Indeed, they say that the general Paulus Aemilius, when, after defeating Perseus in Macedonia, he was organizing feasts, showed
remarkable order in everything and used the same arrangement elsewhere too, and said that it belonged to the same man to draw up a most formidable battle line and to give the most pleasant symposium; for both are matters of good order. And the poet is accustomed to call the best and most kingly men 'marshalers of the people.' And you people, I think, say that the great god changed disorder into order through good arrangement, taking nothing away from what exists
and adding nothing, but by setting each thing in its proper place, fashioning the most beautiful shape out of the most formless, working upon nature. But these grander and more solemn matters we learn from you philosophers; we ourselves observe that the expense laid out on dinners has nothing pleasant or generous about it unless it partakes of order. That is why it is absurd that cooks
and table-servants care intensely about what dish to bring on first, second, in the middle, or last, and, by Zeus, about the place and arrangement of perfume, garlands, and a harp-girl, should one happen to be present — while those invited to enjoy these things are made to recline haphazardly, as it happens, and simply fed, with no regard given to age, office, or anything else of the sort, by which
the one who excels is honored, the one who ranks second is trained to accept it, and the host who arranges them is exercised in judgment and in aiming at what is fitting. For it cannot be that there is a fixed seat and standing for the better man, yet no fixed place for reclining, nor that the host pledges one guest before another in the drinking, yet, in the matter of seating arrangements, overlooks the distinctions, revealing from the very start what is called 'one single Mykonos' —
in effect leveling the whole party." Such, then, was my father's defense. My brother replied that he was no wiser than Bias, so that, whereas Bias had declined to arbitrate between two friends, he himself should become the judge of so many relatives and so many companions all together — pronouncing judgment not about money but about places of honor, as though he had invited them not to entertain them warmly but to vex his own intimates. "Menelaus," he said,
"was strange and proverbial enough, in that he offered advice though he was not asked for it; but stranger still is the man who makes himself, instead of a host, a judge and arbiter over people who neither submit their dispute to him nor are on trial — deciding who is better than whom, or worse; for they have not entered a contest, but come to dinner. Nor, indeed, is such a judgment even easy to make, since some differ in age, others in influence, others in
usefulness, and others in closeness of relation; rather, one would have to keep at hand, as though rehearsing a comparative exercise, the commonplace arguments of Aristotle or the superlatives of Thrasymachus, accomplishing nothing useful, but transferring empty reputation-mongering from the marketplace and the theaters into our drinking parties — trying to relax our other passions through good company, while stirring up this one by contrivance, a thing which I think much more properly belongs
...it is far more fitting, I think, to come together easily and simply over wine, once we have washed off the soul rather than the mud from our feet. But as things stand, we try to remove whatever enmity has arisen among our guests from anger or business dealings, while by our concern for precedence we kindle and rekindle it all over again, humbling some and puffing up others. And yet, if more frequent toasts, and further courses, and still more conversation and greeting are to follow upon the order of reclining, our banquet will become altogether like a satrap's court instead of a gathering of friends. But if we are to preserve equality among the guests in other respects, why should we not begin precisely here, and accustom ourselves, without pretension and simply, to recline together — seeing at once, from the doorway, that we have come to dinner as to a democracy, and not to some special preserve, like a city, where the rich man, once placed at table, outranks the humblest guest in the order of reclining?
When this too had been said, and those present demanded a verdict, I said that I had been chosen an arbiter, not a judge, and would take the middle course. 'Young men,' I said, 'who are entertaining fellow citizens and intimates ought to be trained, as Timon says, to distribute themselves simply and without pretension into whatever place they happen upon, taking such easiness as a fine provision for friendship. But when we play the philosopher in the presence of strangers, officials, or older men, I am afraid we may seem to be shutting pretension out at the courtyard gate only to let it in again by the side door, with a great show of indifference. In this matter something must be conceded to custom and to law as well. Or are we to do away with toasts and greetings too — the means by which, toward those we happen to meet, we show honor, not indiscriminately, but as far as possible, with “the seat, and the meats, and the fuller cups,” as the king of the Greeks says, setting precedence in the place of highest honor?
'We also praise Alcinous, because he seats his guest beside himself, making his own son rise from his place — Laodamas, a man of loving heart, who used to sit nearest him and whom he loved best of all; for to seat a suppliant in the place of one's beloved is a graceful and humane act. Such discrimination exists even among the gods: Poseidon, though he arrives last at the assembly, takes his seat in the very middle, as though that place belonged to him by right. Athena, for her part, is shown always to hold the seat next to Zeus as her own special privilege, and the poet hints at this where he says of Thetis that “she sat down beside father Zeus, and Athena made way for her,” while Pindar says outright that she “sits nearest him who breathes fire like the thunderbolt.” And yet Timon will say that one ought not take honor away from others by assigning it to one alone. But it is he, rather, who seems to do this: for the man who makes common what belongs to one in particular takes it away from him, and what belongs to a person in particular is what is owed to each according to his worth; and it is valor and effort that establish the prize of a race, just as birth, office, and the like establish their own claims.'
'And the man who thinks he avoids being burdensome to his guests by treating them all alike in fact draws trouble down on himself all the more, since he causes pain by depriving each of the honor customary to him. To my mind, however, the business of discrimination is not so very difficult. In the first place, it is not easy for many people of rival standing to converge on a single invitation; and in the second place, once several places have come to be regarded as places of distinction, there is no lack of ways to distribute them, if one can hit the mark — telling one guest he has the first place, another that he has the middle, another that he sits beside the host himself, or beside some friend, intimate, or teacher, giving each of those called men of rank his due, while to the rest I would offer gifts and friendliness, which I think leave them more at ease than an honor would. But if the claims to precedence are hard to judge and the men themselves difficult, see what device I resort to: I seat in the place of greatest distinction, if a father is present, the father, taking him as my guide; if not, a grandfather, a father-in-law, a father's brother, or anyone else who has an acknowledged and particular claim to superior honor in the eyes of the host receiving him — taking this principle from the proprieties observed in Homer. For indeed, when Achilles saw Menelaus and Antilochus quarreling over the second prize in the chariot race, and, fearing they might go further still in anger and rivalry, wished to award the prize to someone else — professing, in word, pity and honor for Eumelus, but in fact removing the cause of their dispute.'
While I was saying such things, Lamprias, who was sitting off to one side as was his habit, spoke up loudly and asked those present whether they would allow him to reprove a judge who was talking nonsense. When everyone urged him to speak freely and spare me nothing, he said: 'Who, indeed, would spare a philosopher who distributes birth, wealth, and office at a dinner as though it were a theater, or grants front seats as if by decree of some Amphictyonic council, so that not even over wine can we escape vanity? For reclining places ought to be arranged not with a view to distinction but to pleasure, and one ought not to weigh the worth of each individual by himself, but rather the relation and harmony of one person to another, as though various elements were being brought together into a single partnership. The builder does not set Attic stone, or Laconian, ahead of the foreign kind on account of its noble birth; the painter does not give the leading place to the most costly color; the shipwright does not put the pine of the Isthmus, or the cypress of Crete, first — rather, each thing is arranged so that, when combined and fitted with the rest, it will make the common work strong, beautiful, and useful. And you see that the god whom Pindar calls our “master craftsman” does not everywhere set fire above and earth below, but arranges them as the needs of bodies require. This, Empedocles says, is why “among sea-roaming, heavy-shelled mussels, and stony-skinned whelks and tortoises, you will see the earthy part dwelling uppermost upon the flesh” — not the place nature would assign it, but the one that the arrangement suited to the common task requires it to occupy. Disorder, then, is a bad thing everywhere, but among human beings — especially when they are drinking — it shows its own vice most clearly, through insolence and countless other evils, which it is the part of a man skilled in order and harmony to foresee and guard against.'
We agreed that he was right to say this, and asked, 'Why, then, do you begrudge us men skilled in order and harmony?' 'There is no begrudging at all,' he said, 'so long as you are prepared to obey me as I rearrange and reorder the party, just as Epaminondas rearranged his phalanx.' We all agreed to let him do so. He then ordered the slaves to clear the middle of the room, and, looking each of us over, said: 'Listen, since I am about to arrange you together — I want to explain beforehand. It seems to me that Pammenes of Thebes was not unjust in charging Homer with being inexperienced in matters of love, because he arranged tribe with tribe and mixed clan with clan, when he ought rather to have interposed lover among beloved, so that the phalanx might be of one spirit, held together throughout by a living bond. That is the kind of banquet I too wish to make of ours.
'I shall not place rich man next to rich, young next to young, official next to official, or friend next to friend; for such an arrangement is inert and idle when it comes to increasing and generating goodwill. Instead, fitting to each man’s need what suits him, I direct that the lover of learning be placed next to the eager student, the difficult man next to the gentle one, the garrulous old man next to a young man fond of listening, the boaster next to the ironist, and the irritable man next to the man of few words. And if I happen to notice a rich man of generous disposition, I will bring to him, raising him up from some corner, a decent poor man, so that there may be an outflow, as it were, from a full cup into an empty one. A sophist I forbid to recline beside a sophist, and a poet beside a poet — for “beggar envies beggar, and singer envies singer” — even though Sosicles here and Modestus, when they put their heads together in this way, strike sparks into flame and risk producing the finest results; yet I separate men who are quarrelsome and abusive, and the quick-tempered, inserting some mild man between them, like a cushion against friction. Men fond of the gymnasium, of hunting, and of farming, however, I bring together; for of likenesses, one kind is combative, like that of fighting cocks, another mild, like that of jackdaws. I also bring drinkers together with one another, and lovers together — not only “those who have felt the bite of a boy's love,” as Sophocles says, but also those smitten with women, and those smitten with unmarried girls; for warmed by the same fire they will take to one another more readily, like iron being welded — unless, by heaven, they happen to be in love with the same person.'
From this there arose an inquiry about the places themselves. For different peoples honor different places: among the Persians, the seat in the very middle, where the king reclines, is the seat of honor; among the Greeks, it is the first place; among the Romans, it is the last place of the middle couch, which they call the 'consular' place; while among some of the Greeks around the Pontus, such as the people of Heraclea, it is, on the contrary, the first place of the middle couch that holds this rank. But it was chiefly about the so-called 'consular' place that we were most at a loss. For among us this place held first rank in honor, and yet the reason for it was established as being neither that it was the first place nor that it was the middle one.
Moreover, of the circumstances associated with it, some were not peculiar to this place alone, while others seemed to deserve no serious attention. Still, three of the explanations offered had some force. The first was that the consuls, having overthrown the kings and reorganized everything along more democratic lines, withdrew themselves from the central, kingly position and yielded to a lower one, so that not even this feature of their office and authority might weigh oppressively on their companions. The second was that, of the two couches assigned to the invited guests, the third couch — and the first place upon it — belongs above all to the host; for there, like a charioteer or a helmsman stationed on the right, he can reach out to oversee the service, and is not, in terms of the nearest places, cut off from showing kindness and conversing with those present.
For the place just below him belongs to his wife or children, while the place just above him is fittingly given to whichever guest is held in the highest honor, so that he may be near the host. This place was thought to have a third peculiarity as well: its natural suitability for business. For the Roman consul is not like Archias, the Theban commander of the garrison, so that, if letters or messages requiring attention should reach him in the middle of dinner, he could simply remark, 'business in the morning,' push the letter aside, and take up his drinking cup instead — no; he must be intent and watchful at just such moments.
For it is not only true, as Aeschylus says, that 'night in travail brings forth cares for the wise helmsman,' but every pleasure of drinking and relaxation likewise carries with it, for a general or magistrate, matters requiring attention. So that he may be able both to hear what he must and to give orders and instructions, he holds this particular place; for here, where the second couch joins the third, the angle formed by the bend leaves an opening that allows a secretary, an attendant, a bodyguard, or a messenger from the camp to approach, converse, and inquire, without troubling him or being troubled by any of his fellow diners, while he keeps his hand and voice free and unobstructed on the upper side.
Craton, our son-in-law, and Theon, our companion, on one occasion when some unruliness had broken out at a drinking party and then subsided, raised the subject of the office of symposiarch, thinking that I, as the wearer of the garland, ought not to overlook a custom that had entirely fallen out of use, but should call it back and reestablish the traditional oversight and ordering of drinking parties under proper authority. This view was shared by the others as well, so that a clamor of encouragement arose from everyone.
'Since, then,' I said, 'this is the wish of all of you, I choose myself as your symposiarch, and I direct the rest of you to drink as you please for the present, but I ask Craton and Theon, as the proposers and lawgivers of this decree, to set out briefly, in some general outline, what sort of man ought to be chosen symposiarch, what goal the one chosen should keep in view in exercising his office, and how he should manage the affairs of the party; I leave it to them to divide the discussion between themselves.' They made a show of reluctance at first, declining the task; but when everyone urged them to obey the ruler and do as they were told, Craton spoke first, saying that just as the ruler of guardians ought, as Plato says, to be the most fit for guarding, so the ruler of drinkers ought to be the most fit for drinking.
'Such a man is one who is neither easily overcome by drunkenness nor unwilling to drink; rather, as Cyrus said, writing to the Spartans, that he was more kingly than his brother in other respects and also carried a great deal of unmixed wine well. For the man who misbehaves in his cups is insolent and unseemly, while the man who is altogether sober is disagreeable, and better suited to be a tutor than to preside over a drinking party. Pericles, for his part, whenever, having been elected general, he put on the military cloak, used to make a habit of addressing himself first, as though reminding himself: “Take care, Pericles — you rule free men, you rule Greeks, you rule Athenians.” Let our symposiarch, in the same way, say to himself, “You rule friends,” so that he may neither permit unseemliness nor take away enjoyment.
'The ruler over drinkers must also be at home with earnestness and no stranger to play, but blended well between the two — though tending, like a fine wine, a little more by nature toward the austere side; for wine itself will draw character toward moderation, softening and relaxing it. Just as Xenophon said that the grimness and rusticity of Clearchus, which elsewhere seemed unpleasant, appeared in battle pleasant and cheerful because of the confidence it inspired, so too a man who is not harsh by nature, but dignified and austere, becomes more agreeable and endearing once relaxed by drinking. Further still, he must possess, above all, an experienced knowledge of each of his fellow drinkers — what change wine produces in him, toward what disorder he is most liable to slip, and how he bears unmixed wine. For it is not merely that there is one mixture of wine with water for one man and another for another — a thing the king's own wine-pourers know, now pouring more, now less — but there is also, for each man, a particular blending with wine peculiar to himself, which it is fitting for the symposiarch to know, and, knowing it, to observe; so that, like a musician, tightening the string of drink for one and loosening and sparing it for another, he may bring their natures, out of difference, into evenness and harmony — taking care that equal shares are not measured out by the pint or the ladle, but that what is fitting and suitable to each is allotted according to some measure of occasion and bodily strength. And if this is difficult, the symposiarch ought certainly to know, at the very least, the general facts concerning natures and ages — for instance, that old men grow drunk more quickly than the young, and men who are already unsteady grow drunk faster than those still at rest; and a man who knows such things would preside over the good order and harmony of a symposium far better than one who does not. And indeed, that...'
the symposiarch must be on familiar and friendly terms with everyone, and be underhandedly hostile to none of the guests, is obvious to all; for he will be tolerable neither in giving orders, nor fair in distributing portions, nor blameless in his jesting with the company. “Such a ruler of the symposium,” he said, “Theon, I have fashioned for you, as it were out of wax, and now hand him over to you from my discourse.” And Theon said, “Well, I accept the man thus fashioned and fit for company; but whether I shall be able to use him in every respect and not disgrace the work, I do not know. It seems to me most fitting that such a man should keep our symposium orderly, and not allow it to become now a democratic assembly, now a sophist’s lecture-hall, then again a gambling-den, and after that a stage and an actors’ platform. Do you not see some men playing the demagogue and pleading cases over dinner, others rehearsing and reading aloud some composition of their own, others acting as judges of mimes and dancers? Alcibiades and Theodorus turned Polytion’s banquet into a mystery-initiation, mimicking torch-processions and hierophantic rites. None of this, I think, ought the ruler to countenance; rather he will give room, in speech and spectacle and games alike, only to what serves the true end of a symposium—
and that end was to work an intensification of friendship, or its birth, through pleasure, among those present; for a symposium is a passing of time over wine that ends in friendship by way of charm. But since excess is everywhere cloying and unmixed wine is in many cases harmful, while a blending of things, when it comes about at the right time and with due measure, removes the too-much by which pleasant things are spoiled and beneficial things made painful—clearly the president will provide the drinkers with a blended kind of pastime as well. Hearing many people say that a coastal walk is a sea-voyage, and a coastal sail the pleasantest of journeys, he will in the same way mix play with seriousness, so that those at play may somehow keep hold of something serious, and in turn those being serious may take heart again, like seasick men gazing from close by toward the land of play. For it is possible to use laughter for many beneficial ends, and to make seriousness pleasant—just as among sea-hedgehog plants and rough restharrow the flowers of soft gillyflowers grow. But whatever forms of play come revelling into symposia without any serious purpose, these he will carefully urge his fellow drinkers to guard against, lest unnoticed, like men who have taken henbane, they run wild into insolence and licentiousness under the guise of so-called ‘commands,’ ordering
stammerers to sing, or bald men to have their hair combed, or the lame to hop on one leg. So it was with Agapestor the Academic, who had a thin, wasted leg: his fellow drinkers, mocking him, ordered everyone to stand on the right foot and drain the cup, or else pay a forfeit; but when the turn to give orders came round to him, he bade everyone drink just as they would see him drink. Then, a narrow jar being brought, he set his weak leg into it and drained the cup, while all the others, finding it impossible when they tried, paid the forfeit. Agapestor, then, was charming, and one ought to make retaliations of this easy and cheerful kind; and indeed one should grow accustomed to giving commands aimed at pleasure and benefit, ordering things that are fitting and possible and that adorn the one performing them—bidding singers to sing, orators to speak, philosophers to resolve some difficulty,
poets to recite some verses. For each person is led gladly and eagerly to that in which he happens to be at his best. Now the king of the Assyrians proclaimed by herald a prize for whoever should discover a new pleasure; but the king of a symposium might well set forth a fine prize and honor for the one who introduces play free of insolence, and beneficial delight, and laughter that is companion not to mockery and insolence but to charm and kindliness—since it is on this point that most symposia founder, for want of proper guidance. It belongs to a temperate man to guard against enmity and anger—the kind that arises in the marketplace from greed, in gymnasia and wrestling-schools from rivalry, in offices and honors from love of glory, and at dinner and over wine from play.”
How is it that it is said, ‘Love, too, teaches a man poetry, even one unmusical before’—this question was raised at Sossius’s house, when some verses of Sappho had been sung, since Philoxenus too says that even the Cyclops ‘healed his love with tuneful Muses.’ It was said, then, that Love is a formidable force in bringing men to every kind of daring and innovation, just as Plato too called him bold and ‘an undertaker of everything’: for he makes the silent talkative and the shy attentive, the careless and lazy diligent and industrious; and what one might marvel at most, a stingy and petty man, once he has fallen into love, is softened as iron is by fire, becoming gentle and pliant and sweeter—so that the jest does not seem altogether absurd, that ‘the purse of lovers is tied with a leek-leaf.’
It was also said that being in love resembles being drunk; for it makes men warm and cheerful and expansive, and once they are in this state they are borne along especially toward song and metrical speech. They say that Aeschylus composed his tragedies while drinking and growing warm with wine. And Lamprias, our grandfather, was, when drinking, most inventive and most eloquent of himself; he used to say that, like frankincense, he gave off vapor under the effect of heat. And indeed men who take the greatest pleasure in seeing their beloved take no less pleasure in praising them than in seeing them; and Love, talkative about everything, is most talkative of all in praise. For lovers are themselves persuaded, and wish everyone to be persuaded, that they love people who are noble and good. This is what drove the Lydian Candaules to bring in a spectator into the bedroom
to view his own wife—for lovers do not wish to be believed on their own testimony alone. That is also why, when writing praises of the beautiful, they adorn them with melodies and meters and songs, as though gilding statues, so that they may be heard by more people and remembered; for even if they give a horse or a cock, or anything else, to their beloved, they want the gift itself to be beautiful and conspicuously and extravagantly adorned. Above all, in bringing flattering speech, they wish to appear pleasant and splendid and extraordinary, of the sort a poet is.” Sossius, however, having praised what had been said, remarked that one could do no worse than to take as a starting point what Theophrastus has said about music: “Indeed,” he said, “I recently read the book. Theophrastus says that there are three origins of music: grief, pleasure,
and inspired possession—each of these turning the voice aside from its accustomed course and inclining it. For griefs have a tendency to slide into the mournful and lamenting strain of song; that is why we see orators, in their perorations, and actors, in their lamentations, gently approaching melody and stretching out the voice. Again, intense joys of the soul, in those lighter of temperament, lift up the whole body as well and summon it to rhythmic movement, as they leap and clap their hands if they cannot dance—‘frenzies and cries of those roused, with head thrown back in tumult,’ as Pindar says. But more refined people, when in this state of feeling, let loose only the voice into singing and the uttering of measures and melodies. Most of all, inspired possession
drives both body and voice out of their accustomed and settled course. Hence Bacchic rites employ rhythms, and prophesying in oracular verse comes to those possessed by the god; and of madmen one can see few who babble without meter and song. Since this is so, if you wish to look closely, unfolding love to the light, and examine it, you would find no other passion possessing sharper griefs, or more violent joys, or greater ecstasies and derangements; rather, just as one can see, in Sophocles, a city
‘at once full of incense-smoke, and at once of paeans and groans,’ so too is the soul of a man in love. It is, then, nothing strange or wonderful if Love, containing and comprising within himself all the origins there are of music—grief, pleasure, inspired possession—is in other respects too fond of speech and talkative, and, more than any other passion, inclined and prone toward the making of songs and verses.” There was talk about King Alexander, to the effect that he did not drink much but spent much time over wine, conversing with his friends. Philinus showed that those who said this were talking nonsense, from the royal journals, in which it is written most frequently and repeatedly
that ‘on this day he slept off the drinking,’ and sometimes ‘the following day too’; that is why he was also rather sluggish in sexual matters, but quick and spirited, which are marks of bodily heat. It is also said that his skin gave off a most pleasant fragrance, so that it filled his tunics with a spicy sweetness—which too seems to be a mark of heat; for that reason the driest and hottest regions of the inhabited world produce cassia and frankincense: for Theophrastus says that fragrance arises through a kind of concoction of moisture, when the harmful moisture is drawn off by heat. Callisthenes too seems to have fallen into disfavor with him because he was reluctant to dine on account of the drinking—since, when the so-called great cup of Alexander was passed to him, he pushed it away, saying
that he did not wish, by drinking of Alexander’s cup, to need the help of Asclepius. So much, then, for Alexander’s heavy drinking. As for Mithridates, who made war on the Romans, they say that in the contests he held he set prizes for gluttony and for heavy drinking, and that he himself won both, and altogether drank more than any man of his time, which is why he was also surnamed Dionysus. We ourselves said that this was one of the things believed at random—
namely the explanation given for the surname; for when he was an infant, a thunderbolt burned his swaddling clothes but did not touch his body, except that a trace of the fire remained on his forehead, hidden beneath his hair, while he was still a child; and again, when he was already a man, a thunderbolt fell into his bedroom while he slept, and, though it fell upon him, his quiver, hanging beside him, was pierced through and its arrows
set ablaze. The seers, then, declared that he would have the greatest strength from archery and light-armed troops, but most people called him Dionysus after the thunderbolts, on account of the resemblance of the event. From this there was talk about men who drank a great deal; among these they reckoned also the boxer Heracleides, whom the Alexandrians affectionately called Heraclous, who lived in the time of our fathers. This man, when at a loss for a drinking-companion to stay with him,
used to invite some for the morning drink, others for lunch, others still for dinner, and last of all some for the revel afterward; and as the first group departed, the second would join in, then in turn the third and the fourth—and he, without any interruption, held out for all of them and carried through all four bouts of drinking together. Among those who lived with Drusus, son of Tiberius Caesar, the physician who used to urge everyone on in their drinking was caught taking five or six bitter almonds beforehand each time, so as not to get drunk; and when he was prevented from this and watched, he could not hold out even a little while. Now some thought that almonds have a certain biting and cleansing quality upon the flesh, such that they even remove freckles from the face; and so, when taken beforehand, by their bitterness they scour the pores and produce an irritation, by which
they draw down the moisture evaporating from the head. To us, however, it seemed rather that the power of bitterness is a drying one, one that consumes moisture; that is why, to the taste, of all the flavors the bitter is the most unpleasant—for the little vessels of the tongue, being soft and moist, as Plato says, are strained unnaturally by the power of dryness, as the moisture is drawn out of them. And bitter drugs are also used to dry up wounds, as the poet says: ‘and upon it he laid a bitter root, rubbing it with his hands, a pain-killing root, which held off all pains: the wound dried, and the blood ceased.’ For he rightly called ‘bitter to the taste’ that which has a drying power. And it is evident, too, that the powders athletes use, with which they wipe away their sweat, are bitter
to the taste and astringent, their bitterness coming from the intensity of their tartness. “So then,” I said, “since this is so, it is reasonable that the bitterness of almonds helps against unmixed wine, by drying the inner parts of the body and not allowing the veins to become filled—since it is by their distension and disturbance, they say, that drunkenness comes about. A strong proof of this argument is what happens with foxes: if, after eating bitter almonds, they do not also drink water afterward, they die, as their moisture is suddenly drained away all at once.” The question was raised concerning old men, why they take more pleasure in stronger, less-diluted drink. Now those who supposed that their condition, being chilled and hard to warm, was for that reason suited to the intensity of a strong mixture, seemed to be saying something common and ready at hand, but not sufficient for the cause, nor even true.
For the same thing has happened in the case of the other senses as well. Old men are hard to move and hard to affect in their perception of qualities, unless these strike them in a concentrated and forceful way; and the cause is the slackness of their condition—for when relaxed and weakened, it tends to need a hard blow to be struck. That is why, in taste, they welcome above all pungent flavors, and their sense of smell has undergone something similar with respect to odors: for it is stirred more pleasantly by strong, undiluted scents. Touch, on the other hand, is unresponsive to wounds—for sometimes, when they receive injuries, they feel scarcely any pain. Very similar is the case of hearing: musicians, as they grow old, tune their instruments sharper and harder, as if rousing the organ of perception by the blow of an intense sound. For what tempering is to iron for sharpness, breath provides to the body
for sense-perception; and when this slackens and relaxes, the organ of perception is left sluggish and earthy, needing something forceful to prick it, such as unmixed wine is. While we were casting about for arguments on the matter before us, it seemed that the case of sight ran counter to this. For older people read letters by holding them far from their eyes, and cannot read them close up; and indicating this, Aeschylus
says of someone that not even from close by—for it is not clearer from nearby; and Sophocles indicates the same thing about old men still more plainly: ‘for a heavy blow in speech scarcely makes its way through the pierced ear, but though he sees far off, close up he is altogether blind.’ If, then, the senses of old men respond more readily to intensity and forcefulness, how is it that in reading they cannot bear the illumination reflected from close by,
but rather, by drawing the book farther away, do they weaken its brightness with the air, just as wine is diluted with water? Now there were some who said, in reply to this, that people do not draw books away from their eyes so as to make the light softer, but rather so as to gather in and take hold of more radiance, filling with bright air the space between the eyes and the letters. Others,
however, held with those who say the rays combine: for since a cone extends from each of the two eyes, having its apex at the eye and its base and seat encompassing the object seen, it is likely that up to a certain point each of the cones travels separately; but once they have gone farther off and fallen in with one another, they make a single light. That is why each of the things seen appears as one and not two,
even though it appears to both eyes at once: the cause is the joining of the cones into the same point and their coalescence, which produces one vision out of two. This being so, old men who bring the letters close, before the rays have yet mingled, but still touch the object separately with each ray, grasp it more feebly; whereas those who set it farther off, once the light has already been mixed and has become abundant, grasp it
more precisely — just as those who hold something with both hands together succeed where they cannot with one hand alone. My brother Lamprias had not read Hieronymus's clever remark, that we see by means of the images that fall upon our sight from visible objects, and that these images set out large and coarse-grained at first; that is why they disturb old men at close range, since their vision is slow-moving and hard, but once the images have been carried into
the air and have acquired some interval of travel, the earthy parts break off and fall away, while the fine parts, drawing near the eyes, fit smoothly and evenly into the passages, so that the old men, being less disturbed, perceive more clearly. The same is true of the scents of flowers, which strike us more fragrantly from a distance; but if you bring them too close, they do not smell as pure or unmixed. The reason is that much of what is earthy and
turbid is carried along with the scent and spoils its fragrance when it is taken in from close by; but from farther off, the turbid and earthy part flows around and falls away, while the pure and warm element in it, owing to its fineness, is preserved for the sense. We, however, holding to the Platonic principle, said that the ray-like breath issuing from the eyes is mixed with the light surrounding bodies and forms with it a single compound,
so that one body arises out of both, sympathetic through and through. One is blended with the other according to a ratio of proportion and quantity: for it is not necessary that one be destroyed by being overpowered by the other, but rather that a single power be produced from both, brought together from a midpoint by harmony and communion. Since, then, the stream from the eyes of the elderly — whether one should call it a current flowing through the pupil, or a breath,
or a light-like ray — is weak and feeble, no blending occurs between it and the external light, nor mixture, but rather destruction and overwhelming, unless they draw the letters far from their eyes and so relax the excessive brightness of the light, so that what meets the sight is not abundant and unmixed but of like nature and proportionate to it. This, indeed, is also the cause of the condition of animals that
feed by night: for their sight, being feeble, is overwhelmed and mastered by the light of day, unable to blend, from so weak and slight a source, with a light so great and strong; but toward the dim and faint light, such as that of a star, it sends out a ray sufficient and proportionate, so that the sense can share and cooperate with it. Theon the grammarian, when we were dining at the house of
Mestrius Florus, raised a puzzle to Themistocles the Stoic: why is it that Chrysippus, though he mentions many paradoxical and strange things — such as that salt fish becomes sweeter if soaked in brine, and that the locks of wool yield less to those who tear them apart by force than to those who work them apart gently, and that people who have fasted eat more slowly than those who have eaten beforehand — gave the cause of none of them? Themistocles
replied that Chrysippus proposed these merely as examples, in an offhand way, since we are easily and unreasonably taken in by what is plausible, and then again disbelieve what runs contrary to the plausible; and turning to Theon he said, "But you, my excellent friend, why trouble yourself over these matters? If you have become a seeker and observer of causes for us, do not camp so far from your own concerns, but tell us for what reason Homer, in
the river, and not in the sea, though it was near, has Nausicaa doing her washing — even though seawater is presumably warmer, more translucent, and better for cleansing." Theon said, "But that difficulty Aristotle resolved long ago, the very one you have set before us. For seawater has earthy and rough matter dispersed through it, and this mixed-in matter produces its saltiness; and it is for this reason that
the sea more readily buoys up swimmers and supports heavy weights, since fresh water, being pure and unmixed, yields more because of its lightness and weakness. Hence, owing to its fineness, fresh water penetrates and passes through and dissolves stains more than seawater does. Or does this not seem to you a plausible account from Aristotle?" "Plausible," I said, "but not true. For I observe that people often thicken water with ash and stones,
or, if these are not at hand, with dust, on the ground that earthy matter, by its coarseness, is better able to wash away dirt, while water itself, owing to its fineness and weakness, cannot do this as effectively. So the coarse matter of the sea is never fit for washing... but rather for its pungency: for this pungency, by opening and unstopping the pores, carries off
the dirt. But since everything oily is hard to wash out and leaves a stain, and the sea is oily, this would rather be the reason why it does not wash well. That the sea is indeed oily, Aristotle himself has said: for salt contains an oily element, and salt water makes lamps burn better; moreover the sea itself, when sprinkled on flames, blazes up together with them, and
of all waters, seawater burns most readily; and this, I think, is also why it is the warmest. Not only that, but in another way too: since the goal of washing is drying, and what becomes driest appears cleanest, the liquid that does the washing must depart quickly along with the dirt, just as hellebore must depart quickly along with the disease. Now fresh water
the sun draws off easily, owing to its lightness, whereas salt water, being caught in the pores because of its roughness, is hard to dry." Theon took this up and said, "That is nothing to the point: for Aristotle, in that same book, says that those who bathe in the sea dry off faster than those who use fresh water, if they stand in the sun." "So he does say," I replied, "but I should have thought you would rather trust Homer, who says the
opposite. For Odysseus, after the shipwreck, meets Nausicaa looking dreadful, "befouled with brine," and says to her attendant maidens, "Stand off there apart, that I myself may wash the brine from my shoulders." And going down into the river he wiped from his head the crust of salt — the poet having marvelously observed what actually happens. For when men come up out of the sea and stand in the sun, the
heat disperses the finest and lightest part of the moisture, while the salty and rough part is left behind and settles and remains upon their bodies as a salty crust, until they wash it off with fresh, sweet water." At Sarapion's victory celebration, when he had trained the chorus for the tribe of Leontis and won, we were dining as fellow-tribesmen by adoption, and talk arose naturally about the eager
rivalry that had taken place. For the contest had been an intensely fought one, since Philopappus the prince had presided splendidly and magnificently, sponsoring all the tribes together. He happened to be dining with us and, out of kindness as much as love of learning, was both telling and hearing old stories in turn. A question of the following sort was then put forward by Marcus the grammarian.
He said that Neanthes of Cyzicus reports, among the local legends, that the tribe of Aiantis had the privilege that its chorus was never judged last. Whether he said this to establish it historically... or whether it is not spurious, let the inquiry into the reason be set before everyone in common. When our companion Milon said, "But what if the story is false?", Philopappus replied, "There is nothing
terrible in that," he said, "if we suffer the same thing as the wise Democritus did, out of love of learning. For he too, it seems, tasting a cucumber, and finding its flavor honey-sweet, asked the serving-woman where it had been bought; and when she told him it was from a certain garden, he told her to get up and lead him there and show him the place. When the woman, astonished, asked what he wanted,
he said, "I must find the cause of its sweetness, and I shall find it by seeing the place for myself." "Then just sit down," the woman said, smiling, "for I, not realizing it, put the cucumber into a jar that had honey in it." And he, as though vexed, said, "You have spoiled it — but nonetheless I shall pursue the inquiry no less, and I shall seek the cause, on the assumption that the sweetness belongs to the cucumber by its own nature and kinship." So let us not,
either, in some cases, make an easy excuse for evasion out of Neanthes' claim: for the discussion will provide useful exercise, if nothing else." So everyone flowed together evenly toward praising the tribe, gathering up whatever fine thing contributed to its reputation. For Marathon too was brought into the discussion, being a deme of that tribe; and they pointed out that the men around Harmodius were of the Aiantis tribe, being in fact from the deme of Aphidnae.
And Glaucias the orator maintained that the right wing at the battle of Marathon had been assigned to the men of Aiantis, relying for proof on Aeschylus's elegiac verses at the border-shrine, since Aeschylus had fought conspicuously in that battle; and he further pointed out that Callimachus the polemarch was also from that tribe, a man who both proved himself the best man and, after Miltiades, was most responsible for the victory in that battle, having
cast his vote in agreement with him. I added to what Glaucias had said, that the decree by which the Athenians were led out was written while the tribe of Aiantis held the presidency, and that in the battle of Plataea that tribe distinguished itself above all; for which reason the men of Aiantis conducted the victory sacrifice, prescribed by the oracle at Delphi, to the Sphragitic Nymphs at Cithaeron, the city furnishing them the victim and everything else. "But you see,"
I said, "that many such honors belong to the other tribes as well, and you know that my own tribe, Leontis, yields to none in reputation. Consider, however, whether it is not more plausible that the story is a consolation drawn from the tribe's eponymous hero, and that what actually happens is an excuse: for Telamonian Ajax is not one to bear defeat easily, but one who, in anger and contentiousness, would spare nothing; so, in order that he might not
become harsh and inconsolable, it was thought fit to remove the harshest part of defeat, by never placing his tribe in the very last position." Among the things prepared for dinners and drinking-parties, my dear Sossius Senecio, some have a necessary order — such as the wine, the food, the delicacies, the couches, and of course the tables; but other elements have arisen for the sake of pleasure, without being strictly required,
such as musical performances, spectacles, and a certain jester, Philip, from the household of Callias — things that please those present, but that people do not particularly miss when absent, nor do they complain that the gathering was lacking on their account. In just the same way, among topics of conversation, the moderate sort of people take up some for the sake of usefulness at their drinking-parties, while they receive others as an agreeable form of entertainment, more suited to the occasion than the flute and
the lyre. Of these, our first book already contained mixed examples: of the former kind, the discussion on philosophizing over wine, and on whether the host himself should assign, or leave to the diners, the arrangement of the couches, and similar matters; of the latter kind, the discussion on whether lovers are given to poetry, and the discussion on the tribe of Aiantis. I call the latter kind, then, table-talk proper,
and the others, in a general sense, symposium questions. They have been written down at random and not in any orderly division, but just as each came to memory. Readers should not be surprised if, in addressing you, we have brought together some of the very topics you yourself proposed to us beforehand: for even if learning does not consist in acts of recollection, still, remembering often amounts to the same thing as learning. Each book has been arranged into ten
problems apiece, and in this book the first is one that, in a certain way, Xenophon the Socratic has set before us. For he says that Gobryas, dining together with Cyrus, admired many things about the Persians, and in particular that they asked one another the sort of questions that were more pleasant to be asked than not, and joked about the sort of things it was better to be teased about than not: for if others, by praising us, often distress and vex us,
how could one not admire their wit and good sense, whose very jests brought pleasure and charm to those being teased? So then, when you were entertaining us at Patrae, you said you would gladly learn what kind such questions were, and what their proper form is: "for it is no small part," you said, "of the art of social intercourse, this science and observance of tactful
questioning and playfulness." "A great part indeed," I said, "but consider how Xenophon himself, both in the Socratic banquet and in the Persian ones, displays this type. If it seems good to us also to take up some account of it, I think, first, that people are glad to be asked what they can easily answer; and these are matters in which they have experience. For those who are ignorant, or who,
if they do answer, are troubled, as if asked to give something they cannot give; or if they do answer, they are disturbed and put at risk by speaking from mere opinion and unreliable conjecture. But if the answer is not only easy but also out of the ordinary, it is more pleasant for the one answering; and answers are out of the ordinary when they belong to people who know things that most do not know or have not heard — such as matters of astronomy or logic, provided they
have real command of them. For each person, not only in acting and passing his days, as Euripides says, but also in conversing, is put in the best humor when he happens to be at his own best; and people delight in being asked the very things they know, not wishing to remain unknown or unnoticed for knowing them. That is why those who have wandered and sailed widely are more gladly asked about a colonial land and a foreign sea, and about barbarian customs and laws, and they gladly relate these things.
...and sketch out bays and coastlines, thinking that this too brings them some pleasure and consolation for their toils. In general, whatever we are accustomed to relate and tell of our own accord, though no one asks — is it not sweeter to be asked, since we think we are doing a favor to those who ask? Yet it was really the business of those who grow tired of it to refrain from asking further. This kind of affliction, indeed, grows especially among seafaring men; but more refined people like to be asked about the following things:
things which, though wishing to tell them, they feel shame about and hold back out of consideration for those present — such as whatever they themselves happen to have accomplished and achieved successfully. Nestor, at any rate, rightly understood Odysseus's love of honor when he said: "Come, tell me, Odysseus of many wiles, great glory of the Achaeans, how did you two take these horses?" For people are annoyed at those who praise themselves and recount their own good fortunes, unless someone else
present bids them do it, and they speak as if compelled. They are gladly asked, at any rate, about embassies and public affairs, if they happen to have accomplished something great and splendid. Hence the envious and malicious are least willing to ask about such things, and if someone else does ask about them, they deflect and turn the conversation aside, refusing to give room to the narration and unwilling to offer the speaker occasions for a discourse that would do him credit. These things, then,
by asking about them, do a favor to those who answer — things which they perceive their enemies and ill-wishers are unwilling to hear. Indeed Odysseus says to Alcinous: "Your heart has been moved to ask about my grievous sorrows, so that I may grieve and groan yet more." And Oedipus says to the chorus: "It is a terrible thing, stranger, to stir up an evil that has long lain quiet." But Euripides says the opposite, that
it is sweet to remember hardships — though not for those who are still wandering and suffering evils. One must therefore be cautious about the questions one asks concerning misfortunes: for people are pained when they must relate their own convictions in court, or the burials of their children, or unsuccessful ventures of some kind by land, or unlucky business ventures by sea. But how they fared well on the speaker's platform, or were addressed with honor by the king, or how, when others fell into storms or fell among bandits, they themselves escaped
the danger — of such things they are gladly asked, often, and in a way, enjoying the matter afresh through the telling, they are insatiable in narrating and recalling it. They also enjoy being asked about friends who are prospering, and about children advancing in their studies, or in advocacy, or in friendships with kings. But about the reproaches, injuries, and convictions of enemies and ill-wishers who have been exposed and brought down, they are more pleased to be asked, and report them more eagerly themselves,
while they hesitate to volunteer such things on their own, guarding against a reputation for malicious pleasure. It is also more pleasant to ask a keen huntsman about his dogs, and a sports enthusiast about athletic contests, and a lover about beautiful people. A pious man devoted to sacrifice likes to narrate his dreams, and would gladly be asked as well about whatever he has achieved by making use of oracular sayings, sacred rites, or the favor of the gods. As for old men, even if the
narrative is not exactly relevant, those who ask always do them a favor and set them willingly in motion. "Nestor, son of Neleus, tell me truly, how did the son of Atreus die? Where was Menelaus? Or was he not in Achaean Argos?" — asking many things at once and welcoming occasions for many words, not, as some do, compressing the answer into the bare necessity and, by driving replies into a narrow compass, depriving the old man's pastime of its sweetest part.
In general, those who wish to give pleasure rather than pain put forward such questions as bring, in their answers, not blame but praise, and, from those who hear them, not hatred or resentment but goodwill and gratitude. So much, then, for questions.
"As for jesting — one who cannot handle it with caution and skill, at the right moment, must abstain from it altogether. For just as those who are on slippery ground fall down even if they only brush against it in passing, so in wine-drinking we stand precariously with regard to every occasion for talk that does not proceed in due form. Indeed we are sometimes more provoked by jests than by outright abuse — partly because we often see abuse arising unwillingly, under the sway of anger, whereas a jest we set down as unnecessary, the deliberate work of insolence and malice; and in general we grow more irritated conversing with
composed, self-possessed people than with mere idle chatterers, for it is clear that in the case of a jest, artifice attaches to its very form, and that it is in fact an insult, contrived with premeditation. The man who plainly called someone a pickled-fish seller abused him outright, but the one who said, "We remember you wiping your nose on your arm," made a jest of it. And Cicero, when Octavius, who was reputed to be from Libya, claimed while Cicero was speaking that he could not hear him, retorted, "And yet
your ear is quite pierced." And Melanthius, being mocked by the comic poet, said, "You are paying me back a debt I never owed." Jests, then, bite more sharply, like barbed arrows that stay lodged longer, and the pleasure taken in their wit pains those who are mocked even as it delights the bystanders; for, delighting in what is said, the bystanders seem to believe it and to join in dragging down the person it concerns. For a jest, according to Theophrastus, is really
a reproach for a fault, disguised in form — hence the hearer, out of his own suspicion, supplies what is left unsaid, as though he already knew it and believed it. Anyone who laughs and is delighted when, say, Theocritus said to a man suspected of stealing cloaks, who asked him whether he was going to dinner, that he was indeed going, "but sleeping there, though" — such a listener is no different from one who confirms the slander outright. That is why
a man who jests out of tune infects the bystanders with malice as well, making them appear to share in his pleasure and join in the insult. It was reckoned one of the disciplines in noble Sparta to jest without giving pain and to bear being jested at; and if anyone who was being teased said "enough," the jester stopped at once. How, then, is it not difficult to find a jest that is actually pleasing to the one jested at, when even a harmless jest is a matter requiring
no ordinary experience and skill?" "And yet it seems to me that, in the first place, jests that pain those who are actually guilty produce a certain pleasure and charm for those who are far removed from the slander. Xenophon, for instance, introduces that extremely ugly and extremely hairy fellow being jested at, in play, as the beloved of Sambaulas. And you remember our friend Quietus — when he remarked that during his illness his hands had felt cold,
Aufidius Modestus replied, "Well, but you have brought them home warm from your province." To Quietus himself this gave laughter and delight, but for a thieving proconsul it would have been an insult and a reproach. That is why Socrates, when he challenged Critobulus, who was extremely handsome, to a contest of good looks, was playing, not mocking. And again, Alcibiades used to tease Socrates about his jealousy over Agathon. Kings, too, take pleasure
in being spoken of as though they were poor men and commoners, just as the parasite, when jested at by Philip, said, "Am I not the one who feeds you?" For by attributing to someone faults that do not really belong to him, one throws into relief the good qualities that do belong to him. But there must be some good quality that indisputably and certainly belongs to the person; otherwise the opposite of what is said carries only a questionable insinuation. For the man who says of someone very rich that his creditors will
soon come down on him, or who says that the water-drinking, temperate man is behaving drunkenly and getting intoxicated, or who calls the man who is generous, magnificent, and openhanded a skinflint and a penny-pincher, or who threatens that the man who is powerful in advocacy and public life will be seized and hauled off in the marketplace — such a man produces delight and a smile. So too Cyrus, in the respects where he was outdone by his companions, became gracious and charming when challenged to a contest in those very things. And when Ismenias was piping for a sacrifice
and the omens were not turning out favorable, a hired flute-player took the pipes from him and played ridiculously; and when the bystanders found fault with him for it, and the sacrifice then proved favorable, he said, "This shows that playing the flute pleasingly is a gift from the gods." But Ismenias laughed and said, "No — while I was playing, the gods lingered on, taking pleasure in it; but eager to be rid of your playing, they accepted the sacrifice at once."
"Furthermore, those who name good qualities in things using words that are properly terms of reproach, when they do so playfully
and gracefully, give more pleasure than those who praise straightforwardly. Indeed, those who reproach through complimentary terms bite more sharply — as when people call wicked men "Aristideses" and cowards "Achilleses," or as in Sophocles' Oedipus, where Creon is called "this man's faithful friend from the beginning." This, then, seems to be the converse counterpart of irony, applied to praise; and this device too
Socrates employed, when he named Antisthenes' gift for befriending and bringing men together into goodwill "procuring," "pandering," and "pimping." And they called Crates the philosopher, who went into every house and was received everywhere with honor and kindness, "the opener of every door." "A charming jest is also produced by a reproach that in fact shows affection, as when Diogenes said of Antisthenes: 'He it was who clothed me in rags and forced me to become a beggar and drove me from my house,
a homeless wanderer.' For he would not have been equally persuasive had he said outright, "He made me wise, self-sufficient, and blessed." And the Spartan, pretending to complain to the gymnasiarch who had supplied smokeless firewood, said, "Because of him we have not even been able to shed a tear." And the man who called someone who dined him daily a "kidnapper" and a "tyrant," because for so many years he had not seen his own dinner table. And the man
who says he has been plotted against by the king, robbed of his leisure and his sleep, having become rich from being poor. And so, too, if someone, turning it around, were to accuse Aeschylus's Cabiri of having made their household short of vinegar, just as they themselves had jokingly threatened. Such jests strike home more, having a sharper charm, yet in such a way as not to give offense or pain to those actually being praised." "The man who is to use a jest gracefully must also know the difference
between the fault and the pursuit — I mean between avarice and contentiousness on the one hand, and a love of music or of hunting on the other: for men are annoyed when jested at over the former, but take pleasure when jested at over the latter. Not unpleasantly, at any rate, did Demosthenes of Mytilene act when, having knocked on the door of a man devoted to singing and the lyre, and the man having answered and told him to come in, he said, "Only if you first tie up your lyre." But unpleasantly did the parasite of Lysimachus react when Lysimachus threw a scorpion
made of wood into his cloak; badly startled and jumping up, once he realized it was a joke, he said, "I too, O king, want to frighten you: give me a talent." "There are similar differences among most people concerning bodily features: some laugh when jested at over having a hooked nose or a snub nose, as did Cassander's friend, who was not at all annoyed when Theophrastus said to him, "I marvel at your eyes, because
they do not sing, though your nose provides the pitch." And Cyrus ordered the hook-nosed man to marry a snub-nosed woman, since the two would fit together well. But men are annoyed when jested at over a foul-smelling nose or mouth; and again, they bear jests about baldness calmly, but take unpleasantly to jests about blindness. Indeed Antigonus himself used to jest about his own bad eye: and once, when he had received a petition written in large letters,
he said, "Even a blind man could see this." Yet he put Theocritus of Chios to death, because when someone said to Theocritus, "If you come into the king's presence, you will be safe," Theocritus replied, "But you are telling me that this very thing — safety — is impossible." Leo of Byzantium, when Pasiades said to him that his own eyes had caught an eye-disease from him, replied, "You reproach me with a bodily weakness, without seeing the retribution you carry on your shoulders
— your son." For Pasiades had a hunchbacked son. Archippus, too, the demagogue of the Athenians, was angered when mocked by Melanthius for being hunchbacked; for Melanthius said that he did not stand at the head of the city but stooped over it. But some bear such things calmly and with moderation, as did the friend of Antigonus who, having asked for a talent and not received it, asked instead for an escort and guards, "so that
I might not be waylaid," he said, "since I have ordered him to carry the talent on his own shoulder." So it is with regard to outward circumstances, because of the diversity involved — different people are annoyed at different things. Epaminondas, dining with his fellow magistrates, was drinking vinegar, and when they asked whether it was good for the health, he said, "I don't know, but I do know that it is good for remembering one's fare at home." Therefore one must, with an eye to people's natures
and characters, employ playful jests accordingly, trying to converse with each person pleasantly and without giving pain." "Love, among other things, is highly variable, and where jests are concerned some lovers are annoyed and vexed while others are delighted. One must know the right moment: for just as a breath of wind, at first, extinguishes a fire because of its weakness, but once the fire has grown, supplies it with fuel and
strength — so love, while it is still budding and hidden, chafes and is vexed at those who reveal it, but once it has flared up and become manifest, it is fed and smiles upon the jests, swelling with them. Lovers are most delighted to be teased, in the presence of their beloveds, about the very fact of being in love, and about nothing else. And if it happens that they are in love with their own wives, or with a noble passion for beautiful young men, they take altogether great delight and pride in
being teased about it in front of them. That is why Arcesilaus, when in his school one of the amorous students shared this remark with him — "It seems to me that nothing touches anything" — replied, "Then you don't touch this one either?", pointing to one of the beautiful and youthful students seated nearby." "One must also consider, further, who is present: for the things people laugh at when they hear them among friends and intimates, they take badly if said in front of
others — in front of one's own wedded wife, or one's father, or one's teacher — unless what is said happens to be pleasing to those people too. For example, if someone is teased, in the presence of his philosophy teacher, about going barefoot or writing by night, or, with his father listening, about pettiness, or, with his wife present, about being indifferent to other women and being a devoted slave to her alone — as when Tigranes was asked by Cyrus, "What
would happen if your wife heard that you had been carrying baggage?" "But she will not hear it," he said, "she will see it herself, being present." "Jests are also made less painful when the speakers themselves share, in some way, in the very thing being mocked: as when a poor man jests about poverty, or a man of low birth about low birth, or a lover about love; for coming from one's like, such a thing seems to be, not an insult, but rather a kind of playfulness — if
it is not so, it provokes and pains. Take, for instance, the king's freedman, a man newly rich, who was crudely and arrogantly lording it over the philosophers dining with him, and who finally asked how it is that from both white and black beans alike a porridge equally green is made. Aridices, asking in return how it is that from white and black leather straps welts equally red are made, made him get up thoroughly distressed.
Amphias of Tarsus, who was reputed to have come from a gardener's stock, having jested at the governor's friend about his low birth, then immediately added, "But we too have sprung from the same seed," and so raised a laugh. Wittily, too, the lyre-player checked Philip's combination of late learning and meddlesomeness; for when Philip thought he was correcting him about notes and harmonies, the player said, "May it never befall you
"O king," he said, "so badly indeed that you may know these things better than I do" -- for by seeming to mock himself, he corrected the king without giving pain. This is why some comic poets, too, are thought to take the sting out of their jesting by mocking themselves, as Aristophanes did with his own baldness and with Agathon's desertion, and Cratinus with his "Bottle" concerning his own love of wine.
"One must be especially careful to watch for this: that the jest arise on the spot, out of what is actually present, in response to some question or bit of play, and not be dragged in from far off, as if brought on as a prepared set piece. For just as people bear more mildly the anger and quarrels that arise from within the symposium itself, whereas if someone comes at them from outside and reviles and disturbs them, they regard him as an enemy and hate him -- so too a jest has a share of pardon and of frankness if it takes its origin from what is present, growing up artlessly and without contrivance; but if it does not arise from the matter at hand but is brought in from outside, it resembles a deliberate assault and an outrage. Such was Timagenes's remark to the man who induced vomiting: 'You are the author of this vile art' -- and his remark to Athenodorus the philosopher, 'if affection for one's offspring is natural.' For ill-timing and irrelevance to the matter at hand show insolence and ill will.
These men, then, according to Plato, paid the heaviest penalty for the lightest of things, namely words; but those who know the right moment and observe it bear witness to Plato himself, that it is the work of a well-educated man to play in a tuneful and pleasing way."
At Eleusis, after the Mysteries, while the festival was at its height, we were dining at the house of Glaucias the orator. When the others had finished dining, Xenocles of Delphi, as was his custom, was teasing our brother Lamprias about his Boeotian gluttony. I, defending him and using the arguments of Epicurus against Xenocles, said, "Not everyone, my good man, makes the removal of pain the boundary and limit of pleasure; but for Lamprias it is even a necessity, since he glorifies the Peripatetic walk and the Lyceum ahead of the Garden, to bear witness in deed to Aristotle. For the man says that each of us is most inclined to eat around autumn, and he has given the reason, though I do not remember it." "Better," said Glaucias, "for we shall try to look into it ourselves, once we stop dining." So when the tables were removed, Glaucias and Xenocles blamed the autumn fruit for different reasons: the one because it loosens the belly and, by emptying the body, is always producing fresh appetites; the other, Xenocles, said that most of the seasonal fruits, having something sharp and biting to the taste, summon the stomach to eating more than any relish or seasoning does -- indeed even a little fruit brought to sick people who have lost their appetite restores it.
Lamprias said that our own connatural heat, by which we are naturally nourished, is in summer dispersed and becomes weaker and more diffuse, but in the waning season it gathers together again and grows strong, hidden within because of the chilling and condensation of the body. I, so as not to seem to contribute nothing to the discussion, said that in summer we become thirstier and use more liquid because of the heat; now then, in the change of season, nature, seeking the opposite as is her custom, makes us hungrier, and gives back to the body's temperament its due of dry food in compensation. Yet one could not say that the food itself is altogether without a share of responsibility: coming as it does from young, fresh crops -- not only cakes, pulses, bread, and wheat, but also the meat of animals that have fed richly on that year's produce -- it differs from the old in its juices and draws those who partake and enjoy it on more strongly.
On account of a certain dream I was abstaining from eggs, taking great care over this -- so that, as in the case of Car, the vision had often come to me clearly and repeatedly. This gave rise to a suspicion, while Sossius Senecio was entertaining us, that I was bound by Orphic or Pythagorean doctrines, and that I regarded the egg -- as some regard the heart and the brain -- as sacred to avoid, holding it to be a principle of generation. And Alexander the Epicurean brought this up in jest: 'It is the same thing to eat beans as to eat the heads of one's parents' -- as if men were hinting that eggs were 'beans' because of the generation they involve, thinking there was no difference between eating eggs and making use of the very animals that lay the eggs. The defense against the charge thus became more unreasonable than the charge itself, for an Epicurean to speak of a dream.
Hence I did not decline the reputation, while at the same time teasing Alexander a little in return -- for he was in fact a charming and reasonably fond-of-learning man. Out of this, he drew into the middle the puzzle that is difficult and gives much trouble to inquirers, concerning the egg and the hen -- which of the two came into being first. And Sylla our companion, saying that with a small problem, as with an instrument, we were stirring up a great and heavy one -- the question of the origin of the universe -- declined to take part. But when Alexander laughed at the inquiry as bringing nothing relevant, our son-in-law Firmus said, "Well then, lend me the atoms for the present. For if the small elements must be posited as the origins of the large, it is likely that the egg came into being before the hen; for it is simple and uncompounded, as among sensible things, whereas the hen is more varied and mixed.
And in general, the origin comes first, and the origin is the seed, and the egg is more than seed but less than an animal: for as growth-in-progress seems to be a mean between natural talent and virtue, so the egg is a certain progress of nature toward the ensouled, proceeding from the seed. Further, just as in the animal they say that arteries and veins come into being first, so it stands to reason that the egg, too, came into being before the animal, as the container before the thing contained. For the arts, too, first mold shapeless, unformed things, and only later articulate each into its proper shapes -- as Polyclitus the sculptor said the hardest part of the work is when the clay is under the fingernail.
For this reason it is likely that, since nature moves matter gently at first, the more sluggish matter obeys, producing shapeless and indeterminate impressions, like eggs; and once these are given shape and etched out, the animal is afterward fashioned within. Just as the caterpillar comes into being first, and then, having hardened through dryness and burst its skin, sends forth through itself another winged thing, releasing what is called its soul -- in the same way here the egg pre-exists as, so to speak, the matter of the generation. For in every change it is necessary that what the changing thing changed from should exist earlier. Consider that gnats are engendered in a tree, and wood-worms in timber, through the putrefaction or concoction of moisture; and no one would think it right that the thing generating them should not already be there beforehand, or should not be prior in nature. For matter stands in the relation to the things that come to be, as Plato says, of a mother and a nurse; and matter is everything out of which the thing generated has its composition."
"As for what comes after this," he said, laughing, "'I shall sing to those who understand' the Orphic and sacred account, which declares that the egg is older not only than the hen, but, taking it all together, assigns to it the seniority of all things at once. And let the rest 'lie fair-spoken,' as Herodotus says, for they are more mystical matters. But since the world contains many kinds of living creatures, there is virtually no class that has no share in generation from an egg: it produces winged creatures and countless swimming and land creatures, lizards, and amphibious ones, crocodiles, and two-footed ones, the bird, and footless ones, the serpent, and many-footed ones, the locust. Hence it is not inappropriate that it has been consecrated among the rites of Dionysus, as an image of that which generates and contains all things within itself."
While Firmus was going through these points, Senecio said that the last of his images was the very first to tell against him. "For you have unwittingly," he said, "O Firmus, opened the world against yourself instead of the proverbial door: for the world pre-exists as the most complete of all things; and it stands to reason that the complete is by nature prior to the incomplete, just as the whole body is prior to the maimed, and the whole prior to the part. For it makes no sense for there to be a part of something that has not yet come into being. Hence no one says that man belongs to the seed, nor the hen to the egg, but we say that the egg belongs to the hen and the seed to the man, on the ground that these latter come to be upon those, and take their origin in them, thereafter rendering the generation, as it were, as a debt owed to nature.
For it is in want of what is its own; and therefore it is by nature disposed to want to make another such thing as that from which it was itself separated. And they define the generative principle as offspring in want of generation; but nothing is in want that has not come to be and does not exist. Eggs, on the other hand, are seen altogether to have the nature of something requiring, within some animal, a solidifying and composing, and organs and vessels of just such a kind -- which is why no egg born of the earth has ever been recorded; rather, the poets say that the Tyndarean egg appeared fallen from heaven. But complete and whole living creatures the earth even now brings forth: mice in Egypt, and in many places snakes, frogs, and cicadas, once some other external principle and power has come into them.
And in Sicily, at the time of the Servile War, when much blood and many unburied corpses had rotted away in the earth, a great swarm of locusts sprang up and, scattering everywhere over the island, destroyed the grain. These creatures, then, grow and are nourished from the earth, and produce a fertile residue of their nourishment, by which they turn to one another for pleasure, and, coupling in intercourse, some are naturally disposed to lay eggs, others to bear live young. And this above all makes it clear that, having received their first generation from the earth, they now, in a different way, produce their offspring through one another. And in general it is like saying that the womb came into being before the woman: for as the womb stands in relation to the egg, so again the egg stands in relation to the chick, being conceived and delivered within it -- so that there is no difference between the man who is puzzled how birds came to be if no eggs had come to be, and the one who asks how men and women came to be before there were genitals and wombs.
And yet most parts come into existence together with the wholes; the faculties come to be added to the parts, and the activities to the faculties, and the results to the activities; and the result of the generative faculty of the parts is the seed and the egg -- so that they must come later than the generation of the wholes. Consider, too, that just as it is not possible for there to be concoction of food before an animal has come into being, so too neither can there be an egg nor a seed: for these too appear to come to be as the result of certain concoctions and transformations, and it is not possible, before an animal has come into being, for there to be a residue of an animal's food having the nature it has.
Nevertheless, the seed does in some way lay claim to being a kind of origin, but the egg has neither the character of an origin -- for it does not exist first -- nor the nature of a whole, for it is incomplete. Hence we do not say that an animal has come to be without an origin, but we say that there is an origin of animal generation, by which matter first underwent change, a certain power having wrought a blending and mixture productive of offspring; but the egg is an after-product, like blood and milk, coming from the animal after nourishment and concoction. For an egg has never been observed forming out of mud, but has its composition and generation only within an animal; whereas countless animals form on their own. And why need one mention the rest? For though many eels are caught, no one has ever seen an eel possessing either milt or egg; yet if one draws off the water and scrapes out all the mud, once water flows back into the place, eels are spontaneously generated.
It follows, then, that of necessity the thing that requires the other for its generation must have come into being later; but whatever can even now come into being apart from and without the other, this must be prior with respect to the origin of generation. For the argument concerns that first generation; since even now birds build nests before laying eggs, and women prepare swaddling clothes -- yet you would not say that a nest came into being before an egg, or swaddling clothes before children. 'For it is not the earth,' says Plato, 'that imitates woman, but woman that imitates the earth,' and likewise each of the other females. For this reason it is likely that the first generation, from the earth, by virtue of the completeness and strength of that which generated, came to be complete and self-sufficient in itself, having no need of such organs, coverings, and vessels as nature now contrives and devises among creatures that bear young, on account of their weakness."
We were giving a victory banquet for Sosicles of Coronea, who had won as a poet at the Pythian games. Since the athletic contest was drawing near, most of the conversation concerned the wrestlers, for many notable ones happened to have arrived. Lysimachus, one of the overseers of the Amphictyons, who was present, said that he had recently heard some grammarian declare that wrestling was the most ancient of all contests, and that even its name bore adequate witness to this; for newer things are naturally apt to benefit from names already established among older ones -- just as they say the pipe has been 'tuned' (harmosthai), and call the pipe-music 'strokes' (kroumata), taking these names over from the lyre. So the place in which all the athletes train, they call the palaistra (wrestling-ground), the name having first been won by wrestling (pale), and only afterward extended also to the other exercises later invented.
I said that this piece of evidence was not strong: for the wrestling-ground is named from wrestling not because wrestling is the oldest of the other contests, but because it alone among the forms of athletic contest happens to need mud, dust, and oil -- for men do not practice either running or boxing in wrestling-grounds, but only the rolling that belongs to wrestling and to the pankration; for it is clear that the pankration is a mixture of boxing and wrestling. "But otherwise," I said, "how does it make sense that wrestling, being the most technical and most cunning of the contests, should also be the most ancient? For it is the simple and unskilled activities, accomplished by force rather than by method, that necessity brings forth first."
When I had said this, Sosicles said, "You are right, and I will contribute a proof to support you, taken from the name itself: for 'wrestling' (pale) seems to me to be named from 'paleuein,' which is to deceive and throw down by trickery." And Philinus said, "But to my mind, it is named from 'the wrestler's dust' (palaiste): for it is especially with this part, the palms, that wrestlers exert themselves,"
just as boxers again in turn use their fists — hence the one is called "pygmē" (fist-fight) and the other "palē" (wrestling) from the deed itself. Moreover, since the poets, when they speak of sprinkling and dusting over, use the word "palunai," and since we see that wrestlers make especial use of this, it is possible to bring the etymology of the name round to this point as well. "Consider further," he said, "whether it is not the case that for runners the task is to leave as much distance as possible behind them and to stand as far apart as they can, while the umpires do not allow boxers, even when they are quite willing, to come to close grips; whereas wrestlers alone we see embracing and grasping one another, and most of the moves of the contest — thrusts, counter-thrusts, holds, and pressings — bring them together and intermingle them with one another. It is therefore not unclear that wrestling (palē) got its name from their coming especially near to and close (pelas) to one another."
When this had been said, and we had praised Philinus for it, Lysimachus spoke up again: "Which, then, would one say was the first of the contests — the footrace, as at Olympia? Here among us, however, in each event they bring in the competitors by age class — after the boy wrestlers, the men wrestlers, and likewise after the boy boxers, the men boxers, and the pancratiasts in the same way; but there, when the boys have finished competing, only then do they call in the men. Consider, though," he said, "whether Homer does not rather demonstrate the order according to time: for in him boxing always comes first, wrestling second, and the footrace is always placed last among the athletic events." At this Menecrates the Thessalian, in admiration, exclaimed, "By Heracles, how much escapes our notice! But if any of the verses are ready at hand for you, do not begrudge us a reminder." And Timon said, "Well, that the funeral games for Patroclus keep this order of events is, one might almost say, familiar to everyone.
Maintaining the order consistently, the poet has made Achilles say to Nestor, 'I give you this prize outright' — for you will no longer contend in boxing, nor wrestle, nor enter the javelin match, nor run on your feet — while he has made the old man, in replying, ramble on in the manner of the elderly, saying that he once beat Clytomedes son of Oenops in boxing, and Ancaeus of Pleuron in wrestling, and outran Iphiclus on foot. Again, Odysseus challenges the Phaeacians either in boxing or in wrestling or even in running, while Alcinous, deprecating the contest, says, 'for we are not faultless boxers nor wrestlers, but we run swiftly on our feet' — showing that it was not by chance, using whatever order happened to present itself differently at different times, but that he was following the customs then established and practiced according to convention; and it was carried out in this way because they still preserved the ancient order of these events."
When my brother had finished, I said that the rest was truly stated, but that I could not think of the reason for the order. It seemed also to some of the others that it was not plausible that boxing and wrestling should have arisen earlier, in contest and rivalry, than running, and they urged me to bring the discussion to a higher level. I said, offhand, that all these seemed to me to be imitations and exercises of the arts of war; for the hoplite race is brought in after all the others, bearing witness that this is the goal of bodily training and of the contest — namely, that those who win, when they charge in against the walls,
should be able to break through a section and cast it down — this is the meaning it carries, that there is no great benefit to a city in its walls if it has men capable of fighting and winning. In Sparta, moreover, for those who had won crowned contests there was a special place in the ranks of battle, stationed around the king himself to fight; and among animals only the horse has a share in a crown and in a contest, because it alone is by nature suited
and trained to be present with fighting men and to campaign alongside them. "But if this much has not been badly said," I went on, "let us now consider that the first task of those fighting is to strike and to guard oneself; the second, once they have closed and come to grips, is to use pushing and to try to overturn one another — a maneuver by which, they say, the Spartans were especially overpowered by our men at Leuctra, since our men were skilled wrestlers. That is why in Aeschylus one of the warriors is called 'heavy, a wrestler-in-arms,' and Sophocles somewhere says of the Trojans that they are 'horse-loving and horn-drawing, and with their bell-clanging shields, wrestlers.' And indeed, in addition to all this, the third task is, for the losers, to flee, and for the winners, to pursue. It was fitting, then, that boxing should come first, that wrestling should hold the second place, and the footrace the last:
because boxing is an imitation of striking and guarding, wrestling of grappling and pushing, while by running they practice fleeing and pursuing." Soclarus, entertaining us in gardens encircled by the river Cephisus, showed us trees variously decorated with what are called graftings; for we saw olives sprouting up out of mastic trees, and pomegranates out of myrtle; there were also oaks bearing fine pears,
and plane trees that had received apple grafts, and fig trees with mulberry insertions, and other minglings of plants mastered so far as to bear fruit. Now the rest of us were joking with Soclarus, saying that he was feeding stranger breeds and creatures than the sphinxes and chimeras of the poets; but Crato put before us for discussion the reason why only the oily plants are by nature unable to accept such graftings,
for one does not see a pine cone, or a cypress, or a fir, or a pine nourishing anything of another kind. Philo took up the question and said, "There is a saying, Crato, current among the learned, confirmed by farmers as well. For they say that oil is hostile to plants, and that any plant you like would perish most quickly if drenched with oil, just as bees do. But the trees just mentioned have a rich
and mature nature, so that they weep pitch and resin; and whenever they are struck, at the cuts, as though from a wound, they gather a kind of discharge; their pine-torch wood, too, gives off an oily moisture and gleams all over with its unctuousness; and this is why they are hard to mix with the other kinds, just as oil itself is." When Philo had finished, Crato thought that the nature of the bark also contributed to this,
for being thin and dry it provides no seat or means of survival for the things inserted into it — unlike bark that is fleshy, moist, and soft, which clings by enfolding itself around the parts beneath the bark that receive the graft." Soclarus himself said that the man who made this point was not wrong to add that the receiving substance must be readily changeable in its own nature, so that, once overpowered, it may be assimilated and
transform the nourishment within itself toward what is being implanted. "For indeed we first loosen and soften the earth, so that once broken up it may change readily and take hold of what is planted in it; for earth that is tight and hard is difficult to change. These trees, however, being light in their wood, produce no blending, because they are not overpowered and do not change. Further," he said, "it is not unclear that in regard to
what is being grafted, the receiving stock must bear the right proportion to it — the receiving part must always be, so to speak, female and fertile; hence people choose the most fruitful of plants and graft onto them, just as they bring other infants to women who have abundant milk. But pine, cypress, and all such trees we see to be meager and poor in their fruit; for just as men given to excessive flesh and bulk are for the most part childless,
because they spend the nourishment on the body and produce no seminal residue from it, so too such trees, enjoying their nourishment, all of it being spent upon themselves, thrive well in bodily size and grow, but bear no fruit, or if they do, it is small and slow to ripen; so that one should not be surprised if what is foreign does not grow in them, since even their own produce is poorly nourished in them."
Chaeremonianus of Tralles, when all sorts of little fish had once been served, pointed one out to us, sharp-headed and elongated, and said that the remora resembled it; for he had seen one while sailing in the Sicilian sea, and had marveled at its power, since it produced no small delay and holding-back in the course of the voyage — the remora clinging on until it was caught by the ship's lookout, sticking to the outside of the ship's hull. Now there were some
who laughed at Chaeremonianus for accepting a mythical and incredible fabrication, and there were others who kept talking of antipathies, and there was much else one could hear from those present — that a ram's appearance stops a raging elephant; that if you bring a sprig of oak near a viper and touch it with it, the viper freezes still; that a wild bull grows calm and gentle when tied to a fig tree; and that amber moves and attracts all light things,
except basil and things soaked in oil; and that the lodestone does not draw iron if it has been smeared with garlic. Since the evidence for these things is plain, they said it was difficult, if not altogether impossible, to grasp the cause. I said that this was more an evasion of the question than an assignment of the cause. "Let us consider," I said, "that many incidental features attaching to conditions
get credited, wrongly, with being causes — just as if someone thought that the grape of the vine ripens because of the flowering of the chaste-tree, on the ground that, as the saying goes, 'the chaste-tree blooms and the cluster ripens'; or confused the mold that appears on lamps with the clouding-over of the surrounding air; or supposed that the curving of the nails was the cause, rather than a mere accompaniment, of
an ulcer around the internal organs. Just as, then, in these cases each such occurrence is a byproduct of the condition, arising from the same causes, so too, I said, there is one cause why the ship both sails slowly and draws the remora to itself: for when the ship's hull is dry and not very heavy with moisture, it is likely that the keel, slipping along by reason of its lightness, cuts the
wave with clean wood and parts from it easily; but whenever the hull, being very wet and soaked through, draws to itself much seaweed and mossy encrustations, the cutting edge of the wood becomes blunter, and the wave, striking against its stickiness, is not easily thrown off. That is why they scrape the sides, cleaning off the moss and seaweed from the wood — the very things to which it is likely that the remora,
clinging by reason of the stickiness, is mistaken for the cause of the slowness, rather than being a mere accompaniment of the cause that produces the slowness." As for wolf-torn horses, some said they were named from the wolves' bits ("lykospadai"), because their high spirit and unruliness were curbed in this way; but our father, who was in no way given to offhand claims in such matters of common report, and who always kept the finest horses, said that colts attacked by wolves,
if they escaped, turned out good and swift-footed, and were called "lykospadai" (wolf-snatched). Since a good many people bore witness to this for him, it presented a difficulty as to the cause why this incident makes the horses more spirited and fierce. Most of those present held the view that the experience produces in the horses not spirit but fear, and that, becoming easily startled and quick to panic at everything, they acquire
impulses that are sharp and swift, like animals struck by a snare. I said we ought to consider whether the truth is not the opposite of what seems the case: that the colts do not become swifter runners because they escaped the harm of the wild beasts after being attacked, but rather that they would not have escaped at all unless they had by nature already been spirited and fast — just as Odysseus did not become clever by escaping from the Cyclops, but escaped
because he was already such a man. After this, the question was raised about wolf-bitten sheep, which are said to yield the sweetest meat but wool that breeds lice. Patrocleas my son-in-law seemed to make no poor attempt at explaining the sweetness, on the ground that the beast's bite renders the flesh tender, since the wolf's breath is so overheated and fiery that it melts and softens
even the hardest of bones within its belly; hence, too, wolf-bitten flesh putrefies faster than other meat. As for the wool, we were puzzled whether it does not actually breed the lice but rather attracts them, distinguishing the flesh by some roughness that irritates or by a peculiar heat; and that this power is engendered in the wool in relation to the wolf's bite and breath, as it spreads even to the
hairs of the animal being slaughtered. And the historical record lent credence to the argument: for we know that of hunters and butchers, some fell an animal with a single blow, so that what has been struck lies without another breath, while others kill only with difficulty and after many blows; and what is more remarkable still is that some inject, along with the iron blade, such a force into the wounded creature that it putrefies quickly and does not last even for
a single day, while others, killing no more slowly than those, produce no such effect on the flesh of the slaughtered animals, which instead lasts for a long time. That the changes attending the slaughter and death of animals extend as far as the hides, hairs, and nails, Homer too is accustomed to make clear when he speaks, concerning hides and thongs, of
a thong 'from an ox slain by force': for in animals not undone by disease or old age but by slaughter, the hide becomes taut and firm, whereas creatures bitten by wild beasts have their nails turn black and their hair fall out and their hides grow flaccid and ragged. When I held the eponymous office at home, most of our dinners were feasts, with a portion allotted to each person by lot at the sacrifices — a practice which some found altogether admirable, while others,
finding fault with it as unsociable and illiberal, thought that as soon as the garland was set aside one ought to go back again to the customary manner of dining, rearranging the tables. "For it is not for the sake of eating," said Agias, "nor of drinking, but of drinking together and eating together, as I think, that we invite one another; but this division into portions, doing away with the sharing, makes many dinners and many diners, but
no one a fellow-diner with anyone else, whenever each person, as if from a butcher's table, takes his portion by weight and sets it before himself. And yet what difference is there between setting down a cup and a jug of wine, filled, before each of the guests, and a separate table, as the Demophontidae are said to have done for Orestes, bidding him drink without paying attention to the others, and
what actually happens now — setting out meat and bread so that each feasts as though from his own manger — except that we are not, as it happens, bound to silence, as those who entertained Orestes were? But perhaps this very thing, too, invites those present toward a common sharing with one another, in that we make use of common conversation with one another, and of song, and share alike in the delight of a girl playing the harp and a girl playing the flute."
"And this mixing-bowl here, set in the midst with no fixed limit, is an unstinting spring of good fellowship, and it has a measure of enjoyment fitted to each man's desire—unlike the portion of meat and bread, which, most unjustly of all, prides itself on an equal measure applied to unequal people: for the same amount is more to the man who needs little and less to the one who needs more. So, my friend, just as a physician who doles out equal doses of medicine to many patients, measured out precisely by weight, is utterly ridiculous, so too is a host of the sort who gathers people together who are neither equally thirsty nor equally hungry, and then attends to them all from an equal supply, defining what is fair and fitting arithmetically rather than geometrically. Now when we go to a shopkeeper, we all make use of one and the same public measure; but when we come to dinner, each of us brings his own private belly, which is filled not by an equal amount but by a sufficient one.
We ought not to transplant those Homeric feasts here, out of the military messes and camp dinners, but rather to emulate the humanity of the ancients, who honored fellowship not merely as sharers of hearth and roof, but as sharers of the same measure and the same food, holding every form of community in esteem. As for Homer's dinners, let us bid them farewell, for they are half-starved and thirsty affairs, with kings as their stewards more exacting than Italian innkeepers, so that even in the thick of battle, with the enemy at hand, they keep precise account of how much each of their diners has drunk. Pindar's feasts, I suppose, are better, in which heroes "mingled reverently around the table again and again" through sharing everything with one another; for that was a true blending and commingling, whereas this present practice is a separation and estrangement of men who are supposed to be the closest of friends, as if they could not even share a common dish."
When Hagias had won applause for these remarks, they urged me on to attack him. So I said that Hagias was suffering nothing out of the ordinary, if he grew vexed at receiving an equal share while carrying so great a belly—for he himself was one of those who delighted in gluttony—"since in a common fish there are no bones," as Democritus says. "But that," I said, "is precisely the point, and it is what has brought upon us a portion beyond our fair share. For nothing has as great a need of equality—which, as the old woman in Euripides says, binds city to allied city and ally to ally—as does fellowship around a table, which has this need by nature and not by convention, and it is a necessary need, not a novel or imported one due to opinion. To the man who eats more than his share of the common food, whatever falls behind and is left out "becomes an enemy," just as in the surge of a fast-sailing trireme. For I do not think that suspicion, snatching, a contest of hands, and elbowing are a friendly or convivial prelude to a feast, but rather uncouth and doglike, and they often end in abuse and anger, not only against one another but even against the table-servants and the hosts. As long as Fate and Lachesis presided with equality over fellowship at dinners and drinking parties, nothing unseemly or ungenerous was to be seen; indeed they called the dinners themselves "daítas" (feasts) and those who were entertained "daitymónes" (feasters), and the table-servants "daitroí," from the verb "to divide" and "to distribute." The Lacedaemonians had as their meat-carvers not just anyone, but their foremost men, so that even Lysander was appointed meat-carver by King Agesilaus in Asia. It was then, I think, that fair distribution fell out of use, when extravagance crept into dinners: for there was, I suppose, no need to divide up pastries and honeyed cheesecakes and other spiced sauces and all sorts of relishes and side dishes; but men, overcome by their fondness for delicacies and soft living, abandoned the principle of equal shares. A proof of this account is that even now sacrifices and public dinners are still conducted by portion, on account of the simplicity and cleanliness of that way of life; so that the one who takes charge of the distribution at the same time helps preserve its frugality. But where private property exists, is common fellowship thereby destroyed? Only where there is no equality: for it is not the possession of what is one's own, but the seizing of what belongs to another, and the greed that arises over the common good, that has given rise to injustice—and it has given rise to strife as well, which the laws, by stopping it with a boundary and measure on private possession, have become known by name as the source of authority and power that distributes fairly to the common good. Why, the host does not think it right to distribute even a garland to each of us individually, nor couches and places at table; but if someone comes bringing a mistress or a harp-girl, "the goods of friends are common," so that, in Anaxagoras's words, "all things may become one, together."
But if the separateness of these things in no way disturbs our fellowship, seeing that the greatest things and those most worthy of our concern—conversation, toasts, tokens of friendship—are held in common, let us stop dishonoring the Fates. And let us stop dishonoring, too, "the lot which is fortune's child," as Euripides says—fortune, which assigns the first place neither to wealth nor to reputation, but, carried along now this way, now that, as chance will have it, both puffs up and exalts the poor and humble man, letting him taste a measure of independence, and, by accustoming the rich and great man to equality, tempers him without pain, so that he does not grow peevish."
Simonides the poet, my dear Sossius Senecio, once at a certain drinking party saw a stranger reclining in silence and conversing with no one, and said, "Sir, if you are a fool, you are doing a wise thing; but if you are wise, a foolish one." "For it is better to hide ignorance," as Heraclitus says, "though that is hard work when one is at ease and over wine"—wine which "lets loose even a very thoughtful man to sing, and unleashes him to laugh gently and to dance, and it sends forth a word that were better left unspoken"—Heraclitus here, it seems to me, is pointing out the difference between mere wine-drinking and drunkenness. For song and laughter and dancing come upon men who are moderately in their cups; but talking and saying things that would be better left unsaid is already the work of intoxication and drunkenness. That is why Plato thinks that the characters of most men are best seen in wine, and Homer too, in saying that they had "not yet come to know one another even at table," clearly understands the talkativeness that wine induces and its power to generate much conversation. For there is no getting to know one another among people who eat and drink in silence; but because drinking leads on to talking, and in talking, along with the stripping bare of much that would otherwise lie hidden, drinking together affords a certain understanding of one another—so that one might not unfairly rebuke Aesop: "Why, my good sir, do you go looking for those windows through which one man might see into another's mind? It is wine that opens us up and shows us, not letting us keep still, but stripping away our pretense and our studied posture, since these are as far removed from wine's law as a child is far from its tutor."
For Aesop, then, and for Plato, and for anyone else who needs a method of testing character, unmixed wine is useful for this purpose; but those who have no need to put one another to the test or to catch each other out, but only to enjoy each other's company kindly, bring together such problems and topics of conversation when they meet, by which the base parts of the soul are concealed, while the best and most cultured part takes fresh heart, advancing, as it were, toward pastures and meadows that are its own, led on by the love of learning. That is why we too have composed for you this third set of ten Table Talk questions, beginning with the one about garlands. For a discussion about garlands once arose, and the drinking party was in Athens, when Erato the musician had made sacrifice to the Muses and was entertaining a good many guests; for after dinner, garlands of every kind were being passed around, and Ammonius made some jest at our expense because, instead of the laurel, we had bound ourselves with garlands of roses—saying that flowery garlands in general were girlish and more fitting for young girls at play than for gatherings of philosophers and musical men.
"I am amazed, too," he said, "at this Erato here, who abhors chromatic shifts in melodies and accuses the good Agathon of them—Agathon, who is said to have been the first to introduce the chromatic scale into tragedy, when he was training the chorus for his Mysians—yet he himself, as you see, has filled our drinking party with a variegated wealth of colors and blossoms, shutting out luxury and soft indulgence that comes in through the ears with his pipe music, while ushering into the soul, as though through other doors, the luxury that comes through the eyes and the nose, and making the garland an instrument of pleasure rather than of piety. And yet this very perfume, from this flowery and already withering garland in the hands of the garland-weavers, gives off a more serious fragrance than one might expect. But pleasure that is bound up with no useful purpose and does not follow upon the origin of a natural desire has no place at a drinking party of philosophic men. For just as those who are led to dinner by friends who have invited them enjoy, by a humane custom, the same hospitality—as Aristodemus was led by Socrates to the house of Agathon, who was giving a feast—whereas if a man comes of his own accord, the door ought to be shut against him; so too the pleasures connected with eating and drinking, invited by nature and following upon our appetites, have their proper place, while it is fitting that all other pleasures, uninvited and indulged for no reasonable purpose, be dismissed."
At this, the young men who were unaccustomed to Ammonius's manner grew troubled and quietly began loosening their garlands; but I, knowing that Ammonius had thrown out the argument into our midst for the sake of exercise and inquiry, addressed Tryphon the physician: "My good sir," I said, "you are bound either to lay aside with us this fine garland blazing with roses, or else to tell us, as you are accustomed to do on each occasion, what benefits flowery garlands bring toward drinking." Erato took up the reply and said, "Yes, for it has been decided that we should accept no pleasure without some contribution in return, but should grow peevish in our enjoyments unless we suffer this along with some compensating benefit—as though we rightly view perfume and purple dye with suspicion, on account of their added extravagance, calling them, in the words of the barbarian, 'deceitful garments and ointments,' while natural colors and scents have a simplicity and purity about them and differ in no way from fruit.
For surely it would be foolish to gather and enjoy fruits, which nature gives us, and yet to dishonor the scents and colors that the seasons bring, on account of the pleasure that blossoms upon them and their charm, unless some other useful purpose is brought in from outside as well. Indeed, quite the opposite seems to be the case: if nature has made nothing in vain, as you philosophers say, then these very things seem to have been made for the sake of pleasure, since they have no other useful purpose but are by nature suited only to give delight. Consider that, in plants that grow and put forth shoots, the leaves come into being for the preservation of the fruit, so that the trees, warmed and cooled by them, may bear the changes of season in moderation; but the flower, once it has served its brief time, is of no further use—except that, when we make use of it, it provides us something delightful to smell and to see, giving off wondrous scents and unfolding into a variety of colors and hues beyond imitation.
That is why, when the leaves are torn away, the plants seem, as it were, to feel pain and to be wounded, and a kind of festering injury and unseemly baldness comes upon them; and it is not, it seems, only of the laurel that Empedocles says one must "altogether keep the hands from its leaves," but we ought to spare the leaves of all other trees as well, and not adorn ourselves through the disfigurement of those trees, plundering their leaves by force and against nature. But the taking away of flowers is more like a harvesting, and does no harm at all; rather, even if one does not gather them in season, they wither and fall away on their own. Just as barbarians clothe themselves in the hides of their flocks instead of their wool, so it seems to me that those who weave their garlands more from leaves than from flowers make improper use of plants.
For my part, then, I contribute these arguments to the garland-sellers—for I am no scholar, so as to be able to quote poems in which we read of the ancient victors at the sacred games being crowned with garlands of flowers; only I do recall that the rose garland has been especially proclaimed sacred to the Muses, remembering Sappho's words to some unmusical and ignorant woman: "you will lie dead, and no memory of you will remain, for you have no share in the roses that come from Pieria." But if Tryphon too can offer some testimony from the art of medicine, let us hear it."
At this, Tryphon took up the argument and said that the ancients had been careless about none of these matters, inasmuch as they made the greatest use of medicine derived from plants: "and there are proofs of this still evident even now. The Tyrians bring first-offerings to Agenor's son, and the Magnesians to Chiron, who are said to have been the first to practice medicine; for there are roots and herbs by which they used to heal the sick. And Dionysus was reckoned a moderate physician, not only because he discovered wine, the most powerful and most pleasant of remedies, but also because he brought ivy into honor, as a plant whose power is most opposed to that of wine, and taught his revelers to wear it as a garland, so that they might suffer less from the wine, since the ivy's coldness quenches the drunkenness. Some of the very names of plants reveal the ancients' careful attention to these matters: they named the walnut tree "karya" because it gives off a heavy and stupefying vapor that causes pain to those who recline beneath it; and the narcissus, because it dulls the sinews and brings on a numb heaviness, from which it takes its name—that is why Sophocles called it "the ancient garland of the great gods," meaning the gods of the underworld.
They say too that rue (péganon) was named from its power: for it "fixes" (pēgnysi) the seed through dryness by means of its heat, and is altogether hostile to pregnant women. And those who suppose that amethyst was so named for its power to help against drunkenness—both the plant itself and the stone named after it—are mistaken; for each of the two is named from its color, since its leaf is not the color of unmixed wine, but resembles wine that is wineless and watered down in its blend. But there are countless other examples one could cite, in which their properties gave rise to their names; and those already mentioned are enough to show the diligence and wide experience of the ancients, from which they made use of garlands worn at drinking parties. For above all, unmixed wine, when it takes hold of the head and strains the body's organs of sense, throws a man into confusion; and the vapors given off by flowers wonderfully help against this, walling off the head from drunkenness as though it were a citadel, since the warm ones gently relax the pores and give the wine's fumes room to breathe, while those that are mildly cool, by their moderate contact, drive back the vapors rising upward,
as does the garland of violets and roses: for both are astringent and, by their scent, contract the heaviness in the head. And the flower of henna, and crocus, and baccharis, bring those who have been drinking into an untroubled sleep; for they give off a smooth and gentle emanation that gradually dissolves the bodily irregularities and roughness that come with drunkenness, so that, as a calm sets in, the ...
and the after-effects of drunkenness are digested away along with it. When the scents of certain flowers spread upward around the brain, the passages of the sense-organs are cleansed, and the fluids are gently thinned, without shock or agitation, being separated out by the warmth, and the brain, which is cold by nature, is warmed.
This is why, above all, people called the flower-garlands hung about the neck "hypothymides," and anointed their breasts with the perfumes made from them. Alcaeus bears witness to this, urging that myrrh be poured "down over the head that has suffered much and over the gray-haired breast." So from here too the scents shoot upward, drawn by their heat into the brain through the sense of smell.
It was not because they thought that spiritedness (thymos) was encamped in the heart that they called the neck-garlands "hypothymides" — for on that reasoning it would have been more fitting to call them "epithymides" — but rather, as I say, because of their exhalation and fumigation.
Let us not be surprised that the exhalations of garlands have such power: it is reported that even the shade of the yew kills people who fall asleep beneath it, when it is at the height of its flowering; and that the vapor given off by the poppy has caused those who gather its sap without taking precautions to collapse. As for the herb called "alyssum," some are freed of hiccups simply by taking it in hand, others merely by looking at it; it is also said to be good for flocks of sheep and goats when planted around their folds. The rose, presumably, gets its name from the great stream of fragrance it gives off; that is also why it withers so quickly. In its power it is cooling, though in appearance it is fiery-red — not unreasonably, for a thin layer of heat blooms on its surface, pushed outward by its coldness.
When we had praised this, Ammonius, smiling at Trypho, said it was not right to kick apart, by way of rebuttal, a discourse so varied and flowery, like a garland — "except that ivy, I don't know how, has been woven in among the cold things, said to help quench undiluted wine; for it is actually fiery and rather hot, and its berry, when mixed into wine, makes it more intoxicating and disturbing precisely because it heats it up, and they say that its tendril, when pulled, twists just as wood does in fire. Snow, which often lingers for many days on other plants, melts away from ivy fastest of all; or rather it is destroyed and melts around it altogether at once, because of its heat.
But the greatest proof of this is reported by Theophrastus: when Alexander ordered Harpalus to plant Greek trees in the parks of Babylon, and above all — since the region was fiery and scorched — to introduce grove-loving, leafy, shady plants among the vegetation, the land refused to receive ivy alone, though Harpalus went to great lengths and struggled hard to make it take. But it died and dried up, because, being fiery itself, when mixed with a fiery soil it found no proper blending but was thrown out of its natural state; for excesses destroy their own powers, which is why things instead reach out for their opposites, and the cold loves the warm, and the warm loves the cold. That is why mountainous, windy, snow-covered regions produce the resinous, pitch-bearing plants — above all pines and firs.
But apart from these, my dear Trypho, plants that are chilly and cold shed their leaves, because their small and feeble store of heat withdraws and abandons the plant, whereas oil and heat keep the olive, the laurel, and the cypress evergreen, just as they keep the ivy. Hence our beloved Dionysus did not bring in ivy as an aid to drunkenness, nor as an enemy of wine — he who plainly named himself, in the case of unmixed wine, 'Methy' and 'Methymnaios.'
Rather, it seems to me that, just as wine-lovers, when no wine from the vine is at hand, resort to a drink made from barley, and some make apple-wines, others date-wines, so too he, longing in wintertime for a garland from the vine, since he saw it bare and leafless, came to love the resemblance offered by ivy. For indeed the twining, wandering habit of its tendril, and the moist, loosely-spreading growth of its leaf, and especially its cluster of berries, which resembles a thick bunch of unripe, ripening grapes, closely imitate the character of the vine.
Nonetheless, even if ivy does contribute something toward relieving drunkenness, we shall say that it does so by its heat, opening the pores, or rather by helping to concoct the unmixed wine — so that, for your sake, Trypho, Dionysus may still remain a physician."
To this Trypho fell silent, considering how he might reply; but Erato, calling on each of us younger men in turn, urged us either to come to Trypho's aid on behalf of the garlands or else to take our garlands off. Ammonius said he granted us free rein, since he would not argue against whatever we might say.
So then, with Trypho too urging me to speak, I said that proving ivy to be cold was not my task but Trypho's, since he makes much use of it as a cooling and astringent agent. "Of what has been said," I went on, "it is not true that ivy, mixed with wine, causes drunkenness; for the condition it produces in those who drink it one would not call drunkenness, but rather derangement and disturbance of mind — the sort of thing henbane produces, and many other such things that madden the mind.
As for the convulsive twisting of the tendril, that argument is unsound: effects contrary to nature are not the work of powers that act according to nature. Wood, too, warps, when fire forcibly draws the moisture out of it, taking on curvatures and distortions; but heat that is akin to a thing is, by nature, disposed to increase and nourish it. Consider rather whether it is not, instead, some weakness and coldness of body that naturally produces its many bends and its tendency to trail along the ground, since it meets frequent obstacles and checks, like a traveler who through weakness often sits down and then goes on again. That is why it needs something to twine around and lean on, being unable to hold itself up and guide its own way, for lack of heat, whose special power is to move upward.
Snow melts and runs off ivy because of the moistness of its leaf; for water quenches the snow's structure and breaks down its porous looseness, since snow is a mass of small, closely packed bubbles — which is why snow melts away no less in places that are extremely cold and damp than in places exposed to the sun. And this being evergreen — or, as Empedocles calls it, 'steadfast-leaved' — is not a matter of heat; for shedding one's leaves is likewise not a matter of cold. The myrtle, at any rate, and the maidenhair fern, though not among the hot but among the cold plants, are always in leaf.
Some, then, think that the leaf persists because of an evenness of blending; Empedocles, in addition to this, attributes it also to a certain proportion of the pores, which let nourishment pass through in an ordered, even way, so that it flows in sufficiently. But in leaf-shedding plants this does not happen, because of the looseness of the upper pores and the narrowness of the lower ones, since the lower ones fail to send nourishment up and the upper ones fail to retain it, but instead, having received only a little, pour it all out at once — as happens in certain uneven irrigation channels — whereas plants that are continually watered hold out with a sufficient and well-proportioned supply of nourishment, and remain ageless and green.
But when it was planted in Babylon it withered and gave out — and this noble plant did well to do so, since, as a client and dependent of a Boeotian god, it had no wish to emigrate among barbarians, nor did it envy Alexander for making himself at home among those foreign peoples, but instead fled and fought hard against being exiled from its own land. The cause was not heat, but rather cold, unable to bear the opposite temperament: for what is akin does not destroy, but is welcomed and sustained, as thyme, though it is hot, is sustained by dry soil — whereas the air surrounding Babylonia is said to be so stifling and heavy that many of the wealthy, once they have filled skins with water, sleep upon them to cool themselves."
Florus wondered how it was that Aristotle, having written in his treatise On Drunkenness that old men are most easily overcome by drunkenness and women least of all, had not worked out the cause — a man not in the habit of leaving such things unexplained. He then put the question before the company to consider together. It was a dinner among familiar friends.
Sulla then said that one case reveals the other, and that if we could correctly grasp the cause in the case of women, we would no longer need much argument concerning old men; for their natures are most opposite in moistness and dryness, smoothness and roughness, softness and hardness. And he said one should take this first with regard to women: that they have a moist constitution, which, being blended into their flesh, gives them its softness and its smooth sheen, as well as their monthly purgations. So whenever wine falls into so much moisture, it is overpowered, loses its own strength, and becomes altogether diluted and watery.
One can also find some support in Aristotle himself: for he says that those who drink all at once, without pausing for breath — what the ancients called "gulping down" — are the least likely to fall into drunkenness, since in their case the unmixed wine does not linger, but is driven through the body by its own rush. And we generally see women drinking in just this way. It is likely, too, that their bodies, because of the continual drawing-down of fluids toward their purgations, have come to be full of passages and cut through, as it were, with channels and conduits, so that the unmixed wine, falling into these, quickly drains away and does not settle upon the principal parts, whose disturbance is what causes drunkenness.
As for old men, that they lack moisture of their own, their very name seems to me to declare first of all: they are called by this term not because they are "flowing into the earth," but because they are already becoming, in their bodily state, something earthy and earth-like. Their stiffness and hardness of joint, and further their roughness of skin, likewise reveal the dryness of their nature. So when they drink, the wine is naturally absorbed, since their body, because of its dryness, is spongy; and then, remaining within them, it produces shocks and heaviness.
For just as floodwaters wash off dense ground without making mud, but mix in more thoroughly with loose, porous ground, so too wine, drawn in by their dryness, lingers within the bodies of old men. And, quite apart from all this, one can see that old men's nature by itself already displays the very symptoms of drunkenness: for the most conspicuous symptoms of drunkenness are trembling of the limbs, stammering of the tongue, excessive talkativeness, quickness to anger, and lapses and wanderings of the mind — most of which are already present even in healthy old men, needing only a slight tip of the scale, any chance disturbance. So that for the old man, drunkenness is not the production of symptoms peculiar to itself, but simply an intensification of symptoms he already shares with it. A proof of this is that nothing more closely resembles an old man than a young man who is drunk. This, then, is what Sulla said.
Apollonides the tactician said that he accepted the account concerning old men, but that, in the case of women, he thought the point about their coldness had been left out — the coldness by which very hot unmixed wine is quenched and made to lose its striking, fiery force.
Since this too seemed plausible, Athryilatus the Thasian physician, injecting a further difficulty into the inquiry, said that there were some who supposed women to be, not cold, but hotter than men, and others, even more, who held that wine is not hot but actually cold. When Florus expressed surprise, he said, "The argument about wine I leave to this man" — pointing to me; for we had, in fact, happened to discuss this very point a few days before —
"but as for women," he went on, "they think they can demonstrate their heat, first, from their hairlessness: the residual matter that would otherwise form hair is consumed by their heat, whereas, when it is in excess, it turns into hair; and second, from the abundance of their blood, which is the source of the body's heat, and which is present in women in such quantity that it would set them ablaze and consume them with fire, if frequent and rapid purgations did not occur.
"Third, this fact about funeral pyres proves that females are hotter than males: for it is said, by those who arrange such things, that they place one female corpse among ten male ones and burn them together, since a woman's flesh contains something resinous and oily, so that it becomes kindling for the rest. Further, if the more fertile is the hotter, and girls come into readiness earlier than boys and are stirred toward procreation sooner, this too would be no weak proof of their heat. Still greater and more persuasive is the fact that they bear cold and winter weather easily; for most women feel the cold less than men do, and generally need fewer clothes."
"But I think," said Florus, "that the doctrine is refuted by these very arguments. For, in the first place, they resist cold better because like is often less affected by like; and further, their generative seed does not come about through a process of cooling, but they merely supply matter and nourishment to that which comes from the male. And again, women cease bearing children much earlier than men cease begetting them.
"Moreover, bodies burn better because of fat, which is thought to be colder than the rest of the body: at any rate, young men and athletes, who are least fatty, burn worst. The menstrual purgation is a matter not of abundance but of corruption and poor quality of blood: for the unconcocted, residual portion of it, having no fixed seat or stability in the body, is expelled through weakness, becoming altogether dull and turbid through the feebleness of its heat. Indeed, the fact that women undergoing this purgation generally feel chills and shivering shows that what is stirred up and departing from the body is cold and unconcocted.
"And as for their hairlessness, who would say this condition belongs more to heat than to cold, when he sees that the hottest parts of the body are the hairiest? For it is heat that pushes all such growth outward, scoring and opening up passages in the skin's surface. Smoothness, on the other hand, comes about through density produced by cold; and that women are denser-textured than men, my dear Athryilatus, you may learn by asking those who still sleep beside women anointed with perfume or oil: for they become saturated with that very unguent while sleeping beside them, even if they do not touch or come into contact with the women at all, because their own body, through its heat and looseness of texture, draws it in."
"Still," he said, "the case about women has, on the other side too, been argued in manly fashion. But as for wine, I am eager to learn from where it has furnished us any suspicion of being cold." "Do you suppose," I said, "that this argument is mine to make?" "Then whose is it?" he said. "Well, I recall," I said, "having come across a discussion of this very problem by Aristotle himself, not long ago—"
—but that was sufficiently long ago. Epicurus too, in his ‘Symposium,’ discusses this at length, and the sum of it, as I take it, is this: he says that wine is not hot in and of itself, but contains within it certain atoms productive of heat and others of cold; and that when it enters the body, it sheds some of these and takes on others from the body, according to whatever temperament or nature it happens to meet there, so that some people are warmed by it while others, when they get drunk, experience the opposite effect.”
“This,” said Florus, “carries us straight off to Pyrrho by way of Protagoras: for it is plain that if we go through olive oil, milk, honey, and the rest in the same way, we shall end up shirking any statement of what each thing is in its own nature, and simply claiming that each becomes what it is through its mixtures and combinations with other things. But how do you yourself go about arguing that wine is cold?” “In this way,” I said: “I was forced at the time to improvise under pressure from two considerations. The first that occurred to me was the practice of physicians: to patients who are enfeebled and in need of some bracing tonic on account of stomach ailments, they administer nothing hot, but give wine and so bring relief; and likewise they check fluxes and sweats with wine, which arrests and strengthens the failing condition of the body no less — indeed even more — than snow does, by cooling and constricting it.
If wine possessed a heating nature and power, it would be much the same, I think, as applying fire to snow, or undiluted wine to the heart. Again, most people say that sleep comes about through a chilling, and that most soporific drugs are cooling — mandrake and poppy-juice, for instance; but these act with great force and violence, compressing and congealing, whereas wine gently cools, brings things to rest with pleasure, and calms motion, the difference between the two being one of degree rather than kind. Further, what is hot is generative: moisture makes for a good flow, and heat rouses the breath into vigor and strength. But those who drink much undiluted wine are duller in sexual intercourse and sow nothing strong or well-formed toward generation; rather, their intercourse with women is feeble and incomplete, owing to the poor and chilled condition of their seed.
And indeed, all the effects that people suffer from cold happen also to the drunk: trembling, heaviness, pallor, tremors in the limbs’ vital spirit, slurred speech, stiffness and numbness in the sinews of the extremities; and for most people drunkenness ends in paralysis, whenever the undiluted wine altogether stuns and quenches the natural heat. Indeed, physicians treat the bodily harms of the drunk and hungover, at first, as it seems, by wrapping them up warmly and putting them to bed, and the next day by bathing, anointing, and feeding them— with foods that, without disturbing the body’s bulk, gently call back the heat that has been scattered and driven out of the body by the wine.
In general, in observable phenomena we track down hidden resemblances and powers. There is, however, no need to be puzzled over what drunkenness itself actually is; for, as we have said, the drunk closely resemble the old — which is why heavy drinkers grow old earliest of all, and most of them go prematurely bald and gray before their time; and all of these conditions are thought to overtake a person through a deficiency of heat.
Further still, vinegar is a certain nature and power belonging to wine, and nothing among things that extinguish fire is more combative toward it than vinegar, but overpowers and stifles the flame more than anything else, owing to its extreme coldness. And we see physicians using the wine-like fruits in preference to others, as cooling agents, in the case of pomegranates and apples too. And do they not make honey-wine by mixing the very nature of honey with rain-water and snow, since the cold destroys the sweetness through its affinity with the astringent, once it prevails? Did not the ancients, for this very reason, dedicate and consecrate to the god the serpent among creeping things and the ivy among plants, as having some cold and frost-like power?
And if, because a great deal of undiluted wine, when drunk on top of hemlock, seems to cure its effects, some take this as evidence of wine’s heat, we for our part will say, turning the argument around, that when mixed with wine this poison becomes incurable and kills outright those who drink it — so that it is no more plausible to suppose that wine counteracts hemlock by being hot than that it cooperates with it by being cold, if indeed it is by coldness, rather than by some other nature and power, that hemlock is more likely to destroy those who drink it.”
Certain young men, who not long before had been frequenting the old philosophic discourses, were tearing Epicurus to pieces, on the ground that it was neither decent nor necessary for him to have inserted, in his ‘Symposium,’ a discussion of the proper season for intercourse: for an older man, they said, to bring up sexual matters at a dinner attended by young lads, and to raise the question whether one should make use of it after dinner or before dinner, was the height of licentiousness. Against this some of the company invoked Xenophon, as leading his fellow-drinkers away after dinner not on foot but on horseback, to have intercourse with their wives. But Zopyrus the physician, who was thoroughly versed in the arguments of Epicurus, said that they could not have read Epicurus’ ‘Symposium’ attentively;
for Epicurus did not make this a set topic from the very beginning and structure of the work and then carry through arguments on it, but rather, after rousing the young men from dinner for a walk, discussed it for the sake of moral discipline, and turned them back from their desires — on the grounds that the act is always precarious and liable to be harmful, but worst of all for those who indulge in it right after drinking and eating. ‘But if,’ he said, ‘this had actually been the express subject of inquiry — whether the philosopher had done well not to have considered at all the proper time and season for intercourse, or whether it is better to do such things at the right time and with due calculation, and whether it is not out of place to consider the right time in general, though shameful to do so at a symposium and at table — it seems to me',
'that one might rather bring the opposite charge against a philosopher: that he should discuss this subject in the daytime, in his lecture-hall, with many people of every sort present, rather than over a cup, among intimates and friends, where it is also fitting to slip in a myth, however dull and flat, along with the wine — how then is it shameful to say or hear something useful, said for the benefit of the practice of intercourse? Indeed, for my part, by the Dog, I would rather have had Zeno’s ideas about intercourse arranged in some symposium, as a matter of play, than lodged in so weighty a treatise as the ‘Republic.’’ At this the young men, struck dumb, lay silent; and when the rest asked Zopyrus to go through Epicurus’ arguments on the subject in detail, he said that he did not remember the particulars precisely, but that he believed the man feared the shocks arising from intercourse,
on account of the throbbing of the body, which throws it into disturbance and agitation when people walk about in such a state right after. For in general, he said, undiluted wine, being apt to strike and to set disturbance in motion, displaces the body from its settled position; and if, when our frame is in this condition, calm and sleep do not take hold of it, but instead other movements come through sexual acts, while the parts most naturally suited to binding and holding the body together are squeezed and wrenched, there is a danger that the mass of the body becomes unsettled, as though shaken from its foundations. For at such a time, he said, the seed does not flow well, there being an obstruction on account of the body’s fullness, but is torn away forcibly and mixed with other matter.
For this reason the man says one ought to engage in such acts once the body has come to rest and the distributions of nourishment and the fluxes have subsided as they pass off and depart, but before the body again becomes in need of further nourishment. One might also adduce, in support of Epicurus, the medical account as well: for the time of day, once digestion has already reached its resolution, is safer, whereas the impulse toward intercourse right after dinner is not without danger — for it is unclear whether, since the food has not yet been mastered, indigestion
would receive the shock and throbbing arising from intercourse, so that the harm would become twofold.” Olympichus then took up the discussion and said, “For my part, I am altogether pleased with the saying of Clinias the Pythagorean. He is reported to have been asked when a man ought especially to approach a woman, and to have replied, ‘Whenever you most wish to be harmed.’ And indeed what Zopyrus has just said makes some sense; but I also see the other occasion as having its own difficulties and drawbacks with regard to the matter.
Just as Thales the wise man, when troubled by his mother urging him to marry, somehow slipped away and put her off by saying to her, at first, ‘It is not yet the time, mother,’ and later, ‘It is no longer the time, mother’ — so too, I think, it will be best for each man, with regard to sexual matters, to be in such a condition that on lying down he says, ‘Not yet the time,’ and on rising, ‘No longer the time.’”
“That is athletic talk, Olympichus,” said Soclarus, “still quite reeking of the cottabus-game and of that meat-eating crowd, and not to the point here. For there are young married men present, by whom ‘works of affection’ must be performed; and Aphrodite has not altogether fled from the rest of us either, but we even pray to her, no doubt, saying in the hymns to the gods, ‘Turn back old age above, O fair Aphrodite.’
Let us consider, then, if you please, whether Epicurus rightly and fittingly, or against all justice, deprives Aphrodite of the night: and yet Menander, a man well versed in love, says that of all the gods it is most fitting that she share in it. For, I think, darkness was well devised as a veil for pleasure by those who set about doing these things, so as not to drive out, by encountering them in the light, the sense of shame from the eyes, and thereby implant boldness in licentiousness, along with vivid memories, by dwelling on which desire is fanned into flame again.
For ‘sight comes to us as the sharpest’ of the body’s ‘experiences,’ as Plato says, and by rousing the soul intensely with images close at hand toward the phantoms of pleasure, it always creates a new and fresh desire. Night, on the other hand, by removing most and the most frenzied of such acts, leads on and lulls our nature to rest, not letting it be driven by sight into excess.
Apart from all this, what sense does it make for a man who has come home from dinner in high spirits, crowned with a garland, if it so happens, and anointed with myrrh, to turn away and cover himself up to sleep — and yet in the daytime, in the midst of his business, to summon his wife from the women’s quarters for some such purpose, or in the early morning to be coupling like a rooster? For evening, my friend, is a rest from labors, and dawn their beginning;
and the evening is watched over by Dionysus Lysios together with Terpsichore and Thalia, while the dawn rouses us up toward Athena the Worker and Hermes of the marketplace. That is why songs, dances, wedding-hymns, revels, feasts, and the resounding din of flutes possess the evening, while the dawn is possessed by the clatter of hammers, the grating of saws, the early-morning outcries of tax-collectors, and proclamations summoning people to court or to attend on kings or magistrates — a time at which the things of pleasure are far away, and Aphrodite’s reign ends, along with the revelries of the young, and no thyrsus-leaf of Bacchus stirs, for cares press in tight.
Moreover, the poet never puts any of the heroes to bed with a wedded wife or a concubine in the daytime, except when he makes Paris, having fled the battle, sink into the bosom of his woman — as though this daytime incontinence belonged not to a man but to a raging adulterer. And indeed, the body would not be harmed by intercourse after dinner any more than at another time, as Epicurus supposes, provided one does not engage in it while drunk or bursting with fullness and weighed down;
for in that case, to be sure, the act is precarious and harmful. But if a man, being reasonably composed and moderately relaxed, his body having grown soft and his mind settled, brings himself to it after some interval, it produces no great disturbance on account of the body’s bulk, nor any of the other effects — whether cooling or a shifting of atoms from their place, as Epicurus says — that it causes;
rather, by rendering to nature what is proper to it, and by calming himself in a way, he will fill up again the void, as a fresh influx comes to the empty spaces. But this is rather more to be guarded against: engaging in sexual acts while still in the midst of one’s business, lest the body, being unsettled and agitated, together with the anxieties of the mind and the exertions and fatigues connected with one’s daily needs, at once seizing hold of it, roughen it further, there having been no adequate interval in between
for nature to take its rest. For not everyone, my friend, possesses Epicurus’ leisure and ease, furnished abundantly and for all time by discourse and philosophy; many face contests each day awaiting them, and gymnastic exercises, one might almost say, await everyone — for whom it is neither honorable nor advantageous to offer the body, disposed in such a state, relaxed, to frenzied intercourse. As for that blessed and imperishable being —
let it be, as it is in itself, unconcerned with our affairs; but we, who follow the law of the city, must take care not to enter upon summer and begin sacrifices having just before accomplished some such act. Hence it is well, having placed night and sleep in between, and having made a sufficient interval and interruption, to rise again clean, as it were from the beginning, and, in Democritus’ words, ‘thinking new thoughts on the new day.’”
At Athens they begin the new wine on the eleventh of the month, calling the day the ‘Jar-Opening’; and long ago, it seems, before drinking they would pray, pouring a libation of the wine, that its use might prove harmless and health-giving to them, as a kind of medicine. Among us, the month is called Prostaterios, and on the sixth day of the month it is customary, after sacrificing to the Good Spirit, to taste the wine — after the west wind has blown; for that wind, more than any other, unsettles and stirs up wine, and once it has escaped this it is thought thereafter to remain steady and reliable.
My father, then, offered the sacrifice as was his custom, and after dinner, when the wine was being praised, he set before the young men studying philosophy along with us the problem of inquiring into an argument for why new wine intoxicates least.
To most of the company this seemed paradoxical and hard to believe; but Hagias said that sweetness everywhere is cloying and produces satiety, and that for this reason no one could easily drink of new wine as much as would suffice to make him drunk, since the appetite, put off by the unpleasant sensation, gives out before it advances as far as quenching thirst. But that sweetness differs from pleasantness, and that the poet, understanding this, says—
with cheese and sweet honey and pleasant wine": for wine, he said, is sweet at the start, but becomes pleasant only when, through the process of digestion, it changes over into austerity as it ages. Aristaenetus of Nicaea said that he recalled having read in certain writings that must mixed with wine stops drunkenness, and that he reports some physicians, when men have drunk too much, bid them vomit and then, when they are about to go to sleep, dip bread in honey and eat it. If, then, sweetness in some way dulls unmixed wine, it is reasonable that new wine does not intoxicate until its sweetness changes. We were very pleased indeed with the young men's resourcefulness in argument, in that, instead of falling upon the arguments that lay ready to hand, they found a supply of their own. For the obvious and easy points to seize upon are, first, the heaviness of must, as Aristotle says, which cuts through the stomach, and the fact that a great deal of windy and watery matter remains mixed in with it: of these the windy part is at once forced out and expelled, while the watery part naturally makes the wine duller; but aging intensifies the wine as the watery element is separated out, so that the wine becomes smaller in measure but stronger in potency.
"Well then," said the father, "since we have already stirred up Aristotle, let us also attempt to say something of our own about the men called 'half-drunk' (akrothorakes); for it does not seem to me — sharp as he is in such inquiries — that he has worked out the cause with sufficient precision. He says, I believe, that in the sober man the reasoning faculty judges well and in accordance with reality, while in the man who is thoroughly drunk perception itself is held in a state of dissolution, but in the man who is only half-drunk the imaginative faculty still retains its strength while the reasoning faculty is already thrown into confusion; and this is why such a man both judges and judges badly, following along after his impressions. But how," he said, "does this seem to you?"
"For my part," I said, "considering the matter by myself, this account seemed to me sufficient as far as the cause is concerned; but if you bid me put forward something of my own, see first whether the distinction just stated ought to be transferred to the body as well. For in the half-drunk, only the mind has been thrown into confusion, while the body is still able to serve the impulses, not yet having been submerged; but when it is shaken down and pressed hard, it betrays the impulses and gives way, since it does not go forward as far as actions — whereas those other men, though they share in the fault, are exposed not by reasoning any the worse but by having strength any the more.
"Looking at it, however, from another starting point," I said, "as regards the power of wine, nothing prevents it from being varied and changing along with the quantity — just as fire, if moderate, hardens and sets the clay, but if it strikes it with excess, melts it down and makes it flow instead; and conversely, the season of a fever, when it begins, stirs up and inflames, but as it advances, fevers rather settle down and abate. What, then, prevents the mind too, when naturally set in motion by wine, once it has been disturbed and provoked, from being relaxed again and settling down as the wine increases? At any rate hellebore has as the beginning of its purgative action the disturbing of the mass within; but if it is given in a smaller quantity than the proper measure, it disturbs but purges nothing. And some, too, who take sleeping-drugs in a quantity less than the proper measure are thrown into a more troubled state, while others, taking more, fall asleep. It is likely, then, that this disturbance in the half-drunk man, once it reaches its peak, likewise dies away, and that the wine, in large amount, contributes to this; for entering the body in quantity it burns out along with it, and consumes, the maniacal element of the soul.
"For just as the dirge and the funeral flute at the beginning stir feeling and draw out tears, but as they lead the soul on into lamentation, they thus little by little remove and use up the painful element in the same way, so too you might observe wine, when it has violently disturbed and provoked the vigorous and spirited element, in turn submerging it and settling the mind down, so that, as it advances further toward drunkenness, it grows quiet."
When I had said this, Ariston cried out, as was his habit, "There has appeared," he said, "a way back into our symposia for the justest and most democratic of measures, which has for some time been exiled by a certain sober authority as if by a tyrant. For just as the theorists of the canon in matters of the lyre say that the ratio of three to two furnishes the concord of the fifth, and the ratio of two to one the concord of the octave, while the fourth, being the faintest, is constituted in the ratio of four to three, so too the harmonists of Dionysus have observed three concords of wine with water — the fifth, the third, and the fourth — thus speaking and singing, either drink five, or three, or not four. For five parts arise in the ratio of three to two, when three parts of water are mixed with two of wine; three parts arise in the double ratio, when two parts are mixed with one; and four parts arise when three parts of water are poured upon one part of wine — this is the ratio of four to three, a sober and feeble mixture, fit for certain officials with sense enough in the town hall, or for dialecticians with their eyebrows raised, when they are examining the shiftings of their arguments.
"Of the other mixtures, the one of two to one brings on that disturbing and half-drunk pitch of intoxication, stirring the chords of the mind that are otherwise unmoved — for it allows a man neither to remain sober nor to sink his folly wholly down into the unmixed wine; while the mixture of two to three is the most musical of all, altogether a bringer of sleep and a banisher of care, and, in the words of Hesiod, that 'averter of harm, soother of children,' which brings deep calm and quiet to the unruly and disorderly passions within us."
To this no one answered Ariston in opposition, for it was plain he was jesting; but I bade the boy take up a cup, as though it were a lyre, and tune the celebrated mixture and harmony, and the slave came forward and poured out the unmixed wine for him; but Ariston drew back, saying with a laugh that he belonged to the theorists of music, not to the practitioners on instruments.
The father, however, added only this much to what had been said: that the ancients, it seemed to him, made two nurses for Zeus — Ite and Adrasteia — but only one for Hera, namely Euboea; and likewise two for Apollo, Aletheia and Corythalia, but more for Dionysus, because this god must be tamed and trained in a greater number of measures by nymphs, so as to become gentler and more sensible.
Euthydemus of Sounion, entertaining us at dinner, set before us a wild boar of great size; and when those present expressed their admiration, he said that another, much larger, being carried by the light of the moon, had spoiled, and that he was greatly at a loss over the cause; for it was not likely that the sun, being hotter than the moon, should not rather putrefy meat.
Satyrus said, "That is not, above all, what one would wonder at, but rather what is done by hunters: for whenever they knock down a boar or a stag and send it off to the city from a distance, they drive in a bronze nail, on the ground that it helps against putrefaction." When we had finished dining, and Euthydemus again recalled the puzzle, he said, "Moschion the physician says
that putrefaction is a melting and flowing of flesh as it changes by corruption into moisture, and that, generally speaking, whatever putrefies becomes moist; and that all warmth, if it is soft and mild, stirs up and confines moisture, but if it is fiery, on the contrary, dries out the flesh. From this it is clear what is being sought: for the moon, gently warming things, moistens bodies, while the sun
rather snatches the moisture out of bodies because of its burning heat — a point on which I believe Archilochus too spoke with natural insight, when he said that the fierce, blazing Dog-star withers many of them; and Homer speaks still more clearly of Hector, over whom, as he lay, Apollo drew a shady cloud, lest the might of the sun should wither the flesh about his sinews and limbs; while the moon sends forth rays that are weaker —
'for by them no grape-cluster ripens,' as Ion says. When this had been said, I remarked, "Everything else has been well said; but one ought not to judge the whole matter by the quantity, the more-or-less, of the heat. For we observe that the sun warms less in winter and yet putrefies bodies more in summer; the opposite ought to happen, if putrefaction were caused by softness of heat. As it is, when the burning heat is more intense, it destroys flesh the faster.
So the moon does not bring dead bodies to putrefaction through a lack and weakness of warmth, but rather one must hold responsible a peculiar quality of the stream that flows from it. That not all heat has a single quality, differing only by degree of more or less, but that there are very many powers of fire, unlike one another, is clear from the most ready examples. Goldsmiths work gold by means of chaff-flame, while physicians warm gently, above all, the medicines they are compounding by means of vine-twig flame; and for softening and shaping glass, tamarisk-wood is thought to be well suited;
while the wood of the olive, though it treats bodies well in vapor-baths, is an enemy to bathhouses and damages their brick lining and foundations by scorching them from beneath. Hence the more fastidious market-inspectors do not allow contractors to use olive-wood, any more than to throw darnel into the furnace; for the fumes from these produce headaches and dizziness in bathers. It is, then, nothing to wonder at that the moon too should differ from the sun, the one sending forth streams that dry, the other streams that relax and set in motion the fluids within bodies. This is why nurses are altogether careful not to show infants to the moon; for being full of moisture, like green wood, they are wrenched and distorted. And we observe that those who have slept in the light of the moon rise up with difficulty, as it were struck senseless in their perceptions and numbed; for the moisture, being diffused by the moon, weighs down their bodies.
It is said, too, that the moon assists toward an easy childbirth, when it is at the full, by the relaxation of fluids providing softer labor-pains; whence, I think, Artemis too has been named Locheia and Eileithyia, being none other than the moon — as Timotheus says outright, 'through the dark vault of the stars, and through the swift-bringing moon.'
The power of the moon also becomes plain in the case of lifeless bodies as well: for carpenters reject timber cut at the full moon, as being soft and quickly rotting because of its moisture; and farmers hasten to gather their wheat from the threshing floor while the month is waning, so that, hardened by the dryness, it may better withstand time; while those who transport grain at the height of the moon find it most beaten down, becoming softer through the moisture. They say too that flour ferments better at the full moon; for fermentation falls little short of being a kind of putrefaction, and, once it has lost its due measure, by loosening and thinning the dough it carries it on to the same kind of corruption. Rotting flesh, too, suffers nothing else
than this: the cohesive breath within it changing over into moisture, it is loosened and flows apart. We observe the air undergoing this too, for it discharges dew most of all at the full moon, as it melts away — as Alcman the lyric poet, I believe, hints when he calls the dew the daughter of air and of the moon, saying somewhere that 'Herse, daughter of Zeus and of the divine moon, nourishes.' Thus from every side it is attested that the light of the moon possesses an exceedingly moistening
and softening power. As for the bronze nail — if indeed, when driven through, it keeps the flesh, as they say, less liable to decay — it appears to have some astringent quality in itself; for physicians use verdigris as a medicine for such purposes, and they report that those who spend their time in copper mines find benefit for their eyes, and that those who have lost their eyelashes grow them again; for the fine dust that rises from the copper ore, falling imperceptibly upon the eyelids, checks the discharges and constricts the tear-duct. This is why, they say, the poet calls bronze 'man-strengthening' and 'gleaming.' Aristotle says, moreover, that wounds from bronze spearheads and knives are less painful and easier to heal than those from iron, because bronze has in itself something medicinal, which it leaves behind at once in the wounds.
That the astringent quality, moreover, has a power opposite to that of the corrupting agent that causes putrefaction, and the healing quality opposite to that of the destructive one, is not unclear — unless indeed one should say instead that by being driven through, the nail draws the fluids to itself, a constant flow being directed toward the affected point. This is why, they say, around that very spot something like a bruise or a stain is seen to appear; and it stands to reason that the rest of the flesh remains unaffected, since the corruption runs together into that one place there."
Sossius Senecio, when Polybius was advising Scipio Africanus not to leave the marketplace before making some one of the citizens his friend — one ought not to take "friend" in a harsh or sophistical sense, meaning that fixed and steadfast kind, but in the common sense, meaning simply the well-disposed man — just as Dicaearchus thought one ought to make everyone well-disposed toward oneself, but to make friends only of the good. For friendship is won only over a long time and through virtue, whereas goodwill is brought on even by need, and social intercourse, and playful company among men of public life, once it has taken the occasion offered by kindly persuasion and the accompaniment of favor.
But observe the point of this piece of advice, whether it holds good not only with respect to the marketplace but also with respect to the symposium — so that one ought not to break up the gathering before acquiring, from among those who have reclined and been present together, someone well-disposed and friendly to oneself. For men go into the marketplace for the sake of business and other needs, but into a symposium those who have any sense at all come in order to acquire friends, gladdening those who are already friends no less than making new ones. For this reason it would be illiberal and vulgar to seek some other kind of profit from such company, but to come away having gained more in friends is both a pleasant thing and a dignified one. And conversely, the man who neglects this makes the gathering graceless and incomplete for himself, and departs from it having become a fellow-diner to the belly, not to the soul; for a true dinner-companion comes to share not only in meat and wine and dessert, but also in conversation, and in playfulness, and in the kind of friendliness that ends in goodwill.
For the graspings and pullings of wrestlers require a coating of dust, but for the grip of friendship wine, mingling with conversation, supplies the touch; for it is conversation that channels wine's kindly and character-forming quality from the body into the soul and helps it along — otherwise, wandering about within the body, wine provides nothing more serious than mere repletion. Hence, just as marble, by cooling
the added strength shrinks it and drives out its excessive moisture and fluidity, it makes the metal that is being hammered and shaped firm; so too the talk of the dinner table does not allow the drinkers to be utterly dissolved by wine, but checks them, and blends into their relaxation a cheerfulness and kindliness that is well-tempered and pleasing, if a man handles it skillfully—as if the softness and pliancy that wine produces were being stamped, like wax, with the seal of friendship.
The first question, then, of our fourth set of ten table questions concerns varied food. It was the month of Elaphebolion, and as we were arriving at Hyampolis for the festival, Philo the physician entertained us, having prepared, it seemed, on a rather lavish scale. Seeing that among the boys who were with Philinus, his son was content with plain bread and needed nothing else, he said, "By Heracles, this is what the saying means: 'they fought amid stones, and there was not a stone to pick up.'" And he jumped up to fetch something useful for them, and after a good while came back bringing them some dried figs and cheese. When I remarked that this is what happens to people who busy themselves preparing extravagant and costly things—they neglect and run short of the necessities—Philo said, "Yes, for I had forgotten that Philinus here is raising a little Sosastros for us, who they say lived his whole life on nothing but milk, tasting no other drink or food. But whereas in his case that regimen probably began as a matter of chance, our boy here, being raised by this Chiron in a manner just the opposite of Achilles—fed from birth on bloodless and lifeless food—will before long, I suppose, be shown living on air and dew, like the cicadas, as they say."
"We, for our part," said Philinus, "had no idea we were coming to dine at a Feast of the Hundred Victims, as in the days of Aristomenes; otherwise we would have come armed, like antidotes, with simple and wholesome dishes against tables so extravagant and inflamed—and this after having so often heard you say that of varied foods the simple ones are more digestible and easier to obtain." And Marcion said to Philo, "Philinus is ruining your preparations, turning the guests away and frightening them off; but if you ask me, I will guarantee to them on your behalf that varied food is more digestible than simple food, so that they may enjoy what is set before them with confidence." So Philo asked Marcion to do just that. And when we had finished dining and called on Philinus to take up his charge against varied food, he said, "The tale is not mine, but this Philo here is always telling us that, in the first place, wild animals that use a single, simple kind of food are healthier than men; whereas those that are fattened up in captivity are prone to disease and easily fall prey to distempers, because they are given food that is mixed and seasoned in various ways.
"Secondly, no physician has ever been so rash an innovator, or so bold, as to give varied food to a man in fever; instead they give the simple, unseasoned kind, as being most obedient to digestion. For food must be acted upon and transformed after being mastered by the powers within us. And a dye, too, masters simple colors more readily, and the least fragrant oil is turned most quickly by perfumers' compounds, and it is the plain and uniform kind of food that is most easily transformed by digestion. But many and varied qualities, being mutually opposed and hard to reconcile, spoil more readily when they clash—just as in a city a mixed and motley crowd of people does not easily attain a single, harmonious condition, but each element resists what is foreign to it and is ill-disposed toward what is alien to it.
"A clear proof of this concerns wine: wines called 'mixed-vintage' intoxicate fastest, and drunkenness resembles nothing so much as the indigestion of wine. That is why drinkers avoid blended wine, while those who do the blending try to conceal it, as though plotting mischief; for change and unevenness throw one off balance. This, I suppose, is also why musicians handle instruments of many strings with great caution, since their only fault is that they are mixed and varied." "For my part," I said, "I can add this: that conviction and assent are more likely to arise out of conflicting arguments than digestion is out of differing qualities. But if I seem to be joking, let me leave that aside and return to Philo's arguments. For we often hear him say that, since indigestion arises from varied qualities of food,
and since multiplicity of mixture is harmful, being productive of alien qualities, one ought to learn by experience what agrees with oneself and stick to that; and if nothing is naturally hard to digest, but it is quantity that causes the disturbance and corruption, then all the more, I think, must one avoid these varied and manifold dishes with which Philo's cook has just now been drugging us, like a rival craftsman, exciting our appetite by novelty and change so that it does not simply stop, but is led on to other things and oversteps, in the midst of variety, the moderate and sufficient measure—like the foster-child of Hypsipyle, who, reaching from one flower to another, delighting his infant soul, insatiable, strips the meadow bare over the widest possible space. Here too one must recall Socrates, who urged us to be on guard against those foods that persuade people to eat when they are not hungry,
meaning that one should be wary and fearful of nothing so much as varied and manifold foods. For this is what draws enjoyment further than need requires—in spectacles, in music, in sexual pleasures, in every kind of game and pastime—being taken up by excess, which has many starting points; whereas in simple, single-natured pleasures the enticement does not lead nature beyond its bounds. In general it seems to me that one would more readily tolerate a musician praising a many-stringed instrument, or a trainer praising an abundance of perfumed oils, than a physician praising a multitude of dishes; for deviations and changes lead one off the straight road to health." When Philinus had said this, Marcion said that it seemed to him that not only those who separate the profitable from the noble, but also those who set pleasure apart from health, as though it opposed and warred against it rather than cooperating with it, fell under Socrates' curse. "For it is only rarely, and unwillingly, as with the most violent of instruments," he said, "that we resort to pain;
whereas no one, even if he wished, could ever thrust pleasure away from any of the rest: rather, in foods and sleep, in baths and anointings and reclining, it is always present, welcoming and nursing the sick person along, with much that is proper and in accord with nature, outshining what is foreign to it. For what pain, what deprivation, what poison ever so easily and simply resolved a disease as a bath taken at the right time, or wine given to those who need it? And food taken with pleasure at once resolves all discomforts and restores nature to its proper state, as if fair weather and calm had come. Whereas remedies achieved through painful means accomplish their work slowly and bit by bit, forcing and prying nature loose only with difficulty. Philinus, then, should not slander us if we do not, hoisting both sails, as it were, flee pleasure altogether, but rather try to combine the pleasant and the healthful more skillfully than some philosophers combine the pleasant and the noble.
Now right from the start, Philinus, in your first argument, you seem to me to have gone astray in supposing that wild animals use simpler food than men do, and are healthier for it. Neither claim is true. As to the first, Eupolis's goats testify against you, singing of their diet as thoroughly mixed and varied, in words something like these: 'We graze on wood of every kind, cropping the tender shoots of fir, of holm-oak, of arbutus, and besides these still others—cytisus and fragrant sage, and
smilax with its ivy-like leaves, wild olive, mastic, ash, poplar, oak of the aria kind, common oak, ivy, heath, buckthorn, mullein, asphodel, rockrose, valonia oak, thyme, and savory.' For the plants listed have, of course, countless differences of flavor, smell, and property—and more still have been left unmentioned. As to the second claim, Homer more knowledgeably refutes it, declaring that plague first attacks the irrational animals. The brevity of their lives, too, and their liability to disease, testify against them; for practically nothing among them lives long, unless one should say the raven and the crow, which we observe to eat anything and everything indiscriminately. And moreover, in the diet you prescribe for the sick you were not doing well when you judged foods easy or hard to digest by that standard; for exercise, training, and dividing up one's food are things that aid digestion, yet do not suit those who are feverish.
And your fear of the conflict and difference among varied foods was unreasonable. For either nature draws what is proper to itself from like things directly into the body's mass—in which case varied food, releasing many qualities from itself, supplies each part with what suits it, so that Empedocles' words come true: 'sweet seized on sweet, and bitter rushed upon bitter, sharp upon sharp, and the fiery took hold of the fiery'—and other matter besides remains suited to the warmth, once the mixture has been dispersed in the breath, so that what is proper follows what is akin to it; for a body so thoroughly mixed and composite as ours has more reason to be replenished and to fill out its constitution from varied matter
than from simple. Or else, if this is not the case, but what we call digestion is naturally able to alter and transform food, then this will happen faster and better with varied food; for like is unaffected by like, while opposition and difference cause the qualities to be more thoroughly transformed and worn away through their mixture with their opposite. And if you reject mixture and variety altogether, Philinus, do not scold Philo here only when he is giving a dinner or having food prepared, but far more when he blends together those royal and remedial compounds—which Erasistratus called 'the hands of the gods'—denounce the strangeness and elaborateness of mixing together, all at once, minerals, herbs, animal substances, and things from land and sea alike; for it would be far better to leave all that aside and confine medicine to barley gruel, cupping, and water-and-oil.
'But, by Zeus,' you will say, 'variety draws out and bewitches an appetite that cannot master itself.' Yes, but so, my good sir, does cleanliness, and a good digestion, and a pleasant smell, and in general whatever is more agreeable: these too attract us and make us more inclined to eat and drink. Why then do we not knead coarse meal instead of fine, prepare wild onions and thistles instead of asparagus, and, rejecting this fragrant wine, drink instead the harsher stuff straight from the vat, serenaded by a chorus of gnats? Because you would say that a healthy regimen is not a flight from pleasure or an avoidance of it, but rather moderation and order among pleasures, keeping the appetite obedient to what is beneficial. Just as helmsmen, when the wind is fierce, use many devices to escape it, but once it has died down and faded, no one
is able to fan it back up and stir it into life again—so too, to restrain and check an appetite when it is excessive is no great task, but once it has already grown weak before its time, and has become soft and is abandoning what is proper to it, to stretch it taut again and rekindle it is very difficult indeed, my friend, and hard work. That is why varied food is better than simple food, which brings on satiety through its uniformity, inasmuch as it is easier to check a nature that is still in motion than to rouse one that has given up. And indeed, what some people say—that satiety is more to be avoided than deficiency—is not true; rather the opposite is the case: satiety, when it ends in some kind of corruption or disease, does harm; but deficiency, even if it produces no other evil, is in itself, of itself, contrary to nature. Let this stand, then, as a counterpoint to your philosophizing.
But there is something else that seems to have escaped the notice of you 'salt-and-bean' philosophers: that varied food is more pleasant, and what is more pleasant makes for a better appetite—provided you remove the excess and overindulgence; for it attaches itself readily to a body that is eager and receptive, sight having prepared the way beforehand, whereas food that has no appeal, wandering about and roaming, is either altogether rejected by nature or accepted only reluctantly, under pressure of need. Only remember and hold on to this one point: that variety does not consist in spicy relishes, and honeyed dishes, and rich sauces—these are elaborate and trifling things—but Plato too provides variety for those fine, noble citizens of his, setting before them bulbs, olives, vegetables, cheese, and boiled dishes of every kind; and besides these he does not begrudge them a share of dessert either, while they dine."
Agemachus once set before us at dinner in Elis some enormous truffles. As those present marveled, someone said with a smile, "Worthy indeed of the thunderclaps that occurred recently"—mocking, as it were, those who say that truffles come into being from thunder. For there were those who claimed that the earth is split open by thunder, as though struck by a nail through the air, and that afterward those who go hunting for truffles use the cracks as a sign; and from this the common belief arose that thunder actually generates the truffle, though they cannot show it doing so—just as if someone supposed that rain makes snails, rather than merely bringing them forth and revealing them. But Agemachus stood firm on the report and insisted that what is marvelous should not be considered incredible. And indeed, he said, there are many other marvelous effects of thunder and lightning and the celestial signs connected with them, whose causes are hard to grasp or altogether beyond our power.
"For indeed this truffle, laughed at and made proverbial," he said, "escapes the thunderbolt not by its smallness, but because it possesses an antipathetic power, just as the fig tree does, and the skin of the seal, as they say, and that of the hyena, with which ship captains cover the tips of their sails. And farmers call the rains that come with lightning fertilizing, and believe them to be so. And in general it is foolish to marvel at these things while overlooking the most incredible of all the phenomena we observe in them—flames arising out of moisture, and harsh sounds being given off by soft clouds. But I am rambling on about this," he said, "only to spur you on to inquire into the cause, so that I may not seem harsh in exacting payment for the truffles." I then said that in a sense I was
extending a hand in agreement to Agemachus's argument; for nothing seemed more plausible, at least for the present, than that water charged with generative power often bursts out together with thunder. The cause is the mingling of heat: the sharp and pure part of the fire departs as lightning, while the heavy and vaporous part, wrapped up within the cloud and changing along with it, draws off the cold and works together to produce the
"and so the moist element, being intimately combined with them, is preserved: the result being that the gentle warmth most readily penetrates growing things and quickly makes them swell. Since such influences also produce a particular quality of mixture and a difference of flavor in the things they water—just as dews make the grass sweeter for the flocks, and the clouds that bloom into the rainbow, wherever they rest upon timber, fill it with fragrance (and it is by this token that the people among us call certain kinds of wood 'rainbow-struck,' supposing that the rainbow settles upon them)—it is far more likely that waters and winds and heat driven down into the depths by lightning and thunderbolt turn the earth and produce such convolutions and cavities as these, just as in bodies certain heats and blood-laden humors produce scrofulous and glandular swellings. For the truffle does not resemble a plant, nor does it come into being without water, but is rootless and without sprout and self-contained, its substance being formed out of earth that has undergone some affection and change."
"But if this account seems to you far-fetched," I said, "such, after all, are most of the phenomena that accompany thunder and lightning; and it is for this very reason that these occurrences carry with them a reputation for divinity." And Dorotheus the rhetorician, who was present, said, "You are right; for not only ordinary people and laymen have experienced this, but some philosophers as well. I myself know of a case: a thunderbolt fell upon a house among us and did many astonishing things. It scattered the wine out of the jars without the earthenware itself being damaged at all, and flying past a man who was asleep it did him no harm and did not even touch his clothing, yet it melted the bronze coins in a purse he had girt about him, fusing all the money together. A Pythagorean philosopher who happened to be staying in the town came up and made inquiries about it, but the man declined to discuss it and told him to attend to his own affairs and pray to the gods.
I also hear that a soldier guarding a temple in Rome had a thunderbolt fall near him that burned through the straps of his sandals but did him no other harm; and that of some silver cups set in wooden cases, the silver melted and sank together while the wood was found untouched and unaffected. These things one may believe or not; but the most astonishing thing of all, which practically everyone knows, is that the bodies of those killed by a thunderbolt remain free from decay. Many people, in fact, neither burn nor bury such bodies, but leave them fenced about, so that the corpses are always seen to be undecayed—contrary to the words of Euripides' Clymene concerning Phaethon, that 'my dear one, unwashed, rots in the ravines as a corpse.' From this, I think, sulfur (theion) also got its name, from its likeness to the smell that things struck by lightning give off when scorched—a fiery, pungent smell, on account of which, it seems to me, both dogs and birds keep away from bodies struck by Zeus's bolt. As for me, let my account of the cause go this far, as if I had merely grazed at the laurel; as for the rest,"
he said, "let us call upon this man here, since he has had good luck with the truffles too, so that we do not suffer the fate of Androcydes. For that painter, though of all his works the most vivid and beautiful were the fish he painted around Scylla, was thought to have been guided by his own passion rather than by his art—for he was by nature a lover of fish. So someone will say of us too, that out of sheer pleasure we have philosophized about truffles, whose origin is disputable, as you see, while in this present case the plausibility of the theory is assumed, and the fact that the cause is self-evident lends it persuasiveness." When I urged him on, saying that it was a fitting occasion—just as in comedy, when the stage machinery is raised and thunder is thrown in—to converse over wine about thunderbolts, the others let the rest pass, agreeing with what had been said, but they were eager to hear something about why people who are asleep are not struck by lightning.
For my part I gained nothing further by taking hold of the cause, since it was of common application; nevertheless I said that the fire of the thunderbolt is remarkable for its fineness and subtlety, having in its very origin a pure and unmixed substance, and that it shakes off and purges away anything moist or earthy that gets mingled with it, on account of the sharpness of its motion. "'Nothing,' as Democritus says, 'struck by lightning from a clear sky can hold back its gleam.' Now the dense bodies—iron, bronze, silver, gold—resist it, and are damaged and melted, being affected by their very resistance and opposition to it; whereas it runs through porous, loose-textured, and yielding bodies without touching them, as it does through garments and dry wood; but green wood it burns, because the moisture in it catches and takes hold of the fire and is kindled along with it. If, then, it is true that people who are asleep do not die from thunderbolts, it is here, and nowhere else, that we must look for the cause. For the bodies of those who are awake are more firmly braced, compacted, and resistant, being filled in all their parts with pneuma (vital breath); and it is this pneuma, by turning the senses toward itself as though tuning an instrument and drawing them taut, that makes the living creature well-strung, continuous with itself, and dense.
But in sleep the body is relaxed, and becomes loose, uneven, slack, and diffused, and acquires many passages, since the pneuma yields and withdraws, through which sounds and smells pass freely without producing any perception of themselves. For that which resists, and which is affected precisely by resisting, does not meet what is brought against it—least of all things moving with such fineness and speed as the thunderbolt as it flies through. For nature wards off the weaker blows by means of hardness and density set up as a defense; but where the force is irresistible, the things that yield are less harmed by it than the things that stand against it." "Add to this," I said, "no small element of shock and fear and terror in the face of such events, from which many, though suffering nothing else, have died from the very fright of dying. Indeed shepherds teach their flocks, when thunder occurs, to run together and huddle close, since those left scattered by fear miscarry. And one may see countless people already dead from thunder who bear no trace either of a blow or of burning, but whose souls, it seems, have flown out of their bodies like birds through sheer fear. For as Euripides says, 'the bloodless blast of thunder has destroyed many.' And indeed, quite apart from this, hearing is the most affect-prone of the senses, and the greatest disturbances are produced by frights and shocks caused through sound—against which the sleeper's insensibility is a defense. Those who are awake, on the other hand, are worn down also by the prior distress, and since fear truly binds, contracts, and condenses the body, they make the blow, by their very resistance to it, a powerful one."
At the wedding of my son Autobulus, Sossius Senecion, who had come from Chaeronea, was present and shared the celebration with us; and among the many other topics that suited the occasion, he raised for discussion the reason why most people invite so many guests to wedding banquets besides the rest—for the lawgivers who fought most vigorously against extravagance were especially careful to set limits on the number of those invited to weddings. "For the man who," he said, "among the ancient philosophers, said something about this very cause that seemed to me, at least as judge, more plausible than anything else—Hecataeus of Abdera—says that those taking wives invite many guests to the feast so that many people will know and can testify that both parties are free-born and marrying free-born partners. For, on the contrary, the comic poets mock those who marry with lavish and ostentatious splendor of dinners and preparation, as not entering the union securely or confidently—as Menander says to the man who urged him to fence in a face with stew-pots: 'terribly, that is no matter befitting a bride.' "But so that we may not seem, taking the easiest course, to be finding fault with others while saying nothing ourselves, I declare first," he said, "that no occasion for a feast is so conspicuous and widely known as that of
a wedding: for people can conceal from many of their friends the fact that they are sacrificing to the gods, or seeing off a friend, or entertaining a guest; but the wedding table has as its accuser the wedding-hymn shouting loudly, and the torch, and the flute—things Homer mentions—and the women standing at the doors to marvel and look on. Since, therefore, no one is unaware of the reception and the invitation, people are ashamed to leave out any of their close friends and relations and those connected to them in any way, and so they invite them all." When we had accepted this, Theon took it up and said, "Let this too stand, for it is not implausible; and add this as well, if you like—that such feasts are occasions not only for friends but for kinsfolk, since another kind of intimacy becomes mingled into the family. And what is more important than this: when the households of two families come together into one, the party receiving takes on the relations and friends of the party giving, and the party giving takes on those of the party receiving, and each, thinking it their duty to show goodwill, doubles the scope of the reception. Moreover, many, or most, of the wedding rites are carried out through the agency of women; and where women are present, it is necessary that the men be brought along as well."
At Aedepsus in Euboea, where the Hot Springs form a naturally beautiful place well furnished for liberal pleasures with lodgings and living quarters, a common resort of Greece has been established: and though many creatures both winged and land-dwelling are caught there, the sea provides no less a well-stocked market, nourishing noble and abundant fish in its clear and steeply shelving waters. The place flourishes most when spring is at its height; for many people arrive there at that season and spend time together in every abundance, and pass most of their leisure in conversation. When Callistratus the sophist was present, it was hard work to dine anywhere else; for his good fellowship was irresistible, and the pleasure of gathering all the agreeable people together in one place was one he provided very often. For he often imitated Cimon of old, entertaining many guests of every sort gladly; but he most often, one might say, imitated Celeus, who is said to have been the first to establish a daily gathering of men of good repute and virtue, and to have called it a prytaneum.
Conversations fitting for such company naturally arose on each occasion; and once the tables, having become extremely varied, gave rise to an inquiry about relishes—whether the produce of the land or that of the sea is more suitable—and while almost all the others were praising the produce of the land, numerous and varied and hard to enumerate by kind and by difference, Polycrates, addressing Symmachus, said, "But you, being a creature of both shores and reared amid so many seas as surround your sacred Nicopolis, do you not take Poseidon's side?" "I certainly wish to, by Zeus," said Symmachus, "and I enlist you too, and call upon you, since you enjoy the sweetest things of the Achaean sea." "Well then," said Polycrates, "let us first go over to our usual practice. For just as, though there are many poets, we call one alone, preeminently, 'the poet'—the best of them—so too, though there are many relishes, fish alone, or most of all, has come to be called 'opson' (the relish), because it surpasses all others by far in excellence.
For indeed we call people 'fish-eaters' and 'fish-lovers,' not those who delight in beef, as Heracles did, who 'ate green figs along with his meat,' nor the fig-lover such as Plato was, nor the grape-lover such as Arcesilaus was, but those who show up regularly at the fish market and are quick to hear the bell. And Demosthenes says of Philocrates that with his traitor's gold he 'bought harlots and fish,' reproaching the man for gluttony and self-indulgence. And Ctesiphon, not badly, when some glutton in the council chamber was shouting that he would burst, said, 'By no means, fellow, make us fish-eaters.' And the man who wrote the little verse, 'Living on capers when you could live on sea-bass'—what does he mean by it? And what do most people mean, in heaven's name, when, urging one another to have a pleasant time, they say, 'Let us dine on the shore today'—do they not thereby declare that a dinner on the shore is the most delightful thing, as indeed it is? Is it on account of the waves and the pebbles that anyone, dining on the shore, seasons his meal
with a flask of oil and capers? Rather it is because the table by the sea is well supplied with abundant, fresh fish. And indeed the produce of the sea is sold, contrary to all reason, at the highest price of all: at any rate Cato, not exaggerating but speaking the plain truth in a public speech against the luxury and extravagance of the city, said that fish sold for more in Rome than cattle did. For they sell a small jar of it for a price for which not even a prow-horned hecatomb of oxen, once slaughtered, could be bought. And yet the best judge of the power of drugs is the most medically skilled person, and of the excellence of songs the greatest music-lover—and so too of the excellence of relishes, the greatest fish-lover. For it is not Pythagoras, surely, nor Xenocrates, that one should consult as arbiter in these matters, but Antagoras the poet, and Philoxenus the son of Eryxis, and the painter Androcydes, who they say, in painting Scylla, rendered the fish around her with the greatest passion and vividness because of his own love of eating fish.
As for Antagoras, King Antigonus, standing beside him in the camp as he was boiling a pot of conger-eels with his cloak girt up, said, "Do you really suppose that Homer, when he was writing down the deeds of Agamemnon, was boiling conger-eels?" And Antagoras answered him not badly, "And do you suppose that Agamemnon performed those deeds of his by prying into who in the camp was boiling a conger-eel?" "These things," said Polycrates, "I offer as my contribution, both to you and, by Zeus, to the fishmongers as well, drawn from witnesses and from common usage." "But I," said Symmachus, "will approach the matter seriously and in a more dialectical fashion. For if a relish is that which sweetens one's food, then the best relish would be that which is most able to sustain one's appetite for bread. Just as the philosophers called the Hopeful School declare that hoping is the most sustaining thing in life, since, hope being absent, life is not endurable even when nothing else is lacking to sweeten it—so too we must reckon as sustaining that appetite for food without which all nourishment becomes graceless and hard to take.
Now among the products of the land you will find nothing of this sort, but among those of the sea, salt comes first, without which practically nothing is edible; indeed even bread itself is made sweeter by having salt mixed into it—which is why Poseidon shares a temple with Demeter, and why, among other relishes, salt is the sweetest relish of all. The heroes, at any rate, being accustomed to a plain and simple diet, like ascetics in their way of life, and having stripped away from their food every added and superfluous pleasure—so much so that they made no use even of fish while encamped by the Hellespont—still could not bear to eat their meat without salt, testifying that this alone among relishes is indispensable. For just as colors need light, so flavors need the savor of salt in order to stir the sense of taste; otherwise they strike the palate as heavy and nauseating. 'For corpses,' as Heraclitus says, 'are more fit to be thrown out than dung'; and all flesh is a kind of corpse, and of a corpse's
...part. The power of salt, coming upon it like a soul entering in, adds to it both charm and pleasure. That is why people take first, before the rest of their food, the pungent and salty items — in general, whatever has partaken most of salt — for these become love-charms to whet the appetite for the other dishes, and the appetite, once lured on by them, approaches the rest fresh and eager; but if it begins from those other dishes instead, it quickly gives out.
So salt is a relish not only for food but also for drink. That Homeric line, “on onion, a relish for one's drink,” suited sailors and oarsmen better than kings; but foods lightly salted, for the sake of good flavor, make every kind of wine sweet and smooth to the taste, and every draught of water agreeable and invigorating; whereas the unpleasantness and harshness the onion produces has no share in this at all — rather it disperses the rest of one's food and hands it over compliant and softer for digestion, adding the graciousness of a relish together with the potency of a medicine, once salt has been applied to the body. Moreover, the other delicacies of the sea, besides being most pleasant, are also the least harmful: for
though they are meat, they do not weigh one down in the same way, but are digested and dispersed easily. Our friend Zeno here will bear witness to this, and Craton too, by Zeus, who bring the sick, before all other foods, to fish, as the lightest of relishes. And it stands to reason that the sea should rear bodies healthy and well-conditioned, if indeed it also gives off to us an air that is fine and pure in its lightness and clarity.” “Well said,” replied Lamprias, “but let us philosophize on the subject a little further. My grandfather used to say, mocking the Jews each time, that the most righteous meat is the one they do not eat; but we shall say that the most righteous relish is the one that comes from the sea. As for these land creatures, even if nothing else were just about them, still they are nourished on the same food as we are and take the same air,
and have baths and drink such as we have; and when we slaughter them we feel a certain shame, since they let out a plaintive cry, and most of them have been made familiar to us and reared alongside us in our way of life. But the race of sea creatures is entirely alien and foreign to us, as though born and living in some other world; neither their look nor their voice nor any service they might render pleads against our eating them, for
there is nothing one could make use of in them while they are alive, since in our world they do not live in any sense we recognize at all; nor is any affection for them called for, but this place we inhabit is a kind of Hades to them — for the moment they come into it, they are dead at once.” When this had been said, and some wished to argue the opposite case, Callistratus, heading off that other argument, said, “What do you all think of what was said about the Jews, that they do not eat the most righteous meat?” “Amazing,” said Polycrates, “and I am further puzzled whether the men abstain from eating the pig out of some honor for the animal, or out of loathing for it. For what is said among them resembles myths, unless perhaps they have some serious reasons that they simply do not divulge.” “Well then,” said Callistratus, “I think the animal is held in some honor among the men:
even if the pig is misshapen and coarse, it is no stranger in appearance, nor more graceless in nature, than the dung-beetle, the vulture, the crocodile, and the cat, which the priests of the Egyptians, some one animal and some another, treat as most sacred. They say the pig is honored for a worthy reason: it was the first, they claim, to break open the earth with the projecting part of its snout and so give an impression of plowing, suggesting the work the plowshare would later do; whence, they say, the tool itself got its name from the pig.
The Egyptians who farm the soft, low-lying parts of the country have no need of a plow at all: rather, when the Nile recedes after soaking the fields, they follow behind and drive the pigs onto them, and these, by trampling and rooting about, quickly
turn the earth over from below and bury the seed. One should not be surprised, then, if for this reason some people do not eat pigs, when other animals receive still greater honors among the barbarians for even flimsier reasons — some indeed quite ridiculous. For instance, they say the shrew-mouse was deified by the Egyptians because it is blind, on the theory that darkness is older than light; and it is said to be born
from mice in the fifth generation, at the new moon; and further, that its liver shrinks during the moon's disappearances. They associate the lion with the sun, because alone among clawed quadrupeds it is born with its eyes open, and it sleeps only the briefest span of time, its eyes gleaming even as it sleeps; and fountains shaped like gaping lions' mouths send forth their jets, because the Nile brings fresh water to the fields of Egypt
when the sun is passing through Leo. They say the ibis, as soon as it is hatched, weighs two drachmas, the very weight of a newborn child's heart; and by the spread of its feet in relation to each other and to its beak it forms an equilateral triangle. And why should one blame the Egyptians for such excess of unreason, when it is recorded that even the Pythagoreans revere the white cock, and among sea creatures abstain especially from the red mullet
and the sea anemone, while the Magi, followers of Zoroaster, honor above all others the land hedgehog, but hate water-rats, and consider whoever kills the most of them beloved of god and blessed? I think the Jews too, if they truly abhorred the pig, would kill it, just as the Magi kill the rats: but as things stand, killing it is forbidden to them just as much as eating it.
And perhaps there is some reason in it: just as they honor the donkey because it revealed a spring of water to them, so too perhaps they revere the pig because it became their teacher in sowing and plowing — unless, by Zeus, one will also say that the men abstain from the hare because they loathe the animal as foul and unclean.” “Not so,” said Lamprias, taking up the point, “rather, they spare the hare out of
their fondness for the creature it most closely resembles [the text here is uncertain]. For the hare, in size and bulk, seems to be a somewhat diminished donkey: its color, its ears, the sleekness of its eyes, and its skittishness are wonderfully alike, so that nothing so small has ever resembled something so large. Unless, by Zeus, in keeping with
these resemblances, those who Egyptianize also hold the swiftness of the creature to be something divine, along with the precision of its senses: for its eye never tires, so that it even sleeps with its eyes open; and it seems to excel in keenness of hearing, which the Egyptians so admired that in their sacred writing they represent 'hearing' by drawing a hare's ear. The men seem to treat pork as taboo because barbarians especially
loathe scaly skin conditions and leprosy, and believe that such afflictions creep over people through contact with things of this kind. And indeed we observe that every pig, under the belly, is covered with scaly eruptions and scabby outbreaks, which do seem to spread over their bodies once some corruption and decay has taken hold in the flesh. Moreover, the very murkiness of the creature's way of life carries a certain baseness in it:
for we see nothing else so fond of mud and of filthy, unclean places — setting aside those creatures whose very birth and nature are rooted in such things. They also say the eyes of pigs are so bent and drawn down within their sockets that they never lay hold of anything above them, nor ever look up at the sky, unless, while being carried on their backs, their pupils undergo some unnatural
reversal. That is why the animal, though otherwise most given to squealing, falls silent whenever it is carried in this way, and is struck dumb, awestruck by the unfamiliar and overpowering sight of the heavens, held back from crying out by fear. And if we are to bring in the mythical material as well, it is said that Adonis was killed by a boar; and they hold that Adonis is none other than Dionysus, and much of what is performed
at the festivals of each confirms this account. Some say he was Dionysus's beloved boy; and Phanocles, a poet of love, writes something to this effect, aware of his divinity: ‘Adonis, roaming the mountains, Dionysus seized, and carried off, journeying to holy Cyprus.’” Symmachus, taken aback at what had been added, said, “Do you, then, Lamprias, enroll your ancestral god — ‘the reveler, rouser of women, blooming amid the frenzied honors’ of Dionysus — and smuggle him in among
the secret rites of the Hebrews? Or is there really some account that shows this god to be the very same as that one?” Moiragenes broke in and said, “Leave him be — for I, being an Athenian, will answer you myself and say that he is none other. Most of the evidence for this can only be spoken and taught to those among us who have been initiated into the full triennial rite; but what
can be recounted in ordinary speech is not forbidden among friends, especially over wine, when the subject is the gifts of the god — and if these gentlemen ask it of me, I am ready to tell it.” When all urged and pressed him, he said, “First, the timing and manner of their greatest and most complete festival befits Dionysus. For, keeping what is called the Fast, at the height of the vintage, they set out tables
heaped with every kind of fruit, under tents and huts woven mostly from vine-branches and ivy; and they call the earlier part of the festival 'Tabernacles.' A few days later they celebrate another festival, called not through riddles but outright the festival 'of Bacchus.' There is also among them a kind of festival of Branch-carrying and Thyrsus-carrying, in which they enter the temple bearing thyrsi. What they do once they have entered,
we do not know; but it is likely that what takes place is a Bacchic revel: for indeed they use small trumpets to call upon the god, just as the Argives do at their festival of Dionysus; and others go before them playing the lyre, whom they themselves call Levites — whether the title comes from Lysius or, more likely, from Euius, one of the god's names. I think, too, that the festival of the Sabbath is not entirely unconnected with Dionysus.
For even now many call the Bacchants 'Sabi,' and utter this very cry when they hold their revels for the god; and confirmation of this one can get, I suppose, both from Demosthenes and from Menander. And it would not be unreasonable for someone to say the name was formed from a certain frenzied agitation that possesses those caught up in Bacchic ecstasy. They themselves bear witness to this account by their own practice, when they honor the Sabbath,
inviting one another above all to drink and take wine; and when something more pressing prevents it, they consider it proper at least to taste unmixed wine. These things one might say are plausible enough; but the strongest evidence against those who oppose this view comes, first of all, from the high priest, who leads the way at their festivals wearing a miter and clad in a fawnskin sewn with gold, wearing besides a robe reaching to his feet and buskins; and many small bells hang down
from his garment, jingling as he walks, just as they do among us; and they use such sounds at their nighttime rites, and call the nurses of the god 'bronze-clashers.' And the thyrsus carved into the pediment opposite the temple bears this out, along with the drums — for these belong to no other god than Dionysus. Furthermore, they do not offer honey in their sacred rites, because they believe it spoils the wine when mixed with it, and honey itself was once, before the vine appeared, both the libation-offering and the intoxicant.
And even now, those barbarians who do not make wine drink a honey-wine instead, tempering its sweetness with wine-like, astringent roots; and the Greeks likewise pour these same sober, honey-mixed libations, on the ground that honey's nature stands most opposed to that of wine. And that they hold this same belief is confirmed by no small sign: that among the many punishments in use among them, one in particular is held in special disgrace —
namely, the one that bars those being punished from wine, for as long a time as the one in charge of the punishment prescribes; and those thus punished…” Here the rest of the fourth book is lost. Concerning the pleasures of the soul and of the body, Sossius Senecio, I for my part cannot tell what opinion you now hold,
since “many shadowy mountains and the sounding sea” lie between us; yet long ago you seemed not entirely to agree with, nor to approve of, those who hold that the soul has nothing of its own that is pleasant or delightful or in any way desirable, but simply lives alongside the body, sharing in its smiles and again its frowns at whatever the body experiences — as though it were a mold or a mirror, receiving the images and reflections
of the sensations that arise in the flesh. For this unlovely doctrine is caught out as false on many grounds, and not least by the fact that at drinking parties the witty and cultivated men, as soon as dinner is over, turn at once to conversation, as though to a second table, and delight one another through discourse — pleasures in which the body shares nothing, or scarcely anything at all — thereby bearing witness that the soul has some private storehouse of enjoyments laid up for itself,
and that these alone are pleasures belonging to the soul, while those others are foreign to it, merely tinging it through its contact with the body. Just as nurses who spoon-feed infants share only a little in the pleasure of it, but once they have satisfied the children and lulled them to sleep, freed at last from their crying, then, on their own, they take suitable food and drink for themselves and enjoy it — so too the soul shares in the pleasures of drinking and eating,
serving the body's appetites the way a nurse does, indulging its needs and soothing its desires; but whenever the body is content and at rest, freed from its business and its servitude, the soul thereafter turns to pleasures of its own, feasting on discourse and learning and stories, and on the search to hear something out of the ordinary. And what need is there to say more on this, seeing that
even coarse men with no love of letters, after dinner, turn their thoughts to pleasures quite removed from those of the body, proposing riddles and puzzles and word-games hidden in numbers? For this same reason mimes and character-actors and Menander and his imitators have found a place at symposia, since these remove no pain from the body, nor produce any smooth and pleasant sensation in the flesh, but rather because
the love of spectacle and of ideas that is natural to each person's soul seeks out its own particular delight and enjoyment, once we are freed from attending to and caring for the body. On these very matters conversation once took place, with you present, in Athens, at the time when Straton the comic actor had his great success — for there was much talk of him then — when we were dining as guests of Boethus the Epicurean, and dining together with us was…
...not a few of that school. Then the mention of comedy turned the discussion, as though among lovers of learning, to an inquiry into the cause: why is it that when we hear people's voices as they rage, or grieve, or fear, we are distressed and made uneasy, while those who act out these same passions and imitate their voices and dispositions give us delight? Now of all those present there was almost one opinion: they said that since the one who imitates is superior to the one who genuinely suffers, and differs from him precisely in not having suffered, we take pleasure and rejoice in perceiving this. But I, though setting foot, so to speak, in another man's chorus, said that since we are by nature rational and lovers of art, we are favorably disposed toward whatever is done rationally and skillfully, and we admire it whenever it succeeds. For just as the bee, being a lover of sweetness, attends to and pursues every substance in which anything honey-like is mixed, so man, being by nature a lover of art and of beauty, is disposed to welcome and embrace every product and object that partakes of mind and reason.
If, at any rate, one were to set before a small child, side by side, a small loaf of bread and, alongside it, a little dog or ox molded from the same flour, you would see him drawn toward the latter. Likewise, if one man were to offer plain silver coin, and another were to hold out and give a little silver figurine or a cup, the child would rather take the object in which he perceives craft and reason mingled in. This is why children of that age take more delight in riddling speech and in games that involve some intricacy and difficulty, for by nature, untaught, the mind is drawn toward what is subtle and cunning as toward its own kin. Since, then, the person truly angry or truly grieving is seen amid certain common passions and movements shared by all, whereas in mimicry a certain cleverness and persuasiveness is displayed, provided the imitation succeeds, we are by nature disposed to delight in the latter and to be pained by the former.
And indeed we experience the same thing in the case of spectacles: we look with distress upon people actually dying or painfully ill, but we gaze with pleasure upon the painted Philoctetes and the sculpted Jocasta — into whose face, they say, the craftsman mixed some silver, so that as the figure of the human being failed and wasted away, the bronze might take on a pallor — we take delight and admire it. "This too," I said, "gentlemen Epicureans, is strong evidence for the Cyrenaics against you, that the pleasure we take in things heard and seen resides not in the sight or in the hearing but in the mind. For a hen crowing continuously, or a crow, is a distressing and unpleasant sound to hear, yet one who imitates a crowing hen or a crow delights us. And we are displeased to look upon consumptive men, yet we gladly gaze upon statues and paintings of the consumptive, because the mind is led by the imitations according to what is proper to itself.
For what did people undergo, or what external experience befell them, that made them so admire Parmenon's sow as to become proverbial? And yet they say that when Parmenon had won renown for his mimicry, others, in emulation, tried to compete against him in display; and since people, already prejudiced and set in their opinion, kept saying, "Good, but nothing compared to Parmenon's sow," one man, taking a little pig under his arm, came forward; and when they, hearing the true sound itself, still murmured, "Well, what is this compared to Parmenon's sow?" — he let the piglet loose into their midst, thereby exposing that their judgment was directed at reputation, not at truth. By this above all it is clear that the same affection of the senses does not dispose the soul in the same way, when there is not attached to it the opinion that the thing is being accomplished rationally or ambitiously."
At the Pythian games there arose discussion about the additional contests, to the effect that they ought to be abolished. For having admitted the tragic actor alongside the three established from the beginning — the Pythian flute-player, the lyre-player, and the singer to the lyre — as though a gate had been thrown open, they could not hold back the crowd of all sorts of performances that pressed and forced their way in together; through these the contest gained a variety not unpleasing, and a festive character, but it did not preserve its austerity and its musical purity, and it caused trouble for the judges and, as was likely, much ill-will from the many who were defeated. Not least did people think it necessary to remove the tribe of prose-writers and poets from the contest — not out of hatred of learning, but because, being by far the most well-known of all the competitors, people felt embarrassed before them and were troubled, considering them all men of talent, though not all could win.
We, then, in the assembly tried to soothe those who wished to alter the established order and who charged the contest, as though it were an instrument, with having too many strings and too many voices. And at dinner, while Petraeus the games-director was entertaining us, when similar talk arose again, we came to the defense of music: we declared that poetry was not a late or recent arrival at the sacred games, but had long since won crowns of victory there. To some I seemed likely to serve up stale fare by bringing up the burial rites of Oeolycus the Thessalian and of Amphidamas the Chalcidian, at which they say Homer and Hesiod contended in verse.
But I set that aside, since it has been thoroughly worn out by the grammarians, along with the readings recited at the funeral games of Patroclus by some as not "hemonas" but "rhemonas," as though Achilles had proposed prizes for speeches as well; letting that go, I said instead that when Acastus his son buried Pelias, he too provided a contest in poetry, and that the Sibyl won it. When many pressed me and demanded the authority for so incredible and improbable an account, I happily recalled and pointed out that Acesander records this in his work on Libya. "And this reading," I said, "is not one that is generally accessible; but as for the work of Polemon the Athenian on the treasuries at Delphi, I think many of you make a point of reading it, and rightly so, for he is a man of wide learning and never nodding off in matters of Greek history.
There, at any rate, you will find it written that in the treasury of Sicyon there was dedicated a golden book, an offering of Aristomache of Erythrae, who had twice won the Isthmian games with an epic poem. Nor, indeed," I said, "is it right to be so awestruck before the Olympic games, as though they were an unalterable and immovable fate among athletic contests. For the Pythian games have included three or four additional musical contests, whereas the athletic contest has for the most part remained fixed from the beginning as it was established; at the Olympic games everything is an addition except the footrace. Many events, too, having been introduced, were later abolished, such as the race of the mule-cart and of the wagon; the crown for boys in the pentathlon was likewise done away with; and in general many innovations have been made regarding the festival.
I am afraid to say that in ancient times a contest of single combat used to be held near Pisa, carried through to the death and slaughter of the defeated and those who fell — lest you demand of me again the authority for this account, and, should the name escape my memory over wine, I become a laughingstock." The question was raised about the pine, on what account it became the wreath at the Isthmian games; for the dinner was in Corinth, the Isthmian games being held, and Lucanius the high priest was entertaining us. Praxiteles the guide, then, brought up the mythical version, that the body of Melicertes was said to have been found washed ashore by the sea against a pine tree; for indeed, not far from Megara, there is a place called "the Fair Course," through which, the Megarians say, Ino ran to the sea carrying the child. It is commonly said by many that the pine is Poseidon's own crown; but Lucanius added
that since the plant is also consecrated to Dionysus, it is not without reason associated with the honors paid to Melicertes — and this very point raised the question by what reasoning the ancients consecrated the pine to both Poseidon and Dionysus. It seemed to us that there was nothing strange in this: both gods are held to be lords of the moist and generative principle; and nearly all the Greeks, one might say, sacrifice to Poseidon as "Nourisher of Plants" and to Dionysus as "Of the Trees."
Not but that one might say the pine belongs particularly to Poseidon — not, as Apollodorus thinks, because it is a coastal plant, nor because, like the sea, it loves the wind (for some say this too), but chiefly because of shipbuilding: for it, and its kindred trees, the fir and the stone-pine, supply the most seaworthy timber, along with pitch and resin for caulking, without which the fastened planks are of no use at sea. To Dionysus the pine was consecrated because it sweetens the wine: they say that pine-covered regions produce vines that bear sweet-wine grapes. Theophrastus attributes this to the heat of the soil: for the pine grows generally in clayey ground, and clay is warm, and so it helps to ripen the wine, just as clay also yields the lightest and most pleasant water. Furthermore, when mixed with grain it also increases the yield abundantly, ripening and swelling the wheat by its heat.
But it is also likely that the vine itself benefits from the pine, which has great suitability for the preservation and durability of wine: for with pitch everyone coats their vessels, and many mix in resin with their wine, as do the Euboeans among the Greeks and, among the Italians, those who dwell around the Po; and from the region of Vienna in Gaul the resinated wine is brought down, held in especially high esteem by the Romans, for such additions not only impart a certain fragrance but also make the wine drink easily, quickly removing by their heat the rawness and wateriness of the young wine.
When this had been said, the one among the orators who seemed most given to reading works of a liberal education said, "By the gods, was it not only yesterday, so to speak, that the pine here became the crown of the Isthmian games, when formerly they were crowned with wild celery? This one may even hear from the mouth of some miser in comedy, saying, 'I would gladly sell the Isthmian prize for whatever the celery crown fetches.' And Timaeus the historian records that when the Corinthians were marching to fight the Carthaginians on behalf of Sicily, some men happened to bring in, not celery, but — and when the majority took this as an omen and not a good one, since celery is thought to be associated with funerals, and those dangerously ill are said to need celery —
Timoleon encouraged them and reminded them of the celery at the Isthmus, with which the Corinthians crown their victors. Further, the flagship of Antigonus, which sprouted celery of its own accord around its stern, was named 'Isthmia.' And this riddling inscription clearly attests a jar stuffed with celery: it is composed thus — 'The dark earth, black earth burnt by fire, conceals the dark blood of the god Dionysus, bearing Isthmian sprigs about its mouth.' Have you not read this," he said, "you who honor the pine as though it were not an import, not something new, but the ancestral and time-honored crown of the Isthmian games?" He thus stirred up the young men, as a man of wide reading and much learning would. Lucanius, however, looking at me and smiling at the same time, said, 'By Poseidon, what a wealth of learned quotation! But others among us, it seems, benefited from their ignorance and lack of erudition, persuading the opposite —
that the pine was the ancestral crown of the games, and that from Nemea, in rivalry, the celery crown intruded as a foreign newcomer, on account of Heracles, and having prevailed, eclipsed the pine as being a fitter sacred emblem; but then in time the pine recovered its ancestral honor and now flourishes again in esteem.' I, for my part, was persuaded and gave my attention, so that I learned by heart and remember many of the testimonies — Euphorion, for instance, speaking somewhat as follows about Melicertes: 'Weeping, they laid the boy down among the pines of the shore, at the time when they are borne along in contests for crowns; for not yet had the rough grip of hands mown down the child of the moon, the grim one, beside the mother of Asopus, from the time when they cast thick celery about their temples.' And Callimachus makes it still clearer:
for Heracles says to him concerning the celery, and to him the sons of Aletes, holding a contest much older than this one beside the god Aegaeon, will establish as the token of Isthmian victory, in rivalry with those from Nemea; and they will dishonor the pine, which formerly crowned the contestants at Ephyra. Further, I believe I have come across the writing of Procles, who records concerning the Isthmian games that they set the first contest for a crown of pine; but later, when the contest became sacred, they transferred to it the celery crown from the Nemean festival. This Procles was one of those who studied together with Xenocrates in the Academy." To some of the fellow-diners Achilles seemed ridiculous, for bidding Patroclus pour the wine more unmixed, and then adding such a reason as, 'for the men dearest to me are beneath my roof.' Niceratus, then, our companion
the Macedonian, flatly maintained that it was not "unmixed" but "warm" that was meant by "zoron," deriving it from "life-giving" (zōtikon) and from boiling (zesis) — a view which, he claimed, made good sense, given that with the men's companions present, a fresh bowl was being mixed from the start; for we too, whenever we are about to pour a libation to the gods, make a freshly mixed bowl. Sosicles the poet, however, recalling Empedocles' statement that in the universal transformation
'things once unmixed become zōra,' said that the word 'zōron' was used by the man to mean the well-tempered rather than the unmixed, and that there was nothing to prevent Achilles from urging Patroclus to prepare the wine tempered for drinking; and if, instead of 'zōron,' he said 'zōroteron,' this was no more strange than 'dexiteron' for 'dexion' (right-hand) or 'thēlyteron' for 'thēleos' (female), since it is common usage to employ the comparative in place of the simple form. Antipater our companion, however, said that in the archaic manner years were called 'hōroi,' and that the prefix 'za-' commonly signifies magnitude; hence wine of many years was called 'zōron' by Achilles. I, for my part, reminded them that by 'zōroteron' some understand 'hotter' to be signified, and by 'hotter,' 'quicker,' just as we ourselves often urge
our attendants to set about their service more briskly ("hotter"). But I declared their zeal to be somewhat boyish, since they were afraid to admit that "zōroteron" meant "more unmixed," as though Achilles would thereby find himself in some awkward position — as Zoilus of Amphipolis supposed, not realizing, first, that Achilles, knowing that Phoenix and Odysseus, being older men, delighted not in watered wine but in the stronger mixture, as do other old men, bids the mixture be made stronger.
Then again, being a pupil of Chiron and not inexperienced in matters of bodily regimen, he no doubt reasoned that for bodies unaccustomed to idleness and leisure, a looser and softer mixture is fitting. And indeed it is not without reason that celery is thrown in among the other fodder for horses, but because horses that are kept idle, contrary to their custom, suffer harm in their feet; and of this...
celery is the best remedy for this. Indeed you would not find any other fodder compared with the horses in the Iliad besides celery, or anything of that sort. But Achilles, being a physician for the horses as well, took care of them appropriately for the occasion, just as he prepared the lightest diet for the body, as being the healthiest one while at leisure; but he did not think it right to prescribe the same regimen for men who had spent the day in battle and contest as for men at leisure — he ordered the mixture of their wine to be made stronger.
Moreover Achilles does not appear to be naturally fond of wine, but rather harsh in temper — he was not, after all, a sweet-tempered or gentle man, but very impetuous; and speaking frankly of himself somewhere he says, "I have lain awake through many sleepless nights"; and a short sleep does not suffice for those who drink their wine unmixed. When reviling Agamemnon, the first thing he calls him is "heavy with wine," as though putting forward drunkenness as the chief of diseases. For all these reasons, then, there was good ground for him to reflect, once those men had appeared, whether the mixture of wine customary for him might be too weak and ill-suited for them.
The oddity apparent in the matter of seating arrangements gave rise to further discussion at the receptions which each of our friends held in entertaining us on our arrival from Alexandria. For many people were always invited, those who were thought in any way to have some claim to be included, and the parties had a turbulent character both in their general conduct and in their hasty breaking-up. But when Onesicrates the physician invited to dinner not many guests but only his closest and most intimate friends, it seemed to me that what Plato said — "a city that grows too large is no longer a city" — held true of a dinner party as well. For a symposium's size is sufficient
only up to the point where it is still willing to remain a symposium; but if it exceeds that through sheer numbers, so that it is no longer sociable with itself, nor sympathetic in its friendly exchanges, nor familiar, then it is no longer a symposium at all. For one ought not to make use of messengers, as in an army camp, nor of boatswains calling out orders, as on a trireme, but the guests should converse with one another directly, just as in a chorus the man at the edge keeps in tune with the leader when the whole symposium forms a single chorus. When I had said this,
our grandfather Lamprias spoke up in the midst of the company and said, "Do we then need self-restraint not only with regard to the dinners themselves, but also with regard to the invitations? For there is, I think, a kind of intemperance even in hospitality, when it passes over none of one's acquaintances but drags all of them along as though to a spectacle or a recitation. As for myself, it is not the running short of bread or wine for the guests that makes the host look ridiculous so much as the running short of room and space; for it is with regard to these things
that an abundance ought always to be kept ready even for uninvited guests and strangers who happen to arrive unexpectedly. Moreover, when bread and wine run short, it is possible to blame the servants for having pilfered them, but a scarcity of room, and a using-up of it through overcrowding, is a kind of contempt on the part of the host himself. And Hesiod is admired with good reason for saying, 'First of all things Chaos came to be' — for space and room needed to exist beforehand for the things that were to come into being — not as though the party were made up, as my son said yesterday,
of the Anaxagorean phrase 'all things were together.' Even so, when there is room enough and preparation enough, the crowding together itself must still be guarded against, as making the company unsociable and unapproachable to one another; for to take away the sharing of wine is a lesser evil than to take away the sharing of conversation from a dinner. That is why Theophrastus, joking, used to call the barbershops 'wineless symposia,' because of the chatter of those who sit there. Those who cram many people together into the same place do away with the sharing of conversation, or rather they make it possible for only a few to converse with one another; for people pair off in twos or threes and talk and converse with each other, while those reclining farther off they neither know nor even look at, being separated by 'a horse's course,'
'both to the tents of Ajax son of Telamon and to those of Achilles.' Hence the rich do not act rightly when they show off youthful bravado in building dining halls fit for thirty couches or more; for such preparation belongs to unsociable and unfriendly dinners, requiring a director of a public festival rather than a symposiarch. Yet that behavior may be excused in them, since they consider wealth to be no wealth at all, indeed truly blind and unproductive, unless it has witnesses, just as
tragedy needs spectators. But for us the remedy for bringing many people together at once would be to invite them frequently in small groups instead. For those who entertain rarely and, as the saying goes, 'once in a blue moon,' are forced to write down every acquaintance or connection whatsoever, however remote; whereas those who invite people more often, taking up three or four at a time, make their dinner parties light, like ferry-boats. And a further means of separating out the great crowd of one's friends
is a continuous reckoning of the occasion's purpose. For just as, for our various needs, we do not summon everyone but only those suited to each particular need — calling on the prudent when we take counsel, on eloquent speakers when we go to court, and, when traveling, on those who are lightest to bear the practical burdens and have the most leisure — so too in receptions one must on each occasion select those who are suitable. Suitable companions for a governor giving a dinner are the magistrates, if they are friends, and the leading men of the city; but at weddings, or at birthday celebrations, those related by family and sharing in the household Zeus; and at such receptions, or at send-offs, one must gather together above all those most cherished by the persons being honored. For when we sacrifice to a god we do not invoke all the other gods together in our prayers, even those who share his temple and his altar, but rather, when three mixing-bowls are being mixed,
we pour a libation to some from the first, to others from the second, and to others from the last; "for envy stands outside the divine chorus." And the company of friends is likewise, in a sense, divine, when it is distributed with good judgment in social gatherings." When this had been said, the discussion at once turned to the question of the cramped seating at the beginning of a dinner and its subsequent loosening — the opposite of what one would expect to happen
as a result of the fullness produced by the meal. Some of us then blamed the posture of reclining, arguing that people, for the most part, recline broadly while dining, since they stretch out their right hand toward the tables; but after dining they turn over more onto their side, making the shape of the body a narrower one, and no longer, so to speak, lying flat, but occupying, along a line, only the edge of their space; just
as knucklebones take up less room when they fall standing upright than when they fall flat, so each of us at first leans forward onto our stomach, looking toward the table, but later shifts our reclining posture from breadth into depth. But most of the company put forward instead the yielding of the couch's bedding, arguing that, being pressed down during the reclining, it spreads out and gives way, just like well-worn shoes, which, gradually
giving and loosening at the seams, provide roominess and freedom of movement for the foot. And the old man, joking at the same time, said that one and the same symposium has two dissimilar overseers and leaders: at the start, Hunger, who has no share in any tactical skill, and later Dionysus, whom everyone agrees to have been the best general there ever was — just as Epaminondas,
when certain generals, through inexperience, led the phalanx into some difficult terrain where it fell into confusion and became entangled in itself, took it in hand and disentangled it and set it back in order — so too Dionysus the Looser and Leader of the Dance, taking us up at the start all huddled together by hunger like a pack of dogs, arranges us into a cheerful and sociable order. When talk arose at dinner concerning the practice of casting the evil eye, and of certain people having a 'bewitching' eye, the rest of the company entirely made light of the matter
and laughed it down; but Mestrius Florus, who was entertaining us, said that the actual occurrences remarkably support the common report, but that the lack of an explanation makes people unjustly disbelieve the account, given that, though countless things plainly exist, the explanation for them still eludes us. "And in general," he said, "the person who seeks a rational explanation for everything strips away all sense of wonder from every case. For where
the explanation for a cause fails, that is precisely where inquiry begins — that is to say, philosophy; so that, in a sense, those who disbelieve wondrous things do away with philosophy altogether. One must," he said, "pursue the question of why something happens by reasoning, but accept that it does happen on the evidence of report. And many such things are indeed reported: we know, for instance, of people who harm infants most of all by staring down at them, because the infant's constitution, being moist and weak, is turned and driven for the worse by them, while
solid and already-set constitutions suffer this less. And yet Phylarchus reports that the people who live around the Black Sea, formerly called the Thibians, are deadly not only to infants but even to grown adults; for those who come into contact with their glance, their breath, and their speech waste away and fall ill;
and it seems that the mixed-blood peoples who came to buy slaves from that region noticed this effect. But of these phenomena, one is perhaps less astonishing, since touch and direct contact upon the skin has some evident beginning of an effect; and just as the feathers of other birds, when set alongside those of the eagle, are destroyed, wearing away and shedding as their plumage rots, so it is not at all out of keeping that a human touch too can be
in one case beneficial and in another harsh and harmful; but that people should be harmed by merely being looked at happens, indeed, just as I have said, yet it is disbelieved because the cause is hard to track down." "And yet," I said, "you yourself have in a way found some trace and pathway of the cause, by arriving at the effluences given off by bodies; for smell, and voice, and the current of
the breath are certain emanations of living creatures, and parts of them that set the senses in motion, whenever people are affected by their falling upon them. And it is far more likely that such things are given off by living creatures because of heat and motion, since the breath possesses a kind of pulsation and agitation, by which the body, being continually struck, sends forth certain effluences; and this is most likely to happen
especially through the eyes; for sight, being highly mobile and accompanied by breath that sends out a wondrous fiery radiance, disperses a remarkable power, so that a person both suffers much and does much through it. For a person is affected by moderate pleasures and displeasures arising from things seen; and of the passions of love, which are indeed the greatest and most violent affections of the soul, sight
supplies the beginning, so that the lover flows and melts, as it were, when he gazes upon beautiful people, drawn toward them as though pulled. For this reason one might especially wonder at those who suppose that a person is affected and harmed through sight, yet no longer believe that a person can act and cause harm through it. For the mutual glances of those in their prime, and whatever issues forth through the eyes — whether it be light or a current —
wastes away and destroys lovers, along with a pleasure mixed with pain, which they themselves call bittersweet; for neither by touch nor by hearing do people suffer wounding and affliction in the way that they do by looking and being looked at. For such a transmission and kindling occurs from the sight that those who marvel at Median naphtha catching fire from a distance because of flame should be regarded as entirely inexperienced in love; for the glances
of the beautiful, even when exchanged from quite far off, kindle a fire in the souls of lovers. And indeed we often hear reported the remedy for those suffering from jaundice: by gazing upon the charadrius bird they are cured; for this creature seems to have such a nature and constitution that it draws in and receives the affliction as it issues forth, like a current, through sight; and this is why the charadrius birds do not look at those
who have jaundice, nor can they endure it, but turn away and keep their eyes shut — not out of envy, as some suppose, of the cure that would come from them, but as though wounded by a blow. And of other diseases, those who spend time with sufferers most readily and quickly catch ophthalmia in particular; so keen a power does sight possess to communicate and to implant in another the beginning of an affliction." "And indeed," said
Patrocleas, "you speak rightly, at least as regards bodily matters; but as for the affections of the soul, among which is the casting of the evil eye, in what manner and how does it transmit harm through sight to those who are looked upon?" "Do you not know," I said, "that the soul, when it suffers, brings the body into a corresponding state? For thoughts of sexual desire arouse the genitals, and the fury of dogs in their contests against wild beasts often
extinguishes their sight and blinds them; while griefs, and avarice, and jealousies change the complexion and waste away one's physical condition; and of none of these is envy less apt, by its very nature, to lodge in the soul and to fill the body too with its wickedness, which painters do well to attempt to capture when they sketch the face of Envy. So then, whenever people so disposed by envy fix their gaze upon others, and their eyes, being
positioned nearest to the soul, draw up the evil from it and, like arrows dipped in poison, fall upon their victims — I think nothing strange or incredible occurs if they affect those they gaze upon; for even the bites of dogs become more severe when they bite in anger; and they say that the seed of men takes hold more readily when men approach in the act of love; and in general the passions of the soul strengthen and render more vehement
the powers of the body. This is also why they believe that the class of so-called amulets against fascination is of help against envy, since the strangeness of their appearance draws off the gaze, so that it presses less heavily upon those affected. Let these," I said, "Florus, be reckoned as the contributions to the feast." And Soclarus said, "Only if we first put them to the test ourselves; for there is something in the argument that appears spurious. For if
we take as true what many people say about those who are bewitched, you surely are not unaware that some suppose even friends and relatives, and some even fathers, to possess a bewitching eye, so that women do not show their children to them, nor allow them to be gazed upon for long by such people; how then will this affliction still seem to be a matter of envy? And what, by Zeus, will you say
about those who are said to bewitch themselves? For you have heard of this too; and if not, you have certainly read the lines: 'Fair once were they, fair, the locks of Eutelidas'; but a baleful man, seeing himself in the whirl of a river, bewitched himself, and at once an unseemly sickness seized him — for Eutelidas, they say, appearing handsome to himself, and suffering something because of the sight, from that moment fell ill and
lost both his good condition and his beauty. But consider how you can find arguments to explain such oddities." "Otherwise," I said, "not very adequately; but drinking, as you see, from so large a cup, not without boldness: I say that all the passions, once they have remained in souls for a long time, produce evil dispositions; and these, once they have acquired
...set in motion by whatever occasion presents itself, often carry people down, even against their will, into their own habitual passions. Consider how cowards fear even the things that would save them, how the irritable grow harsh even toward those dearest to them, and how the lustful and licentious end by being unable to keep away even from the most sacred of bodies. For habit is powerful in drawing one's disposition toward what is familiar to it, and a person who is precariously balanced is bound to stumble against everything he meets. So it is no wonder that those who have formed within themselves an envious and bewitching disposition are moved, in keeping with the particular nature of that passion, even against their own kin: moved in this way, they do what their nature compels, not what they wish. For just as a sphere is bound to move spherically and a cylinder cylindrically, owing to the difference in their shape, so a person's envious disposition moves him enviously toward everything. Yet it is also likely that such people look more intently at what is their own and what they love; and that is why they do it more harm.
As for the excellent Eutelidas, and all those said to bewitch themselves, I think it is not unreasonable that this happens to them. For according to Hippocrates, being at the very peak of good condition is precarious, and bodies that have advanced to the height of their prime do not stay there, but incline and sway toward the opposite. So whenever people make a sudden gain in condition and see themselves looking better than they expected, so that they marvel at and closely study the change in their body, they come close to being carried by their own condition toward the worse — that is, to bewitching themselves. This happens more from the currents that arise when people stand before water or other reflecting surfaces; for the current breathes back upon the very ones looking, so that they are harmed by the same means with which they used to harm others. Perhaps the same thing, happening also with children, often falsely lays the blame on those who merely look at them.
When I had finished, Gaius, the son-in-law of Florus, said: "But Democritus's images — like the men of Aegium or Megara — get no reckoning or regard at all. He says these images, which issue from envious people, are not wholly without sensation or impulse, and are filled with the malice and bewitching power that comes from those who send them out; and that, becoming implanted with this malice, remaining, and taking up residence with the people who are bewitched, they throw them into confusion and harm both their body and their mind. That, I think, is more or less the man's meaning, though he expresses it in marvelously grand and elevated language."

"Quite so," I said, "but I am surprised you failed to notice that I said nothing else about these currents except to strip them of anything animate or purposive — precisely so that you would not think I was conjuring up phantoms for you late into the night, sentient, thinking images meant to frighten and unsettle you. Let us, then, if you agree, examine this further in the morning."
Once, when we were dining in Chaeronea and every kind of fruit had been set before us, one of the guests reclining at table happened to recite the line, "sweet fig trees and apple trees of splendid fruit," and "luxuriant olive trees." The question then arose why the poet applied the epithet "of splendid fruit" specifically to apple trees. Tryphon the physician said it was said by comparison with the tree itself: though the tree is quite small and unimpressive to look at, it produces fruit that is beautiful and large. Someone else said that the apple alone among tree-fruits displays beauty composed of every element together: it is clean to the touch, so that it does not soil the hand but fills whoever touches it with fragrance instead; its taste is pleasant; and it is most delightful to smell and to see. That is why, engaging nearly all the senses at once, it is reasonably praised. We agreed that these explanations were reasonable enough.
But since Empedocles had written, "wherefore pomegranates are late-born, and apples overflow their rind," we understood the epithet applied to pomegranates to mean that, since autumn is already ending and the summer heat dying away, they ripen their fruit late; for their moisture, being weak and viscous, cannot be brought to solidify by the sun unless the air begins to turn colder — which is why Theophrastus says this is the only tree that ripens its fruit better, and faster, in the shade. But as to what Empedocles the sage meant by calling apples "hyperphloia," we were at a loss — especially since the man was not in the habit, for the sake of fine writing, of decorating things with the most attractive-sounding epithets, as if with bright colors, but of making each epithet reveal some underlying substance or property: as when he calls the body that surrounds the soul "the earth enveloping mortal man," calls the air "cloud-gathering," and calls the liver "full of blood."
When I had said this, some of the grammarians present said that apples were called "hyperphloia" because of their peak ripeness, since the poets use the word "phloiein" for being exceedingly in bloom and flourishing; and that Antimachus, in much the same way, spoke of the city of the Cadmeans as "blooming with fruit"; and likewise that Aratus, speaking of the Dog Star, says, "some things it strengthened, but of others it destroyed all the bloom," using "phloos" for the greenness and blossom of fruits; and that there are even some Greeks who sacrifice to Dionysus under the title "Phloios," the Budding One. Since, then, of all fruits the apple most retains its greenness and bloom, the philosopher called it "hyperphloion."
But our grandfather Lamprias said that the prefix "hyper" signifies not only excess and intensity but also "on the outside" and "above": in this sense we call a lintel "hyperthyron" and an upper room "hyperoon," and the poet calls the outer flesh of a sacrificial victim "huperterа," just as he calls the inner parts "enkata." "Consider, then," he said, "whether Empedocles rather coined the epithet with this in mind: that whereas other fruits have their outsides enclosed by a rind, and bear on their surface what are called husks, shells, membranes, and pods, the apple's rind lies on the inside — a sticky, oily membrane to which the seed clings — while the edible part surrounds it on the outside. It was therefore reasonably named 'hyperphloion,' having its rind turned outward."
After this a question was raised about figs: why such a rich, sweet fruit should grow from so bitter a tree. For even the fig tree's leaf, on account of its roughness, is called "thrion," and its wood is full of sap, so that when burned it gives off very pungent smoke, and once reduced to ash, its lye is the most effective of all for cleansing, owing to its sharpness. And most remarkable of all: while every other plant that sprouts and bears fruit also blossoms, the fig tree alone bears no blossom. And if, as they say, it is never struck by lightning, one might attribute that too to the bitterness and poor condition of its trunk; for lightning bolts seem not to touch such things, just as they do not touch the hide of the seal or of the hyena.
Taking up the discussion, the elder among us said that whatever sweetness is present in the plant is all squeezed together into the fruit, so that it is only reasonable that what is left behind becomes sharp and unmixed with sweetness; for just as the liver, once its bilious element has been separated off into one place, itself becomes very sweet, so the fig tree, releasing all its rich and savory quality into the fig, is itself left with no share of sweetness. "And that the wood does share in some good quality after all," he said, "I take as evidence what the gardeners report: they say that rue growing beneath a fig tree, planted alongside it, is more pleasant and milder in flavor, as though benefiting from some of its sweetness, so that its usually heavy, overpowering pungency is tempered — unless, by Zeus, the opposite is true, and the fig tree, drawing off the rue's nourishment for itself, is what removes its sharpness."
Florus, when we were dining at his house, raised the question of who might be meant by "those of the salt and the bean" in the proverb. Apollophanes the grammarian resolved this readily on the spot: "Friends close enough," he said, "to dine together on nothing more than salt and bean are what the proverb refers to." We then puzzled over how salt came to be held in such honor, since Homer plainly says, "he sprinkled it with divine salt," while Plato says that salt, by human custom, is the substance most beloved of the gods. The puzzle was sharpened further by the fact that the Egyptian priests, when observing ritual purity, abstain from salt altogether, so that they even eat their bread unsalted. For how could they treat as forbidden something beloved of the gods and divine? Florus told us to set the Egyptians aside and address the question in Greek terms.
I replied that even the Egyptians are not really at odds with the Greeks here: their purifications also exclude procreation, laughter, wine, and many other things otherwise worth pursuing. Salt, perhaps, they avoid while keeping themselves pure because, as some say, its heat stimulates one toward intercourse; and it is also likely that they avoid it simply as the most pleasant of relishes. For salt is very probably the relish and seasoning of all other relishes — which is why some call it "the Graces," since it makes what is necessary in our food pleasant. "Is that, then," Florus asked, "why salt is called divine?" "That," I said, "is indeed no small part of it. People tend, for the most part, to deify what is common and pervades their needs, as with water, light, and the seasons; and the earth they take to be not merely divine but a god outright. Salt yields to none of these in usefulness, since it serves as the finishing touch that food receives on its way into the body, giving it a fitness suited to our appetite.
"But consider also whether this further divine quality belongs to it: that by keeping dead bodies free of decay and preserving them for a long time, it resists death itself and does not allow what is mortal to perish and vanish entirely. Just as the soul, the most divine part of us, holds living creatures together and does not let their substance dissolve, so the nature of salt, taking hold of dead bodies and imitating the work of the soul, checks them as they are being carried toward corruption, restrains and steadies them, and provides harmony and mutual affinity among their parts. That is also why some of the Stoics say that the flesh of a living pig is essentially dead meat, with the soul scattered through it, like salt, merely to keep it from spoiling. You see, too, that we consider the fire of a thunderbolt sacred and divine, because we observe that the bodies of those struck by it remain undecayed and endure for a long time. What wonder is it, then, if the ancients supposed salt divine as well, since it possesses the very same power as that divine fire?"
When I fell silent, Philinus took up the discussion: "Does the power of generation not seem divine to you," he said, "given that god rules over all things?" When I agreed, he said, "Well then, people believe that salt contributes not a little to generation, just as you yourself mentioned regarding the Egyptians. Those who breed dogs, at any rate, when the females prove too sluggish toward mating, arouse and stir their dormant sexual instinct with, among other things, salty food and salted meat. Ships that carry salt breed an enormous multitude of mice — since, as some say, the females become pregnant even without mating, simply by licking the salt; though it is more likely that the saltiness produces an itching in their organs and so spurs the creatures on toward coupling. Perhaps that is also why people call a woman's beauty, when it is neither inert nor unpersuasive but mixed with charm and allure, 'salty' and 'piquant.' I think, too, that the poets call Aphrodite 'sea-born,' and put forward the myth invented about her origin from the sea, as a veiled reference to the generative power of salt. Indeed they represent Poseidon himself, and the sea gods generally, as prolific and the fathers of many children. And among the animals themselves, you could not name any creature of land or air as prolific as the creatures of the sea are all together — which is what Empedocles had in mind when he wrote of the sea 'bearing the unmusical tribe of the widely-scattered, swarming fish.'"
Sossius Senecio, they say that when Plato took Timotheus, the son of Conon, away from lavish, general's-style banquets and entertained him at the Academy simply and tastefully — with, as Ion puts it, "tables that cause no inflammation" — tables after which follow pure sleep and dreams of brief, untroubled visions, since the body enjoys fair weather and calm, Timotheus, noticing the difference the next day, remarked that those who had dined with Plato also felt well the day after. And indeed a well-tempered body, unburdened and light, standing ready without misgiving for every activity, is truly a great asset for having a good day. But those who dined with Plato gained something else no less valuable: the chance to go back over what had been said at the table. For the pleasures of what was drunk or eaten leave behind a memory that is ignoble and, besides, quick to fade, like a stale, greasy smell that lingers on; but the subject matter of philosophical problems and discussions delights those who remember it, ever present as though freshly given, and offers no less of a feast to those who were absent, once they hear of it and share in it from others — so much so that even now lovers of learning share in and enjoy the Socratic symposia, just as those who actually dined there did at the time.
And yet, if it were bodily pleasures that mattered, Xenophon and Plato ought to have left behind, not a record of what was said, but an inventory of the dishes, cakes, and desserts served at the houses of Callias and Agathon. As it is, however, those things — though no doubt prepared at great trouble and expense — were never thought worthy of a single mention; whereas the philosophical discussions carried on in a spirit of playful seriousness they took care to set down in writing, leaving behind examples that show men ought not only to converse with one another over wine but also to remember what was said. So I am sending you this sixth book of the Table Talk, in which the first question concerns why those who fast feel thirst more than hunger.
It seemed unreasonable that those completing a fast should be thirstier than hungry, since the lack of solid food would seem naturally to call for its own proper replenishment. I said to those present that, of the things within us, it is heat that either alone, or more than anything else, requires nourishment — just as, indeed, we observe that outside us neither air, water, nor earth desires to be fed or consumes what comes near it, but fire alone does. That is also why the young are more inclined to eat than the old, on account of their heat, while conversely the old bear fasting most easily, since in them the heat is already dulled and diminished, as in bloodless creatures, which likewise need food least of all because of their lack of heat; and each person individually finds that exercise, shouting, and whatever else increases heat through movement...
...increases the heat, makes one eat more pleasantly and more eagerly. And food for the heat — as I think — that which is primary by nature, is above all the moist, as both the flames that grow when fed with oil show, and the fact that ash is the driest of all things: for the moisture has been burned out of it, and the earthy part is left bereft of moisture. And likewise fire separates and divides bodies by removing the moisture that binds and holds them together.
So whenever we fast, the moisture is at first forcibly drawn off by the heat from the remnants of food in the body; then the burning heat proceeds to the innate moisture of the flesh itself, pursuing the wet element. So, when a dryness comes about as in clay, the body naturally needs drink more, until, once we have drunk, the heat, restored and strengthened, produces an appetite for solid food.
When this had been said, the physicians around Philo challenged the first thesis: they said that thirst does not arise from deficiency, but from a certain reshaping of the pores. For example, those who are thirsty at night, if they fall asleep, stop being thirsty without drinking; and those who have fevers, when there is a remission or the fever has altogether ceased, are at the same time freed from thirst; and for many people who have bathed, and, by Zeus, for others who have vomited, thirst comes to an end. In none of these cases is the moisture increased; rather, the pores alone are affected, undergoing some reshaping, a different arrangement and disposition.
This becomes even clearer in the case of hunger: for many sick people are at once deficient and yet have no appetite, while for some others, even when they eat their fill, their appetites do not slacken at all, but instead intensify and persist. Indeed, many who had lost their appetite for food, on taking a salted olive or tasting a caper, quickly recovered and restored their appetite. From this it is especially clear that hunger arises in us from some affection of the pores, not from deficiency: for such foods, though they add nourishment and so reduce the deficiency, nevertheless produce hunger. In this way the pleasant tastes and pungencies of relish foods, by contracting and tightening the stomach, or conversely by opening and relaxing it, work up around it a certain receptive fitness for food, which we call appetite.
Now it seemed to me that these arguments had been made plausibly, but that they were opposed to the greatest end of nature, toward which appetite leads every living creature — namely desiring the replenishment of what is deficient and ever pursuing what is lacking of its own proper substance. “For to deny that the very feature by which a living creature differs most from a lifeless thing exists in us for the sake of self-preservation and continuance — as an eye implanted for the things proper and necessary to the body — and instead to suppose that it is merely an affection and a kind of turning of the pores occurring through largeness and smallness, was, to my mind, an account that made no sense at all for those who posit nature so simply.
Moreover, it is unreasonable that the body should shiver from a deficiency of its own proper heat, and yet no longer be thirsty or hungry from a deficiency of the natural moisture and nourishment; and it is even more unreasonable still, if nature desires emptying for the sake of filling, but does not desire filling for the sake of emptying, but rather because some other affection has arisen. And indeed such needs and replenishments in the case of living creatures differ in no way from what happens in agriculture: for plants suffer many similar things and are helped in similar ways — against dryness they are watered by irrigation, and cooled moderately when they are scorched; when they are chilled we try to warm them and cover them, wrapping them in many coverings; and for whatever is not in our own power we pray the god to grant it — soft dews and warm airs amid moderate breezes — so that nature may always have a replenishment for what is lacking, preserving its proper balance.
For this is, I think, why nourishment (trophē) was so named — that which preserves (tērei) nature. For plants, this preservation happens without sensation, drawn from their surrounding environment, as Empedocles says, as they are watered with what suits them; but in our case appetite teaches us to seek and pursue what is lacking to our proper balance. Nevertheless, let us also examine each of the things said and show that it is not true.
For foods with a pleasant taste and pungency perhaps produce, not appetite, but a kind of biting sensation in the parts that receive nourishment, like an itch from the touch of things that scratch; and even if this affection too is a form of appetite, it is likely that what is already present is broken down and separated by such foods as they become finer, and that they produce a deficiency — not because the pores are reshaped, but because they are emptied and cleared out. For sharp, pungent, and salty things break up the material and disperse and scatter it, so that they renew the appetite by squeezing out what is stale and left over from the day before. And in the case of those who bathe, it is not by being reshaped that the pores put an end to thirst, but by taking up moisture through the flesh and being filled with a moist vapor.
As for vomiting, by expelling what is foreign, it affords nature the enjoyment of what is proper to it. For thirst is not simply for moisture, but for the moisture that is natural and proper to us; hence, even if a great deal of foreign matter is present, a person remains in deficiency: for it stands in the way of the natural moisture, which is what appetite is for, and does not allow mixing or blending with it, until it withdraws and departs; and only then do the pores take up what is akin to them.
Fevers, on the other hand, push the moisture into the depths; and when the middle parts of the body are inflamed, all the moisture has withdrawn there and is held compressed — which is why it happens that many people vomit at the same time, the density of the internal parts forcing the moisture upward, and are thirsty on account of the deficiency and dryness of the rest of the body. So whenever there is a remission, and the heat departs from the middle parts, the moisture, dispersing again, recedes and, passing through, as is its nature, everywhere, both gives relief to the middle parts and softens the flesh, making it smooth and tender instead of rough and parched, and often also brings on sweats; hence the deficiency that causes thirst ceases and comes to an end, as the moisture shifts away from the part that was overburdened and struggling to well up, toward the part that needs and desires it.
For just as in a garden, when the well has an abundant supply of water, if no one draws it up and irrigates the plants, they must inevitably go thirsty and untended; so too in the body, when the moisture is dragged down into a single place, it is no wonder that there is deficiency and dryness in the rest, until there is once again an inflow and a diffusion — just as also happens with feverish patients, when their fever relaxes, and also happens to those who fall asleep while thirsty: for in their case too, sleep brings the moisture back from the middle parts and, distributing it everywhere among the parts, produces an equalizing and a replenishment.
As for this so-called reshaping of the pores, by which hunger or thirst is said to arise — what sort of thing is it, really? For my part, I see no other differences that could occur in the pores, by way of affection, other than contracting and dilating: when they contract, they can receive neither drink nor food; and when they dilate, they create an emptiness and space, which is nothing but a deficiency of what is natural and proper. Indeed, my excellent friend,” I said, “the astringencies of the parts that are being dyed have a sharp, cleansing quality, by which, as the superfluous matter is excreted and dissolved away, the pores receive and retain more of the dye, taking it in because of their deficiency and emptiness.”
When this had been said, our host said that this too was reasonably argued, and turned to the further difficulty: the emptyings and refillings of the pores explain the immediate case well enough, but for those who are thirsty the opposite happens — if they eat, it turns out that their thirst is intensified. This affection, he said, those who posit differing kinds of pores seem to him to explain most easily and most persuasively — even if their other points were argued only plausibly. For since there are pores in everyone, one pore has one set of proportions and another has another: of these, the wider ones take up both dry and moist food together, while the narrower ones admit only drink; and the emptying of the narrower ones produces thirst, while that of the wider ones produces hunger.
Hence, if those who are thirsty eat, they are not helped, since the pores, because of their narrowness, do not receive the dry food, but remain deficient in what is proper to them; while if those who are hungry drink, the liquids enter into the wider pores and, filling their emptiness, relax the excessive intensity of their hunger. To me, what actually happens seemed true, but I did not accept the hypothesis about its cause.
“For indeed,” I said, “if one were to riddle the flesh with these pores that some people are so attached to and fond of, one would make it flabby, tremulous, and unsound. And the notion that the same parts of the body do not receive drink and solid food alike, but that they trickle down and are sorted out as though through sieves, is altogether fanciful and bizarre. For this mixing with moisture, breaking down the food and taking the internal heat and the breath as its helpers, refines the nourishment more precisely than any instrument, with every kind of cutting and division, so that every particle of it becomes friendly and akin to every other particle — not fitted together as into vessels and holes, but unified and grown into one.
And apart from these considerations, the greatest part of the difficulty has not even been resolved: for those who eat, if they do not also drink, not only fail to relieve their thirst but actually intensify it further, and to this point nothing has been said in reply. Consider, then, also our own account,” I said, “whether we are taking plausible hypotheses — first, taking it that the moist is destroyed and used up by the dry, while the dry, moistened and softened by the moist, undergoes diffusions and exhalations; and second, not supposing that hunger is simply a squeezing-out of dry food, nor thirst of moist food, but rather a deficiency of the moderate and sufficient amount; for those in whom either is entirely lacking altogether neither hunger nor thirst, but die at once.
Once these premises are laid down, it is no longer difficult to grasp the cause. For thirst is intensified in those who have eaten, since the food, by its dryness, gathers up and draws out further whatever scattered moisture is left, weak and scanty, in the body — just as, outside, we see earth, dust, and sand take into themselves and make disappear whatever moisture is mixed with them. And drink, in turn, of necessity relieves hunger: for the moisture, wetting and dissolving the hard and gluey food already present, so that juices and vapors arise, carries these up into the body and adds them to the parts that need them.
Hence Erasistratus was not wrong to call the moist ‘the vehicle of nourishment’: for by mixing with what has become sluggish and heavy through dryness or some affection, it carries it up and lifts it along with itself. Many people, too, without drinking but only by bathing, have stopped being intensely and severely hungry: for the moisture entering from outside makes the food already present richer in juice and more nourishing, by loosening the internal parts, so that the intense bitterness and savagery of hunger relents and is soothed. This is also why some who are starving themselves deliberately live for a long time, provided they take only water, until every bit of what is capable of nourishing and being added to the body has been drawn out.”
For a luxury-loving foreign guest who liked his drinks cold, the servants prepared well water made colder still: for having drawn it up in a vessel and hung the vessel in the well, without letting it touch the spring, they let it spend the night there, and it was brought to dinner colder than freshly-drawn water. The guest happened to be reasonably fond of learning, and said he had gotten this practice from Aristotle, set down along with an explanation; and the explanation was this: all water, once it has first been heated, cools all the more afterward — just like the water prepared for kings, for when it is boiled to the point of seething, they heap a great deal of snow around the vessel, and it becomes colder.
Just as, of course, our own bodies too are cooled all the more after bathing: for the relaxation produced by the heat, having made the body full of open pores and porous, admits a great deal of the outside air and makes the change more violent. So, when the water is first given a preliminary chill by the spring and then, in the air, warmed beforehand, it is cooled quickly afterward.
Now we praised the guest for having remembered this so manfully; but about the explanation itself we were at a loss. For the air in which the vessel hangs — if it is cold, how does it warm the water? And if it is warm, how does it in turn cool it? For it is unreasonable for the same thing to suffer opposite effects from the same agent, with no difference having arisen. When he fell silent and was at a loss, I said there was no need to be puzzled about the air, for our senses tell us that it is cold, especially the air of deep wells — so that it is impossible for the water to be warmed by cold air.
“Rather, this cold air is unable to change the spring water because of its great quantity; but if one draws it off little by little, the air, gaining the upper hand, will cool it further.” “But surely,” I said, “as for the pebbles or the anvils, which people throw into water because they think this cools and tempers it, you recall that this too is stated by Aristotle.”
“That,” he said, “is exactly the point: he has stated only the fact itself in his Problems, that this is what happens; but as for the cause, we shall attempt it ourselves, for it is especially hard to discern.” “Quite so,” I said, “and indeed I would be surprised if the explanation did not escape us; but look at it all the same. First, does it not seem to you that the water is cooled by the air falling upon it from outside, and that the air acts more forcefully when it presses back against the stones and anvils?
For these do not let it pass through, as bronze and earthenware vessels do, but by their density they hold it in and reflect it back from themselves into the water, so that the cooling becomes strong and thorough throughout. That is also why, in winter, rivers become colder than the sea: for in rivers the cold air, being reflected back, has force, whereas in the sea, because of its depth, it dissipates, having nothing to press back against. And in another way, too, it is likely that the thinner kinds of water are cooled all the more by the cold, since, being weaker, they are more easily overpowered by it.
Now whetstones and pebbles make the water finer, by gathering together whatever muddy and earthy matter is mixed into it and drawing it down out of it, so that the water, becoming thinner and weaker, is more easily overpowered by the cooling. And indeed lead too is among the things that are naturally cold, since, when rubbed with vinegar, it releases white lead, the coldest of deadly poisons; and pebbles, by their density, carry the cold through to the depths. Every...
"...for every stone is a mass of earth that has been chilled and compacted by frost — the more compressed, the more so. So it is not absurd that both the stone and the lead, by resisting, intensify the coldness of the water." After a brief pause the stranger said, "Lovers desire most of all to be with their darlings themselves, but failing that, they desire to talk about them; and this is what I feel about snow. Since it is not here with us and we do not have any, I should like to learn the reason why it is preserved by the very hottest things. For by wrapping it in chaff and swaddling it in unfulled cloaks, people keep it undamaged for a long time. It is a marvel, then, if the hottest things are what preserve the coldest." "Quite so," I said, "if indeed it is true. But it is not so — rather we are deceiving ourselves, supposing that whatever warms is itself hot.
We see that the very same cloak warms in winter and cools in summer — just as that tragic nurse tends the children of Niobe, warming and cooling them with the tatters of finely-woven mantles. The Germans, at any rate, use clothing as a defense against cold alone, the Ethiopians against heat alone, but we use it against both. So why, if it warms, should we call it hot rather than cold on the ground that it cools? If we must judge by sensation, it would rather be called cold: for the tunic strikes us as cold when we first put it on, and so do the bedclothes when we lie down; but then it grows warm as it is filled with the heat coming from us, at once enclosing and holding in the heat and at the same time keeping out the cold and outside air away from the body.
Thus people who are feverish and burning up constantly change their clothes because whatever is put on them feels cold; yet once it has been put on, it at once becomes hot from the body's heat. So then, just as the cloak, once warmed, warms us, so, once chilled, it in turn chills the snow; and it is chilled by the fine vapor the snow gives off, for it is this, shut up within, that holds together the snow's congealed state, and when the vapor departs, the snow, being water, flows and melts away, and the whiteness — which the mixture of vapor with moisture, becoming frothy, had produced — fades. At the same time, then, the cold is held in, roofed over by the cloak, and the outside air, being shut out, neither cuts into the mass of ice nor lets it dissipate.
Unfulled cloaks serve this purpose especially well because of their roughness and dryness — the nap of their wool does not let the heavy cloak press down and crush the looseness of the snow; just as chaff too, because of its lightness, falls upon it softly and does not break up the mass of ice, while otherwise being dense and close-packed enough to keep out the heat of the air and to prevent the cold from leaving the snow. That the escape of the vapor is what causes the melting is evident to the senses, for as the snow melts it produces vapor."
Nigrus, our fellow citizen, had come back from his studies, having spent no long time in the company of a distinguished philosopher — but long enough that, without grasping the man's real teaching, he had become filled with its more tiresome features, imitating his master's fault-finding manner and cross-examining his companions on every subject. So when Aristion was giving us a dinner, Nigrus found fault with the rest of the provisions as extravagant and over-elaborate, and said that wine ought not to be poured out strained, but, as Hesiod bade, should be drunk straight from the jar, keeping its natural strength and power.
"Such straining," he said, "first of all cuts out its sinews and quenches its heat, since it often blooms and breathes itself away in the straining; and second, it displays fussiness and affectation and a luxury that squanders what is useful for the sake of what is pleasant. For just as the practice of castrating cocks and pigs, making their flesh soft and womanish contrary to nature, belongs not to healthy people but to those corrupted by gluttony — so too, if I may use a metaphor, those who strain the unmixed wine emasculate it and make it effeminate, being unable, through weakness, either to carry its strength or to drink a moderate amount, because of their own intemperance.
Rather, this is a device and a contrivance of theirs for drinking more: they remove the wine's weight and leave only its smoothness, just as people give boiled-down wine to invalids who crave cold drinks uncontrollably. Whatever gives wine its temper and strength, this they remove and strip away in the straining. A strong proof of this is its spoiling — the fact that it does not keep, but degenerates and wastes away, as if cut off from its root, the lees. The ancients, indeed, called wine outright by the name 'lees' — just as we are accustomed to call a man 'soul' or 'head,' naming him from his most essential part; and we speak of those who gather the vintage of the vine as 'lees-gathering,' and Homer somewhere used the word 'vintage-time'; and he was accustomed to call wine itself 'gleaming' and 'red' — not, as Aristion
gives it to us pale and sallow through excessive straining." Aristion laughed and said, "No, my friend, not pale, nor bloodless, but mild and gentle — to judge from its very look, for a start. You, though, insist on gorging yourself on the night-black, dark-robed wine, and you fault the straining as if it were a bilious vomiting, through which the wine, releasing what is heavy, intoxicating, and unwholesome, becomes light and mixes with us without violence — the very wine, I think, that Homer says the heroes drink. For he does not call 'gleaming' what is murky, but what is clear and bright; the poet who spoke of bronze as 'man-strengthening' and 'gleaming' would not have called it 'gleaming' if it were dark.
So then, just as the wise Anacharsis, while finding fault with other things among the Greeks, praised the charcoal-burners because they leave the smoke outside and bring fire home — so you wise men would do better to find fault with other things. If we push out and disperse the wine's disturbing and troublesome element, delighting in the wine itself without prettifying it, and without cutting off its temper and edge as one would iron's, but rather cleansing it as one would rust or grime, in what way do we go wrong? "Because, by Zeus, it is stronger when unstrained"? But a man too, my friend, when delirious and raving is stronger too; but when, by the use of hellebore or a regimen, he is brought back to health, that violent, high-strung force departs and fades away, and true strength and soundness of mind come to his body.
So too the straining of wine, by removing its harsh, maddening quality, brings it into a gentle and healthy condition. Over-elaborateness, I think, differs very greatly from cleanliness: for women who rouge themselves, perfume themselves, and wear gold and purple seem over-elaborate; but no one finds fault with bathing, anointing, or arranging one's hair. The poet delightfully shows the difference in the passage where Hera adorns herself: 'First with ambrosia she cleansed every stain from her immortal skin, and anointed herself richly with oil' — up to this point it is simply care and cleanliness. But when she takes up the golden pins and the earrings wrought with such fine skill, and finally, at the end, takes hold of the sorcery that is in the girdle, the matter becomes over-elaborateness and a wantonness unbefitting a wife.
So too with wine: those who tint it with aloes or sweeten it with cinnamon and saffron are dressing it up like a woman and pimping it out for the symposia; but those who remove from it what is foul and useless are tending and cleansing it. Otherwise you might call all these things over-elaborateness, beginning with the house itself: why is it so carefully plastered? Why is it opened up on the side from which it will best receive clean air and enjoy the light as it moves around toward its setting? Why is every cup polished and scoured all over so as to shine and glitter? Or was the cup meant to be free of filth and rancid smells, while what is drunk from it is to be full of mold or stains?
And why need I mention other things? For the very working of wheat into bread is nothing other than a process of purification — see with how much labor it is carried out: it is not merely a matter of sifting, sieving, separating, and distinguishing the grain from what does not belong to it, but the kneading, which presses out the roughness of the dough, and the baking, which draws off the moisture, purify and reduce the matter down to what is edible alone. What, then, is strange if straining likewise removes the lees of wine, as one would coarse meal or refuse — especially since this purification requires neither expense nor much trouble?"
There is an ancestral sacrifice which the archon performs at the public hearth, while each of the others performs it privately at home; it is called "the driving out of Bulimos." They strike one of the household slaves with rods of the chaste-tree and drive him out through the doors, saying as they do so, "Out with Bulimos, in with wealth and health!" Now when I was serving as archon, a good many people took part with me in the sacrifice; and when we had performed the customary rites and reclined again at table, the discussion first turned on the name itself, then on the formula they pronounce over the one being driven out, but above all on the affliction and what accompanies it.
It seemed that "bulimos" signifies a great or public famine, especially among us Aeolians, who use π in place of β; for we do not say "boulimos" but "poulimos," as though it were a "great hunger" (polys limos). And it seemed that "boubrostis" was something different; we took our evidence for this from Metrodorus' Ionian History, for he records that the Smyrnaeans, who were formerly Aeolians, sacrifice a black bull to Boubrostis, cutting it up and burning it whole, hide and all. And since all hunger seems akin to disease, and bulimos especially so, arising when the body has suffered something contrary to its nature, they reasonably set "wealth" in opposition to it as to a deficiency, and "health" as to a disease —
Just as "to be seasick" was originally named for those whose stomachs grow weak on board ship and during a voyage, but through common usage has come to be the name of the affliction for anyone who suffers it in any way whatsoever — so too, it seems, "to be ravenously hungry" (bouliman), beginning from that origin, has extended its meaning to this case. These points, then, we all filled out together as a shared contribution of remarks. But when we came to grips with the cause of the affliction, the first question raised was why those who travel through deep snow become especially ravenous — as indeed Brutus, going from Dyrrachium toward Apollonia, was endangered by this affliction.
There was a heavy snowfall, and none of those carrying provisions kept up with him; so when he began to faint and collapse, his soldiers were forced to run up to the city walls and beg bread from the enemy sentries guarding them; and having received it, they at once revived Brutus — which is why, when he later became master of the city, he treated everyone with kindness. Horses and donkeys suffer this affliction too, especially when they are carrying dried figs or apples. And what is most remarkable is that bread, more than any other food, restores not only men but also pack animals, so that even if they eat the smallest amount of it, they are cured and can walk again.
When silence fell, reflecting that the arguments of our elders, while they set at rest and satisfy the lazy and untalented, give the ambitious and learned a starting point of their own and the boldness to seek out and track down the truth, I recalled the Aristotelian treatises, in which it is said that, when there is great chilling from outside, the internal parts become intensely heated and produce a great deal of melting matter; and this, if it flows down into the legs, produces fatigue and heaviness, but if it flows to the sources of movement and respiration, produces faintness or even weakness.
When this argument had been stated, what naturally followed took place: some attacked the doctrine, others defended it vigorously. Socles said that the starting point of the argument was very well laid down: for the bodies of those who walk through snow are indeed sufficiently chilled and compacted; but that the melting matter produces heat, and that this heat then takes hold of the sources of respiration, seemed to him to beg the question. He thought it more likely that the heat, being contracted and increased within, consumes the body's nourishment, and then, once this too runs short, dies down like a fire, itself fading away; that is why such travelers grow extremely hungry, and, on eating even a very small amount, immediately flare up again — for what is eaten becomes, as it were, fuel to kindle the heat anew.
Cleomenes the physician, however, said that the word 'hunger' (limos) is bound up in the name quite apart from the actual thing, just as 'drinking' is contained in 'swallowing,' and 'bending' in 'straightening up.' For bulimia, he said, is not really hunger, as it seems, but an affection in the stomach that produces faintness through a rush of heat. So, just as things with a strong smell help against fainting fits, so bread revives those who are ravenous — not because they lack nourishment, since they revive at once on receiving even the smallest amount, but because it calls back the breath and strength that are sinking away.
That it is faintness and not hunger is shown by the case of pack animals: for carrying dried figs or apples does not create any deficiency, but rather a kind of heartburn, and, by Zeus, a sort of dizziness. To us, however, this too seemed to be said only in a moderate degree, and it seemed possible, starting from the opposite premise — positing not compression but rarefaction — to preserve the plausibility of the explanation. For the vapor that flows off from snow is, as it were, the finest chaff of the frozen mass, an extremely fine-grained powder; yet it has a certain cutting, dividing power, not only on flesh but even on silver and bronze vessels — for we see that these do not hold the snow in:
as it evaporates it is used up, and it fills the outer surface of the vessel with a thin, crystal-like moisture, which the vapor leaves behind as it departs imperceptibly through the pores. This same vapor, striking those who walk through snow as something sharp and flame-like, seems to burn their extremities by cutting into and passing through the flesh, just like fire; hence a great rarefaction occurs throughout the body, and the heat flows outward because of the coldness of the vapor, and, being quenched near the surface, it dissipates as a fine, dewy sweat, so that the body's strength melts away and is used up.
Now if a person keeps still, not much heat leaves the body; but when movement quickly converts the body's nourishment into heat, while the heat is carried outward, and the flesh is broken down, a sudden failure of strength is bound to occur. That being chilled not only congeals but also melts bodies is clear: for in great winters whetstones of lead melt away; and both the sweating that occurs and the fact that ravenous hunger befalls many who are not even hungry point rather to a rarefaction and a flowing-away than to a compaction of the body. Bodies are rarefied
and in winter, as has been said, it is by the thinness of the breath; but otherwise it is fatigue and motion that sharpen the heat within the body: for having become thin and wearied, it flows out abundantly and is dispersed through the body. It is likely that apples and dried figs breathe out something of this kind, so that they refine and break up the heat of pack animals; for different things are naturally suited to be absorbed and dissolved by different agents.
The question was once raised why, although there are many liquids, the poet is accustomed to adorn the rest with their own particular epithets — calling milk “white,” honey “pale-green,” and wine “red” — yet he calls oil merely “moist,” fittingly, from the quality common to all liquids alone. The answer given was that, just as the sweetest thing is that which is sweet all the way through, and the whitest that which is white all the way through, so too a thing is called “moist” in the fullest sense when nothing in it is dry: and this is the case with oil.
In the first place, its smoothness displays the uniformity of its parts: for it is consistent with itself all the way through, in respect of touch. Next, it offers the clearest surface for the sight to mirror itself in: for there is nothing rough in it to break up the reflection, but from every part, because of its liquidity, it bends back even the smallest ray of light onto the eye — just the opposite of milk, which of all liquids alone does not reflect, because of the great deal of earthy matter mixed into it. Further, when stirred, it makes the least noise of all liquids, for it is liquid all the way through,
whereas in the others, as they flow and are carried along, the hard and earthy particles knock and strike against each other and make a noise because of their roughness. Moreover it alone remains unmixed and undiluted, for it is the densest of liquids: it has no empty spaces or pores between its dry and earthy parts within itself to receive whatever is thrown in, but because of the likeness of its parts it is well-fitted together and continuous. And when the oil foams, it does not admit air, because of its fineness and continuity. This is also the reason why fire is nourished by it: for fire is nourished by nothing except what is moist, and this alone is combustible. From wood, at any rate, the airy part departs as smoke, while the earthy part is left behind reduced to ash;
only the moist part is consumed by the fire, for by this it is naturally nourished. Water, then, and wine, and the rest, since they share largely in what is turbid and earthy, when they fall upon the flame tear it apart both by their roughness and by their weight, pressing it down and quenching it; but oil, because it is most purely liquid, changes because of its fineness and, once overcome, catches fire. The greatest proof of its liquidity is
the fact that from the smallest quantity it spreads and diffuses over the largest area: for neither honey nor water nor any other liquid, however small a quantity, undergoes such an expansion, but is quickly used up and exhausted because of its dryness. Oil, however, being everywhere pliable and soft, spreads over the body of those anointed with it and flows along together with them to the greatest distance, because of the liquidity by which its parts are drawn out,
so that it also remains and is hard to wash out. A garment soaked with water dries easily, but to clean out stains of oil is no ordinary task, for it penetrates most of all because it is the finest and most liquid of things. And indeed people find it harder to get diluted wine out of garments, as Aristotle says, because it is finer and penetrates more into the pores. Aristion’s cook was in high favor among the diners,
since, besides preparing the rest of the meal skillfully, he served up a cock that had just been sacrificed to Heracles, tender as if it had been killed the day before, though it was in fact fresh and newly slaughtered. When Aristion said that this happens quickly if the bird, as soon as it is killed, is hung from a fig tree, we sought the reason. That a strong and violent vapor issues from the fig tree is attested both by observation and by
what is said about bulls: that the fiercest bull, when tied to a fig tree, grows calm and submits to being touched, and altogether lets go of its rage as though it were being worn away. But the greatest part of the cause and power lay in the pungency: for the fig tree is the most acrid-sapped of all plants, so that the fig itself, the wood, and the leaf are all saturated with it; hence, when burned, its smoke
stings especially sharply, and its ash, once burnt, produces a very cleansing powder — and all of this is due to heat. Some think that the sap causes milk to curdle not by entangling and gluing together the particles of the milk through the unevenness of their shapes, with the smooth and rounded ones being squeezed out to the surface, but rather by melting away, through heat, the unstable and watery part of the liquid. Evidence of this is
also the fact that the sap, useless as it is, is sweet, yet is the worst of drinks: for it is not the smooth parts that are separated out by the uneven ones, but rather the cold and unconcocted part that is halted by the heat. Salt, too, contributes to this effect, for it is hot; but against the supposed entangling and binding it works in the opposite direction, since salt is by nature especially apt to dissolve things. So then the fig tree gives off a hot, pungent,
and cutting vapor, and this it is that breaks down and ripens the flesh of the bird. The same thing happens when wheat is placed in a pit together with niter, on account of heat. That the fig has something hot in it, they infer from the wine jars: when these are placed in a storage pit, the wine in them is quickly used up. There is a saying current among the Romans, Sossius Senecio, that they attribute to a witty and kindly man—
who, when he had dined alone, said he had “eaten,” not “dined,” that day — as though he always longed for the fellowship and friendliness that sweeten a dinner. Evenus used to say that fire is the most pleasant of seasonings, and Homer calls salt “divine,” while most people call it “the Graces,” because, being mixed into most things, it makes them agreeable and pleasant and welcome to the taste; but of a dinner
and a table the truly most divine seasoning is a friend who is present, familiar, and well known — not because he eats and drinks together with the company, but because he shares in and imparts conversation, provided there is in it something useful, persuasive, and suited to what is being said; since for most people idle chatter over wine drives them, in their foolishness, into their passions and further distorts them. For this reason it is worth taking
no less care in choosing our topics of conversation than our friends when we invite them to dinner, holding the opposite view and practice from the Spartans; for they, when they admit a young man or a stranger to their common mess, point to the windows and say, “Through here no word goes out”; we, on the other hand, accustom ourselves to use words that can be carried out to everyone and shared with all, because our subjects contain nothing licentious or blasphemous
or malicious or ungenerous. One may judge from the examples, of which this book contains the seventh set of ten. It happened once, in summer, that one of the guests came out with the ready-made line that everyone uses, ‘Soak your lungs with wine, for the star is rising again’; and Nicias of Nicopolis, the physician, said, ‘It is no wonder if a poet like Alcaeus was ignorant of something that even Plato the philosopher was ignorant of. And yet
Alcaeus might somehow find some support, in that the lung, being near the stomach, does enjoy some of its moisture, and so it is plausible that it is dampened on that account; but the philosopher,’ he said, ‘after writing so clearly that drinks pass through the lung, has left even his most eager defenders no plausible line of defense on his behalf. For the misapprehension is a great one. In the first place, since the passage of moist food
needs to be mixed with the dry, it is likely that the same vessel underlies both, namely the gullet, which delivers the food, softened and soaked, into the stomach below; and again, since the lung has become altogether smooth and dense, how does the barley-meal drunk in a posset pass through it without being caught? This is the very difficulty that Erasistratus rightly raised against him. And indeed, in the case of most of the parts of the body,’
he continued, ‘Plato, in tracing through his argument the purpose for which each part exists, and wishing to understand the use for which nature made each one — as indeed befits a philosopher to think — does not properly account for the function of the epiglottis, which is appointed for this very purpose: that in the swallowing of food it should press upon the windpipe and prevent anything at all from slipping into the lung; for terrible are the roughnesses and lacerations produced by coughing’,
when something slips past and the breath is driven out; and this structure, lying between the two passages and inclining toward each, falls upon the gullet when we speak, and upon the windpipe when we eat and drink, keeping the course clear for the breath and for respiration. Further,’ he said, ‘we know that those who drink gently keep their bellies moister than those who gulp down liquid all at once: for the gulped liquid is at once driven’,
by its own force straight into the bladder; whereas liquid drunk gently lingers longer among the food and softens it, so that it becomes mingled with it and remains. This would not happen if the liquids were separated off immediately upon swallowing, and did not rather become entangled with us and escort the food along together, using the liquid as a kind of vehicle, as Erasistratus used to say.’ While Nicias was expounding these matters, Protogenes the grammarian said that he had observed that
Homer, before anyone else, understood that the gullet is the vessel of food, and the windpipe that of breath — which the ancients called the ‘asphagus’; hence they were accustomed to call men with loud voices ‘eris-pharagoi.’ For, having said that Achilles struck Hector’s throat where death of the soul comes swiftest, he adds: ‘nor did the bronze-heavy ash spear cut through the windpipe, so that he might yet address him in reply with words.’ As if
the windpipe were the proper channel of voice and breath, while he had set down the throat separately as the passage for the other. When silence fell upon this speech, Florus said, ‘Shall we let Plato go by default, with no one to defend him?’ ‘Not we,’ I said; ‘for if we abandon Plato, we shall at the same time have to abandon Homer along with him, who is so far from driving liquid away and turning it aside from the windpipe that he even has the food expelled together with it in that very passage.’
For he says, “wine gushed out from his throat, and gobbets of human flesh,” unless one is to say that the Cyclops, just as he had a single eye, also had a single passage, the same for both food and voice; or that the word he uses, “pharynx,” means the gullet and not the windpipe, contrary to the way it has always been used by everyone, both long ago and now. I have brought these points forward not for lack of witnesses, but because truth itself
led me to them, since indeed many good witnesses stand ready for Plato. Set aside, if you like, Eupolis, who in his Flatterers says: “for Protagoras used to bid us drink, so that our lung might be washed clean before the Dog Star rises”; set aside too the elegant Eratosthenes, who speaks of ‘the lung, deep and moistened with unmixed wine’; and Euripides, saying plainly “wine passing through the channels of the lungs,” clearly
shows himself to have seen something even sharper than Erasistratus: for he saw that the lung has cavities and is pierced through with pores, through which it lets moisture pass. For breath had no need of pores for its exit; rather, the lung has become sieve-like and full of many passages for the sake of the liquids and of whatever slips along together with liquids. And it is, my good man, no less fitting for the lung than for the gullet
to pass along together with the drink the barley-meal and the meal-groats, since our gullet, too, is not smooth, as some say, nor slippery, but has roughnesses, on which it is likely that the fine and small particles that come up against them and catch there escape the act of swallowing. But it is not right to say either the one thing or the other; for nature’s ingenuity in matters of function is beyond the reach of argument,
nor is it possible for reason to describe worthily the precision of the instruments she employs — I mean the breath and the heat. Further, among the witnesses I summon for Plato, Philistion of Locri, a very ancient man and one distinguished in your art, and Hippocrates, and Dioxippus the follower of Hippocrates: for these men set forth not some other path but the very one that Plato
pointed out for the drink. Indeed the much-honored epiglottis did not escape the notice of Dioxippus, but he says that it is around this that the liquid, being separated off during swallowing, flows into the windpipe, while the food rolls on into the gullet; and that nothing of the food falls into the windpipe, but the gullet, along with the dry food, also receives a certain part of the liquid mixed in with it,
for it is plausible that the epiglottis lies before the windpipe as a partition and a regulator, so that the drink may filter through gently and little by little, rather than the breath being forced and disturbed by it rushing in quickly and all at once. This is why birds have not developed, and do not have, an epiglottis: for they neither suck nor lap, but peck, letting the drink down little by little and gently moistening
and wetting the windpipe. Enough, then, of witnesses. Plato’s argument first has its warrant from observation itself. For when the windpipe is wounded, the liquid is not swallowed, but, as when a channel is cut open, it is seen falling out and spurting forth, even though the gullet remains sound and uninjured. Next, we all know that in cases of lung disease thirst follows, most intense, caused by dryness
or by heat, or by some other cause that, together with the inflammation, produces the craving; and what is an even greater proof than this: those animals in which no lung has grown, or in which only a very small one has grown, have no need of drink at all, nor do they desire it, because the desire for its proper function is inborn in each of the parts; and where there are no such parts, there is neither need
nor eagerness for the activity performed through them. In general, the bladder would seem to have come into being for nothing, in the case of those who have one: for if the gullet takes up the drink together with the food and hands it over to the belly, the residue of the liquid food needs no channel of its own, but a single common one suffices for both, as if by a shared conduit, brought in together by the same route to the same place: but as it is, separate
has the bladder come to be, and separate the intestine: because the one proceeds from the lung, the other from the gullet, the two being separated off at once during swallowing. Hence no trace of the dry residue appears in the liquid, resembling it neither in color nor at all in smell — although it would naturally have come to share in those qualities, had it been mixed and soaked together with it in the belly
and not be strained out so pure and untainted. But no stone has ever formed in the stomach either — and yet there was just as much reason for the liquid to congeal and solidify there as in the bladder, if indeed everything that is drunk passed into the stomach by way of the gullet. But it seems that the gullet, drawing off at once from the windpipe enough — and only a moderate amount — of the passing liquid, uses it up for the softening and reducing of the food to chyle, and therefore produces no excess of liquid; while the lung, distributing from itself, as it were, both breath and moisture to the parts that need them, secretes the remainder into the bladder. These explanations are far more plausible than the others. Yet perhaps the truth in such matters is ungraspable, and one ought not, in a matter so obscure and so much disputed, be so dogmatic — especially not one who lays first claim to reputation and ability as a philosopher."
In our readings of Plato, the terms "horn-struck" and "unsoftenable" always occasioned inquiry — not as to what they meant, for it was clear that, since people believed the seeds that struck against the horns of oxen produced unsoftenable fruit, they called a stubborn, hard man "horn-struck" and "unsoftenable" by the same metaphor. But the dispute was about the very cause itself, on account of which this happens to seeds that strike against the horns of oxen. And we often begged off from our friends, deterred not least by Theophrastus's discussion, in which he has collected and recorded many facts whose cause is undiscoverable by us — such as the scratching-about of hens after they have laid, the seal that swallows its rennet when caught, the horn that the stag buries, and the eryngo plant, which, when a single goat takes it into her mouth, brings the whole herd to a standstill: for among such cases the horn-striking of seeds too is commonly cited as a fact that commands belief, though its cause is either undiscoverable or exceedingly difficult. But once at Delphi, over dinner, some of our companions set upon us, arguing that not only does counsel and judgment grow better from a full stomach, but wine also makes our inquiries keener and our pronouncements bolder, and they asked me to say something about the problem. Now I had no poor advocates for declining — Euthydemus my fellow-priest and Patrocles my son-in-law — who brought forward not a few facts of this kind drawn from farming and hunting. It was thought, for instance,
that hail is the sort of thing turned aside by hail-watchers using the blood of a mole or women's rags; and that wild fig branches, tied onto cultivated fig trees, keep the fruit from falling and hold it together and help it ripen; and that deer, when caught, shed a salty tear, but pigs a sweet one. "But if you go looking into these things," said Euthydemus, "you will presently have to account for celery and cumin as well — the one people think grows better for being trampled and crushed underfoot as it sprouts, the other for being sown with curses and abuse." Since Florus thought this all play and nonsense, while none of the others would give up the inquiry as ungraspable, I said, "I have found a remedy, with which, if you too will resolve some of the difficulties you have raised, you can press this argument home against me. It seems to me that cold produces hardness in wheat and chickpeas, compressing and congealing their substance to the point of hardness, while warmth makes them easily loosened and soft. Hence those are wrong who apply to such cases the Homeric line about
the "no year bears" fields: for naturally warm places, given a favorable blending of air, produce softer fruits. Now of the seeds that fall from the hand straight into the earth, those that sink in and are, so to speak, born under cover enjoy more fully the earth's warmth and moisture; but those that strike against the horns of oxen do not meet with the "best good order," as Hesiod calls it, but, being knocked aside and slipping off, resemble things thrown rather than things sown. Hence either the cold destroys them outright, or, striking their bare coats, makes them hard to dissolve, sapless, and woody. For you can see that even among stones, the parts embedded in earth, as if alive, are softer than those on the surface — warmth keeps them so; that is why craftsmen bury the stones they mean to work, as if ripening them by warmth, while those left in the open air, bare, become resistant, hard to shape, and unsoftenable because of the cold. And they say that grain too, if it remains longer on the threshing floor exposed and bare, becomes harder than grain gathered up at once. In some places, too, a wind that strikes the grain while it is being winnowed makes it hard because of the cold, as they report happens at Philippi in Macedonia; but chaff heaped over stored grain protects it. And one should not be surprised to hear farmers say that of two parallel furrows, one produces hard grain and the other soft; and, most remarkable of all, that of the pods of a single bean plant, some are of one sort and some of another — obviously because a cold wind or rain has struck some less and others more."
Alexion, my father-in-law, made fun of Hesiod for advising us to "drink freely at the opening and the closing of the jar, but be sparing in the middle" — precisely where the best wine is found. "For who," he said, "does not know that the middle of wine is best, the top of oil, and the bottom of honey? He ought rather to have told us to leave the wine in the middle alone and wait until it turns for the worse, once the jar has run low." When this had been said, we let Hesiod go and turned to inquiring into the cause of the difference. The matter of the honey gave us little trouble, since almost everyone knows that the lightest part is lightest because of its porousness, while the dense and continuous part settles below the rest by its weight; and if you turn the vessel upside down, each part in a little while resumes its proper place, one sinking, the other rising to the top. Nor was wine left without plausible explanations either: first, its potency, being a kind of heat, seems reasonably to be concentrated most in the middle, and this is best preserved there; and second, the lower part is spoiled by the lees, while the upper part on the surface is corrupted by the nearness of the air. For we know that air is most apt to alter the character of wine — that is why people bury the jars and cover them, so that as little air as possible may touch them. And, most important of all, a full vessel does not let wine spoil as readily as one that has grown depleted; for a great deal of air flows in to fill the empty space and alters it all the more, whereas in full vessels the wine is held together by itself and admits little of the corrupting influence from outside. Oil, too, gave us no poor occasion for discussion. One person said that the lower part of the oil grows worse, being clouded by the sediment, and that the upper part is not really better but only seems so, because it is farthest from what harms it. Another blamed the density of oil, on account of which it is most resistant to mixture and admits none of the other liquids into itself except when forced in by some blow; hence it does not even mix with air, but keeps apart because of the fineness and continuity of its particles, so that it is changed less by air, since the air cannot master it. Aristotle seemed to oppose this account, having observed, as he says, that oil grows more fragrant and altogether better in vessels that have been partly emptied; he then assigns the cause of the improvement to the air, since there is more of it, and it prevails more as it settles into the depleted vessel. "Perhaps, then," I said, "the air both benefits oil and harms wine by the very same power. For aging is advantageous to wine, but disadvantageous to oil, and the air, falling upon each, removes this aging: what is cooled stays fresh, while what has no outlet grows old quickly and withers through continuous confinement — so it has plausibly been said that the air, approaching what lies at the surface, keeps it fresh. That is why the top of wine is the worst part, and the top of oil the best; for aging produces the best condition in the one, the worst in the other."
Florus, being fond of old customs, would not allow the table to be cleared bare, but always left some food remaining on it. "And this is not the only thing," he said, "that I know my father and grandfather carefully observed — they also never let a lamp go out; for the ancient Romans were most scrupulous about this too, whereas people nowadays put it out right after dinner, so as not to waste oil needlessly." Eustrophus the Athenian, who was present, said, "Well, what more good does that do them, unless they also learn the clever trick of our friend Polycharmus, who said that after much deliberation over how the slaves might be kept from stealing the oil, he barely worked out the solution — to fill the lamps to the brim the moment they went out, and then check again the next day whether they remained full." Florus laughed and said, "Well then, since that problem is solved, let us examine the question why it is likely that the ancients were just as scrupulous about lamps as about tables." The question of the lamps was taken up first, and his son-in-law Caesernius supposed that, because of its kinship with the undying, sacred fire, the elders regarded the destruction of any fire whatsoever as something to be religiously avoided: for there are two kinds of destruction, as with a human being — one violent, when the fire is put out by force, the other as if natural, when it wastes away of itself. The sacred fire, then, they guarded against both, continually feeding and watching it; but the other fire they let waste away of itself, without doing it violence or begrudging it, as though they were taking the life from a creature, so that it should not be kept alive to no purpose. Lucius, the son of Florus, said that the rest was well said, but that in singling out the sacred fire they did not thereby honor and revere it as better or more solemn than other fire; rather, just as some Egyptians revere and honor the whole race of dogs, others that of wolves or crocodiles, yet each people keeps and feeds only a single animal — some a dog, others a crocodile, others a wolf, since it was not possible to keep them all — so here too the care and guarding bestowed on that one fire was a symbol of scrupulous regard for fire in general. "For nothing else so resembles a living thing as fire does — moving and feeding itself, and by its brightness revealing all things and making them plain, as the soul does; and its power, not without a share in the vital principle, shows itself most of all in its quenching and destruction: for it cries out and makes sounds and resists, just as a living thing does when it is killed by violence — unless you have something better to say," he said, looking toward me. "None of the causes given," I said, "do I find fault with; but I would add that the custom is also a lesson in kindliness: for it is not right to destroy food when one has had one's fill, nor, after drinking deep from a spring, to blind and hide its source, nor to destroy the markers of a voyage or a road once one has made use of them, but to leave and preserve what is useful for those who will need it after us. Hence it is not honorable, out of stinginess, to extinguish the light of a lamp we no longer need, but rather to preserve and leave it, in case someone in need should come while it is still there and burning: for indeed, if it were possible, it would be a fine thing to lend even sight and hearing to another, and, by Zeus, prudence and courage too, when we ourselves are about to sleep and rest. Consider, too, whether it was not from a similar training in gratitude, carried to an extreme, that the ancients revered fruit-bearing oaks, and the Athenians called a certain fig tree sacred and forbade the felling of the sacred olive: for such practices do not, as some say, incline men toward superstition, but accustom our sense of gratitude and fellow-feeling, even in our dealings with insensate and inanimate things. Hence Hesiod rightly does not allow food to be served from pots that have not first been offered to the fire, but bids us render the fire its first-fruits and its due honor for its service; and the Romans did well in their use of lamps, in that they did not take back the nourishment they had given, but let it be used and let it shine as long as it lived."
When I had said this, Eustrophus said, "Does this, then, also give a fitting opening to the discussion of the table, for one who thinks that something should always be left over from dinner for the servants and the servants' children? For they take pleasure not so much in receiving as in sharing. That is why they say the kings of the Persians not only always send out portions to their friends, commanders, and bodyguards, but also always set out the dinner of the slaves and of the dogs on their own table, so far as possible making fellow-diners and fellow-hearth-companions of all whom they employ; for even the fiercest of beasts are tamed by a share in food." And I, laughing, said, "But that 'stored-away fish' of the proverb, my friend — why do we not bring it out too, along with the Pythagorean measure, on which he forbade us to sit, teaching us always to leave something over from what is present for the future, and to remember tomorrow in the midst of today? Among us Boeotians, at any rate, the saying 'leave something also for the Medes' is on everyone's lips, from the time when the Medes overran Phocis and the farthest parts of Boeotia, plundering and pillaging as they went; and everywhere, always, the maxim 'leave something also for strangers who arrive' ought to be ready to hand — just as I, for my part, find fault with Achilles' table, always caught empty and starved: for when the envoys around Ajax and Odysseus arrived, he, having nothing ready, is forced to cook and prepare food from scratch; and again, wishing to show Priam kindness, he 'leaps up' and slaughters a white sheep, and skins and roasts it, spending a great part of the night on these tasks. But Eumaeus, being, as he was, the well-bred nursling of a wise man, had no such trouble when Telemachus appeared, but at once feasted him once he had sat down, setting before him platters of roasted meat, 'which they had left over the day before, when they were eating.' And if this seems a small thing, that other point is not small — the checking and holding back of appetite while the means of enjoyment is still at hand: for those accustomed to abstain from what is present desire less what is absent."
Lucius then took up the point and said he recalled hearing from his grandmother that the table is sacred, and that nothing sacred ought to be left empty. “And it seemed to me,” he said, “that the table is also an image of the earth: for besides nourishing us, it is round and stable, and by some is fittingly called a ‘hestia,’ a hearth. For just as we hold that the earth must always have and bear something useful for us, so too we think the table ought not to be seen empty and left bare of anything set upon it.”
At the Pythian games Callistratus, who was superintendent of the Amphictyons, when a fellow citizen and friend, a singer to the flute, arrived too late for the official registration, barred him from the competition according to the law; but in entertaining us he brought him into the banquet dressed and garlanded, as if for a contest, adorned along with the chorus in splendid fashion.
And by Zeus, at first it was a charming performance; but then, once he had shaken and rattled the company thoroughly, and perceived that most of them had given way and, carried off by pleasure, were letting him do as he pleased, playing wildly on his pipe and indulging every excess, he threw off all restraint and showed that music, more than any wine, intoxicates those who take it in however it comes, and without limit. For they were no longer content to shout and clap while reclining, but in the end most of them leapt up and joined in movements that were unbecoming of free men, though well suited to those strains and melodies.
When they had stopped, and the drinking-party was returning again to order, as though out of a fit of madness, Lamprias wanted to say something and speak frankly to the young men; yet, being afraid that he might come across as too disagreeable and unpleasant, he hesitated. At that point Callistratus, as if offering him an opening, said something of this sort to lead in: “I myself,” he said, “absolve the love of listening and the love of spectacle from the charge of intemperance — though I do not altogether agree with Aristoxenus, who says that the word ‘good’ is applied to these pleasures alone. For people also call dishes ‘good’ and perfumes ‘good,’ and say they have ‘fared well’ after dining pleasantly and expensively. Nor do I think Aristotle was right to excuse from the charge of intemperance the enjoyments that come through sight and hearing, on the ground that these alone are peculiar to human beings, while animals, having a nature suited to the others, both use and share in them.
For we observe that many of the irrational creatures too are charmed by music — deer, for instance, by the pipe; and for mares in heat a tune is piped which men call the ‘horse-tune.’ And Pindar says that the dolphin, in the windless expanse of the sea, was stirred to dance by the lovely melody of pipes. And men hunting scops-owls take them by dancing, since the birds delight in the sight and, imitating the movements, sway their shoulders this way and that along with the hunters. So I see nothing peculiar to such pleasures except that they alone belong to the soul, whereas the others terminate in the body and around the body: melody, rhythm, dance, and song, passing beyond mere sensation, lodge their charm and their tickling delight in the rejoicing part of the soul itself.
That is why none of such pleasures is hidden away, nor needs darkness and encircling walls, as the Cyrenaics say; rather, stadiums and theaters are built for them, and to watch or hear something in the company of many others is more delightful and more dignified — a mark, surely, not of intemperance and self-indulgence, but of a liberal and refined pastime, one that seeks as many witnesses of itself as possible.”
When Callistratus had said this, Lamprias, seeing those patrons of the entertainers growing still bolder, said: “That is not the reason, son of Leon; rather, it seems to me that the ancients were not right to call Dionysus the child of Lethe — Forgetfulness — for they ought to have called him her father, since it is because of him that you too now seem to have forgotten that, of the errors people commit concerning pleasures, some are caused by intemperance and others by ignorance and inattention.
Where the harm is manifest, people go wrong there through intemperance, forcing down their reasoning; but whatever does not immediately and on the spot exact the penalty of self-indulgence, that they choose and do out of ignorance of the harm. That is why we call those who go astray over food, sex, and drink — who are followed by many illnesses, the ruin of their fortunes, and disgrace — intemperate: like that Theodectes, who, though suffering from an eye infection, said ‘Welcome, dear light,’ when his beloved appeared; or Anaxarchus of Abdera, who, as they say, knowing full well, was wretched all the same, for his nature, pleasure-struck, carried him the opposite way — a nature which most of the sophists themselves cower before.
But those pleasures which, while the desires concerned with belly, private parts, taste, and smell are drawn up in opposition to them, and while people are on guard against being caught by these, steal in unnoticed around the eyes and ears and take up secret residence there, lying in ambush — those who succumb to such pleasures, though no less prone to passion and self-indulgence than the others, we do not likewise call intemperate. For it is not through knowing but through inexperience that they are swept along, and they suppose themselves superior to pleasure if they sit through a whole day in the theaters without food or drink — as if a jar should pride itself on not being lifted up by the belly or the base, while it is easily carried off by the ears.
Hence Arcesilaus said it made no difference whether one were a catamite behind or in front. One must fear the softness and self-indulgence that tickles through the eyes and through the ears no less; and one must not consider a city unconquerable merely because it keeps its other gates secure with bars, bolts, and portcullises, if the enemy can get inside by passing through just one; nor consider oneself unconquered by pleasure, if one has been taken not through the shrine of Aphrodite but through the Museum or the theater — for one has equally given way and handed over one's soul to be led and carried off by pleasures.
For the pleasures of every cook and perfumer, pouring over us drugs more pungent and more elaborate than those of melodies and rhythms, lead us on and corrupt us, in a way testifying against themselves; for of these there is nothing blameworthy, nor anything changed, as Pindar said of the things upon the table — whatever splendid things earth and the surging sea bring us — once they are simply set before us. But no dish, no food, and not even this excellent wine we are drinking, when consumed, has ever drawn out of us, through pleasure, such a cry as the piping and drumming just now have filled the house with — if not the whole city — with uproar, clapping, and shouting.
That is why one must be especially wary of these pleasures: they are the strongest, precisely because they do not, like those concerned with taste, touch, and smell, terminate in the irrational and merely physical part of the soul, but instead lay hold of the part that judges and thinks. Moreover, against the other pleasures reason, even when it falls short in the struggle, still manages to resist, and some passions themselves often stand in the way: in the fish-market, for instance, stinginess checks the gourmand's reaching hand, and love of money has turned love of a costly courtesan aside — just as, in Menander, each of the drinking companions, when the pimp brought in some haughty young girl to tempt them, bent his head down and simply chewed away at his sweetmeats.
For borrowing money is a harsh penalty for intemperance, and loosening one's purse-strings is not at all easy. But as for these so-called liberal pleasures concerning the ears and eyes, the music-loving, pipe-loving frenzies, one may draw and enjoy them free of charge and without payment from many quarters — at contests, at theaters, at banquets — with others providing the expense.
That is why corruption comes so readily to those whose reasoning does not step in to help and guide them.” A silence followed, and then he said: “What, then, must reasoning do, or what must it say, for us to ask its help? It will hardly wrap earmuffs around us like those of Xenocrates, nor will it make us get up in the middle of dinner if we notice a lyre being tuned or a pipe starting to sound.” “No indeed,” said Lamprias, “but whenever we fall in among the Sirens, we must call upon the Muses and take refuge on the Helicon of the ancients.
For a man in love with something costly cannot be brought Penelope, nor be given Pantheia to live with; but a man who delights in mimes, in wretchedly composed and affectedly clever melodies and songs, can be led over instead to Euripides, Pindar, and Menander, ‘washing his brine-soaked hearing,’ as Plato says, ‘with a fresh stream of words.’ For just as the magi bid those possessed by demons recite and repeat to themselves the Ephesian Letters, so we too, when stirred by such warblings and leapings, by frenzied cries and head-tossing riot, ought to call to mind and set beside them those sacred and solemn Letters, comparing them with songs, poems, and words held in common, so that we shall not be utterly overwhelmed by this thing, nor let ourselves be carried off sideways, as if borne along by a smooth-flowing stream.”
Homer represents Menelaus as coming of his own accord to the banquet Agamemnon gave for the chiefs; for he knew in his heart how his brother was toiling, and he did not overlook the fact that his brother's oversight had become obvious, nor did he reproach him by staying away, as fault-finding and difficult people do, who fasten upon such oversights and lapses of memory in their friends, taking more pleasure in being neglected than in being honored, so that they may have grounds for complaint.
As for the custom of the ‘called-along,’ whom people nowadays call ‘shadows’ — those who are not themselves invited but are brought to the dinner by the ones who were invited — the question was raised where this custom first arose. It seemed to have begun with Socrates, who persuaded Aristodemus, though uninvited, to go with him to Agathon's house, and who then had something rather comic happen to him: for Socrates, quite unnoticed, fell behind along the way, and Aristodemus went in ahead of him — literally a shadow going on before a body that had the light behind it.
Later, however, in receiving guests — especially those of persons in authority — it became necessary for hosts who did not know the followers and attendants accompanying the guest to extend the invitation for the guest's sake, while still setting some limit on the number, so that they might not suffer what befell the man who once entertained King Philip in the countryside: Philip arrived bringing many companions, and the dinner had not been prepared for so many. Seeing the host thrown into confusion, Philip quietly sent word around to his friends, bidding them leave room for a cake; and they, expecting this, held back from the dishes already set before them, and so the dinner proved sufficient for everyone.
While I was rambling on about this to those present, Florus decided it was worth some serious inquiry into the matter of these so-called ‘shadows,’ to work out whether it is proper for those invited to walk along and follow in this way. His son-in-law Caesernius rejected the practice altogether, saying that we ought above all to follow Hesiod's advice and invite the man who loves us to the feast; failing that, we should call upon our own acquaintances and intimates, to share with us the libation, the table, the conversation that arises over wine, and the goodwill of the occasion.
“As it is,” he said, “we behave like those who hire out ships for freight, allowing whatever anyone brings to be loaded aboard; just so we hand over our banquets to others and let them be filled up from whoever happens to turn up, whether they are agreeable or worthless. I would be astonished if an agreeable man ever arrived as someone else's guest — or rather uninvited, since often the host does not know him at all; and if the host does know him and is on familiar terms with him and yet has not invited him, it is all the more shameful for that man to go, as though he were being caught out for sharing in the other's hospitality in a sense by force and against the host's will.
Moreover, to go ahead of, or to lag behind, the man who invited him, on the way to another's house, carries with it a certain awkwardness, and it is hardly becoming to need witnesses, on approaching one's hosts, to prove that one has come to dinner not as an invited guest but as so-and-so's shadow. And again, to tag along and keep watch over another man's time for oiling and bathing, whether he is slow or quick about it, is thoroughly illiberal and worthy of a Gnatho — if indeed Gnatho became the cleverest of men at dining at others' expense.
And indeed, if there is any time when people are especially permitted to say, ‘Tongue, if you wish to boast a little, speak freely,’ and the greatest frankness, mixed with playfulness, attends what is said and done over wine, how then could a man conduct himself in such company if he is not a genuine, self-invited guest, but in a sense illegitimate, smuggled into the party? For both using frankness and refraining from it toward those present lays one open to easy misconstruction. Nor is it a small evil, this casual use of names and this buffoonery, for men who are not offended but instead put up with being called ‘shadows’ and answering to the name — for it accustoms one, through this readiness to be led by mere words, toward shameful conduct itself.
That is why, whenever I have invited companions, I have sometimes given the name ‘shadows’ — for the city's usage is strong and hard to resist; but as for myself, invited by one man to go to another's house, up to now I have held out against complying.”
When silence followed these words, Florus said: “This second point presents the greater difficulty; but inviting in this way is necessary in the reception of strangers, as was said before, for it is neither decent to entertain a guest without his friends, nor easy to know beforehand whom he will bring with him.” And I said to him: “Consider, then, whether those who have granted hosts this manner of inviting have not also granted, to those invited, the right to comply and go along. For it is no more fine to give what ought not be given, or to ask for it, than it is to summon what ought not be summoned, or to consent to it, or to do it.
Now, in dealings with rulers or with strangers there is no choice or selection involved in the invitation; one must simply receive those who come along with them. But otherwise, when entertaining a friend, it is more friendly to invite him personally, in a way that shows one is not ignorant of his acquaintances, intimates, and kin — for the honor and the favor are greater when it is plain that one does not fail to notice which people the friend embraces most, with whom he is most glad to spend time, and that one is pleased for them to be honored equally whether invited directly or merely brought along.
Not but that there are occasions when the host must act on his own judgment, just as those who sacrifice to a god together with the gods who share his altar and his temple offer a joint prayer for them all without naming each one individually. For neither food nor wine nor perfume puts a man in so pleasant a mood as does a well-disposed and agreeable fellow-guest. But to inquire closely and question what particular dishes and pastries the man about to be entertained enjoys most, and to ask about differences among wines and perfumes, is altogether vulgar and shows the manner of the newly rich; whereas for a man who has many friends, relations, and intimates, to invite for himself those among them with whom he would most gladly spend time, and in whose company he is most cheered, and to bring these along above all, is neither unpleasant nor out of place.
For neither sailing together, nor living in the same house, nor pleading a case jointly with people one does not wish to be with, is as unpleasant as dining together with them — and, conversely, dining together is as pleasant as those other things are unpleasant; for the symposium is a shared partnership in seriousness and play alike, in conversation and in action. Hence it is not chance acquaintances but those who are truly dear to us that...
—and be intimate with one another, so that they may spend the time pleasantly together. Cooks prepare their dishes by blending different flavors—sharp, rich, sweet, and pungent—but a dinner party cannot become good and pleasing unless the guests brought together are of one kind and share the same feelings. Now since, as the Peripatetics say, the first mover is unmoved, while the last thing moved does not move anything else, and between the two is that which both moves other things and is itself moved by others, so too," I said, "in our discussion, since there are three kinds of people—the one who only invites, the one who is only invited, and the one who both invites and is invited—we have already spoken of the one who invites; it would be no worse to go through the others as well," I said,
"as far as I see fit. The man, then, who is invited by another and in turn invites others is bound, I think, first of all to spare the crowd, and not, as though foraging in enemy territory, to provision himself indiscriminately from everyone around him, nor, like men seizing territory at draughts, always to block and drive off all the friends of his host in favor of his own—so that the men giving the dinner suffer what those suffer who carry out meals as offerings to Hecate and the averting gods: they do not taste them themselves, nor do the people at home, except for a share of the smoke and the commotion. For those who say 'having sacrificed to the Delphians, he buys his own meat back' are merely joking with us; but this really happens to those who receive strangers who are thoughtless, or friends who arrive with a crowd of shadows, like Harpies, and strip and plunder their dinners. In the next place, one ought not
to go off to another man's dinner with whatever company he happens to have, but should above all invite the host's own household and intimates, competing with the host himself and forestalling him with invitations; failing that, one should invite his own friends whom the host himself would have wished to choose—being reasonable, choosing reasonable men, and if fond of learning, choosing men fond of learning, or, if he is a man of influence, men of influence—long since seeking, in one way or another, to bring them into
acquaintance and fellowship with the host. For to hand over and provide, to a man so disposed, the beginning of an association and of friendliness is a rather happy stroke, and a graceful one; but the man who brings in people uncongenial and ill-matched—heavy drinkers to a teetotaler, or dissolute and extravagant men to one plain in his way of life, or again gloomy old men, or bearded sophists with a booming voice, to a young man fond of drinking and playful—is out of season, repaying kindness with unpleasantness. For
the guest who has been invited ought to be no less agreeable to his host than the host is to his guest; and he will be agreeable if he makes not only himself but also those who come with him and on his account both charming and gracious. As for the one who still remains of the three—the man invited by one person to go to another's house—he is one who, shrinking from the very name 'shadow' and resenting it,
will indeed seem, in truth, to be afraid of a mere shadow; yet the matter calls for the greatest caution. For it is not right readily to follow just anyone, nor in just any manner; rather, one must first consider who the inviter is. For if he is not a very close acquaintance, but rather one of the rich or one of the powerful, wanting, as if for a stage production, a splendid retinue, or fully persuaded that he is doing a favor and paying an honor by the invitation, he is to be declined at once. But if he is a friend and an intimate, one should not obey at once, but only if it seems that he has need of some necessary meeting and companionship that admits of no other occasion—either because he has arrived from far away after a long absence, or is about to depart, and clearly, out of goodwill, desires and longs to spend time together—and provided he brings along not a large or a strange company, but only himself, or himself with a few companions; or if, apart from all this, he is working to bring about
through the invitation some beginning of familiarity and friendship between the one invited and the host, the host being a decent man and worthy of friendship. But as for worthless men, the more they lay hold and entangle themselves, the more, like brambles and cleavers, they must be stepped over; and even if the men bringing one along are decent but are not bringing one to decent company, one ought not to follow along or put up with it, as though taking a bad medicine mixed with honey—
a bad friend by means of a good one. It is also out of place to go to see a person who is a complete stranger and unfamiliar, unless he is a man of outstanding virtue, as has been said, and one is doing this to make a beginning of friendship and would be glad to arrive easily and simply, in the company of another, to see him. And indeed, of one's own intimates, one should go especially, when invited by another, to see those who themselves are permitted to go with others
to see us. For Philip the jester thought it more laughable to come to dinner uninvited than invited; but for good men who are friends, to come uninvited to other good men who are friends is more dignified and more pleasant, if they arrive at the right moment, unlooked for and uninvited, in the company of other friends, delighting their hosts and at the same time honoring those who brought them. But least of all is it fitting to go, when not invited by them but by others, to rulers or
wealthy men or potentates—guarding, not unreasonably, against a reputation for shamelessness, bad taste, and ill-timed ambition." There was talk at Chaeronea, over wine, about entertainments, with Diogenianus of Pergamum present, and we had trouble fending off a deep-bearded sophist of the Stoa, who brought forward Plato accusing those who make use of flute-girls over their wine, on the ground that they are unable to keep one another's company by means of speech.
And yet Philippus of Prusa, who was present, from the same wrestling-school, bade us leave alone those guests at Agathon's table, who spoke things more delightful than any flute or harp; for it was no wonder that a flute-girl was dismissed when those men were present, but rather it would have been strange if forgetfulness of both drink and food had not overtaken the party, through sheer pleasure and enchantment. And yet Xenophon was not ashamed, with Socrates
and Antisthenes and other such men present, to bring in the jester Philippus, showing the men, as Homer showed 'the onion as relish for drink.' And Plato has inserted Aristophanes' speech about love, like a comedy, into the Symposium, and at the end, throwing open the outer door, brings in a most colorful scene—Alcibiades, drunk, crowned, and reveling. Then follow the sparring matches with Socrates
and the encomium about Agathon and Socrates. O dear Graces, is it lawful to say that if Apollo himself had come to that symposium with his lyre tuned, those present would have begged the god to hold off, until the discourse was brought to its conclusion and reached its end? "Then can it be," he said, "that those men, who possessed such grace in conversation, nevertheless made use of interludes
and varied their symposia with such amusements as these; while we, mixed together with men of public and market-place affairs—and often, when we happen to be so, with common and rather boorish people—banish such grace and pastime from our parties, or else leave them ourselves, fleeing as if from the approach of the Sirens? Yet Cleitomachus the athlete, getting up and leaving whenever anyone brought in talk of love, was admired for it; and shall a philosopher
who flees from a symposium at the sound of a flute, and, when a harp-girl tunes her strings, shouts for his sandals and orders the lamp lit at once, not be laughable, loathing the most harmless pleasures the way dung-beetles loathe perfumes? For if ever, then surely most of all over wine, one ought to indulge in such play and give one's soul over to the god for these purposes. As for Euripides, though in other respects he is dear to me, he has certainly not
persuaded me, in his prescription about music, that it should be brought in for griefs and heavy sorrows; for there, one must set over the sick, like a physician, speech that is earnest and sober, but such pleasures as these should be mixed in with Dionysus, set down as a part of play. For there is something charming in the remark of the Laconian who, watching at Athens the contests of new tragedies, and seeing the elaborate preparations of the sponsors and
the eager efforts of the trainers and the rivalry, said that the city did not seem to him to be behaving sensibly, playing with such great earnestness; for truly, when playing, one ought to play, and not purchase one's leisure at the cost of great expense or of time useful for other things, but rather, in drinking and relaxation, taste a little of such things, and at the same time, while enjoying oneself, consider whether there is anything useful to be got from them."
When this had been said, as the sophist was wanting to argue back again, I headed him off, saying, "Rather, Diogenianus, one might consider this: of the many kinds of entertainment there are, which sort would best fit a drinking-party, and let us call on this wise man here to judge; for being unaffected by, and immune to the charm of, everything, he would not be led astray into choosing the more pleasant over the better." So, when
both Diogenianus and the rest of us urged him, he, without hesitating at all, said that he would drive all the rest off to the stage and the orchestra, but would bring in what had recently been introduced at Rome into dinner parties, though it had not yet caught on widely. "For you know," he said, "that of Plato's dialogues some are narrative and others dramatic; of these dramatic ones, then, the lightest are taught
to boys, so that they can recite them by heart; and there is added a delivery suited to the character of the persons represented, a shaping and modulation of the voice, and gestures and expressions that follow what is being said. These things the austere and cultivated people welcomed with extraordinary delight, but the unmanly and those whose ears have been corrupted through lack of taste and culture—the sort Aristoxenus says vomit bile whenever they hear something in the enharmonic mode—rejected them; and
I should not be surprised if they reject it altogether, for effeminacy is gaining the upper hand." And Philippus, seeing some of the company growing rather displeased, said, "Spare us, my good man, and be sparing in your abuse of us; for we were the first, when the practice was being introduced at Rome, to be displeased by it, and we took to task those who thought it fit to make Plato an accompaniment to wine, and to listen to Plato's dialogues over their sweets and perfumes while they drank on—
at which time, with Sappho's poems and those of Anacreon being read aloud, I for my part felt I should set down my cup out of shame. But since much occurs to me to say, I am afraid I may seem to be talking to you with a certain earnestness rather than in play; and so, as you see, I hand over to my friend Diogenianus, along with the cup, the task of 'washing the salty ear with a draught of sweet speech.'" Diogenianus then took it up and said, "But I hear that these speeches too
are sober ones; so that wine does not seem to be wronging us, nor to be getting the better of us. Still, I am afraid that I myself may have to submit an account of my conduct; and yet a great deal of the entertainment ought to be pared away. First, tragedy, as being not at all suited to a drinking party but rather too solemn in its declamations, and given to contriving the portrayal of events involving suffering and lamentation. And from dancing I dismiss the Pyladean style, which is grand, emotional, and
involves many characters; but out of respect for those praises which Socrates delivered concerning dancing, I welcome the Bathyllian style, which from the outset, in its plain form, touches on the cordax, portraying some pantomime of Echo, or of a Pan or Satyr reveling together with Love. Of comedies, the Old Comedy is unsuited to men who are drinking, on account of its unevenness; for the earnestness in its so-called parabases and
its outspokenness are far too undiluted and intense, and its readiness for jibes and buffoonery is dreadfully overdone and unrestrained, and full of indecent expressions and licentious names; further, just as at the dinners of great men each of those reclining has his own wine-pourer standing by, so here each guest will need a grammarian at his side to explain each detail—who Laispodias is in Eupolis, and who Cinesias in Plato,
and who Lampon in Cratinus, and each of the other people made fun of; so that our symposium would turn into a schoolroom, or else the jokes would go by unheard and unintelligible. But as for the New Comedy, what objection could anyone raise? It is so thoroughly blended into symposia that one could steer the drinking-party through better without wine than without Menander. For its diction is sweet and its handling of affairs
is plain and everyday, so that it is neither despised by the sober nor a source of distress to those who are drunk; and useful, unaffected maxims flow through it, and it softens the harshest of characters, as though in fire, by means of wine, and bends them toward greater gentleness; and its mixture of earnestness with play would seem to have been made for no other purpose than to provide, to men who have been drinking and are relaxed, pleasure and benefit at once.
Even its love affairs, in his work, have their proper season for men who have been drinking and are about to go home shortly afterward and rest beside their own wives; for there is no love of a male boy in all those many plays, and the seductions of maidens turn, for the most part, into marriage; and the affairs with courtesans, if the women are forward and bold, are broken off through some act of self-restraint or repentance on the young men's part; but for those
who are good and love in return, either some legitimate father is discovered, or some period of time is added to their love, allowing a humane show of consideration and restraint. These things, for men engaged in some other business, are perhaps worth no serious attention; but in the act of drinking, I should not be surprised if their charm and grace, together with a certain shaping and adornment, produce an effect that assimilates men's characters to those that are decent
and humane." Diogenianus, then, either finished or paused and fell silent; and when the sophist attacked him again, thinking it necessary to go through certain speeches of Aristophanes as well, Philippus, addressing me, said, "This man has satisfied his own desire, having praised Menander, who is most to his taste, and seems no longer to care about anything else. Many of the entertainments remain unexamined by us,
about which I should be glad to hear you speak; and we shall judge the contest of the animal-carvers tomorrow, if it please our guest and Diogenianus, while sober." "Well then," I said, "there are certain mimes, of which some are called 'plots' and others 'farces'; and I think neither kind is suited to a symposium—the 'plots' because of the length of the pieces and the difficulty of staging them, and the 'farces,' being full
of buffoonery and vulgar scurrility, are not fit to be watched even by the slave-boys who carry the sandals, at least if their masters are sensible men. Yet most people, even with women reclining beside them and young children present, put on display representations of deeds and words which disturb the soul more than any drunkenness. But the lyre, at any rate, has long been, even as far back as Homer's time, a familiar accompaniment of the feast,
and it is not fitting to dissolve so ancient a friendship and intimacy; rather, one need only ask the lyre-singers to remove the excessive dirges and lamentation from their songs, and sing instead things auspicious and fitting for men at a festive gathering. As for the flute, it is not possible to banish it from the table even if one wished to; for the libations long for it together with the garland, and the divine joins its voice with the paean, and then it strikes up...
...and passed through the ears, pouring in a sweet sound that brought calm all the way to the soul; so that if the strong wine had not shaken loose or dissolved some troublesome and anxious thought, this, yielding to the grace and gentleness of the melody, grows quiet—provided that the music itself keeps due measure, without working the hearers into passion or, with its droning pipes and many-stringed excess, unsettling and driving out of place a mind already made pliant by wine and unsteady. For just as grazing animals do not understand speech that carries meaning, but herdsmen rouse them and lull them again with careless hisses and clicks of the tongue, or with pipes and shells, so too whatever is bestial and herd-like in the soul, unintelligent and deaf to reason, is soothed and calmed by those who play and pipe to it with melodies and rhythms.
Nevertheless, if I must say what I myself think, I would never hand the symposium over to the pipe alone, or to the melody of the lyre without speech and song, as though letting it be swept along by a mere current. We must train ourselves, both in our serious moments and in our play, to derive our pleasures from reasoned speech and to spend our time in conversation; and melody and rhythm should be served up like a relish alongside speech, not offered on their own account, nor should we indulge them like gluttons. For just as no one rejects the pleasure that accompanies wine and food along with the need for nourishment, while Socrates used to box the ears of that pleasure which comes from perfumes, as unnecessary and superfluous—so too, when the sound of the harp and the pipe merely strikes the ears on its own account, we should not give it entry; but if it follows along with speech and song, feasting and delighting the reason within us, then let us admit it—recalling that Marsyas was punished by the god precisely because, having stopped his own mouth with the strap and the pipes, he dared to compete with bare melody against song accompanied by the lyre. Let us only take care," I said, "that to fellow drinkers capable of delighting one another through conversation and philosophy we do not bring in anything from outside that will be more a hindrance to good company than any form of entertainment.
For it is not only those who, having safety at home and from their own resources, still wish to import it from elsewhere, as Euripides said, who are foolish, but also those who, though great cheerfulness and good spirits are already present among them, make it a point of pride to bring in pleasures from outside. Indeed, the munificence of the Great King, shown toward Antalcidas the Spartan, appeared strikingly tasteless and boorish, when he dipped a garland of mingled roses and crocus in perfume and sent it to him, thereby quenching its natural, proper beauty and doing outrage to the flowers. It is much the same thing, when a symposium has its own charm and its own proper music within it, to pipe and play upon it from outside, taking away what belongs to it by adding what is foreign. Indeed, the occasion most calling for hired performers would be when the symposium is heaving and bristling toward quarrel or contentiousness, so as to quench some abusive exchange and to interrupt an inquiry that is being carried into an unpleasant rivalry and a sophistical contest, and to check disputes proper to the assembly and the marketplace, until the symposium once again becomes, from the start, calm and unruffled."
There was talk over dinner, while Nicostratus was our host, about the matters the Athenians were about to debate in assembly. When someone said, "Gentlemen, we are doing a Persian thing, deliberating over wine," Glaucias took him up and said, "Why more Persian than Greek? For it was a Greek who said, 'counsel and cunning are better on a full stomach'; and it was Greeks who, together with Agamemnon, besieged Troy—men to whom, once they had eaten and drunk, the old man would first begin to weave his counsel, becoming the one who proposed to the king the best course, saying, 'Give a feast to the elders,' for, he says, 'you will obey him who, when many are gathered, devises the best counsel.' For this reason too, the peoples who enjoyed the best-ordered constitutions in Greece, and clung most closely to their ancient customs, kept their governing bodies together over wine. For the institutions called among the Cretans the Andreia, and among the Spartans the Phiditia, held the rank of secret deliberative councils and aristocratic assemblies, just as, I think, do our own Prytaneum and Thesmotheteion here; and not far removed from these is Plato's nocturnal assembly of the best and most statesmanlike men, to which the greatest matters, most worthy of consideration, are referred. And those who pour a last libation to Hermes, when they are about to remember bed—do they not thereby bring reasoned speech together with wine into the same place? At any rate, as though the wisest of gods were present and watching over them, men pray to him as they are first departing. And the ancients of old, as though Dionysus himself needed no help from Hermes, called him Eubouleus, 'Good Counselor,' and for his sake called the night itself euphrone, 'the kindly-minded.'"
When Glaucias had gone through all this, it seemed to us that those turbulent debates had been fairly well lulled to sleep; and, so that they might be still further forgotten, Nicostratus introduced another inquiry, saying that at first he had not much cared about the practice, since it seemed to him a Persian one; but now that it had been shown to be Greek, he needed an argument to help him against the absurdity that appeared on the face of it. "For reasoning, like an eye in a fluid that is being tossed about, becomes hard for us to move and hard to put to work; and the passions, from every side, like reptiles stirring toward the sun, are set in motion toward wine and, rising up, make the judgment unsteady and unsettled. Hence, just as reclining is better for drinkers than sitting, because it holds the body still and releases it from all motion, so it is best for the soul, too, to remain undisturbed; and if that is not possible, then, just as to children who cannot keep still one gives not a spear and sword but a rattle and a ball, so the god gave the wand of fennel to those who are drunk—put into their hands the lightest of weapons and the softest of defenses, so that, however quickly they strike, they do the least harm. For the mistakes of drunken men ought to be laughable, not pitiable and tragic, involving great failures. Moreover—and this is the most important point in deliberations about the weightiest matters—wine takes away from drunken men the very thing that a person lacking judgment and inexperienced in affairs most needs: to follow those who think clearly and to listen to the experienced."
Wine takes this away—so that Plato says its very name (oinos) arose "because it makes drinkers think (oiesthai) they have sense": for no drinker, however much he may fancy himself distinguished, or handsome, or rich, fancies it so strongly as he fancies himself wise. That is why wine is so full of talk, and fills men with untimely chatter and a domineering conceit, so that we are inclined not to listen but rather to be listened to, and to lead rather than to follow, as is fitting." "But," he said, "one could easily gather points for this side of the case, since they are obvious; what is needed is to hear the opposing arguments, whether some younger man or some older one is prepared to give them." Then our brother, quite craftily and in a sophist's manner, said, "Do you really think anyone could find the arguments the problem admits of, on the spur of the present moment?" And when Nicostratus firmly affirmed that he did think so, given so many lovers of learning and statesmen present, our friend smiled and said, "Then do you think that you yourself could speak adequately to us about these matters, while holding that, because of wine, one is disqualified for practical and political deliberation? Or is this like supposing that a man who has been drinking sees well enough with his eyes but mishears with his ears those who meet him and converse with him, yet hears precisely those who sing and pipe?
For just as here it is more likely that the useful, rather than the merely elegant, attracts the attention of the senses, so it is with the mind as well. I should not be surprised if something subtle and philosophical escapes a man over wine, while, when his mind is drawn to practical deliberations, it is likely to grow concentrated and to pull itself together for clear thinking—just as Philip at Chaeronea, though he was babbling a great deal in his drunkenness and making himself ridiculous, the moment word reached him concerning a truce and peace, composed his face, drew his brows together, and, driving off his rambling, unrestrained manner, gave the Athenians a very well-considered and sober answer. And yet drinking is a different thing from being drunk, and we think that those who are drunk enough to babble nonsense ought to go off and sleep it off, whereas, in the case of men who otherwise have good sense but who continue drinking wine over an extended time and drink it through, there is no need to fear that they will fail in judgment and lose their skill—seeing that dancers and lyre-players perform no worse at symposia than in theaters. For skill, when present, keeps the body upright in its activities and moving safely along with it; and to many men, wine, functioning as an ally that lends boldness, adds not a repulsive or unmixed boldness but one that is graceful and persuasive—just as they say Aeschylus, too, composed his tragedies while drinking; and it is not, as Gorgias said, that one of his plays, the Seven against Thebes, is "full of Ares," but rather that all of them are full of Dionysus.
For wine, being, in Plato's words, one that "warms the soul together with the body," makes the body run freely and opens up passages for imaginative ideas, which come streaming in along with the boldness of speech. For some men, who have an inventive nature but, while sober, one that is timid and rigid, when they come to drinking, are made to give off vapor, like frankincense, through the warmth. And wine drives away fear, which is no less an obstacle than anything else to men deliberating, and extinguishes many of the other passions that are mean-spirited and ignoble, and it unfolds, as it were, certain folds of malice and festering resentment hidden in the soul, and brings every character and passion into full view in speech. It is, moreover, most productive of frankness, and, through frankness, of truth itself; and where frankness is absent, neither experience nor quickness of mind is of any use. In fact, many men succeed better by using whatever thought presents itself than if they craftily and cunningly conceal what occurs to them.
There is, then, no need to fear that wine stirs up the passions; for what it stirs is not the basest part—except in the most wicked men, whose faculty of deliberation is never sober in any case. Rather, just as Theophrastus used to call barbershops "wineless symposia" because of their chatter, so too a wineless drunkenness, and a sullen one, dwells forever in the souls of the uneducated, forever disturbed by some anger or ill will or contentiousness or meanness of spirit—all of which wine, for the most part, blunts rather than sharpens, making men not foolish or stupid but simple and free of cunning—men who do not overlook their own advantage, but who choose the honorable course. Those, however, who consider cunning to be cleverness, and false opinion and meanness of spirit to be prudence, naturally declare foolish those who, over wine, state plainly and without guile what appears to them. The ancients, on the contrary, called the god Eleuthereus, "the Liberator," and Lysios, "the Loosener," and believed him to possess a great share of the prophetic art—not because of "his Bacchic frenzy and madness," as Euripides put it, but because, by removing and freeing the soul from its servility, its excessive fearfulness, and its distrust, he grants men the ability to deal with one another in truth and frankness."
Those, Sossius Senecio, who banish philosophy from symposia do not do the same thing as those who take away the light, but worse—inasmuch as, when the lamp is removed, moderate and self-controlled men will be no worse off, since their sense of shame counts for more with them than their seeing one another; but when ignorance and lack of culture are present along with wine, not even that golden lamp of Athena could furnish a graceful and orderly drinking-party. To gorge oneself with others in silence is altogether swinish, and perhaps impossible; and the man who abandons reasoned speech at a symposium, but will not permit its being used in an orderly and beneficial way, is far more absurd than a man who thinks the guests at his dinner ought to drink and eat, but who pours them undiluted wine and sets before them relishes that are unseasoned and unprepared. For no drink and no food is as unpleasant and harmful, when not prepared in the proper manner, as speech that is passed around a symposium untimely and thoughtlessly.
Philosophers who denounce drunkenness call it "wine-babble"; and to babble is nothing other than to indulge in empty and nonsensical talk. And when disorderly chatter and nonsense fall into undiluted wine, insolence and drunken outrage are the most tasteless and graceless result. It is not without point, then, that among us too, at the Agrionia, the women search for Dionysus as though he had run away, then stop and say that he has taken refuge with the Muses and is hidden among them; and a little later, when dinner is over, they pose riddles and puzzles to one another—the mystery rite teaching us that we must use, over drink, speech that has some element of contemplation and culture in it, and that when such speech is present alongside drunkenness, what is savage and frenzied is concealed, held down benignly by the Muses.
This book, then, contains, first, what we happened both to hear and to say last year at Plato's birthday celebration. It is the eighth book of the Table Talk. On the sixth day of the rising month of Thargelion we had celebrated the birthday of Socrates, and on the seventh we were celebrating that of Plato; and this occasion first provided us with talk suited to the coincidence, which Diogenianus of Pergamum began. For he said that Ion had put it well concerning fortune, that though differing greatly from wisdom, it produces very many things resembling it; and this seemed to him to have brought about, quite artfully as if of its own accord, not merely that the two birthdays fall so close together, but also that the elder man and teacher should have come first in reputation.
It occurred to me to mention to those present a good many other cases of coincidences that had converged on the same occasion: such as the matter concerning the birth and death of Euripides—born on the day on which the Greeks fought their sea battle against the Mede at Salamis, and dying on the day on which Dionysius the Elder, the tyrant in Sicily, was born; fortune thus, as Timaeus said, at one and the same time leading offstage the imitator of tragic sufferings and bringing onstage the real performer of them. They also called to mind the death of Alexander the king and that of Diogenes the Cynic, which took place on the same day. And it was generally agreed that King Attalus had died on his own birthday; while as for Pompey the Great, some said he died on his birthday, others that he died in Egypt one day before his birthday. Pindar, too, came up for mention, since he had been born at the time of the Pythian games and had furnished the god with many splendid hymns.
And Florus said that Carneades, too, did not deserve to be left out of mention at Plato's birthday celebration—a man who was the most illustrious devotee of the Academy; for both men, he said, were born at a festival of Apollo, the one at the Thargelia in Athens, the other while the Cyrenaeans were celebrating the Carneia; and both peoples keep their festival on the seventh day. "And you, prophets and priests," he said, "call the god, since he was born on that day, Hebdomagenes, 'Seventh-born.' That is why those who attribute Plato's begetting to Apollo...
"and I do not think anyone would say that those who dedicate this offspring of Plato to Apollo are dishonoring the god, since through Socrates he has been made a physician for us, like another Chiron, for even greater sufferings and diseases." At the same time he recalled the vision and voice said to have come to Ariston, Plato's father, in his sleep, forbidding him to have intercourse with his wife or touch her for ten months. Tyndares the Spartan then took up the discussion and said, "It is indeed fitting to sing and say of Plato that 'he did not seem to be the son of a mortal man, but of a god'; for I am afraid that the notion of the divine may seem to conflict with what is incorruptible, in that the begetting is no less problematic than the begotten thing itself: for that too is a kind of change and an experience of being acted upon — as Alexander himself, I think, suspected when he said that he recognized himself as most mortal and corruptible especially in the act of intercourse with a woman and in sleep, on the grounds that sleep comes about through weakness, and that all generation is a passing-away and corruption of something proper to oneself into something else.
"But I take heart again when I hear Plato himself calling the unbegotten and eternal god the father and maker of the cosmos and of all other begotten things — not, of course, because they come into being through seed, but through some other power of the god, which imparts to matter a generative principle, whereby matter is acted upon and changes, the god having implanted it. For the courses of the winds, too, escape the notice of the female bird, except when the moment of laying is at hand. And I think there is nothing strange in it, if the god, without approaching as a man does, but by certain other contacts through other means and touches, turns and fills the mortal with a more divine offspring. And the story is not my own," he said, "but the Egyptians say that Apis too is engendered in this way, by the touch of the moon; and in general they attribute to a male god intercourse with a mortal woman, but they do not think, conversely, that a mortal man could furnish the beginning of conception and pregnancy to a female god, because they hold that the substances of the gods consist in air and breaths and certain kinds of heat and moisture."
At this a silence fell, and then Diogenianus began again and said, "Since we have had discussions about the gods, shall we, on the occasion of Plato's birthday, take up Plato himself as a partner in the conversation, by examining what notion he had in mind when he declared that god always does geometry — if indeed one ought to accept this saying as Plato's?" When I had said that this is written nowhere clearly in any of his books, but has sufficient credibility and is characteristic of the Platonic manner, Tyndares immediately took up the point and said, "Do you suppose, Diogenianus, that the saying hints at something recondite and hard to discern, rather than exactly what he himself has often said and written, in praise of geometry, namely that it draws us away from clinging to sense-perception and turns us back toward the intelligible and eternal nature, the contemplation of which is the goal of philosophy, as it were the culminating vision of a mystery rite? For the nail of pleasure and pain, which fastens the soul to the body, seems to carry the greatest evil in this: that it makes the objects of sense more vivid than the objects of intellect, and forces the mind to judge by feeling rather than by reason. For, growing accustomed through intense suffering and pleasure to attend to what wanders and shifts about the body, as though it were the truly existent, the mind is blinded, and it loses that organ and light of the soul which is worth 'ten thousand eyes,' the only thing by which the divine can be beheld.
"Now in all the so-called branches of learning, as in mirrors that are unwarped and smooth, traces and images of the truth of intelligible things are reflected; but geometry especially, according to Philo, being the origin and mother-city of the others, leads back and turns the mind, purifying and releasing it, as it were, gently from sense-perception. That is why Plato himself found fault with the followers of Eudoxus, Archytas, and Menaechmus for trying to reduce the doubling of the solid to instrumental and mechanical constructions, as though attempting, by means other than reason, to find two mean proportionals in whatever way was available: for in this way, he thought, the good of geometry is lost and destroyed, as it runs back again to the world of sense and is not carried upward, nor does it lay hold of the eternal and incorporeal images, in reference to which god is always god."
After Tyndares, Florus, who was his companion and always liked to make a show, in jest, of being his admirer, said, "You have done the argument a service by making it not your own but common property — for you have given someone the chance to refute it by demonstrating that geometry is necessary not for the gods but for us. For god surely has no need of a branch of learning that serves like an instrument to turn and redirect the mind from things that come to be toward things that truly are; for those realities exist in him, and with him, and around him. But see whether Plato, in this hint, has escaped your notice as saying something relevant and proper to you — inasmuch as he blends Lycurgus with Socrates no less than with Pythagoras, as Dicaearchus thought. For Lycurgus, as you surely know, banished arithmetical proportion from Sparta as being democratic and mob-like, and introduced geometrical proportion instead, as suited to a temperate oligarchy and a lawful kingship; for the one assigns equality by number, the other what is fitting by ratio, and does not mix everything together indiscriminately, but there is in it a clear discrimination between the good and the bad — not by scales or by lots, but by allotting to each always what is proper to it, according to the difference of virtue and vice. This is the proportion that god applies to affairs, called, my dear Tyndares, justice and retribution, teaching us that the just is equitable, not that equality is just; for the equality that most people pursue, being the greatest of all injustices, god removes it as far as possible and preserves what is fitting, defining things geometrically according to reason and according to law."
We applauded this. But Tyndares said Florus was being envious, and he called on Autobulus to take up the argument against Florus and chastise it. Autobulus declined to do that, but brought forward instead an opinion of his own. He said that geometry is a study of nothing else than the properties and modifications having to do with limits, and that god fashions the cosmos in no other way than by giving limit to matter, which is unlimited — not in size or number, but because the ancients were accustomed to call "unlimited" whatever is indefinite and unbounded on account of its disorder and irregularity. For shape and form are the limit of everything that has been shaped and formed, and matter, deprived of these, was in itself formless and shapeless; but when numbers and ratios came to be present in it, as though it were bound and encompassed by lines, and from lines by planes and depths, it furnished the first forms and differentiations of bodies, as it were foundations, for the generation of air and earth and water and fire.
"For it would have been impossible and impracticable for equalities of sides and similarities of angles and harmonious proportions to arise in octahedra and icosahedra, and further in pyramids and cubes, out of matter that is disordered and wandering, without something to set bounds to each thing and articulate it geometrically. Hence, once limit had come to be present in the unlimited, the universe was fitted together and blended in the best possible way and became, and continues to become, bounded — while matter is always forcing its way toward re-emerging into the indefinite and fleeing from being made subject to geometry, and reason lays hold of it and circumscribes it and distributes it into forms and differences, from which all growing things have derived their generation and constitution." When this had been said, they asked me too to contribute something to the discussion. I praised the opinions that had been expressed as genuine and proper to those who had put them forward, and said that they had sufficient plausibility. "But," I said, "so that you may not undervalue yourselves nor look entirely outside your own resources, listen to the argument on this subject most highly esteemed among our teachers.
"For among the most geometrical of theorems, or rather problems, is this: given two figures, to construct a third that is equal to the one and similar to the other; and it is said that upon discovering this Pythagoras offered a sacrifice. For this is certainly far more elegant and more musical than that other theorem, which demonstrated that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the sides about the right angle." "You put it well," said Diogenianus, "but what has this to do with the argument?" "You will readily understand," I said, "if you recall the division in the Timaeus, where he divided into three the primary things from which the cosmos derived its generation, of which we call the one god, by the most just of names, another matter, and another form. Now matter is the most disordered of underlying things, form the most beautiful of paradigms, and god the best of causes. He wished, then, so far as was possible, to leave nothing that could be bounded unbounded, but to order nature by reason and number, making one thing out of all the underlying elements together, as much as form and as much as matter combined could produce.
"Hence, having set himself this problem — given two things, to make a third — he made, and makes, and forever preserves the cosmos, equal to matter and similar to form: for since it always exists in a state of generation and change and all manner of experiences, on account of the innate necessity of its bodily nature, it is aided by its father and maker through the reason that defines its being with reference to the paradigm; and the circumference of existing things is more beautiful than that which is merely proportionate." A commotion arose while we were dining at Athens at Ammonius's house, resounding through the residence, as people outside were shouting for the general — for Ammonius was serving his third term as general. When he had sent some of his attendants to quell the disturbance, and they had sent the men away, we ourselves began to inquire why those inside hear along with those shouting from outside, while those outside do not in the same way hear those inside.
Ammonius said that this had already been resolved by Aristotle: that a voice from within, carried outward into the vast and open air, is immediately dimmed and dispersed, while a voice coming from outside inward suffers nothing of the kind, but is held together and remains distinct; but this other matter required more explanation — why voices are more resonant at night, and preserve their clarity along with their volume more purely. "To me, then," he said, "it does not seem a poor contrivance of providence to have furnished clarity for hearing at a time when sight has little or no work to do at all. For since the air is dark, according to Empedocles, 'of desolate, blind night,' whatever it takes away from the eyes' power of perceiving in advance, it restores through the ears. But since it is necessary also to track down the causes of things that come about of necessity by nature, and this too is proper to the natural philosopher — the study of material and instrumental principles — who among you," he said, "will be the first to offer a plausible account?" When silence followed, Boethus said that, when he was still young and playing the sophist, he used to employ postulates from geometry and take unproved hypotheses, but now he would use some of the propositions already demonstrated by Epicurus.
"Existing things move within what does not exist; for much void is scattered and mixed among the atoms of the air. Now when the air is diffused and has breadth and circulation on account of its rarity, the empty spaces between its particles that are left are small and slight, and the atoms, being scattered about, occupy a large amount of space; but when it is contracted and a compression of the atoms into a small space occurs, and they collide with one another under compulsion, they create much open space and large gaps outside themselves. This happens at night on account of the cold; for heat relaxes and separates and dissolves compressions — hence things that boil, and soften, and melt occupy more room than their bodies did before; and conversely, things that congeal and cool contract toward one another and draw together and leave voids in the vessels that contain them, and spaces from which they have withdrawn.
"Now the voice, when it advances and meets many bodies packed closely together, is either altogether blunted, or suffers great breaks and many collisions and delays; but in an empty space free of bodies it has a smooth and continuous and unimpeded run to the ear, preserving its clarity together with its speed all the way with the sound. You see indeed that the empty parts of vessels, when struck, respond more readily to the blows and extend the sound far, and often, being carried round in a circle, transmit it widely; but a vessel filled with a solid body, or with some liquid altogether, becomes deaf and voiceless, since the sound has no road or space by which to pass through. Of the bodies themselves, gold and stone, on account of their density, produce thin and harsh sounds and quickly extinguish the notes within themselves; but bronze is sonorous and talkative, in that it is full of voids and light and thin in bulk, not compressed by many bodies pressing on one another, but possessing an abundant mixture of a yielding and impalpable substance,
which gives it facility for its other motions as well, and receives the voice kindly and sends it on its way, until someone, laying hold of it as though along a road, arrests it and blinds the void — at which point it stops and ceases to advance further, on account of the obstruction. These things," he said, "seem to me to make the night resonant, and the day less so, since the heat and diffusion of the air produce only small intervals between the atoms." "Let no one," he said, "raise objections to the first hypotheses." And I, at Ammonius's bidding to say something in reply to him, said, "Your first hypotheses, my dear Boethus, although they contain a great deal of void, may stand; but you are not right to posit void as what preserves and moves sound. For it is proper to silence and stillness to be untouched, unaffected, and unstruck, whereas voice is the striking of a resonant body, and resonant is what is sympathetic with itself and continuous in its own substance, and easily moved and light and uniform and responsive because of tension and continuity — such as is the air among us. For water and earth and fire are themselves voiceless, but all of them give sound when breath falls upon them
and produce noises and crashes; whereas bronze has no share of void at all, but being blended with uniform and smooth breath, is readily struck and resonant. And if one must judge by sight, iron appears to have more of what is porous and full of void and honeycomb-like; yet it is exceedingly harsh-sounding and the most mute of the metals. There was, then, no need to trouble the night by contracting its..."
There was no need to cause trouble for the night by contracting and stretching taut its air, and elsewhere again leaving spaces and voids—as though the air were an obstacle to sound and were destroying the very substance of which it is itself the substance, body, and power. Without such devices, irregular nights—misty and stormy ones—would surely have to be more resonant than clear, evenly mixed nights, on the theory that atoms are pushed together in one place while the place they leave behind is left empty of bodies; and, most obviously of all, a cold day would have to be more resonant than a warm summer night. Neither of these is true.
So, having abandoned this explanation, I turn instead to Anaxagoras, who says that the air is set in motion by the sun with a trembling motion full of pulsations, as is evident from the tiny specks and fragments that constantly flit through a beam of light, which some call "motes." These particles, he says, hiss and crackle in response to the heat during the day and by their noise make speech hard to hear, whereas at night their agitation and sound become manifest.
When I had said this, Ammonius said, "Perhaps we shall look ridiculous, imagining we are refuting Democritus and correcting Anaxagoras. Still, the hissing must be removed from Anaxagoras' particles: it is neither plausible nor necessary. The trembling of the particles, and their motion as they are agitated in the light, are enough by themselves, often, to tear voices apart and scatter them. For the air, as has been said, is the body of voice; and by furnishing itself as substance, when it is stable it transmits the parts and movements of sounds far off, in a straight, smooth, and continuous line. Calm and stillness are resonant, and the opposite holds too, as Simonides says: 'nor did any leaf-shaking blast of winds then arise, which might have hindered the honey-sweet voice, as it spread, from reaching the ears of mortals.' Often the agitation of the air does not even let the articulate shape of speech reach our perception fully formed, yet it always carries something of its volume and magnitude. Night itself, then, by itself has nothing that sets the air in motion; but day has a great one—the sun—as Anaxagoras himself said."
Thrasyllus, Ammonius' son, took this up and said, "Then what has come over us, in god's name, that we think we must appeal to theoretical motions of the air while overlooking its plain, visible turbulence and violence? For that great ruler in heaven—the sun, our Zeus—does not creep up unnoticed or gently stir the smallest particles of air; the moment he appears he raises up and sets everything in motion, giving favorable signs, rousing peoples to their work. And they follow, as though reborn, 'thinking new thoughts with each day,' as Democritus says, with activities neither silent nor idle. Ibycus was not wrong to call dawn 'famed,' since it is then that both hearing and speaking already occur. But at night, the air being for the most part waveless and unheard, since everything is at rest, it naturally sends the voice up to us unbroken and whole."
Aristodemus of Cyprus, who was present, said, "But watch out, Thrasyllus, that this is not disproved by the night-battles and night-marches of great armies, which make voices carry no less far, even though the air is in turmoil and agitation. There is also a cause on our own side: what we ourselves say at night is for the most part urgent—rousing someone with pressing emotion, or making inquiries—so that we make our calls strained and forceful. Whatever rouses us to action and speech at just the time we are naturally disposed to keep still is no small or gentle thing, but something great, driven by the compulsion of some pressing need, so that our voices too are carried more forcefully."
When the Isthmian Games were held, in the second term of Sospis' presidency of the games, we managed to avoid his other banquets, at which he entertained many guests at once, and often all the citizens together; but on one occasion, when he received his closest friends and men of letters at his home, we too were present. When the first tables had been cleared, someone came bringing Herodes the orator a palm branch and a woven crown, sent by an acquaintance who had won a prize for a speech of praise. Herodes accepted these graciously and sent them back, saying he was puzzled why the different contests each have their own crown, while the palm belongs to all of them alike.
"I, for one," he said, "am not persuaded by those who point to the equality of its leaves—rising up opposite each other and growing out together, as it were—and claim this resembles a contest and rivalry, and that the very word 'victory' (nikē) derives from 'not yielding' (mē eikon); for a great many other plants too distribute nourishment to their paired leaves with what amounts to exact measure and weight, producing a marvelous equality and order. Still less convincing are those who suppose the ancients loved the palm for its beauty and fine growth, inferring this from Homer, who compared the bloom of the Phaeacian girl to 'a young shoot of a palm.' You surely are not unaware that people also pelted victors with roses and campions, and some even with apples and pomegranates, as beautiful things, always honoring their champions this way. But the palm has nothing so conspicuously superior to other plants, since in Greece it does not even bear edible fruit, only fruit that is unripe and unfit to eat. If, as in Syria and Egypt, it produced its date—most delightful of all things to look at, and in sweetness to eat as a dessert—nothing else could be compared to it. The king, they say, being especially fond of the Peripatetic philosopher Nicolaus, who was sweet in character, slender and tall, and full in the face with a ruddy blush, used to call the largest and finest dates 'Nicolauses,' and to this day they are still called that."
In saying this, Herodes seemed to have brought in the story about Nicolaus no less pleasantly than the question itself. "All the more reason, then," said Sospis, "for each of us to be eager, as far as each is able, to contribute something to the question. I offer mine first: the reputation of victors ought to remain, as far as possible, unfading and ageless, and the palm is among the longest-lived of plants, as the Orphic verses too attest somewhere: 'a creature living as long as the crown-topped shoots of palms.' And it is almost alone in truly possessing what is falsely claimed of many other plants. What is that? To keep its leaves steadfastly, to be truly evergreen. For neither the laurel, nor the olive, nor the myrtle, nor anything else said not to shed its leaves, do we ever see keeping the very same leaves forever; rather, as the first ones fall away, others grow in their place, and, like a city, each remains ever-living and undiminished only as a whole. But the palm, casting off none of what grows on it, is truly and constantly evergreen; and it is precisely this strength of it that people especially associate with the might of victory."
When Sospis had finished, Protogenes the grammarian, addressing Praxiteles the guide by name, said, "Shall we simply let these orators go on arguing their own way, from probabilities and plausibilities, while we ourselves contribute nothing from history? And yet I believe I recall—having read it recently in the Attic histories—that Theseus was the first to hold a contest on Delos, and that he tore off a branch of the sacred palm, which was then called a 'spadix.'" Praxiteles replied, "This is uncertain, and people will say we should ask Theseus himself why, when he presided over the contest, he tore a branch from the palm rather than from laurel or olive. Consider instead whether the prize of victory is really Pythian, instituted by Amphictyon; for there too victors were first adorned, in honor of the god, with laurel and palm, since people dedicate to the god not laurels or olives but palms—as Nicias did on Delos when serving as choregos for the Athenians, and as the Athenians did at Delphi, and, earlier still, Cypselus the Corinthian. For our god besides is a lover of contests and of victory, competing himself in lyre-playing, song, and discus-throwing, and, as some say, even in boxing, and lending aid to men who compete, as Homer testifies, portraying Achilles saying: 'we bid these two men, being the best, to raise their fists and box hard for this prize, and to whichever Apollo grants the endurance to win...' And of the archers, the one who prayed to the god hit the mark and took first prize, while the other, too proud to pray, missed the target. Nor, indeed, is it likely that the Athenians dedicated their gymnasium to Apollo without reason, by mere chance; rather, they believed that the god from whom we have our health also gives good condition and strength for contests. And since there are light and heavy events, it is recorded that the Delphians sacrifice to Apollo as a boxer, and the Cretans and Lacedaemonians as a runner. And do not the dedications of spoils, first-fruits of victory, and trophies at Delphi likewise testify that this god has the greatest share in the power to win and to prevail?"
While he was still speaking, Cephisus, son of Theon, broke in and said, "But none of this smells of history or of guidebooks at all—it has been dragged up from the very heart of Peripatetic commonplaces and argued merely for plausibility. What's more, my friends, by hoisting up the god like a piece of stage machinery, in tragic fashion, you are simply trying to frighten off anyone who disagrees. The god, as is fitting, is equally well-disposed to everyone. Let us instead, following Sospis—for he leads us well—return again to the palm, since it offers our discussion plenty of handholds. The Babylonians hymn and sing of it as providing them three hundred and sixty kinds of uses; for us Greeks it is scarcely useful at all, and this very fruitlessness might belong to an athletic ideal: being the most beautiful and the largest of trees, it is, through its own good discipline, unfruitful among us—just as an athlete's regimen consumes his nourishment on his body, so only a small and poor amount is left over for the palm to put into seed.
But beyond all this it has a peculiar property, shared by no other tree, which I am about to mention: if you lay weights on top of a palm-wood beam and press down on it, it does not yield by bending downward, but curves the other way, as though resisting the force applied to it. The very same thing happens in athletic contests: those who give in to their trials through weakness and softness are pressed down and bent by them, while those who vigorously endure their training are raised up and grow, not only in body but in spirit as well."
Someone raised the question why ship-captains draw their water from the Nile at night rather than by day. To some it seemed that they feared the sun, since it pre-heats liquids and makes them more prone to spoil: everything that has been heated or warmed is always more ready to change, having already, through the loosening of its quality, been made susceptible. Cold, by contrast, by compressing things, seems to hold each thing together and preserve it in its natural state—water not least of all, since coldness is a property naturally proper to water, as snow shows, keeping meat resistant to spoiling for a long time. Heat, on the other hand, drives many things, honey among them, out of their own proper quality: honey spoils when boiled, but if it stays unheated it even helps preserve other things from spoiling.
The strongest confirmation of this explanation was found in still, marshy waters: in winter they are no different from other waters to drink, but in summer they turn foul and unwholesome. Since night is thought to correspond to winter, and day to summer, people suppose that water stays more unaltered and unaffected if it is drawn at night. To these fairly plausible arguments there was added another account, confirmed, as it were, by the plain but reliable experience of sailors: they said they draw the water at night while the river is still settled and quiet, whereas by day, with many people drawing water and sailing about, and many animals stirring through it, it becomes churned up, thick, and earthy—and such water is prone to spoil, since all mixed things are more liable to decay than unmixed ones, for mixture produces strife, strife produces change, and putrefaction is itself a kind of change.
That is why painters call the mixing of colors "corruption," and why the poet used the word "stained" for dyeing, while common usage calls what is unmixed and pure "incorruptible" and "undefiled." Earth especially, when mixed with water, alters and spoils its natural, drinkable quality; hence still, hollow waters, which fill up with much earth, are more prone to spoil, while running waters escape and shake off the earth carried against them. Hesiod did well to praise a spring that is "ever-flowing, outflowing, and unmuddied," for what is uncorrupted is wholesome, and what is unmixed and pure is uncorrupted. The differences among kinds of soil bear this out no less: waters running through mountainous, rocky ground are firmer than those of marshy, level ground, since they carry off little earth.
The Nile, however, enclosed by soft country—or rather mixed with it as blood is mixed with flesh—enjoys sweetness and is filled with nutrients of a weighty, nourishing power, but it flows along mixed and turbid, and all the more so when it is stirred up, for motion mixes the earthy element into the water; but when it settles, the earthy part sinks down and departs by its own weight. That is why they draw water at night, getting ahead of the sun as well, under whose action the finest and lightest part of the water is always drawn off and lost.
When my younger sons had lingered in the theater over some performances and arrived rather late for dinner, Theon's sons jokingly mocked them, calling them "dinner-delayers" and "gloom-suppers" and the like; and they, defending themselves, called the others in turn "dinner-chasers." One of the older men remarked that it is really the one who is late for dinner who deserves the name "dinner-chaser," since whenever he is running behind he appears to hurry along faster than a walking pace. He also recalled a witty remark of Galba, Caesar's jester, who used to call those who arrived late to dinner "dinner-cravers," since, busy as they were, their love of dining kept them from ever declining an invitation.
I remarked that Polycharmus too, when he was a popular leader in Athens and was giving an account of his life before the Assembly, said, "These, men of Athens, are my achievements"—and added, among other things, "never, when invited to dinner, did I arrive last." Such a thing is generally thought quite in keeping with democratic manners; conversely, people forced to wait for latecomers resent them as disagreeable and oligarchic. But Soclarus, speaking in defense of the young men, said, "Nor, indeed, is Pittacus said to have been called a 'gloom-supper' by Alcaeus for dining late, but rather..."
...as one who took pleasure, for the most part, in disreputable and worthless drinking companions. But dining too early was once considered disgraceful, and they say that the word for “breakfast” (akratisma) comes from akrasia, “lack of self-control.” Theon took this up and said, “Not at all — not if we are to believe those who record the ancient way of life. For they say that the men of old, being industrious and temperate at once, ate bread at dawn dipped in unmixed wine and nothing else; and this, they say, is why that meal was called akratisma, from the unmixed wine (akratos), while they called what was prepared for the evening meal opson, ‘relish’ — for they dined late, once their business for the day was done. From this a further question arose about deipnon (dinner) and ariston (the midday or morning meal), and where each got its name. Ariston seemed to be identical with akratisma — Homer bears witness to this when he speaks of Eumaeus and his companions preparing their ariston ‘at the appearing of dawn’ — and it seemed plausible that ariston was named for the early hour, just as aurion, ‘tomorrow,’ is. Deipnon, on the other hand, was so named because it gives rest (dianapauei) from toil, since people dine after doing something, or in the middle of doing it; this too can be gathered from Homer, who says, ‘when the woodcutter got his deipnon ready.’ Unless, by Zeus, the truth is rather this: that they took their ariston straightaway and without trouble, casually, from whatever was at hand, while their deipnon was already elaborately prepared beforehand — and so they called the one ‘easiest’ and the other, as it were, ‘the labored one.’”
Our brother Lamprias, who is naturally impudent and fond of a laugh, said he would show that the Roman names for these meals were a thousand times closer to the Greek originals than the Greek names themselves — so much license being granted to talking nonsense. For, he said, the Romans call dinner cena because of its communality (koinonia); the old Romans used to eat their ariston by themselves, but they dined together with their friends. The midday meal, meanwhile, was called prandium after the hour, since endios means ‘midday,’ and the rest one takes after ariston is called endiazein; or else the word signifies some early food or nourishment which they take before they grow faint from hunger. “And indeed,” he said, “to leave aside the bedding, the wine, the honey, the oil, the tasting, the toasting — countless other things plainly use the very same words. Who would not say that komos in Greek becomes comissatio, and that mixing (kerasai) becomes miscere, as in Homer, ‘and she in turn mixed honeyed wine in the bowl’? That mensa is the table, from being set ‘in the middle,’ and panem is bread, as loosening hunger; that the wreath is corona, from the head, just as Homer likened the helmet to a stephane; that caedere is keirein, ‘to cut,’ and dentes are the teeth, and labra the lips, from taking (lambanein) food through them? Either we must listen to these derivations too without laughing, or else we must not so easily accept those other ones either — cutting words apart and demolishing them piece by piece, like little walls, and slipping through the gaps we make.”
Sullas of Carthage, when I arrived in Rome after a long absence, announced a dinner — the hypodektikon, as the Romans call it — and invited, among a few other companions, a pupil of Moderatus the Pythagorean named Lucius, from Tyrrhenia. This man, seeing our Philinus abstaining from living creatures, as was natural, was led on to speak of Pythagoras’s teachings, and declared Pythagoras to be Tyrrhenian — not by descent from his father, as some others claim, but himself born, raised, and educated in Tyrrhenia — insisting on this most of all from the symbols, such as: not to leave the bedclothes in disorder on rising from bed; not to leave the impression of a pot lifted from the ashes but to smooth it away; not to receive swallows into the house; not to step over a broom; and not to keep at home any bird with curved talons. For he said that these precepts, though spoken and written by Pythagoreans generally, were actually observed and kept only by the Tyrrhenians.
When Lucius had said this, the matter of the swallows above all seemed strange — that a harmless, man-loving creature should be shut out just like the birds of curved talon, which are the most savage and murderous of all. And indeed the one explanation by which some of the ancients thought to resolve the symbol — as an allusion aimed at slanderous and whispering acquaintances — Lucius himself did not accept; for the swallow has the least share of any bird in whispering, and no more talkativeness or chatter than jays, partridges, or hens.
“Is it, then,” said Sullas, “because of the myth of the child’s murder that they hold swallows in abomination, casting on us from a distance those sufferings out of which, they say, Tereus and the women did and suffered lawless and terrible things — and to this day they call the birds ‘Daulids’? And when Gorgias the sophist was fouled by a swallow, he looked up at it and said, ‘That is not fine, Philomela.’ Or is this too an empty notion? For the nightingale, though implicated in the very same tragic tale, they neither exclude nor banish.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “this too has some sense to it, Sullas. But consider whether, in the first place, by the very reasoning that excludes the curved-taloned bird, the swallow too falls into disrepute among them: for it is a flesh-eater, and it kills and eats above all the cicadas, sacred and musical creatures that they are; and its flight hugs the ground, as it hunts small, delicate creatures, as Aristotle says.
“Again, alone among the creatures that share our roof, it lives with us contributing nothing and lodges without paying any due. Yet the stork, though it shares neither shelter nor warmth nor any safety or help from us, still pays some toll for the ground it occupies: it goes about destroying creatures hostile and hateful to man — toads and snakes. The swallow, by contrast, receives all these benefits from us, and once she has reared her chicks to maturity, departs ungrateful and unheard-of again. And here is the strangest thing of all: alone among the creatures that live in our houses, the fly and the swallow are never tamed to man, nor will they tolerate touch, or companionship, or any sharing in work or play — the fly out of fear, because it is so often mistreated and driven off, the swallow because she is by nature man-hating and, through her distrust, forever untamed and suspicious. If, then, we must view such matters not straightforwardly but, bending them back as it were, look for the reflections of other things within them, then he who set up the swallow as an example of fickleness and ingratitude does not mean to allow those who attach themselves to us for the occasion, and worm their way in, to be made close intimates beyond that point, given a share in hearth, home, and our most sacred things.”
Having said this, I think I gave the conversation license to continue, for I now pressed on boldly and confidently to the other symbols, offering fairly moral interpretations of each. As for the mark left by the pot, Philinus said they wipe it away to teach that one should leave no visible trace of anger behind, but that once it has boiled up and then subsided and settled, all resentment should be wiped clean away. The disturbing of the bedclothes seemed to some to hold no hidden meaning at all, but rather to make plain, in itself, what is unbecoming: that a place and an impression, like a mold, should be seen left behind by a man who has slept with his wedded wife. Sullas, however, guessed rather that the symbol was meant to deter sleeping during the day, since the bed is stripped of its readiness for sleep at once, at dawn — implying that one ought to rest at night and, once risen, act by day, and not overlook, so to speak, any trace of a fallen body; for a sleeping man is of no more use than a dead one. In support of this seemed to stand also the Pythagorean precept enjoining their companions never to lighten anyone’s burden, but rather to help load it on and pile it further — as men who allow themselves neither leisure nor ease.
Since, while all this was being said, Lucius neither found fault nor praised, but kept silent, listening quietly and looking down at himself, Empedocles, addressing Sullas by name, said: “Lucius our friend, if he is troubled by what is being said, then it is time for us to stop as well. But if these matters fall under the rule of silence, still I think that this at least is neither forbidden to say nor unfit to be carried to outsiders: that they abstained above all from fish. This too is recorded of the ancient Pythagoreans, and I myself have met pupils, in our own time, of Alexicrates, who, while otherwise partaking of other things moderately — and indeed even offering sacrifice, by Zeus — nonetheless refuse absolutely to so much as taste fish. The reason Tyndares the Spartan gave for this rule of silence was that it was a special privilege: that fish are called ellopes, as having their voice (opa) confined and shut in; and that the man who shares my name, bringing his teaching to a Pythagorean close, said, ‘guarding the doctrines within a silent mind, though it be less than they deserve,’ and that, altogether, these men regarded silence as something divine, since even the gods reveal what they intend to the wise through deeds and facts, without speech.”
When Lucius replied gently and simply that the true account, perhaps, still remained hidden and unspoken even now, but that there was no begrudging an attempt at what is plausible and likely, Theon the grammarian spoke first, saying that to prove Pythagoras Tyrrhenian would be a great undertaking, and not an easy one; but it is agreed that he spent a long time in the company of the wise men of Egypt, and that he emulated many of their practices, and approved above all those concerning the sacred rites of the priests — among them the matter of beans, since Herodotus says the Egyptians neither sow beans nor eat them, nor can even bear to look at them. And we know that their priests still abstain from fish even now; and in their state of ritual purity they also shun salt, so as to eat no relish, nor anything else mixed with sea-salt. Others give various other reasons for this, but there is one true one: hatred of the sea, as something not of our kind, alien to us, or rather altogether hostile by nature to the human element. For, they say, the gods are not nourished by the sea, as the Stoics suppose the stars to be; rather, on the contrary, it was into the sea that the father and savior of their land perished — the one they call the outflow of Osiris. And in mourning for the one born in its left-hand regions and destroyed in its right-hand ones, they hint at the ending of the Nile and its destruction, which occurs in the sea. For this reason they consider neither its water fit to drink, nor anything it nourishes or produces pure or akin to themselves, since such creatures share with them neither a common air nor a common food; but the very air that preserves and nourishes everything else is deadly to those creatures, as beings that have come into existence and live contrary to nature and need. And one should not be surprised that they consider sea creatures alien and unfit to be mixed into their own blood and breath, seeing that they will not even deign to greet ships’ pilots when they meet them, because such men make their living from the sea.”
Sullas, approving of this, added, concerning the Pythagoreans, that they for the most part tasted of sacrificial victims only after offering the first portions to the gods; but that no fish is ever fit for sacrifice or offering. I then, once they had finished, said that many people, both philosophers and laymen, would take up arms on Egypt’s behalf where the sea is concerned, reckoning up the many benefits it has provided to make our life easier and more pleasant. “But the Pythagoreans’ truce with fish, on the grounds that they are not of our kind, is strange, indeed rather absurd — or rather altogether savage, a kind of Cyclopean privilege granted to other creatures over kinship and intimacy, while they themselves are cooked and consumed at our hands. And yet they say that Pythagoras once bought up a catch of fish and then ordered the net let go — not as one indifferent to the fish as foreign and hostile, but as one paying ransom for captives who had become his friends and kin.”
“It is for this reason,” I said, “that the fairness and gentleness of these men suggests we should suspect quite the opposite: that perhaps it was for the sake of practicing justice, and habituating themselves to it, that they especially spared sea creatures — since these, unlike other creatures, give men no pretext at all, however slight, for ill-treatment, as fish do us no wrong, nor are they even capable of doing so. One may infer, both from their sayings and from their sacred rites, that the men of old considered it an accursed and unlawful act not merely to eat, but even to kill, any creature that does no harm; but hemmed in by sheer numbers pressing upon them, and, they say, urged on by some oracle from Delphi bidding them defend their crops as these were being destroyed, they began to sacrifice animals — yet still troubled and afraid as they did so, they called the act erdein and rhezein, ‘to perform,’ as though doing something momentous in sacrificing a living creature; and even now they keep strict watch against slaughtering a victim before it has nodded in assent under the libation poured over it. So scrupulous were they with regard to every kind of wrongdoing. And yet — to leave everything else aside — if people had abstained only from hens or hares, it would not have been long before, through sheer numbers, it became impossible either to inhabit a city or to enjoy the fruits of the earth; so that, necessity pressing them at first, it soon became, through pleasure, an easy matter to put an end to abstaining from meat altogether. But the race of sea creatures neither consumes the same air as we do, nor the same water, nor encroaches on our crops, but is contained as it were within another world of its own, keeping to its own boundaries; and death stands as the penalty over those who cross them, so that it gives the belly no pretext, small or great, against them. Rather, the hunting and netting of every kind of fish is plainly the work of gluttony and a love of delicacies, disturbing the seas for no just cause and plunging down into the depths. For surely no one calls the red mullet a ‘ravager of fields,’ nor the parrotfish a ‘grape-eater,’ nor calls any mullet or bass a ‘seed-gatherer,’ as we name land creatures in accusation; nor could one charge the largest fish with anything of what we pettily hold against the weasel or the household fly. And so, restraining themselves not by law alone from wronging man, but also by nature from wronging anything that does no harm, they made least use of fish among their relishes, or none at all; for even apart from the question of injustice, the whole business surrounding fish seems to display a kind of intemperance and gluttony, being extravagant and overly elaborate. This is why Homer represents not only the Greeks abstaining from fish while encamped beside the Hellespont, but sets no seafood before the luxury-loving Phaeacians either, nor before the dissolute suitors, though both peoples are islanders; and the companions of Odysseus, sailing over so vast a sea, nowhere let down hook, or line, or net, so long as barley-meal remained; but when the ship’s provisions had run out, shortly before they laid hands on the cattle of the Sun, they took to catching fish, making it not a relish but a necessary food, ‘with bent hooks, and hunger gnawed at their bellies’ — driven by that same necessity both to eat fish and to devour the cattle of the Sun. This is why abstinence from fish has become, not only among the Egyptians or the Syrians but among the Greeks as well, a part of ritual purity — warding off, I think, along with what is just, also the excess and extravagance of such eating.”
Nestor then took up the argument: “As for my own fellow citizens, they get no credit at all—just like the Megarians. And yet you have often heard me say that the priests of Poseidon, whom we call hieromnemones, never eat fish; for the god is called Phytalmios, ‘the Nurturer.’ The descendants of Helen the ancient also sacrifice to Poseidon as ancestral god, holding that man was born from the moist element, as the Syrians likewise believe; and that is why they too revere the fish, as a kinsman and foster-brother, philosophizing rather more reasonably than Anaximander. For Anaximander does not declare that fish and men came into being among the same beings, but that men were first generated within fish, and were nourished there like dogfish, and when they became capable of helping themselves, then came forth and took to dry land. So then, just as fire consumes the wood from which it was kindled—though that wood was, so to speak, its mother and father—so too (as the poet who inserted the Marriage of Ceyx into the works of Hesiod put it) Anaximander, having declared the fish to be the common father and mother of mankind, thereby discredited it as food.”
Philo the physician insisted that the disease called elephantiasis had become known only quite recently, since none of the ancient physicians had made any mention of this affliction, being occupied instead with other, minor and obscure conditions difficult for most people to observe. I myself, for my part, produced as a witness on his behalf Athenodorus the philosopher, who records in the first book of his Epidemics that it was only in the time of Asclepiades that not only elephantiasis but also hydrophobia first came to light. Those present were astonished that new diseases should then, for the first time, have had their origin and formation in nature; but they thought it no less astonishing that such considerable symptoms could have escaped notice for so long a time. Most of them, however, inclined rather toward the second view, as being the more plausible for human nature—holding that nature is least of all, in matters of this kind, fond of novelty, and no eager artisan of new conditions in the body, any more than in a city. Diogenianus then said that the diseases and affections of the soul, too, follow a certain common and ancestral path.
“And yet,” he said, “vice is manifold and adventurous of every sort, and the soul is self-governing and master of itself, able, if it wishes, to change and turn easily; still, its very disorder has a certain order, and it keeps due measure even in its passions, as the sea does in its overflowings, and no form of wickedness has broken out that was unrecorded even among the ancients. Rather, there are many varieties of desire, countless movements and shapes of fear, and the forms of grief and pleasure are a task too great to enumerate exhaustively; none of this is a thing of today or yesterday, but it has always existed, and no one knows from where it first appeared. How, then, could a new disease or a late-born affection come to the body, when the body—unlike the soul, which has within itself its own source of motion—is instead bound up with causes shared in common with the rest of nature, and mixed into a compound whose very indeterminacy wanders within fixed limits, like a ship tossing about within a confined course? For the constitution of disease is not without cause, so as to introduce, contrary to all order, a coming-into-being and a power out of nothing, and it is no easy task to discover a genuinely new cause—one that did not simply declare that unprecedented air, or strange water, or untasted foods, now for the first time flowing in here from certain other worlds or spaces between worlds, are the reason. For it is from these very things—the things by which we also live—that we fall ill; there are no seeds of disease that belong to disease alone. Rather, it is the vices of these things in relation to us, and our own errors regarding them, that disturb nature; and these disturbances have everlasting varieties, though they are often called by new names.
For names belong to convention, but the affections themselves belong to nature; hence it is that, being variously colored within these fixed bounds, they have produced the illusion of novelty. Just as it is possible for a sudden barbarism or solecism to arise in the parts of speech and in their combinations with one another, so too the mixtures of the body have fixed kinds of slips and transgressions, belonging in a sense to nature itself, even among the things that are contrary to nature. In this respect the mythographers, too, are clever: they say that altogether monstrous and prodigious animals came into being at the time of the Battle of the Giants, when the moon was deviating from its course and not making its risings from its accustomed point. In just the same way, some people think it fitting that nature gives birth to new diseases as if they were portents, fabricating for the change a cause that is neither plausible nor implausible, but simply pointing to the excess and the greater degree of certain affections as constituting their novelty and difference. This is not correct, my dear Philo: intensification and increase add magnitude or quantity, but they do not remove the underlying thing from its own kind. Just so, I think, elephantiasis is not some intensified form of one of the scaly, mangy conditions, nor is hydrophobia one of the disorders of the stomach or of melancholy. And yet this, surely, is remarkable: that not even Homer was ignorant of it, unbeknownst to you—for by ‘the raging dog’ he is clearly referring to this very affliction, from which men, too, are said to ‘rage,’ or go mad.”
When Diogenianus had gone through these points, Philo himself replied with a measured response to his argument, and urged me to join him in speaking on behalf of the ancient physicians—on the ground that they would be liable to a charge of neglect, or of ignorance in the gravest matters, if indeed these diseases do not turn out to be more recent than their own era. In the first place, then, it seemed to us that Diogenianus was not right to insist that intensifications and relaxations make no difference and do not remove a thing from its kind; for on that reasoning we would have to say that vinegar does not differ from sour wine, nor bitterness from astringency, nor darnel among the wheat from mint among the sweet herbs. And yet these are plainly departures and changes of quality—the relaxations being cases of things withering away, the intensifications cases of things growing more vehement. Or else we would have to say that there is no difference between the flame of a thin vapor and the mere glow of a flame, nor between the hoarfrost of dew and the hail of a rainstorm, but that all these are simply intensifications and vehemences of the same thing; and it would then be time to say that blindness differs not at all from dimness of sight, nor cholera from mere nausea, but only by degree, by more and less. Yet none of this is reasonable. For if they grant that what has now come about is simply the acceptance of an intensification and a vehemence, then, in the first place, since the novelty consists in quantity and not in quality, the paradox remains just the same; and secondly, as Sophocles said—not badly—about things disbelieved because they did not exist before, when the question is whether they have now come into being: ‘all things uncreated came first, once for all.’ It seems reasonable, too, that the affections did not all run out toward their coming-into-being at once, in a single dash, as if a single starting-gate had fallen, but that, one following upon another in constant succession, each received its first origin at some particular time.
“One might conjecture,” I said, “that those conditions arising from deficiency, and whatever is produced by an onset of heat or cold, were the first to appear in human bodies; but that surfeit, luxury, and self-indulgence came upon men later, the result of idleness and leisure amid an abundance of necessities that produced a great deal of harmful residue—residue in which the varied forms of disease, and every manner of their combination and mixture with one another, are constantly producing something new. For what accords with nature is ordered and well defined, since nature is order, or the product of order; but disorder, like the sand of Pindar, escapes number, and whatever is contrary to nature is at once indeterminate and unlimited.
“Things admit of being true only in a single, simple way, but of being false in countless ways: rhythms and harmonies, too, have their fixed rules, yet the ways in which men go wrong in lyre-playing, song, and dance could not be encompassed by anyone. Indeed, Phrynichus the tragic poet says of himself: ‘Dance gave me as many figures as the waves the deadly night of winter raises on the sea.’ And Chrysippus says that the combinations arising from only ten simple propositions exceed a million in number. But this was refuted by Hipparchus, who demonstrated that the affirmative form contains one hundred thousand and one thousand and forty-nine compound combinations, and the negative form of it three hundred and ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty-two. Xenocrates, for his part, declared that the number of syllables which the letters produce in combination with one another amounts to twenty times ten thousand times ten thousand.
What wonder is it, then, if the body—possessing within itself so many powers, and constantly taking on so many qualities introduced through food and drink, and employing motions and changes that keep neither a single fixed occasion nor always the same order—should, through the combinations of all these things with one another, sometimes produce diseases that are new and unfamiliar? This is just as Thucydides records the plague at Athens to have occurred, inferring its lack of precedent chiefly from the fact that the flesh-eating animals would not touch the corpses. So too those who fell ill around the Red Sea, as Agatharchides has recorded, experienced other symptoms both new and unrecorded: little snake-like worms that ate through their shins and popped out from their arms, and which, when touched, would retreat back in again, and produced unbearable inflammations as they coiled themselves within the muscles. This affliction, like many others, is known to have occurred neither before nor since to anyone but those people alone. Indeed, a certain man suffering from difficulty urinating, over a long period, passed a stalk of barley-straw complete with joints. And we know of our own guest-friend Ephebus at Athens expelling, together with a great quantity of seed, a small hairy creature that moved swiftly on many feet.
Aristotle records that Timon’s tortoise in Cilicia hibernated for two months of every year, showing no sign at all that it was alive except by breathing alone. And indeed, in the records of Menon’s school it is written down as a sign of a liver ailment that domestic mice would be carefully watched and chased—a thing which is nowhere seen to happen now. We ought not, then, to be astonished if something occurs that did not exist before, nor if something that did exist before has since disappeared; for the cause lies in the nature of bodies, which takes on different compositions at different times. As for introducing new air or strange water as a cause, let us set that aside, if Diogenianus does not wish it—though we do know that the followers of Democritus both say and write that, when worlds outside our own perish and bodies of a foreign kind flow in from the effluence, the beginnings of plagues and unfamiliar afflictions often intrude here as a result. Let us also set aside the local devastations among us caused by earthquakes, droughts, and rainstorms, by which the winds and the springs, having an earth-born nature, are necessarily affected along with the earth and change along with it. But as for the change that has occurred with respect to food, delicacies, and other habits of diet on the body, this must not be passed over.
Many things once untasted and inedible have now become most pleasant, such as wine mixed with honey and the womb of animals; and they say that the ancients did not even eat brain, which is why Homer says, ‘I value him no more than a fig,’ speaking in this way of brain, referring to the practice of throwing it away and discarding it in disgust. And we know that many of our older contemporaries are still unable to taste ripe cucumber, the Median apple (citron), or pepper. From such things, then, it is reasonable that bodies should experience strange effects and shift gradually in their compositions, producing their own peculiar quality and residue; and further, that the order and rearrangement of foods should make no small difference. For what are called ‘cold tables’—of oysters, sea urchins, raw vegetables—once occupied, as Plato says of light things, the position from tail to mouth; now, having been transferred, they occupy the first place instead of the last.
A great matter, too, is that of what are called appetizers taken before drinking: the ancients did not even drink water before eating something solid, whereas people nowadays, fasting and already half-drunk, take hold of their food with a body already soaked through and seething, offering thin, sharp, and pungent things as kindling for the appetite, and then gorging themselves on the rest in that condition. And nothing is weaker in the face of change, or more productive of the origin of new diseases, than the great susceptibility of the flesh to what happens at the baths—just as iron is softened and made to flow by fire, and then receives its tempering and hardening from cold water. ‘There flow into Acheron the Pyriphlegethon’: this, I think, is what one of those who lived not long before us might have said, on the opening of a bathhouse door.
For those men of old used such loose and soft habits that King Alexander himself once slept in the bathhouse while running a fever, and the wives of the Gauls used to bring pots of porridge into the baths and eat together with their children while bathing at the same time. But nowadays the baths seem to rage like mad dogs, barking and tearing at us: the air drawn in within them, having become a mixture of moisture and fire, allows no part of the body to remain at rest, but shakes and disturbs every particle of it and dislodges it from its place, until we quench ourselves, all fevered and boiling. ‘There is, then, no need,’ I said, ‘my dear Diogenianus, for the argument to resort to extraneous or otherworldly causes; the change in diet itself is quite capable, on its own, of both generating some diseases and making others disappear.’”
While reading Aristotle’s Physical Problems on our journey to Thermopylae, Florus himself, as philosophical natures are generally prone to do, became filled with many perplexities and passed them on to his companions, bearing witness to Aristotle’s own statement that wide learning creates many starting points for perplexity. Now the rest of these questions provided us with a not ungraceful pastime during the day, in our walks; but the matter said about dreams—that they are unreliable and false, especially during the leaf-shedding months—came up again after dinner, I am not sure how, when Favorinus had taken up other subjects for discussion. To your companions, then, who are my sons, it seemed that Aristotle had resolved the difficulty; and they thought there was no need to inquire or say anything more than, like him, to blame the fruits of the season. For, being still young and full of vigor, they generate a great deal of turbulent breath within the body—
for it is not likely that wine alone ferments and grows agitated, nor that oil, when newly pressed, makes a crackling noise in lamps, as the heat throws off vapor in waves; rather, we see that fresh grain, too, and all the season’s fruit, are swollen and distended until they breathe off what is gaseous and unconcocted. And as evidence that some foods are conducive to bad dreams and disturbing to the visions seen in sleep, they used as testimony both beans and the head of the octopus, which those who wish to practice divination through dreams are told to avoid. Favorinus himself, though in most respects an utterly devoted admirer of Aristotle, and one who assigns the Peripatetic school the largest share of plausibility, on that occasion nonetheless offered some argument...
...of Democritus, an old argument that he brought out, as it were, from smoke and dimness, and set about clearing and brightening. He put forward this very homely doctrine that Democritus states: “images sink deep into bodies through the pores and produce the visions that occur in sleep as they are carried back up; and these images travel about, coming off from everything—from utensils and clothes and plants, but especially from living creatures—because of much agitation and heat, not only bearing shapes and impressions molded from the body—as Epicurus supposes, following Democritus up to this point but then abandoning the argument—but also gathering up and drawing along with them, from each source, impressions of the movements and deliberations of the soul, and of characters and passions, and when they strike upon us, they speak and report, as if alive, to those who receive them, the opinions, reasonings, and impulses of those who sent them out, whenever they approach while keeping their images distinct and unconfused.”
This happens above all when their passage occurs through smooth air, unimpeded and swift. But the autumn air, in which the trees shed their leaves, has much unevenness and roughness, and it distorts and deflects the images in many directions, and makes their clarity faint and weak through the slowness of their passage as it grows dim—just as, conversely, images that leap forth quickly and are carried swiftly from things that are seething and burning hot render their impressions fresh and significant.
Then, looking over at Autobulus and his companions with a smile, he said, “But I see that you are already able to fight shadows against these images, and to think you are accomplishing something by applying touch to an old opinion as if to a painting.” And Autobulus said, “Stop your embroidering at us; we are not unaware that, wishing to make Aristotle's opinion prevail, you have set up Democritus's opinion as a mere shadow beside it. So we shall turn to that opinion and do battle with it, since it accuses the new fruits and the dear autumn produce unjustly. For summer bears them witness, and so does the late season, when the autumn fruit is most green and bursting with sap, as Antimachus said;
for those of us who eat it fresh, just as it is produced, are less troubled by deceptive and false dreams. But the leaf-shedding months, already encamping alongside winter, keep their foods in digestion, and what remains of the tree-fruits is shriveled and wrinkled, having let go of that sharp, maddening quality entirely. Moreover, those who drink new wine at the earliest opportunity drink it in the month of Anthesterion, after winter; and that day we call the day of the Good Spirit, while the Athenians call it the Jar-Opening.
We see even the workers, fearful, always drawing off the must while it is still fermenting. So let us abandon this slandering of the gods' gifts and take another road, the one that the very name of the season points to, along with the airy and false dreams. For it is called ‘leaf-shedding’ on account of the coldness and dryness that then causes the leaves to fall away—except for whatever is warm or oily, such as olive, laurel, and palm, or moist, such as myrtle and ivy;
for in these plants the blending of qualities helps them, but not in the others: for the sticky, cohesive quality does not remain, either because the moisture is thickened by cold or dried up through deficiency or weakness. Now it is possible for plants too to flourish and grow through moisture or warmth, but this is truer still of animals; and conversely, cold and dryness are destructive. That is why Homer charmingly used to call mortals ‘the moist ones,’ and called rejoicing ‘being warmed,’ while he called what is painful and fearful ‘chilling’ and ‘shivering.’
The words ‘bloodless’ and ‘skeleton’ are applied to corpses, the name itself reproaching their dryness. Further, blood, which has the most sovereign power within us, is at once both warm and moist, while old age lacks both qualities. And as the year runs its course, autumn seems to be, as it were, its old age: for the moist has not yet arrived, and the warm is no longer strong; and this condition, being plainly one of dryness together with coldness, renders bodies vulnerable to diseases.
It is inevitable that souls share the condition of bodies, and especially that, when the breath grows chilled and thickened, the power of divination is dimmed, like a mirror clouded over with mist. It therefore yields nothing clear or articulate or well-defined in its visions, so long as it remains thick, unlit, and contracted.”
This is the ninth book of the Table Talk, dear Sossius Senecio; it contains the discussions that took place at Athens in the Museum, and especially it is fitting that the number nine should belong to the Muses.
As for the number, if it exceeds the customary ten questions, that should not cause surprise: for it was right to render to the Muses everything belonging to the Muses in full, and to take nothing away, as though from sacred things, since we owe them more and finer offerings than these. Ammonius, while serving as strategos at Athens, held an examination in the Diogeneion of those who were learning letters, geometry, rhetoric, and music, and he invited to dinner those teachers whose pupils had distinguished themselves.
Many of the other scholars were present too, and pretty much all of our usual circle. Now Achilles invited to dinner only those among the combatants who had actually fought in single combat, wishing, as they say, that if any anger or harshness had arisen between men under arms, they might lay it aside and set it down once they had shared a common feast and table. But with Ammonius the opposite happened:
for the rivalry and contentiousness of the teachers, once they had gotten into their cups, grew still more intense; and by now there were propositions and challenges flying about, undisciplined and disorderly. So first he ordered Eraton to sing to the lyre; and when he had sung the opening lines of the Works, ‘So after all there was not just one kind of Strife,’ he praised him for having fitted the words so suitably to the occasion.
Then he raised the subject of the timeliness of verses, how it sometimes has not only charm but also great usefulness. And the rhapsode's case was immediately on everyone's lips: at the wedding of Ptolemy, who was marrying his sister—an act considered strange and unlawful—the rhapsode had begun with those very lines, ‘And Zeus called Hera his sister and his wife.’ And there was the one at the court of King Demetrius who was reluctant to sing after dinner,
so the king sent to him his son, still a small boy, Philip, and the singer immediately took up the boy and sang, ‘To rear this child of mine worthy of Heracles and of us.’ And Anaxarchus, when he was being pelted with apples by Alexander at dinner, rose up and said, ‘Some god shall be struck by a mortal hand.’ But best of all was the Corinthian boy taken captive when the city was destroyed:
Mummius, going carefully among the freeborn children who knew their letters, ordered one to write a verse, and the boy wrote, ‘Thrice blessed, four times blessed, the Danaans who perished then.’ They say Mummius was moved and wept, and set free all those connected with the boy. He also recalled the story of the wife of Theodorus the tragic actor, who would not receive him into her bed while the contest was still close at hand;
but when he had won and come in to her, she embraced him and said, ‘Son of Agamemnon, now that is permitted to you.’ After this, several of those present were moved to bring up many untimely remarks as well, on the ground that it is not without use to know and guard against them: for instance, they say that when Pompey the Great, on returning from his great campaign, was present as his daughter's tutor gave a demonstration, and a book was handed to her, the girl happened upon this very opening,
‘You have come from war: would that you had perished there.’ And when an unattributed rumor reached Cassius Longinus that his son had died abroad, and no one could say whether it was true or dispel the suspicion, a senator, already an older man, came in to him and said, ‘Will you not disdain, Longinus, an untrustworthy rumor and malicious talk—as though you did not know and had not read the line, “Rumor never wholly perishes”?’
And the man at Rhodes, when a grammarian asked him for a line to use as a demonstration in the theater, held out to him, ‘Get off the island quickly, most contemptible of the living—’ it being unclear whether he meant it as a joke or missed the mark unintentionally. This, at any rate, wittily soothed the uproar. Since it was customary at the Museum gatherings for lots to be passed around and for those paired together to propose learned questions to one another, Ammonius, fearing that some of the men in the same profession might be paired together,
ordered, without drawing lots, that the geometer should put a question to the grammarian, and the musician to the rhetorician, and then that the returns should be reversed in the opposite order. So Hermias the geometer put first to Protogenes the grammarian the question of stating the reason why the letter alpha is placed first among all the letters. Protogenes gave the answer commonly stated in the schools: that the vowels rightly take precedence over the consonants and semivowels;
and among the vowels, since some are long, some short, and some—called ‘of two times’—are both, these naturally differ in power. And among these same vowels again, the one holding the most commanding rank is the one fit to be placed before the other two, and subordinate to neither—such as alpha: for this letter is willing neither to be ranked second to iota nor to upsilon, and to be combined with either
so as to form a single syllable out of the two, nor to share their condition, but as though indignant, it springs away and always seeks a beginning of its own; whereas whichever of those two you please, when placed first, can be used together with the other that follows and harmonizes with it, and can form the syllables of words, as in ‘tomorrow,’ ‘to play the flute,’ ‘Ajax,’ ‘to feel shame,’ and countless others. Therefore, like athletes in the pentathlon, it surpasses and wins by three points:
in most cases by being a vowel, and further, among vowels, by being one of two times, and further still by these same qualities naturally fitting it to lead and never to come second or to follow. When Protogenes had finished, Ammonius called on me and said, ‘You are no help at all to Cadmus, you Boeotian, whom they say placed alpha first of all because the Phoenicians so name the ox, which',
they place not second or third, as Hesiod does, but first among necessities.’ ‘Not at all,’ I said; ‘for I am more bound to help my own grandfather, if I can, than the grandfather of Dionysus. For Lamprias, my grandfather, used to say that the first sound naturally produced among articulate sounds is emitted through the power of alpha: for the breath in the mouth is shaped chiefly by the movements of the lips,
and when these first open, with the upper part parting, this sound comes out—one that is quite simple and requires no effort at all, calling for no engagement or restraint of the tongue, but is sent out with the tongue lying in its place; which is also why infants utter this as their very first sound. And he said that the verb ‘to hear’ [aíiein] was likewise named from the perception of sound,
and many similar words, such as ‘to sing’ [áidein], ‘to play the flute’ [auleîn], and ‘to raise a cry’ [alalázein]. And I think that ‘to lift’ [aírein] and ‘to open’ [anoígein] too were not inappropriately named from the opening and raising of the lips, by which this sound issues from the mouth. That is also why the names of the consonant letters, with one exception, all make use of alpha, as if it were a light
for the blindness that otherwise surrounds them: only the letter pi lacks this feature, for phi and chi are respectively pi and kappa aspirated.’ In response to this, Hermias said he accepted both accounts, and I said, ‘Why then did you not also explain to us whether there is any reason for the number of the letters, as it seems to me there is?
I take as evidence the fact that the total of the consonants and semivowels, in relation to one another and to the vowels, did not come about by chance, but according to the first proportion—as we call it. For there being nine, and eight, and seven, the middle number both exceeds and is exceeded in the same ratio; and of the outer terms, the greatest bears the same ratio to the smallest
as the number of the Muses bears to that of Apollo: for the group of nine belongs, of course, to the Muses, and the group of seven has been allotted to the Leader of the Muses; and when these two are added together, they naturally double the middle number, since the semivowels too share in a way in the power of both.’ And Hermias said, ‘Hermes is said to have been the first of the gods in Egypt to discover letters; that is also why
the Egyptians draw the ibis first among their letters, as belonging properly to Hermes—not rightly, in my own opinion, since they thus grant precedence in matters of letters to a mute, voiceless creature. To Hermes above all the number four is assigned; and many record that the god was born on the fourth day of the waxing month. Indeed the first, so-called Phoenician letters, named for Cadmus, numbered four times four, as the group of four supplied them;
and of the letters discovered later, Palamedes first added four, and Simonides afterward added just as many more. Moreover, that among all numbers the first perfect one is—the triad, as having a beginning, middle, and end, and the hexad, as being equal to the sum of its own parts—this is clear. Of these, then, the hexad multiplied by the tetrad, and
the triad multiplied by the ogdoad, the first perfect number of the first cube, has furnished the sum of twenty-four.’ While he was still speaking, Zopyrion the schoolmaster was visibly laughing and muttering asides; and when Hermias finished, he could not restrain himself but called such things sheer nonsense: for the number of the letters, he said, had come to be so great, and their order arranged as it is, by no reasoned principle but by a kind of coincidence,
just as, he said, the first line of the Iliad happens to have the same number of syllables as the first line of the Odyssey, and again the last line matches the last, purely by chance and automatically. After this we restrained Hermias, who wanted to put some question to Zopyrion; but Maximus the rhetorician, from farther off, asked him, out of Homer, which hand of Aphrodite Diomedes wounded.
When Zopyrion quickly countered by asking in which leg Philip was lame, Maximus said, ‘It is not the same thing: for Demosthenes has given no explanation on that point; but you, if you admit you are at a loss, others will show where the poet indicates the wounded hand to those with sense.’ So we thought Zopyrion had been thoroughly refuted, and since he kept silent, we asked Maximus to demonstrate. ‘First then,’
Maximus said, ‘since the verses run thus: “Then, reaching out, the son of great-hearted Tydeus wounded the tip of her hand, leaping forward with his sharp spear,” it is clear that, since he wished to strike the left hand, he had no need to leap across, because he was already facing her right hand with his own left as they approached from opposite sides; for it was reasonable that the stronger hand, especially as Aeneas was being carried off, should be the one holding him back, and that other hand
Wound her, and let the wounded goddess be carried up into heaven, while Athena laughed and said: "Surely some daughter of Achaea has been inciting the women of Troy again, whom she now loves exceedingly, to go along with the Trojans — caressing one of the deep-bosomed Achaean women, she has scratched her delicate hand against a golden brooch." "I think that you too, best of teachers," he said, "whenever you affectionately stroke and caress one of your pupils, ought not to do this with the left hand but with the right — just as it is fitting that Aphrodite too, being the most dexterous of the goddesses, shows affection to the heroines in this way."
This made everyone else more cheerful, but Sospis the rhetorician, noticing that the grammarian Hylas alone was silent and sullen — for he had not fared very well in the recitations — cried out to him, raising his voice, "Such alone was the soul of Telamonian Ajax," and went on addressing the rest of the line even more loudly to him: "But come here, lord, that you may hear our word and speech: tame your might and your unyielding spirit." Hylas, still uneven-tempered from his irritation, answered rudely that the soul of Ajax, having drawn the twentieth lot in Hades, had according to Plato exchanged its nature for that of a lion, whereas he himself often felt it would be better to become the donkey of the comic old man than to see men inferior to himself living more conspicuously than he.
Sospis laughed and said, "Well then, while we are about to put on the pack-saddle, if you care at all for Plato, teach us by what reasoning he has made the soul of the son of Telamon proceed by lot to the twentieth choice." Hylas, thinking he was being mocked, waved this off in disgust, and being out of sorts our brother took up the question and said, "Well then, does not Ajax always rank second in beauty, stature, and courage, 'after the blameless son of Peleus'? And twenty is the second decade, and the decade is the strongest among numbers, just as Achilles is among the Achaeans?" When we laughed, Ammonius said, "Let these remarks of yours, Lamprias, stand as jests aimed at Hylas; but for us, not in jest but in earnest — since you have willingly taken up the argument — go through the reason."
So Lamprias, taken aback, then after pausing not long, said that in many places Plato plays with us through the use of names; but wherever he mixes some myth with his discourse about the soul, he there makes the fullest use of intelligence. For just as he calls the intelligible nature of heaven a winged chariot because of the harmonious revolution of the cosmos, so here he names the messenger of the dead, of Pamphylian stock, "son of Harmonius," and calls him Er, hinting that souls are born according to harmony and are fitted together with bodies, and when released they are borne together from every side into the air, and from there they turn again to their second births.
"What, then, prevents us from taking the word 'twentieth' as spoken not with reference to the truth but as 'likely' (eikos) and fashioned for the sake of the argument, or with reference to the lot, as meaning 'at random' (eike) and happening by chance? For he always touches on the three causes, being indeed the first to do so — or rather the one who best understood how what is according to fate is naturally intertwined and interwoven with what is according to chance, and again what is in our own power with each of these and with both together. But now he has marvelously indicated the power that each of these has in our affairs, assigning the choice of lives to what is in our own power — for virtue and vice are without a master — while attaching living well to those who choose rightly, and the opposite to those who choose badly, by the necessity of fate. The fallings of the lots, scattered in disorder, introduce chance also into the upbringings and civic constitutions that each group obtains, forestalling much of what is ours."
"See, then, whether it is unreasonable to seek a cause for things that happen by chance; for if the lot appears to have come about by some reasoning, it no longer happens by chance or automatically, but from some fate and providence." While Lamprias was still speaking, Marcus the grammarian seemed to be calculating something and counting to himself; then, when Lamprias stopped, he said, "Of the Homeric souls that he has named in the Nekyia, the soul of Elpenor, not yet mingled with those in Hades because his corpse had not been buried, wanders as it were on the border; and the soul of Tiresias surely ought not to be counted together with the others, since to him alone, though dead, Persephone granted a mind, that he alone should be wise and converse and understand among the living, before drinking of the blood.
If, then, setting these aside, Lamprias, you count the rest, it turns out that Ajax's soul is the twentieth to come into the sight of Odysseus, and that Plato is playing on this, coloring his account with reference to the Homeric Nekyia." When everyone made a stir at this, Menephylus the Peripatetic, addressing Hylas, said, "Do you see that the question was not mockery or insult? But, my good man, leave aside the ill-tempered and ill-named Ajax, as Sophocles calls him, and side instead with Poseidon, whom you yourself are accustomed to tell us was often defeated — here by Athena, at Delphi by Apollo, at Argos by Hera, at Aegina by Zeus, at Naxos by Dionysus — yet everywhere gentle and free from resentment about his misfortunes; here at least he even shares a temple with Athena, in which there is also an altar of Forgetfulness set up."
And Hylas, as if made more cheerful, said, "But this has escaped you, Menephylus, that we also remove the second day of the month Boedromion not with reference to the moon, but because on that day the gods are thought to have contended over the land." "In everything," said Lamprias, "Poseidon has proven more civic-minded than Thrasybulus, in that, even when not prevailing as Thrasybulus did, he yet — being defeated — 'men are to be deceived by oaths.'" And Glaucias said, "I for my part have heard this saying told of Polycrates the tyrant; but it is likely to be said of others too. Why do you ask this?" "Because, by Zeus," said Sospis, "I see boys playing at odd-and-even with knucklebones, and Academics doing the same with arguments; for such quibblers are no different from those who ask whether the things gathered in the hand are even or odd."
Then Protogenes stood up and, calling me by name, said, "What has come over us, that we let these orators live in luxury, laughing at others, while they themselves are asked nothing and propose no contributions to the conversation? Unless, by Zeus, they will say that they have no share in the fellowship of wine, being admirers and emulators of Demosthenes, a man who drank wine his whole life long." "That is not the reason for this," I said, "but rather that we have asked them nothing. But if you have nothing more useful to propose, I think I shall put to them one of Homer's rhetorical theses, a case of conflicting laws."
"Which one is that?" he said. "I will tell you," I said, "and put it to them at the same time, so let them now pay attention. For Alexander, on stated terms, made his challenge thus: 'But set me in the middle, and Menelaus dear to Ares, to fight for Helen and all her possessions; and whichever of the two prevails and proves the stronger, let him take all the goods rightly and lead the woman home.' And again Hector, proclaiming it and setting the challenge before everyone, used almost the very same words: he bids the other Trojans and all the Achaeans lay their fine armor upon the bounteous earth, while he himself in the middle, and Menelaus dear to Ares, fight alone for Helen and all her possessions; and let the wife and possessions go with whoever proves victorious.
Menelaus having accepted, they make the agreement binding with oaths, and Agamemnon leads off: 'If Alexander slays Menelaus, then let him himself lead away Helen and all the possessions; but if fair-haired Menelaus kills Alexander, let him take all the goods rightly and lead the woman home.' Since, then, Menelaus won but did not kill him, each side, taking up its own claim, presses it upon the enemy — the one demanding on the grounds that Paris had been defeated, the other refusing to give up on the grounds that he had not died.
How, then," I said, "might one most rightly state and arbitrate this case of conflicting laws — a task not for philosophers nor for grammarians, but for orators who, like you, practice both grammar and philosophy?" Sospis then said that the word of the one who issued the challenge was more authoritative, like a law: "for that man announced the terms on which they would contend, and those who accepted and agreed to it are no longer free to add conditions of their own. And the challenge was not made concerning killing and death, but concerning victory and defeat — and quite rightly so. For it was fitting that the woman belong to the better man, and the one who wins is the better man, while it often happens that even good men die at the hands of inferior ones — as Achilles later died, shot by Paris; and we would not, I think, say that Achilles' death was a defeat, nor his killer's a victory, but rather an unjust stroke of luck for the one who struck him.
But Hector had been defeated even before he died, since he did not stand his ground but was afraid and fled when Achilles came at him; for the one who gives up and flees has suffered an undisputed defeat and has conceded that his opponent is the better man. That is why, first, Iris, bringing the news to Helen, says that 'with long spears they will fight over you, and to the one who proves victor you will be called dear wife'; and then Zeus awarded the prize of the battle to Menelaus, saying, 'Victory plainly belongs to Menelaus dear to Ares.' For it would be absurd that, whereas he defeated Podes by hurling a spear at him from a distance while he neither expected nor guarded against it, and this counted as a victory, the other — who gave up, fled, and dove into the folds of his wife's robe, letting himself be spoiled while still alive — should not deserve to carry off the victor's prize, having by his own challenge proven the better man and the survivor."
Glaucias, taking this up, said that, first, in decrees and laws, in agreements and covenants, the later terms are held to be more authoritative and more binding than the earlier ones: "the later agreements were those made through Agamemnon, having death, not the defeat of the one overcome, as their end. Then, the first challenge was made in words alone, but the latter were accompanied also by oaths, and curses attended those who transgressed them, accepted and agreed to not by one man but by all — so that these became truly a covenant, and the former only a challenge. Priam bears witness to this, as he departs after the oaths of the contest: 'Zeus, surely, and the other immortal gods, know to which of the two the fulfillment of death is destined' — for he knew that the agreements had been made on these terms. That is why, shortly after, Hector says, 'high-throned Zeus, son of Cronos, did not bring the oaths to fulfillment' — for the contest remained unfulfilled and had no undisputed outcome, since neither man had fallen.
For this reason it seems to me that the question was not even truly one of conflicting laws, since the later agreements included the earlier ones within themselves; for the one who killed has won, but the one who won did not kill. To put it concisely, Agamemnon did not annul Hector's challenge but clarified it; he did not change it but added to it the most decisive element, placing victory in the act of killing — for this is complete victory, whereas the other pretexts and counter-arguments have their difficulties, as in the case of Menelaus, who neither wounded nor pursued him. Just as, then, in genuine cases of conflicting laws, the judges side with whichever party has nothing disputable in its claim, letting go of the less clear one, so here too one must consider the agreement that leads to an unambiguous and recognized conclusion to be the more binding and more authoritative one. And, what is most important, the very man who seemed to have won, not having withdrawn when his opponent fled nor having stopped, but 'ranging everywhere through the throng, if anywhere he might catch sight of godlike Alexander,' has himself testified that the victory was invalid and incomplete, since his opponent had escaped.
Nor did he forget the words spoken by Alexander himself: 'whichever of us death and fate is appointed for, let him die, and you others be parted quickly.' Therefore it was necessary for him to seek out Alexander, so that by killing him he might complete the task of the contest; but not having killed him nor captured him, he was not justified in demanding the victor's prize. For indeed he had not won, if one must judge by his own words, when he reproached Zeus and lamented his failures: 'Father Zeus, no other god is more baneful than you; truly I thought to punish Alexander for his wickedness, but now my sword is broken in my hands, and the spear flew from my grasp in vain, and I did not strike him' — for he himself admits that it was nothing to have cut through the small shield and to have seized the helmet as it fell off, if he did not strike and kill his enemy."
After this we poured libations to the Muses, and having sung a paean to Apollo, leader of the Muses, we joined Erato in singing to the lyre, from Hesiod, the passage about the birth of the Muses. After the song, Herodes the orator said, "Listen, you who steal Calliope away from us, saying that she is present with kings alone — surely she does not resolve syllogisms or ask questions that involve exchanging one term for another, but does the things that belong to the work of orators and statesmen. Of the others, Clio takes up the encomiastic function — for they used to call praises 'klea' — and Polymnia the historical, for there is 'memory of many things'; and in some places they say that all the Muses together are called 'Mneiai,' as at Leiai.
For my part, I also lay some claim to Euterpe: if, as Chrysippus says, she has been allotted what is delightful and pleasing in social intercourse. For the orator is no less a man of social conversation than one skilled in the courtroom and in deliberative speaking; for these faculties involve both goodwill and advocacy and defense, and we make the greatest use of praise and blame — and in these we achieve no trivial or small things, if we do it skillfully; but if inexpertly and without art, we miss the mark. For the line 'alas, how this man is dear and honored by all' applies, I think, all the more to men, in proportion as they possess persuasiveness and charm in their social relations, which are well suited to them."
And Ammonius said, "It is not right to begrudge you, Herodes, for grasping at the Muses with a full hand — for the goods of friends are held in common. And it was for this reason that Zeus begot many Muses, so that all might draw abundantly from what is good; for not all of us engage in hunting, or soldiering, or seafaring, or manual crafts, but all of us who reap the fruit of the broad earth have need of education and of speech — which is why he made Athena one, and Artemis one, and Hephaestus one, but made the Muses many. As to why there are nine and neither fewer nor more, one might ask...
“...tell us? I think you must have thought about it, being so fond of the Muses and so learned in music.” “And what is so clever about that?” said Herodes. “Everyone has on his lips, and every woman sings, the number nine, since it is the first square number formed from the first odd number, and it is odd multiplied by odd, inasmuch as it divides into three equal odd parts.” And Ammonius, smiling, said: “You have recalled that manfully. And add to it this much besides: that the number is also composed from the first two cubes joined together, one and eight, and again, by another combination, from two triangular numbers, three and six, each of which is itself a perfect number. But what has this more to do with the Muses than with the other gods? It would be fitting because we have nine Muses — but do we have nine Demeters, or nine Athenas, or nine Artemises?
Surely it does not persuade even you that the Muses came to be so many in number because the name of their mother is made up of that many letters.” When Herodes had laughed and a silence fell, Ammonius urged us to take up the question. So my brother said that the ancients knew only three Muses: “but it is pedantic and boorish to cite proof of this before so many and such distinguished men.
The reason is not, as some say, the melodic genera — the diatonic, the chromatic, and the enharmonic — nor the boundary notes that mark off the intervals, the nete, the mese, and the hypate; and yet the Delphians did in fact give the Muses these very names, not rightly attaching them to a single science, or rather to a part of the single science of music, namely the harmonic part. Rather, all the sciences, as
I believe, and the arts that are carried through by reasoned discourse, the ancients, having observed that they fell into three kinds — the philosophical, the rhetorical, and the mathematical — made of the three a gift and grace of the gods, which they called Muses. Later, in Hesiod’s time and after, as their powers came to be more fully disclosed, dividing each of the three again into three species, each containing within itself further differences,
they observed the following: in the mathematical kind there is the part concerned with music, the part concerned with arithmetic, and the part concerned with geometry; in the philosophical kind, the logical, the ethical, and the physical; and in the rhetorical kind, they say the encomiastic came into being first, the deliberative second, and the forensic last. Since none of these could be considered godless or unmusical, but each was thought worthy of a higher guiding power,
it was reasonable that they did not make the Muses equal in number to these but discovered that they already were. Just as the number nine divides into three triads, each of which is again divided into as many units, so too there is one thing common to all — the correctness of reasoning about its proper subject — and this has been distributed three by three among each of the three kinds; and then again, each Muse individually presides over and adorns one
faculty. I do not think that poets and astronomers can charge us with neglecting their arts, since they know no less than we do that astronomy is allied with geometry, and poetry with music.” When this had been said, the physician Tryphon remarked, “And why have you shut the shrine of the Muses against our art?” whereupon Dionysius of Melite took up the question: “You are calling many others besides yourself to join the accusation; for
we farmers too claim Thalia as our own, since we credit her with the flourishing and thriving growth and preservation of plants and seeds.” “But you are not being fair,” I said, “for you also have Demeter Anesidora and Dionysus, ‘who makes glad the wooded haunts of trees, the holy light of autumn,’ as Pindar says; and we know that physicians have Asclepius as their patron, and make use of Apollo the Healer in every way,
but of none of the Muses’ leader. For, as Homer says, ‘all men have need of gods,’ but not all men have need of all the gods alike. But I marvel that it escaped Lamprias what is said by the Delphians. For they say that the Muses among them are named not after notes or strings, but rather, since the universe has been divided in three parts, the first is the portion of the fixed stars, the second that of the planets,
and the last that of the region beneath the moon; and all of these are bound and arranged together according to harmonious ratios, and each has its own guardian Muse: of the first sphere, Hypate; of the last, Nete; and of the one in between, Mese, which holds them together and turns mortal things, as far as possible, toward the gods, and earthly things toward the heavenly — just as Plato too hinted with the names of the Fates,
calling one Atropos, one Clotho, and one Lachesis; for over the revolutions of the eight spheres he set not the Muses but the Sirens, equal in number to them.” Menephylus the Peripatetic then took up the point and said: “The Delphian account has some measure of plausibility, but Plato is absurd, setting up the Sirens in place of the Muses over the eternal and divine revolutions — spirits not at all benevolent or
kindly — while either leaving out the Muses altogether or addressing them by the names of the Fates and calling them daughters of Necessity. For Necessity is unmusical, while Persuasion is musical, and I think that she who loves to dwell with the Muses far more — as Empedocles’ Grace — detests harsh, unyielding Necessity.” “Quite so,” said Ammonius, “the necessity that operates in us involuntarily and against our choice is harsh, but the necessity that is
among the gods is not harsh, I think, nor hard to obey, nor forceful, except toward the wicked, just as in a city law is, for the best citizens, their own best guide, unalterable and inviolable, not because change is impossible for it but because it is undesired. As for the Sirens of Homer, they do not frighten us contrary to reason in the myth, but he too was rightly hinting
that their musical power is not inhuman or destructive, but that to souls departing from here to there, and wandering after death, it instills, it seems, a longing for heavenly and divine things and forgetfulness of mortal things, holding them spellbound and singing them to rest; and other souls follow and accompany them out of joy. Here among us, some faint echo of that music
reaches us through words and calls forth and reminds our souls of that former state; but the ears of most people are plastered and sealed over with fleshly obstructions and passions, not waxen ones; while the soul that by its natural gift perceives and remembers is affected no less than by the most frenzied loves, yearning and longing, yet unable to release itself from the body.
I myself, however, do not altogether agree with these men; rather it seems to me that Plato, having called the axes spindles and distaffs, and the stars whorls, in an unusual way here also calls the Muses Sirens — ‘those who speak’ divine things and utter them in Hades, just as Sophocles’ Odysseus says that the Sirens who came to him were daughters of Phorcus, ‘chanting the laws of Hades.’ The Muses are eight in number and accompany the
eight spheres, while one has been allotted the region around the earth. The eight, then, presiding over the revolutions, maintain and preserve the harmony of the wandering stars with the fixed ones and with each other; while the one that oversees and circles the region between earth and moon bestows on mortals, as far as they are naturally able to perceive and receive it, grace and rhythm and harmony, through
speech and song bringing persuasion as an ally of political and social life, soothing and charming what is turbulent and errant in us, calling it back gently, as it were from a wrong road, and setting it right. ‘But those whom Zeus has not loved are terrified when they hear the cry of the Pierian Muses,’ as Pindar says.” When Ammonius had added to this the saying of Xenophanes, that such things, as he was accustomed to say, are ‘held as opinion, resembling the truth,’ and urged each of us to declare and say what he thought,
I, after a brief pause, said that “Plato himself supposes that he can discover the powers of the gods, as it were, by tracing their names; and let us likewise place in heaven and around heavenly things one of the Muses, who evidently is Urania; and it is reasonable that those things need no elaborate or varied governance, since they have one simple cause governing their nature;
but where there are many discords and many irregularities and transgressions, there we must station the eight Muses, each correcting a different kind of vice and disharmony. And since life is partly a matter of seriousness and partly of play, and needs to be handled musically and with due measure, our serious part — Calliope, Clio, and Thalia — being the guide of the science and contemplation concerning
the gods, will be thought to turn and help set that part right; while the remaining Muses will not, out of weakness, overlook the part of us that inclines toward pleasure and play growing licentious and bestial, but will receive and escort it, blended gracefully and decorously with dance and song and choral movement possessing rhythm and harmony and reason. I, however, since Plato leaves in each of our actions two
starting points — the innate desire for pleasures, and the acquired opinion that reaches for what is best, and calls the one reason and the other, at times, passion, and since each of these two again has its own further differences — I see that each truly requires great and divine guidance. To begin with, one part of reason is political and kingly, and over this Hesiod says
Calliope is set; ambition Clio is especially allotted to exalt and glorify together with it; while Polyhymnia belongs to the love of learning and to the memory of the soul — wherefore the Sicyonians call one of their three Muses Polymatheia. To Euterpe everyone would assign the contemplative part of the truth concerning nature, leaving to no other kind purer or finer enjoyments and delights. Of
desire, the part concerned with food and drink Thalia makes sociable and fit for the symposium instead of inhuman and bestial — wherefore we say that those who are together in wine with kindness and cheer are ‘making festivity’ (thaliazein), not those who behave with insolence and drunken abuse; while over the earnest pursuits of intercourse, Erato, present together with persuasion that carries reason and a sense of timing, removes and quenches the maddening and frenzied element of pleasure,
leading it instead to friendship and trust, not to outrage or licentiousness. And the pleasure of the eyes — whether it belongs more to reason, or to passion, or is common to both — the remaining two, Melpomene and Terpsichore, take in hand and adorn; so that the one becomes not bewitchment but cheerful delight, and the other not sorcery but charm.” After this, when a pyramid-cake had been brought in, they carried it off
as the prize for dancing; and my brother Lamprias, together with Meniscus the trainer, was appointed judge, for he had danced the pyrrhic dance convincingly, and in his gesturing at the wrestling schools he seemed to surpass the other boys. As many were dancing with more eagerness than musical skill, some thought it fitting that the two who were most esteemed and wished to preserve proper rhythm should dance movement against movement. Thrasybulus then asked Ammonius what the term
‘movement’ (phora) meant, and this gave Ammonius occasion to discuss the parts of dancing at greater length. He said there are three: movement, figure, and indication. For dancing consists of motions and positions, just as melody consists of notes and intervals; and here the pauses are the limits of the motions. The motions, then, they call
‘movements,’ while the positions and postures into which the motions are carried and come to rest they call ‘figures,’ as when dancers, having arranged the body into the figure of Apollo or Pan or some Bacchant, hold that shape as if drawn in outline. The third element, ‘indication,’ is not imitative but truly points out the things themselves. For just as poets use proper names in a pointing, indicative way — naming Achilles and Odysseus
and the earth and the sky, as they are called by most people — but for vividness of expression and for imitations they employ coined words and metaphors, saying that broken streams of water ‘murmur’ and ‘babble,’ and that arrows fly ‘eager to taste flesh,’ and that an evenly matched battle ‘holds heads level in the fray’; and they fashion many compound words to imitate
limbs in motion — as Euripides says of Perseus, ‘flying through the holy heaven of Zeus, the Gorgon-slayer,’ and Pindar, of the horse, that it ‘sped its unspurred frame beside the Alpheus in the race,’ and Homer, of the horse-racing, that ‘the chariots plated with bronze and tin ran on with the swift-footed horses’ — so too in dancing, the figure is imitative of shape and form, while the
movement is expressive of some feeling, or action, or power; and by their indications, dancers properly point out the actual things themselves — the earth, the sky, those standing nearby — which, when done in a certain order and measure, resembles the proper names used in poetry, when they are brought forth with a certain grace and smoothness, as in such phrases as ‘reverend Themis and quick-glancing Aphrodite, and Hera of the golden crown’
‘and fair Dione’; and ‘of Hellen were born law-dispensing kings, Dorus and Xuthus and Aeolus, glorious in the chariot.’ Otherwise, for those too pedestrian and clumsy in their rhythm, such expressions come out as ‘of one was born Heracles, of the other Iphiclus’; and ‘her father, and husband, and son were kings, and her brothers, and her ancestors’; and ‘Greece calls her the Olympian.’ For such errors
occur also in dancing, in the matter of indications, if they lack plausibility or grace along with propriety and simplicity. And in general he said he would transfer Simonides’ saying from painting to dancing: that dancing is silent poetry, and poetry in turn is speaking dance; whence he said that painting has no share in the art of poetry, nor poetry in that of painting, and that the two make no use whatsoever
of one another. But between the arts of dancing and poetry there is every kind of partnership and mutual participation, and especially in imitating the class of songs called hyporchemes, both arts actively bring to completion the same imitation, through figures on the one hand and words on the other. It would seem, as in painting, that poems resemble the colors, and dance movements resemble the outlines, by which the forms are defined. This is shown by the poet who is thought
to have succeeded best in the hyporchemes and to have been the most persuasive of himself in this, by his statement that each art needs the other; for he says, ‘imitate, as you whirl on eager foot, either the untamed horse or the Amyclaean hound, pursuing the winding melody’; or again, ‘as over the flowering Dotian plain flies the horned deer in search of death, twisting its neck to look back with its other head, and all along the track,’ and so forth.
the poems all but smooth out the very disposition proper to dancing, and summon the hands and the feet — or rather draw and stretch the whole body to the rhythms, as if with cords — so that when these words are being spoken and sung, people are unable to keep still. He himself, at any rate, is not ashamed to praise his own dancing no less than his poetry, when now, grown old,
"I mingle light dancing with the song of the feet — they call it the Cretan manner." But nothing of the present day has profited so much from bad taste in music as dancing has. That is why it has suffered what Ibycus, in his fear, expressed: "I dread lest, having sinned in some way before the gods, I win honor at the price of men." For she too, having taken to herself a certain vulgar, popular poetry, and having fallen from that heavenly poetry, now holds sway over
the senseless and foolish theaters, like a tyrant who has made almost the whole of music her subject, but has utterly lost the honor that truly belongs to her among men of sense and godlike men. These, more or less, Sossius Senecio, were the last of the discussions held on that occasion in the Museum, at the house of the good Ammonius.

======== Moralia: Quaestiones Graecae ========

"Who are the koniopodes and artynoi at Epidaurus?" The governing body consisted of one hundred and eighty men; from among these they chose councillors, whom they called "artynoi." Most of the common people spent their time in the countryside, and they were called "koniopodes" ("dusty-feet"), as one can infer, because they were recognized by their dust-covered feet whenever they came down into the city.
"What is the onobatis among the Cymaeans?" When a woman was caught in adultery, they led her into the marketplace and set her up on a certain stone in plain view of everyone; then they mounted her on a donkey, and after she had been paraded around the city she had to stand again on the same stone and remain disgraced for the rest of her life, being called "onobatis" ("donkey-rider"). They considered the stone unclean after this and purified it. There was also among them a certain office called the "phylaktos."
The man holding this office kept guard over the prison the rest of the time, but when he came into the council in its nighttime session he would lead the kings out by the hand and hold them until the council determined concerning them, whether they were guilty or not, casting their vote in secret. "Who is the hypekkaustria among the Solians?" This is what they call the priestess of Athena, because she performs certain apotropaic sacrifices
and rites. "Who are the amnemones at Cnidus, and who is the aphester?" They employed sixty men chosen from the best families as a kind of board of overseers for life, also serving as counsellors on the most important matters; they were called "amnemones" ("unmindful ones"), as one might guess, because of their being unaccountable — unless indeed, by Zeus, they were in fact men of excellent memory. The one who put the questions to them for their opinions was the "aphester." "Who are those among the Arcadians
and Lacedaemonians called chrestoi?" When the Lacedaemonians were reconciled with the Tegeans they made a treaty and set up a joint pillar by the Alpheus, on which, among other things, it was written: "to expel the Messenians from the land, and not to be permitted to make them chrestoi." Aristotle, explaining this, says it means not to put to death, as a favor to those of the Tegeans who sided with the Laconians. "Who is the krithologos among the Opuntians?" Most of the Greeks
in their very ancient sacrifices used barley, the citizens offering it as first-fruits. The official in charge of the sacrifices, who collected these first-fruits, they called the "krithologos" ("barley-gatherer"). They had two priests: one appointed over matters divine, the other over matters concerning the daimones. "What are the ploiades clouds?" They called "ploiades" ("floating ones") especially the rain-laden clouds that drift about, as Theophrastus
says in the fourth book of his work On Things in the Upper Air, in these words: "since these floating clouds too, and the compact ones, though motionless and quite white in color, show some difference in their substance, in that they are neither turning to water nor turning to vapor." "Who is the platychaites among the Boeotians?" In their Aeolic dialect they call by this name those who are neighbors sharing a house or bordering fields, as having the greatest share [of proximity]. I will quote one passage
from the law concerning the office of thesmophylax, there being several such passages. "Who is the hosioter among the Delphians, and why do they call one of the months Bysios?" They call "hosioter" the sacrificial victim, whenever it has been designated "hosios" ("sacred/pure"). There are five "hosioi" for life, and they perform most of their rites together with the prophets and join in the sacred ceremonies, since they are held to be descended from Deucalion. As for the month "Bysios," as
most people suppose, it comes from "physios" ("of nature"), for it marks the beginning of spring, when most things then grow and sprout. But the truth is not so; for the Delphians do not use beta in place of phi, as the Macedonians do when they say "Bilippos" and "balakros" and "Beronike," but rather in place of pi: for indeed they call "patein" (to tread) "batein," and "pikron" (bitter) they commonly call "bikron."
"Bysios," then, is "pysios," [the month] in which they inquire and make inquiry of the god — for "to inquire" (pynthanesthai) is also an ancestral practice. For in this month the oracle was given, and they consider this the seventh day to be the god's birthday, and they call it "Polyphthoos," not because of the baking of cakes (phthois), but because it is a month of much inquiry and much divination. For it was only later that the monthly oracular consultations were granted to petitioners; before that
the Pythia gave oracles only once a year, on this very day, as Callisthenes and Anaxandrides have recorded. "What is the phyximelon?" It belongs to the small, ground-hugging plants, whose shoots, when grazing animals come upon them, they nibble down and damage and harm their growth; whenever, then, they shoot up and attain some size and escape being harmed by the grazing animals, they are called "phyximela" ("escaping-the-flocks"). The witness for this is Aeschylus.
"Who are the aposphendonetoi?" The island of Corcyra was inhabited by Eretrians. When Charicrates sailed from Corinth with an armed force and was prevailing in the war, the Eretrians boarded their ships and sailed off homeward; but the islanders, having gotten wind of this beforehand, kept them from the land and prevented them from disembarking by slinging stones at them. Being unable either to persuade or to force their way past them, since they were numerous and unyielding, they sailed toward Thrace and, having occupied
a place where, they say, Methon, an ancestor of Orpheus, had formerly lived, they named the city Methone, but were called by their neighbors "aposphendonetoi" ("those driven off by slinging"). "Who is Charila among the Delphians?" The Delphians hold three festivals every nine years in succession, of which they call the one the Stepterion, the second the Heroïs, and the third Charila. Now the Stepterion seems to be an imitation of the god's
battle with Python and of his flight and pursuit afterward to Tempe; for some say he fled after the killing because he needed purification, while others say that he followed Python, who was wounded and fleeing along the road we now call the Sacred Way, and just missed catching him at the end; for he found him just dead of the wound and already tended in burial by the
boy whose name was Aix, as they say. The Stepterion, then, is an imitation of these events or of others like them. But most of the ceremony of the Heroïs involves a mystic account, which the Thyiades know, though from what is done openly one might guess it relates to the bringing-up of Semele. Concerning Charila they tell some such tale as this. A famine from drought gripped the Delphians, and they came to
the doors of the king with their children and wives and made supplication. He distributed some of the barley meal and pulse to those better known to him, for there was not enough for everyone. When a little orphan girl, still young, came and kept begging insistently, he struck her with his sandal and flung the sandal in her face; she, being poor and destitute but not ignoble in
character, went off out of the way and, loosening her girdle, hanged herself. As the famine grew worse and diseases were added to it, the Pythia gave an oracle to the king that he must propitiate Charila, a maiden who had died by her own hand. With difficulty they discovered that this had been the name of the girl who had been struck, and they performed a sacrifice mixed with a rite of purification, which they still carry out even now every nine years. For the king sits in state, distributing the barley meal
and pulse to everyone, both strangers and citizens, while an image of Charila as a child is brought forward; and when everyone has received their share, the king strikes the image with the sandal, and the leader of the Thyiades takes it up and carries it to a certain ravine, and there, having tied a cord around the image's neck, they bury it in the very place where they buried Charila after she hanged herself. "What is the 'beggar's meat'
among the Aenianians?" There have been several migrations of the Aenianians. First, while living around the Dotian plain, they were driven out by the Lapiths into the region of the Aethices. From there they occupied the region of Molossia around the Araouas river, from which they were named Paraouai. Afterward they occupied Cirrha; and at Cirrha, having stoned their king Oenoclus to death at the god's command, they went down into the region around the Inachus, which was inhabited
by the Inachians and Achaeans. An oracle was given that whoever should give up any part of the land would lose all of it, while whoever should receive land willingly given would keep it. Temon, a man of note among the Aenianians, took up rags and a beggar's wallet as though he were going to beg, and came to the Inachians; and when the king, in insolence and to raise a laugh, gave him a clod of earth, he took it, put it in his wallet, and vanished, well pleased with the
gift; for he departed at once without begging for anything more. The elders, astonished, called the oracle to mind, and went to the king and told him not to scorn the man nor let him get away. Temon, then, perceiving their intention, set off in flight, and escaped, after vowing a hecatomb to Apollo. As a result of this, the kings fought a duel, and Phemius of the Aenianians, seeing Hyperochus of the Inachians
coming against him with a dog, said he was not acting fairly, bringing a second combatant into the fight. When Hyperochus drove off the dog and turned around, Phemius struck him with a stone and killed him. Having thereby won the land, and having driven out the Inachians together with the Achaeans, they revere that stone as sacred and sacrifice to it, and cover it with the fat of the victim. Whenever they
render the hecatomb to Apollo, after consecrating an ox to Zeus, they set aside a special portion for the descendants of Temon, and this they call "beggar's meat." "Who are the Coliadae among the Ithacans, and what is the phagilos?" After the slaughter of the suitors, the relatives of the dead rose up against Odysseus; summoned by both parties as arbitrator, Neoptolemus judged that Odysseus should leave and go into exile from Cephallenia and Zacynthus
and Ithaca on account of the bloodshed, while the companions and kinsmen of the suitors should pay compensation to Odysseus every year for the wrongs done to his household. Odysseus himself then removed to Italy, but he consecrated the payment to his son and ordered the Ithacans to bring it to him. It consisted of barley meal, wine, honeycombs, oil, salt, and sacrificial animals older than "phagiloi": Aristotle says a "phagilos" is a lamb.
Telemachus freed the followers of Eumaeus and mingled them among the citizens, and from Eumaeus comes the clan of the Coliadae, and from Philoetius the clan of the Bucolidae. "What is the wooden dog among the Locrians?" Locrus was the son of Physcius son of Amphictyon, and from him and Cabye came Opus. Locrus, having quarreled with his father and taken along a good number of the citizens, sought an oracle concerning a colony. When
the god told him to found a city wherever he happened to be bitten by a wooden dog, he was crossing to the other sea when he trod on a briar-bush (kynosbatos). Troubled by the wound, he spent several days there, during which time he became acquainted with the region and founded the cities of Physceis and Hyanteia and the others which the Locrians called Ozolae came to inhabit. As for the name "Ozolian" Locrians, some say it comes from Nessus, others
say it comes from the serpent Python, saying that they were washed ashore by the sea and rotted in the land of the Locrians; some say it is because the people wore skins and goat-hides and, spending most of their time with goatherds, became foul-smelling; but others say the opposite, that the land, being full of flowers, took its name from its fragrance — among them is Archytas of Amphissa, for he has written of "grape-garlanded, fragrant Macyna,
lovely." "What is the garment called aphabroma by the Megarians?" Nisus, from whom Nisaea was named, ruling from Boeotia, married Abrote, daughter of Onchestus and sister of Megareus — a wife, as it seems, of exceptional and outstanding good sense. When she died, the Megarians mourned her of their own accord, and Nisus, wishing to establish an everlasting memory and renown for her, ordered the women of the city to wear
the robe which she had worn, and named the robe "aphabroma" after her. The god too seems to have lent support to the woman's renown; for many times, when the Megarian women wished to change their garments, an oracle prevented them. "Who is the dorixenos?" In ancient times the Megarid was inhabited village by village, its citizens divided into five groups. They were called Heraeis, Piraeis, Megareis, and
Cynosoureis and Tripodiskioi. When the Corinthians brought about war among them against one another — for they were always scheming to bring the Megarid under their own control — nevertheless, out of decency, they waged war gently and as kinsmen. For no one ever wronged those engaged in farming at all, and those who were captured had to pay a fixed ransom, which was accepted and they were then released. Formerly they did not even exact this, but whoever took a captive brought him
home, and after sharing salt and table with him sent him back home. The one who had brought the ransom was praised and remained forever a friend of the man who had taken him, being addressed as "dorixenos" ("guest-friend won by the spear") from having been a captive of war; but the one who defrauded him was held in disrepute, not only among the enemy but also among his own citizens, as unjust and untrustworthy. "What is the palintokia?" When the Megarians expelled the tyrant Theagenes, they behaved with moderation for a short time in
their government; but then, as the popular leaders poured out for them abundant and unmixed freedom, as Plato says, they became utterly corrupted, and treated the wealthy insolently in other respects as well; the poor would go into their houses and demand to be entertained and dined sumptuously, and if they did not get what they wanted, they used force and violence against everyone. Finally, having passed a decree, they exacted back the interest from the
moneylenders to whom they had actually paid it, calling this practice "palintokia" ("interest paid back"). "What is Anthedon, concerning which the Pythia said, 'Drink wine of the lees, since you do not dwell in Anthedon' — for the Boeotian Anthedon is not rich in wine?" They used to call Calaurea in ancient times "Eirene," after a woman named Eirene, who they say was born of Poseidon and Melantheia, daughter of Alpheus. Later, when the descendants of Anthes and Hyperes
settled there, they called the island Anthedonia and Hyperia. The oracle ran as follows, according to Aristotle: 'Drink wine of the lees, since you do not dwell in Anthedon, nor in sacred Hypera, where you used to drink unlees'd wine.' So says Aristotle. But Mnasigeiton says that Anthus, who was Hypere's brother, was lost while still an infant, and that Hypere, wandering in search of him, came to Pherae
to Acastus, where by chance Anthus was serving as a slave, appointed to pour the wine. So, as they were feasting, the boy, bringing the cup to his sister, recognized her and said to her quietly, 'Drink wine of the lees, since you do not dwell in Anthedon.' "What is the saying at Priene, 'darkness by the oak'?" The Samians and Prienians, at war with one another, generally inflicted and suffered moderate damage; but a great battle
took place in which the Prienians killed a thousand Samians. Seven years later, engaging the Milesians near the place called the Oak, they lost their best and, at the same time, foremost citizens, on which occasion Bias the sage, sent as ambassador from Priene to Samos, distinguished himself. Because this suffering had proved so bitter and grievous a calamity for the wives of the Prienians, a curse was established, and an oath
...concerning the most important matters, "the darkness by the oak," because their children and fathers and husbands were slaughtered there.
"Who are those among the Cretans called the 'burnt ones'?" They say that the Tyrrhenians, who had seized the daughters and wives of the Athenians from Brauron at the time when they were living in Lemnos and Imbros, and were afterward driven out, came to Laconia and formed a union with the native women there until children were born to them. But because of suspicion and slander they were again forced to leave Laconia, and sailed to Crete with their wives and children, under the leadership of Pollis and Delphus. There, warring against those who held Crete, they for a time allowed many of those who died in battle to lie unburied — at first because they were too occupied with the war and its dangers, but later because, once they had grown accustomed to shrinking from the task, they were reluctant to touch corpses that had already decayed with time and dissolved. So Pollis devised certain honors, privileges, and exemptions, and assigned some of these to the priests of the gods and others to the buriers of the dead, consecrating the latter as well to the chthonic spirits, so that they might remain inviolable; then he divided them by lot with Delphus. Some were called priests, the others "burnt ones"; and these lived under their own laws, and along with their other privileges enjoyed immunity from prosecution for the offenses which the other Cretans habitually commit against one another, driving off and carrying away goods by stealth — for those men, it was said, committed no wrong, neither stealing anything nor taking anything away.
"What is the tomb of the children among the Chalcidians?" Cothus and Aiclus, the sons of Xuthus, came to Euboea to settle it, at a time when the Aeolians still held most of the island. Cothus had an oracle that he would fare well and prevail over his enemies if he bought the land. So he landed with a few companions and came upon some little boys playing by the sea; joining in their games and being friendly with them, he showed them many foreign toys. When he saw that the boys were eager to have them, he said he would not give them unless he received some of their land from them. So the boys, picking it up from the ground, gave it to him, and having received the toys they went off. But the Aeolians, learning what had happened, and with their enemies bearing down on them by sea, in anger and grief put the boys to death. They were buried beside the road that leads from the city to the Euripus, and the place is called "the Children's Tomb."
"Who is the mixarchagetas at Argos, and who are the elasioi?" They call Castor "mixarchagetas" and believe he is buried among them; Polydeuces they revere as one of the Olympians. Those who are thought able to ward off epileptic seizures they call "elasioi"; they are believed to be descendants of Alexida, daughter of Amphiaraus.
"What is the enknisma spoken of among the Argives?" It is the custom of those who have lost a relative or a close friend to sacrifice to Apollo immediately after the period of mourning, and thirty days later to Hermes. For they believe that, just as the earth receives the bodies of the dead, so Hermes receives their souls; and to the attendant of Apollo they give barley and receive in return meat from the sacrificial victim, and having extinguished the fire as polluted and kindled a new one from others, they roast this meat, calling it "enknisma."
"Who is the vengeful alastor, and who is the alitêrios or palamnaios?" One should not believe those who say that "alitêrioi" got their name from those who, during a famine, watch for a man grinding grain and plunder him. Rather, "alastor" is the name given to one who has done deeds that will not be forgotten (alêsta) and will be remembered for a long time; "alitêrios" is one whom it was right to shun and guard against because of his wickedness. These things, says Socrates, are written on bronze tablets.
"What is the meaning behind the custom whereby those who lead the ox from Aenus to Cassiopaea, as they escort the maidens, sing all the way to the border, 'May you never return to your dear native land'?" The Aenianians, driven out by the Lapiths, first settled around Aethacia, then around Molossia and Cassiopaea; and having nothing good from that region, and moreover suffering from harsh neighbors, they came to the Cirrhaean plain, led by their king Oenoclus. There, when a great drought occurred, they stoned Oenoclus to death in accordance with an oracle, as the story goes, and after wandering again they arrived at the land they now hold, which is good and abundant in every crop. Hence it is fitting that they pray to the gods never to return to their former homeland, but to remain there in prosperity.
"Why is it that among the Rhodians no herald enters the shrine of Ocridion?" Is it because Ochimus betrothed his daughter Cydippe to Ocridion? But Cercaphus, who was Ochimus's brother and was in love with the girl, persuaded the herald — for it was the custom for heralds to fetch brides — when he came to take Cydippe, to bring her to him instead. When this had been done, Cercaphus fled with the girl, and only returned later, after Ochimus had grown old. And so it became the custom among the Rhodians that no herald should approach the shrine of Ocridion, because of the wrong that had been done.
"Why is it that among the Tenedians a flute-player is not permitted to enter the temple of Tenes, nor is Achilles to be mentioned within the temple?" Is it because, when his stepmother slandered Tenes, claiming that he wished to have intercourse with her, Molpus the flute-player bore false witness against him, and because of this it fell to Tenes to flee — to Tenedos, together with his sister? It is said that Achilles's mother Thetis strongly forbade him to kill Tenes, since he was honored by Apollo, and she charged one of the household servants to be watchful and remind him, lest Achilles unwittingly kill Tenes. But when Achilles, overrunning Tenedos, was pursuing the sister of Tenes, who was beautiful, Tenes met him and defended his sister; she escaped, but Tenes was killed. When Achilles recognized the fallen man, he killed the servant, because he had been present but had not reminded him; and he buried Tenes where his temple now stands, and neither does a flute-player enter it nor is Achilles named there.
"Who is the poletes among the Epidamnians?" The Epidamnians, being neighbors of the Illyrians, noticed that the citizens who mixed with them were becoming corrupt, and fearing revolution they chose one man each year, from among those approved by them, to handle such contracts and exchanges with the barbarians; this man, going among the barbarians, provided a market and arrangements for all the citizens, and was called "poletes" (the seller).
"What is the Thracian headland of Araeus?" The Andrians and Chalcidians, sailing to Thrace to settle it, jointly took the city of Sane through treachery, and on learning that the barbarians had abandoned Acanthus, they sent two scouts. When these, approaching the city, perceived that the enemy had entirely fled, the Chalcidian scout ran ahead so as to seize the city for the Chalcidians, while the Andrian, unable to keep pace, hurled his spear, and when it stuck fast in the gates he shouted loudly that the city had been taken beforehand by the spear of the sons of Andros. From this a dispute arose, and without going to war they agreed to have the Erythraeans, Samians, and Parians judge the whole matter. But when the Erythraeans and Samians cast their vote for the Andrians, while the Parians voted for the Chalcidians, the Andrians laid curses concerning this place upon the Parians, that they should neither give a wife to the Parians nor take one from them; and for this reason they named it "the headland of Araeus," though it had previously been called the headland of Draco.
"Why is it that at the Thesmophoria the women of Eretria roast the meat not over fire but in the sun, and do not invoke Calligeneia?" Is it because it fell to the captive women whom Agamemnon was bringing from Troy to sacrifice to the Thesmophoroi there, but a voyage suddenly appearing possible, they put to sea, leaving the sacrifice unfinished?
"Who are the 'ever-sailors' among the Milesians?" When the tyrants around Thoas and Damasenor were overthrown, two political clubs held the city, one called Plutis, the other Cheiromacha. Those in power, having brought affairs under the control of their club, used to deliberate on the most important matters while embarking on ships and putting out to sea, away from the land; it happened that they had to perform the Thesmophoria sacrifice, and when a favorable voyage appeared, they would embark on the ships and sail out far from the land; having ratified their decision, they would then sail back to shore, and for this reason they were called "ever-sailors."
"Why do the Chalcidians call the place around the Pyrsophion 'the meeting-place of the men in their prime'?" They say that Nauplius, being pursued by the Achaeans, took refuge with the Chalcidians as a suppliant, and partly defended himself against the charge, and partly brought countercharges of his own against the Achaeans. The Chalcidians, then, had no intention of handing him over; but fearing that he might be treacherously killed, they gave him as a guard the young men in their prime, and stationed them in this place, where they used to gather together and at the same time keep watch over Nauplius.
"Who is the man who sacrificed an ox to his benefactor?" A pirate ship lay at anchor off Ithaca, on which there happened to be an old man among jars containing pitch. By chance an Ithacan ferryman named Pyrrhias turned his attention to this, and rescued the old man, asking for nothing in return, but moved by his entreaty and taking pity on him; and at the old man's bidding he took the jars as well.
When the pirates had gone and there was no more danger, the old man brought Pyrrhias to the jars and showed him that they held a great deal of gold and silver mixed in with the pitch. So Pyrrhias, suddenly become rich, treated the old man well in all other respects and also sacrificed an ox to him. This is the origin of the proverb they use: "No one but Pyrrhias ever sacrificed an ox to his benefactor."
"Why was it the custom for the maidens of the Bottiaeans to say, as they danced, 'Let us go to Athens'?" They say that the Cretans, in fulfillment of a vow, sent to Delphi the first-fruits of their people, and those who were sent, seeing that there was no prospect of provision for themselves, set out from there to found a colony; and they first settled in Iapygia, and afterward took possession of this region of Thrace, with Athenians mingled among them. For it seems that Minos did not put to death the young men whom the Athenians sent as tribute, but kept them at his court in servitude. Some of the descendants of these, then, being considered Cretans, were sent along to Delphi. Hence the daughters of the Bottiaeans, in remembrance of their lineage, used to sing at their festivals, "Let us go to Athens."
"Why do the women of Elis, in their hymn to Dionysus, invite him to come to them 'with the foot of an ox'?" (The hymn runs thus: "Come, hero Dionysus, to the holy temple of the Eleans, with the Graces, to the temple, with your ox foot raging." Then twice they sing, "worthy bull.") Is it because they call the god both "ox-born" and, some of them, actually a bull; or do they mean by "ox-footed" one with a great foot, just as the poet calls the large-eyed woman "ox-eyed" (boôpis) and the boastful man "bougaios"?
Or rather is it because the foot of an ox is harmless, while its horn is harmful, and so they are inviting the god to come gently and without causing hurt? Or is it because many believe the god to have been the originator of both ploughing and sowing?
"Why is there, before the city of the Tanagraeans, a place called Achilleion, so named?" For it is said that Achilles bore more enmity than friendship toward the city, having carried off Stratonice, the mother of Poemander, and having killed Acestor, the son of Ephippus. Now Poemander, the father of Ephippus, when the region of Tanagra was still inhabited village by village, was besieged in the place called Stephon by the Achaeans because he was unwilling to join their campaign, and abandoned that place by night and fortified Poemandria. Polycrithus the architect, being present and belittling and mocking the works, leapt over the trench.
Poemander, enraged, rushed to hurl a great stone at him, one that had lain hidden there from ancient times, set upon nocturnal sacred rites; tearing this up in ignorance, Poemander threw it, and missing Polycrithus, killed his son Leucippus instead. Now by law he ought to have gone into exile from Boeotia, having become one who, though a guest bound by hearth and supplication, had shed kindred blood; but this was not easy, since the Achaeans had invaded the territory of Tanagra. So he sent his son Ephippus to entreat Achilles. Achilles, having been persuaded, brought him in along with Tlepolemus, son of Heracles, and Peneleos, son of Hippalcmus, all of whom were his own kinsmen. Escorted by these men, Poemander was sent to Chalcis and purified of the killing by Elephenor, and he honored these men and set apart sacred precincts for them all, of which the precinct of Achilles has preserved even the name.
"Who are the Psoloeis among the Boeotians, and who are the Oleiai?" They say that the daughters of Minyas — Leucippe, Arsinoe, and Alcathoe — went mad and conceived a desire for human flesh, and cast lots concerning their own children; when the lot fell to Leucippe, she gave up her son Hippasus to be torn apart. Their husbands, wearing mourning garb out of grief and sorrow, were called "Psoloeis" (sooty ones), and the women themselves "Oleiai," that is, "destructive."
And to this day the people of Orchomenus give these names to those descended from that family. And every other year at the festival of the Agrionia there occurs a flight and pursuit of these women by the priest of Dionysus, who carries a sword. It is permitted to kill whichever of them is caught, and in our own time the priest Zoilus did kill one. But it turned out well for none of them; for Zoilus himself, falling ill from a trivial wound that festered, wasted away for a long time and died, and the Orchomenians, beset by public misfortunes and legal penalties, transferred the priesthood out of that family, choosing the best man from among all the citizens instead.
"Why do the Arcadians stone to death those who enter the Lycaeum willingly, but if they do so unknowingly, send them off to Eleutherae?" Is it because those so released are thought to be set free, and thus the account gained credence, so that "to Eleutherae" came to mean the same as "to the land of Ameles" and "you will come to the seat of Aresas"? Or is it, according to the myth, because Eleuther and Lebeadus alone of the sons of Lycaon had no part in the pollution committed against Zeus, but fled into Boeotia, and the Lebadeans have equal citizenship with the Arcadians — and so they send those who unwittingly entered the forbidden precinct of Zeus off to Eleutherae?
Or is it, as Architimus says in his Arcadian History, that some men who had entered unknowingly were handed over by the Arcadians to the Phliasians, by the Phliasians to the Megarians, and being conveyed from the Megarians toward Thebes, were overtaken near Eleutherae by rain, thunder, and other portents from Zeus — from which some say the place came to be called Eleutherae?
As for the claim that no shadow falls from a man who has entered the Lycaeum, this is said not truthfully, but it has gained strong credence. Is it because the air turns to clouds and grows dark and gloomy over those who enter, or because the one who enters is doomed to die, and the Pythagoreans say that the souls of the dead cast no shadow and do not blink? Or does the sun indeed cast a shadow, but the...
...or does the law take away the sun from the one who has entered? This is what they mean by their riddling way of speaking, for the one who enters is also called a "stag" (elaphos). This is why, when Kantharion the Arcadian deserted to the Eleans, who were at war with the Arcadians, and crossed into the forbidden precinct together with plunder, and then, when the war ended, fled to Sparta, the Lacedaemonians handed him over to the Arcadians — the god having commanded them to give back “the stag.”
Who is the hero Eunostos at Tanagra, and for what reason is his sacred grove forbidden to women? Eunostos was the son of Elieus, son of Cephisus, and of Scias. They say he received this name because he was raised by a nymph named Eunosta. Being handsome and just, he was no less self-controlled and strict; and they say that Ochna, one of the daughters of Colonus, his cousin, fell in love with him. But when Eunostos rebuffed her advances and, after reproaching her, went off to accuse her to her brothers, the girl got ahead of him and did this very thing against him herself, and incited her brothers Echemus, Leon, and Bucolus to kill Eunostos, claiming that he had forced himself on her. So they lay in ambush and killed the young man. Elieus then put them in chains; but Ochna, filled with remorse and turmoil, at once wishing to free herself of the grief caused by her love, and at the same time pitying her brothers, told Elieus the whole truth; and he reported it to Colonus. When Colonus held a trial, Ochna's brothers went into exile, and she herself threw herself off a cliff, as Myrtis of Anthedon, the lyric poetess, has recorded. Eunostos' shrine and grove were kept so completely off-limits and inaccessible to women that whenever earthquakes, droughts, or other divine portents occurred, the people of Tanagra would carefully search and inquire whether some woman had, without their noticing, approached the place; and some of them, among whom was Cleidamus, a distinguished man, would say that they had met Eunostos walking toward the sea to bathe, as a sign that a woman had entered the precinct. Diocles too, in his treatise On Heroes, records a decree of the Tanagraeans concerning the matters Cleidamus reported.
Why in Boeotia, near Eleon, is there a river named Scamander? Deimachus, son of Eleon and a companion of Heracles, took part in the campaign against Troy. As the war, it seems, dragged on, Glaucia, daughter of Scamander, fell in love with him; he accepted her, and got her with child. He himself then fell fighting the Trojans, while Glaucia, fearing to be found out, took refuge with Heracles, and confessed to him her love and the union she had had with Deimachus. He, partly out of pity for the woman and partly rejoicing that offspring of a good and close companion would survive, took Glaucia aboard his ships, and when she had given birth to a son, brought her to Boeotia and delivered both the child and her to Eleon. The boy was named Scamander and became king of the country. He renamed the river Inachus “Scamander” after himself, and the nearby stream “Glaucia” after his mother; and he named the spring Acidusa after his own wife, by whom he had three daughters, whom they honor to this day, calling them “the Maidens.”
From what source did the proverbial saying “this one has the right” arise? Dinon the Tarentine, while serving as general — a man capable in matters of war — once had one of his proposals voted down by the citizens. When the herald announced the winning motion, he himself raised his right hand and said, “This one is stronger” — so Theophrastus has recorded it. Apollodorus, in his Rhytinus, adds a further detail: when the herald said “these votes are more numerous,” Dinon replied, “but these are better,” and thereby ratified the show of hands of the minority.
From what source was the city of the Ithacans called Alalcomenae? It is because Anticleia, violated by Sisyphus while still a maiden, conceived Odysseus — a story told by a number of authors. Ister of Alexandria, in his Commentaries, adds that when she was given in marriage to Laertes and was being brought to him by sea, she gave birth to Odysseus near Alalcomenium in Boeotia, and that this is why he, referring to it as it were his mother-city, gave that name to the city in Ithaca, calling it by the same name.
Who are the “lone-eaters” (monophagoi) at Aegina? Of the Aeginetans who campaigned against Troy, many perished in battle, and still more at sea in a storm during the voyage home. Their relatives, receiving back the few who survived, and seeing that the rest of the citizens were in mourning and grief, thought it right neither to rejoice openly nor to sacrifice to the gods; instead, each family privately, at home, welcomed back the survivors with feasting and warm greetings, waiting on their own fathers, kinsmen, brothers, and household themselves, with no outsider allowed in. In imitation of this, they now hold a sacrifice to Poseidon called the “thiasoi,” in which they feast by themselves, in silence, for sixteen days, with no slave present; then, after celebrating the Aphrodisia, they bring the festival to a close. It is from this that they are called “lone-eaters.”
Why is the statue of Zeus Labrandeus in Caria made holding a raised axe, rather than a scepter or a thunderbolt? Because Heracles, after killing Hippolyta and taking her axe along with her other weapons, gave it as a gift to Omphale. The kings of Lydia after Omphale wore it as one of their sacred emblems, passed down in succession, until Candaules, thinking it beneath him, gave it to one of his companions to carry. When Gyges revolted and went to war against him, Arselis came from Mylasa with a force to aid Gyges, and killed both Candaules and his companion, and carried the axe off to Caria along with the rest of the spoils. There he had a statue of Zeus made and put the axe in its hand, and named the god “Labrandeus” — for the Lydians call an axe a “labrys.”
Why do the Trallians call vetch “the purifier,” and use it especially for ritual expiations and purifications? Is it because the Leleges and Minyans once drove them out and held the city and territory themselves, and later the Trallians came down and conquered it, and as for those of the Leleges who were neither destroyed nor fled, but were left behind there because of their helplessness and poverty, they took no account of these people, whether they lived or died, and made a law that any Trallian who killed a Minyan or a Leleges should be counted pure, provided he paid out a measure of vetch to the relatives of the man he had killed.
Why is it proverbial among the Eleans to say “to suffer worse things than Sambicus”? It is said that a certain Sambicus of Elis, who had many accomplices working under him, stole a great many of the bronze dedications at Olympia and sold them off, and finally plundered the sanctuary of Artemis Episkopos — this sanctuary is in Elis, and is called the Aristarcheion. Immediately after this act of sacrilege he was caught and tortured for a whole year, being interrogated about each of his accomplices, and died in this manner; and the proverb arose from what he suffered.
Why in Lacedaemon is the hero-shrine of Odysseus set up beside the sanctuary of the Leucippides? Ergiaeus, one of the descendants of Diomedes, persuaded by Temenus, stole the Palladium out of Argos, with Leagrus, one of Temenus' intimates, aware of and joining in the theft. Later, having fallen out with Temenus in anger, Leagrus moved to Lacedaemon, bringing the Palladium with him. The kings there received it eagerly and set it up near the sanctuary of the Leucippides, and, sending to Delphi, they inquired by oracle about its safekeeping and preservation. When the god's answer indicated that one of those who had taken the Palladium should be made its guardian, they set up there the hero-shrine of Odysseus, supposing besides that this hero had a claim on their city because of his marriage to Penelope.
Why is it the custom among the women of Chalcedon, whenever they meet men who are not their own, especially magistrates, to veil one cheek? They had a war with the Bithynians, who were provoked to hostility on every pretext. When Zipoites became their king, he mustered his whole force, and with the addition of Thracian reinforcements, burned and overran the countryside. When Zipoites attacked them at a place called Phalium, they fought badly, through recklessness and lack of discipline, and lost more than eight thousand soldiers. They were not entirely wiped out at that time, since Zipoites granted the Byzantines terms of peace. But since a great dearth of men now gripped the city, most of the women, out of necessity, married freedmen and resident aliens, while others chose to remain unmarried rather than accept such marriages, and conducted their own business before judges and magistrates by themselves, drawing back one side of their veil from their face. The married women, out of shame, imitating these women as their betters, adopted a similar custom.
Why do the Argives drive their sheep up to the precinct of Agenor and have them mate there? Is it because Agenor cared for sheep better than any other king and possessed more flocks than any of them? Why do the children of Argos, playing at a certain festival, call themselves “Ballachradai”? Is it because the first people whom Inachus led down from the heights to the plains were sustained on wild pears — for wild pears were the first fruit to appear to the Greeks in the Peloponnese, when that land was still called Apia, whence wild pears were named “apioi”?
What is the reason why the Eleans lead their mares in heat outside their borders before letting them be covered? Is it because Oenomaus, who of all kings was most fond of horses and cherished the animal above all, called down many terrible curses on those who covered mares within Elis, and they, fearing that curse, purify themselves of it by this practice?
Why was it the custom among the Knossians that borrowers should seize the money themselves? Is it so that, if they defaulted, they would be liable for a crime of violence and punished the more severely?
What is the reason for which, at Samos, they call a certain Aphrodite “the Aphrodite of Dexicreon”? Is it because their women, behaving licentiously out of luxury and wanton excess, were purified by Dexicreon, a wandering priest-charlatan who used a purification rite and freed them of it? Or is it rather that Dexicreon, a ship-owner, sailed to Cyprus on business, and, when he was about to load his ship, Aphrodite bade him take on water and nothing else, and sail off as quickly as possible; persuaded, he loaded a great quantity of water and set sail, and then, when a windless calm settled over the sea, he sold water to the other merchants and ship-owners, who were dying of thirst, and collected a great sum of money from this, and out of it he had a statue of the goddess made and named after himself. If this is true, it appears that the goddess did not wish to enrich one man alone, but through one man to save many.
Why is it that among the Samians, whenever they sacrifice to Hermes the Gift-Giver, anyone who wishes is permitted to steal and to strip passers-by of their cloaks? Because, once, in obedience to an oracle, they moved from the island to Mycale and lived for ten years by piracy, and afterward, sailing back to the island again, the Samians overcame their enemies.
From what is a place on the island of Samos called Panaima (“All-Blood”)? Is it because the Amazons, fleeing Dionysus from the territory of Ephesus, sailed across to Samos; and he, having built ships and crossed over, joined battle with them and killed many of them around this place, which, because of the great quantity of blood that flowed there, was called Panaima by those who beheld it in wonder? Some are said to have died around Phloion, and their bones are shown there; and some say that Phloion (“the Bark”) split open at their deaths, when they cried out with some loud, piercing sound.
For what reason is the men's hall at Samos called “Pedetes” (the Fettered)? When the landowners (geomoroi) held the government after the murder of Demoteles and the overthrow of his one-man rule, the Megarians made war on the Perinthians, who were colonists of the Samians, bringing along fetters, it is said, for the prisoners they expected to take. When the landowners learned of this, they sent help with speed, appointing nine generals and manning thirty ships; of these, two, as they were sailing out, were destroyed by a thunderbolt off the harbor. The generals, sailing on with the rest, defeated the Megarians and took six hundred of them alive. Elated by the victory, they resolved to overthrow the oligarchy of the landowners back home. Now the leaders of the government provided them the occasion themselves, by writing instructions that the Megarian captives should be brought back bound in their own fetters. So the generals took these instructions, and showing them secretly to some of the Megarian captives, persuaded them to join forces with them and to help free the city. When they deliberated together about the plan, they decided to knock loose the rings of the fetters, and, having fitted them in this way around the Megarians' legs, to fasten them up to their belts with straps, so that they would not slip and fall off as they walked, once the fetters had been loosened. Having thus equipped the men and given each a sword, when they sailed to Samos and disembarked, they led them through the marketplace to the council chamber, where practically all the landowners were sitting together; then, at a signal given, the Megarians fell upon them and killed the men. When the city had been freed in this way, they made citizens of those Megarians who wished it, and, having built a spacious house, dedicated the fetters in it; and from this the house was named “Pedetes.”
Why, among the Coans, does the priest of Heracles at Antimacheia, dressed in women's clothing and with his head bound up in a headband, begin the sacrifice? Heracles, having set sail from Troy with six ships, was caught in a storm, and when the other ships were destroyed, he was driven with the one remaining ship, by the wind, onto Cos, and put ashore at the place called Laceter, having saved nothing but his weapons and his men. Coming upon some sheep, he asked the shepherd for one ram. The man was called Antagoras; and being at the peak of his bodily strength, he challenged Heracles to wrestle him, on condition that if he threw him, he could carry off the ram. When Heracles closed with him in a grapple, the Meropes came to Antagoras' aid, and the Greeks to Heracles', and a fierce battle broke out. It is said that Heracles, overwhelmed by their numbers, took refuge with a Thracian woman and escaped notice by concealing himself in women's clothing. When he had once more overcome the Meropes and, having been purified, married the daughter of Alcyopus, he put on a flowered robe. This is why the priest sacrifices at the place where the battle happened to take place, and why bridegrooms receive their brides while wearing women's dress.
From what does the class called “wagon-rollers” at Megara take its origin? Under the licentious democracy, which also brought about the cancellation of debts and the plundering of temples, a delegation of Peloponnesians was traveling to Delphi through Megarian territory and made camp for the night at Aegeirae by the lake, with their children and wives, just as they happened to be, in their wagons. The most reckless of the Megarians, having gotten drunk, in wanton violence and cruelty rolled the wagons over into the lake and pushed them in, so that many of the pilgrims were drowned. The Megarians, then, because of the disorder of their state, took no notice of the crime; but the Amphictyons…
since the mission was a sacred one, the Amphictyons turned their attention to the matter and punished the offenders, some with exile, some with death. Their descendants were called the 'Wagon-Rollers.'

======== Moralia: Quaestiones Naturales ========

Why does seawater not nourish trees? Is it for the same reason that it does not nourish land animals either? For the followers of Plato, Anaxagoras, and Democritus think that a plant is a creature rooted in earth. It is not the case that, because the sea's water is nourishing and drinkable for marine plants just as it is for fish, it therefore also nourishes plants and trees growing on land: seawater does not soak into their roots because of its density, nor is it drawn up because of its weight. That it is heavy and earthy is shown by many things, including its greater buoyancy in holding up ships and swimmers. Or is it rather that trees are harmed above all by dryness, and seawater is drying? Hence salt helps against putrefaction, and the bodies of those who have bathed in the sea at once have a dry and rough surface. Or is it that oil is hostile to plants and destroys whatever it is smeared on, while the sea partakes of much oiliness—which is why it helps kindle fire, and we advise people not to throw seawater onto flames? Or has the water become undrinkable and bitter, as Aristotle says, through a mixture of burnt earth? For indeed lye
is produced when fresh water falls upon ash, and this dissolution changes and spoils what is wholesome and drinkable, just as within us fevers turn moisture into bile. As for the woody growths and plants that they report sprout in the Red Sea, these bear no fruit but are nourished by the rivers that pour much silt into it; hence their origin is not far from land but close to it. Why do trees and seeds grow better nourished by rainwater than by water brought in channels? Is it, as Laetus used to say, that rain, by its striking force, opens up passages in the earth by dividing it, and so seeps down more readily to the root? But this is not true, and Laetus failed to notice that marsh plants too—the bulrush,
the sedge, and the rush—remain unenlarged and fail to sprout when rains do not fall in their season. What Aristotle says is true, however: that rainwater is fresh and new, while marsh water is stale and old. Or is even this more plausible than true? For spring water and river water too are fresh and newly generated: "you could not step twice into the same rivers," as Heraclitus says—other waters flow in and nourish, and these are no worse. Is rainwater, then, light and airy, mixed with wind, and so guided and sent up quickly into the plant because of its fineness—which is also why it makes bubbles when mixed with air? Or does it nourish chiefly by being mastered by what it nourishes?
for this is what digestion is; indecoction, its opposite, occurs when what is fine, simple, and without inherent flavor—such as rainwater—proves too strong to be acted upon and changed. For being generated in air and wind, it comes down pure and unmixed, whereas spring waters, being made like the earth and the places through which they pass, are filled with many qualities, on account of which they are less
easily transformed and more slowly yield themselves to digestion for change into what is nourished; whereas the ready transformability of rainwater is proven by its tendency to putrefy, for it is more prone to putrefaction than river water or well water, and digestion seems to be a kind of putrefaction, as Empedocles testifies when he says, "wine within the wood becomes water, having putrefied beneath the bark." Or is it easiest and most ready of all to attribute the sweetness and goodness of rainwater to the fact that it is sent forth at once by the wind?
That is why young animals enjoy it more eagerly, and frogs, expecting rain, brighten their voices for joy, welcoming the rain as a relish to the marsh water and as the seed of its own sweetness—Aratus too made this a sign of coming rain when he said: "Ah, wretched generations, food for the water-snakes, the tadpoles' fathers croak straightway from the marsh." Why do herdsmen give their flocks salt to lick? Is it, as most people suppose, for the sake of increasing their food intake and fattening them? For its sharpness stimulates appetite, and by opening up the passages it makes a way more readily for food to be distributed through the body—which is why Apollonius the Herophilean used to order the lean and poorly nourished not to be fed with sweet or coarse food
but with salted and brined foods, whose fineness, acting like a kind of ingrained roughening, delivers nourishment to the body through its passages. Or do they rather accustom their livestock to lick salt for the sake of health, to check excess fat? For animals that grow too fat fall sick, and salt melts and dissolves their fat, whereby they are more easily and readily skinned once slaughtered; for the fat that glues and binds the hide together becomes thin and weak under the sharpness of the salt.
The blood, too, of those that lick salt is thinned, and their insides do not congeal once salt is mixed in. Consider also whether they are not more fertile and more eager for mating: dogs, at any rate, conceive quickly after eating salted meat, and salted ships' timbers nourish more mice because of
their frequent coupling there. Why are seeds better nourished by rains accompanied by thunder and lightning—the ones people actually call "lightning-rains"? Is it because such rains are windy on account of the disturbance and mixing of the air, and wind, by stirring the moisture, sends it up and delivers it more? Or is it that thunder and lightning are produced by heat in the air struggling against cold,
and that is why it thunders least in winter and most in spring and autumn, because of the unevenness of the blending of the seasons—and this heat, by cooking the moisture, makes it agreeable and beneficial to growing things? Or is it chiefly in spring that it thunders and lightens for the reason stated, and spring rains are more necessary for seeds before summer comes, which is why the region that receives the most rain in spring,
such as the region of Sicily, yields many good crops? Why is it that of the flavors, eight in kind, we observe only one, the salty, that is not produced from any fruit? And yet the olive first bears the bitter flavor, and the grape the sour, and then, changing, the one becomes oily and the other winelike; and the astringent likewise changes in
date-palm fruits, and the tart in pomegranates changes into the sweet; some pomegranates and apples, however, simply bear the sour throughout, while the pungent is abundant in roots and seeds. Is it, then, that there is no generation of the salty at all, but rather that the salty is a corruption of the other flavors—which is why it is unnourishing for all things that are nourished from plants and seeds, though it becomes a relish for some
by removing the cloying excess of what nourishes? Or is it that, just as people boiling seawater remove its salty, biting quality, so too in hot things the salty quality is dimmed by the heat? Or is flavor, as Plato said, water filtered through a plant, and seawater too, when filtered, casts off its salty quality, since that quality is earthy and made of coarse particles—which is why people digging near the shore come upon sweet
springs, and many draw sweet water, filtered, out of the sea using vessels of wax, the salty and earthy part being separated off; and passage through clay entirely renders seawater, once filtered through it, drinkable, because the clay retains the earthy part within itself and does not let it pass through. Since this is so, it stands to reason that plants neither take up salinity from outside nor, if it arises
within them, secrete it into their fruit; for their passages, being fine, do not let through what is earthy and coarse-grained. Or should saltiness be classed as a kind of bitterness, as Homer says: "and from his mouth he spat out the bitter brine, which streamed in quantity down from his head"? And Plato says that both flavors cleanse and dissolve, but the salty does this less and is not
harsh. It will seem that the bitter differs from the salty by an excess of dryness, since the salty too is drying. Why do those who habitually walk among dew-laden trees develop a scurf on the parts of their body that touch the foliage? Is it, as Laetus used to say, that the dewy moisture, by its fineness, scrapes the skin off the flesh? Or, just as blight arises in seeds that are kept moist, so too
does some efflorescence, given off by the dew as it scratches and dissolves the tender green surfaces, spread and settle on the least fleshy parts of the body, such as the shins and feet, and there scratch and bite the surface? That there is indeed something naturally biting in dew is shown by the fact that it makes fat people leaner: at any rate, plump women, gathering dew
with cloaks or soft wool, seem thereby to melt away their excess flesh. Why do ships sail more slowly on rivers in winter, but not correspondingly slowly on the sea? Is it that river air, being always sluggish and heavy and becoming still thicker in winter through the surrounding cold, impedes those who sail? Or do rivers suffer this more from the water itself than from the air?
for the cold, compressing the water, makes it heavy and dense, as one can learn from water-clocks: they run more slowly in winter than in summer. And Theophrastus records that in Thrace, near Mount Pangaeus, there is a spring from which the same vessel, filled with its water and left standing, draws a weight twice as great in winter as in summer. That the density of the water causes the slowness of sailing is clear
from the fact that river boats carry a greater cargo in winter, for the water, becoming denser and heavier, offers more resistance and support; whereas heat prevents the sea from becoming dense, which is also why it does not freeze, for congealing seems to be a kind of densification. Why is it that, while other liquids grow cold when stirred and churned, we observe the sea growing warmer when it is whipped into waves?
Is it that, in other liquids, motion drives out and disperses the heat as something incidental and foreign to them, whereas the sea's heat, being innate to it, is rather fanned up and fed by the winds? Evidence of this heat is its transparency and the fact that it does not freeze, even though it is earthy and heavy. Why does the sea taste less bitter to the taste in winter? This is what
Dionysius the water-engineer is also said to report. Is it because the sea is never wholly without sweetness nor devoid of bitterness, since it receives so many rivers; and because the sun, by its lightness, draws off and raises to the surface the sweet and drinkable part, doing this more in summer, while in winter it touches the water more gently owing to the weakness of its heat, so that the portion of sweetness that remains behind, being considerable,
tempers and relieves the undiluted bitterness and medicinal harshness? This same thing happens quietly with drinking water too: it grows worse in summer, as the lightest and sweetest part of its heat is dispersed, while in winter fresh new water flows in, and the sea too must share in this, being stirred by it as the rivers also swell. Why do people pour seawater into wine, and fishermen say an oracle was brought
instructing that Dionysus be dipped in the sea, while others, far from the sea, throw in roasted Zacynthian gypsum? Is it that heat helps against excessive chilling, or does heat itself especially unsettle the wine, quenching and destroying its strength? Or is it that the watery and windy element in wine, being most liable to change, is fixed by the earthy substances, which by nature have the power to contract and dry it out, while salt together with
seawater, by thinning and dissolving what is foreign and superfluous, does not allow foul odor or putrefaction to arise; and besides this, whatever is thick and earthy, becoming entangled with the heavier elements and dragged down along with them, forms sediment and dregs, leaving the wine itself pure. Why are people more prone to seasickness sailing on the sea than on rivers, even when they sail on the sea in calm weather? Is it that, of the senses, smell most stirs nausea,
and of the emotions, fear does? For people tremble, shudder, and have their bowels loosened when they conceive an image of danger; and neither of these troubles those who sail on a river, for the smell is one familiar to all drinkable, sweet water, and the voyage is without danger, whereas on the sea people are distressed and afraid at the unfamiliar smell, not trusting the present
about what is to come: so the calm does them no good, but the soul too, being tossed and thrown into confusion, stirs up and fills the body with disturbance. Why is it that when the sea is sprinkled with oil it becomes clear and calm? Is it, as Aristotle says, that the wind, sliding off the smoothness, produces no buffeting or tossing? Or is this account plausible only for what happens on
the surface, since it is also said that divers, when they take oil into their mouths and blow it out, gain brightness and clear sight in the depths—where there can be no sliding of wind to blame? Consider, then, whether the sea, being earthy and uneven, is pushed apart and separated by the density of the oil, and then, as it rushes back together and contracts again, passages are left between, giving the eyes clarity and
transparency. Or is the air mixed into the sea by nature luminous through heat, but becomes uneven and shadowy when disturbed: so that whenever the oil, by its density, smooths away this unevenness, the air recovers its evenness and clarity? Why do fishermen's nets rot more in winter than in summer, although other things generally suffer this more in summer? Is it, as
Theophrastus supposes, that heat, retreating before cold, is displaced inward and makes the depths of the sea warmer, just as happens with the earth—which is also why spring waters are warmer in winter, and lakes and rivers give off more vapor then, since the heat is shut up in the depths by the mastery of the cold? Or is it not putrefaction at all that afflicts the nets,
but rather that, when they stiffen and grow rigid from the cold, drying out and becoming brittle, they suffer, under the battering of the waves, something resembling a kind of rot and decay? For indeed they are strained more in the chill, just as sinews, drawn taut, are torn apart, since the sea is more often churned up on account of the winter storms; which is also why fishermen treat and thicken their nets with dyes, fearing their unraveling, since if they are neither dyed nor treated,
...would more easily escape the notice of fish, since the undyed color of the linen is airy and deceptive in the sea.
Why do the Dorians pray for a bad hay harvest? Is it because hay that gets rained on is gathered badly? For it is cut not dry but green, and so, once soaked through, it quickly rots; whereas grain that is rained on before summer is helped against the hot, southerly winds, since these winds do not allow the grain forming in the ear to become dense, but by their heat they disperse and dissolve its compactness, unless the moisture of the soaked earth remains to cool and moisten the ear.
Why is rich, deep soil good for wheat, while thin soil is better for barley? Is it because strong seeds need more nourishment, while weak seeds need light, sparse nourishment, and barley is weaker and less dense, so it cannot bear abundant, heavy nourishment? This reasoning is confirmed by the fact that three-month wheat grows better in somewhat dry ground, since it is less moisture-dependent and needs less nourishment, and for that reason also ripens faster.
Why is it said, "plant wheat in mud, but barley in dust"? Is it, as we have said, because the one can master more nourishment while the other cannot bear abundance and flooding; or is it that wheat, being dense and woody, grows better when softened and made pulpy in moisture, while for barley, on account of its sparseness, dryness is advantageous at the start, either because of its heat, being well-tempered and harmless — while barley's constitution is colder? Or is it that they fear to grind wheat when it is dry because of the ants, which attack it at once, whereas they are less drawn to barley, since its grains are hard to carry off and hard to transport on account of their size?
Why do they take hairs for fishing-line more from male horses than from females? Is it, as with other parts, that the male is more vigorous than the female also in its hairs; or rather do they think that the hairs of females become worse from being wetted by urine?
Why is the appearance of a squid a sign of a great storm? Is it because all cephalopods are by nature very sensitive to cold, owing to the nakedness and bareness of their flesh, being covered by neither shell nor skin nor scale, but having their hard, bony part within — which is why they are called "soft creatures"? They perceive the approach of a storm quickly because of this sensitivity. Hence the octopus runs up onto land and clings to little rocks as a sign that wind is all but present, while the squid leaps out of the water, fleeing the cold and the disturbance in the depths of the sea; for indeed, of all the cephalopods, it has the most easily crumbled and tender flesh.
Why does the octopus change its color? Is it, as Theophrastus thought, that it is by nature a timid creature, so that when disturbed it turns with its breath and changes color along with it, just as a person does — which is why it has been said, "the color of a coward changes"? Or is this said plausibly with regard to the change itself but not adequately as an explanation of the resemblance it takes on? For it changes in such a way that its color comes to resemble whatever rocks it is near; it was with this in view that Pindar wrote, "bringing to bear most of all the mind of the sea-beast, consort with all the cities," and Theognis, "hold the mind of the many-colored octopus, which appears such as the rock it approaches." This trait, they say, belongs also to those who excel in cunning and cleverness, in that, wishing to escape notice and elude those nearby, they are always likened to the octopus. Or do they suppose that it uses its color as clothing, changing it as easily as one changes garments, at will?
May it be, then, that the octopus itself provides only the beginning of this affection through fear, while the decisive causes lie elsewhere? Consider, then — knowing, as Empedocles held, that there are effluences from all things that have come to be: for not only from living creatures, plants, earth, and sea, but even from stones there continually depart many streams, and from bronze and iron too; indeed all things decay and give off odor because something is always flowing from them and continually being carried off. And indeed they produce either attractions or leapings-upon by means of these effluences, some supposing entwinings of them, others blows, still others certain pushings and circlings. Especially from the rocks along the shore, sprinkled and rubbed away by the sea, it is likely that many small fragments continually depart, which, differing from one another in color, do not attach themselves to other bodies but pass by unnoticed, either slipping around those with denser pores or running through those with looser ones. But the flesh of the octopus, to look at, is from the start honeycomb-like and full of pores, and receptive of effluences; and whenever it is afraid, turning and being turned by its breath, it, as it were, tightens and draws its body together, so that it comes to receive and hold on its surface the effluences of things nearby; for indeed its roughness combined with softness provides coils for the particles that arrive, so that they are not scattered but gathered together and remain, and this makes the surface take on the same color as the things nearest to it. A strong proof of this cause is the fact that the octopus does not become like every neighboring thing, nor does the chameleon take on white colors, but each takes on only those colors whose effluences find pores in it that are commensurate with them.
Why is the tear of a wild boar sweet, but that of a deer briny and unpleasant? The cause is the heat and cold of these animals: the deer is cold, while the boar is very hot and fiery. Hence the one flees while the other defends itself against attackers, and it is especially then, on account of its spirit, that the boar sheds its tear; for as much heat is carried up to the eyes, as has been said, "bristling well its mane, glaring fire from its eyes," what melts away becomes sweet. Some say, however, that as with the whey of milk, when the blood is disturbed the tear is forced out, as Empedocles says. Since, then, the blood of boars is rough and dark on account of heat, but that of deer is thin and watery, it is reasonable that what is secreted in the passions of anger and fear is, in each case, of a corresponding kind.
Why do tame sows give birth more often, and different ones at different times, while wild sows give birth only once, and nearly all around the same days? These days fall at the beginning of summer; hence it has been said, "let it no longer rain by night, on the day the wild sow gives birth." Is it on account of abundance of food — truly "in satiety is Aphrodite"? For abundance of food produces reproductive residue both in plants and in animals. Now the wild sows seek their food by themselves and in fear, while for the tame ones there is always food available, in one case growing naturally, in the other from provision. Or is the cause the leisure and lack of leisure that occur together? For the tame sows are idle, unwilling to wander far from their swineherds, while the wild ones, roaming the mountains and running about, disperse and consume all their food in bodily exertion, so that, because they are always together, either no residue forms, or also because the females are reared and herded together with the males, this produces a recollection of sexual matters and calls forth desire together, as Empedocles said of human beings — "and in him too a longing, mingled somehow through digestion" — whereas among the wild ones, being reared apart from one another, the lack of affection and difficulty of mingling blunts and quenches their impulses.
Or is what Aristotle says also true, that Homer called the boar "chloune" meaning the one-testicled one? For he says that in most of them the testicles are broken off through rubbing against tree-trunks.
Why do they say that the bear's paw has the sweetest flesh and is most pleasant to eat? Is it because the flesh that most concocts the body's nourishment is the most pleasant? And the part that is most ventilated concocts best, being moved most and exercised together with the rest — just as the bear moves this part the most, since it uses it, as it were, as feet for walking and running, and as hands for grasping.
Why is spring a season difficult for tracking? Is it because the dogs, as Empedocles says, searching out with their nostrils the "scattered fragments of the beasts' limbs," which the animals leave behind in the woods, pick these up — but in spring the greatest number of the scents of plants and shrubs obscure and confound these, pouring out and mingling above the blossoming, and they flit about and lead the dogs astray from catching the scent of the beasts? For this reason they say that no one hunts around Etna in Sicily, for a mountain violet grows and flourishes abundantly there throughout the year in the meadows, and the place, always filled with fragrance, seizes away the breath of the animals. And there is a myth told, that it was from there that Pluto snatched away Kore as she was gathering flowers, and that for this reason, honoring and revering the place as inviolable, they do not attack the creatures that graze there.
Why do they least succeed at tracking by footprints around the full moon? For the reason already stated? For the full moons are especially dew-shedding; hence Alcman too called the dew the daughter of Zeus and the Moon, writing, "dew, daughter of Zeus and divine Selene, nourishes." For dew is a weak and feeble kind of rain, and the heat of the moon is likewise weak; hence it draws moisture up from the earth, as the sun does, but being unable to raise it on high or to take hold of it, it lets it fall back down.
Why is ground made dewy by the cold difficult for tracking? Is it because the animals, reluctant to go far from their lairs on account of the cold, make few tracks, and hence they say the animals spare themselves from ranging far, so as not to suffer by wandering far in winter, but always have pasture nearby? Or is it that the tracked ground must not merely retain footprints but must also stir the sense of smell, and it is stirred by scents that are loosened and softly relaxed by warmth, while excessive chilling, freezing the scents, does not allow them to flow or to stir the sense — hence they say that perfumes and wine likewise smell less in cold and winter, since the air, becoming frozen, holds the scents fast within itself and does not allow them to be given off?
Why do animals, when they fall into some affliction, seek out and pursue the remedies that help them, and often benefit from using them — just as dogs eat grass in order to vomit up bile; pigs make for river-crabs, since eating them helps against headache; the tortoise, after eating the flesh of the viper, eats marjoram afterward; and they say that the bear, when nauseated, takes up ants with its tongue and, swallowing them, is relieved — although none of these creatures has had experience or encounter with these remedies beforehand. Is it, then, just as honeycombs stir the bee by their scent, and carrion the vulture, drawing it from afar, that in the same way pigs are drawn by crabs, the tortoise by marjoram, and anthills draw the bear, by scents and emanations that are akin and proper to them, sensation leading them not by any reasoning about what is advantageous? Or is it rather that the bodily constitutions of the animals bring on the appetites, constitutions which their illnesses produce, generating various sharp or sweet qualities, or certain other unaccustomed and strange qualities, as their fluids are altered — as is evident in the case of women, when they are pregnant, and crave to eat even stones and earth? For this reason too, skilled physicians can foretell, from the cravings of the sick, which of them will be saved and which will perish. At any rate, the physician Mnesitheus records that at the onset of pneumonia, the patient who craved onions was saved, while the one who craved figs perished, because appetites follow bodily constitutions, and constitutions follow the state of the disease. It is plausible, then, that animals too, when they fall into illnesses that are not entirely fatal or destructive, acquire this same disposition and constitution, by which each of them is carried and led by its appetites toward the things that will save it.
Why does must, if the vessel is kept surrounded by cold, remain sweet for a long time? Is it because the change of must into wine is a kind of concoction, and cold hinders concoction, since concoction comes about through heat; or is it, on the contrary, that sweetness is the flavor proper to the grape, so that sweetness is even said to "ripen" when it is well blended, while the cold, not allowing it to evaporate but confining the heat, preserves the sweetness of the must? This same cause also explains why must from grapes harvested in rain boils up less: for boiling comes from heat, and cold holds back and constricts the heat.
Why of all animals does the bear least gnaw through nets, although wolves and foxes do gnaw through them? Is it because, having its teeth set deepest within its gaping mouth, it least reaches the cords, since its lips fall forward first on account of their thickness and size; or is it rather that, being strong in its paws, it breaks and tears apart the snare; or does it use both its paws and its mouth together, tearing the cord with the one while defending itself against its pursuers with the other? And nothing helps it so much as its rolling about; hence, rather than busying itself with tearing apart the nets, it often somersaults free and saves itself, whether or not there is need of its teeth as well.
What is the reason that we do not marvel at cold waters but do at hot ones, although it is clear that heat is the cause of the latter just as cold is of the former? For it is not, as some suppose, that heat is a positive power while cold is a privation of heat — since in that case what does not exist would appear to be the cause of more things than what does exist. Rather, it seems that nature apportions the marvelous to the rare — but how? What comes to be seldom comes to be an object of inquiry. "Do you see this boundless bright expanse above, and the earth all round held in its moist embrace" — how many spectacles it brings by night, and how much beauty it displays by day? Yet the many do not marvel at the nature of these, but rainbows and the variegated patterns of clouds by day, and flashing lights that burst like bubbles, are held to be adorned as if by night.
Why do we call the unfruitful vines, though luxuriant in their branches and shoots, "goatish"? Is it because he-goats that are very fat are less fertile and mount the female only with difficulty on account of their fatness? For seed is a residue of the nourishment added to the body; so whenever an animal or a tree is in good condition and grows fat, this is a sign that it consumes the nourishment within itself, producing little or no residue, or only a small and puny one.
Why does a vine wither when sprinkled with wine, especially wine made from itself? Is it, as happens among heavy drinkers...
...baldness occurs, since the heat of the wine evaporates the moisture. Or is it that the character of wine is naturally present in the vine, as Empedocles says: “wine is water that has rotted beneath the bark, within the wood”? So whenever the vine is drenched from outside with wine, it becomes, as it were, fire heaped upon fire for the vine, and the mixture drives out its nourishing power. Or is it that unmixed wine, having an astringent nature, penetrates the roots, and by drawing the pores together and compacting them, stops the water from passing into the plant, by which the plant is naturally able to flourish and put forth shoots? Or is it rather more likely that this is contrary to nature for the vine — to receive back into itself what has gone out from it and now returns again? For the moisture in plants, once it has flowered, normally serves to nourish something, and is not simply added back again, nor does it become once more part of the...
Why alone among all trees does the palm rise up against a weight placed upon it? Is it because the fiery, breath-like force that is especially strong in it, when tested and provoked, exerts itself and rises up more and more? Or is it that the weight, suddenly pressing on the branch, forces all the air within it, once compressed, to retreat backward, and then, its strength gradually recovered, the branch again pushes back against the weight with that airy force? Or is it that the soft, tender shoots simply cannot bear the pressure, and when the weight is removed they gradually straighten themselves up, merely giving the appearance of rising up against it?
Why does water drawn from wells nourish less than water flowing from a spring or falling from the sky? Is it because well water is colder and contains too little air? Or because it has much salt mixed into it from the earth, and salt, more than anything, produces leanness? Or is it that, being sluggish and not exercised by running, it acquires some bad quality hostile to plants and living creatures — the cause being that it is neither well concocted nor able to nourish anything? For this reason stagnant waters, too, are judged less wholesome, since they cannot work off the harm they receive either from the bad quality of the air or from the earth.
Why is the zephyr commonly said to be the swiftest of all winds, as Homer too says, “we also ran along with the blasts of the zephyr”? Is it because it is accustomed to blow when the air is thoroughly purged and least clouded? For density and impurity of the air considerably impede the course of the winds. Or is it that the sun, grazing the cold blast with its rays, causes it to be carried more swiftly? For whatever cold is drawn together by the force of the winds must, once overcome by heat as if by an enemy, be driven farther and faster.
Why can bees not endure smoke? Because the passages of their vital breath are extremely narrow, and this breath, intercepted and shut in by the smoke, chokes them and drives the bees nearly to death. Or is the acridity and bitterness of the smoke the cause: bees delight in sweet things and use no other nourishment, and so, as something contrary and harmful because of its bitterness, they detest smoke. For this reason beekeepers, when they raise smoke to drive bees away, are accustomed to burn bitter herbs, such as hemlock and centaury.
Why do bees sting more quickly those who have recently committed adultery? Is it because their little soul is exceedingly fond of cleanliness and refinement, and besides, their sense of smell is very keen? Since the intercourse of the impure, on account of their shamelessness and unrestrained lust, tends to leave them more unclean, such people are detected more quickly by the bees, who conceive a more violent hatred against them. Hence in Theocritus a shepherd jestingly says that Venus was driven to Anchises so that she might be stung by bees for the adultery she had committed: “Betake yourself to Ida, betake yourself to Anchises, where the oak and the cypress grow, where the bees hum and the honey-flowing house resounds with their buzzing.” And Pindar: “Little craftswoman of the honeycombs, who stung Rhoecus with your sting, taming his treachery.”
Why do she-wolves all give birth at a fixed time of year, within twelve days? Is it because they can neither grasp anything by thought nor recall those virtues by which man alone is able to act? And so, since in their minds they cannot distinguish by whom an injury was inflicted, they judge only whatever presents itself threateningly before their eyes to be an enemy, and prepare to take vengeance on it. Or is it that, when a stone is thrown along the ground, the wolf, supposing it to be some kind of animal, first tries after its own nature to seize it, and then, when it sees itself deceived in that expectation, attacks the man again? Or is it that it hates equally both the man and the thing thrown, and pursues whichever is nearer? This is why dogs, too, leaving the man who threw it, pursue and bite at the stone. Antipater, in his book on animals, says that she-wolves are inclined to bring forth their young when the acorn-bearing trees shed their blossom, which, once tasted, opens their wombs; and when there is no abundance of it, the offspring dies within the body itself and cannot come into the light. Moreover, those regions are not frequented by wolves which do not bear acorns and oaks. Some refer this to the myth of Latona, who, when she was pregnant and could find no safety anywhere because of Juno, obtained from Jove that she be changed into a she-wolf for the twelve days during which she journeyed to Delos, so that ever after all she-wolves might give birth at that very same time.
Why does water appear white at its surface but black at the bottom? Is it because depth is the mother of blackness, dulling and weakening the sun's rays before they descend to it, while the surface, being struck continually by the sun, must necessarily take on the whiteness of light? Empedocles himself confirms this: the black color at the bottom of a river arises from shadow, and the same is seen likewise in hollow caves. Or is it that the bed of rivers and of the sea, generally covered with mud, produces through the reflection of the sun a color corresponding to its own? Or is it more likely that the water there is not at all pure and unmixed, but is tinged with an earthy quality — since, being continually in motion, whether flowing or stirred, it carries something along with it from that mud — so that when it settles to the bottom it renders the water more turbid and less transparent?

======== Moralia: Quaestiones Romanae ========

Why do they command the bride to touch fire and water? Is it because these two, as elements and first principles, represent the one the male and the other the female, and the one introduces the principles of motion while the other supplies the power of the underlying substance and matter? Or is it because fire purifies and water cleanses, and the woman who has been married must remain pure and undefiled? Or is it that, just as fire without moisture is unnourished and dry, while water without heat is barren and inert, so too the male is powerless and the female powerless apart from each other, and it is their union that brings about, for those who marry, a shared life together? Or rather, is it that neither partner must be abandoned, and each must share every fortune with the other, even if the only things they are ever to share are fire and water?

Why do they light not more, and not fewer, but five torches at weddings, torches which they call "keriones"? Is it, as Varro used to say, because three praetors were employed, and with the aediles more still, and it is from the aediles that those who marry take their fire — or rather is it because, of the numbers in use, the odd number was thought better and more perfect for other purposes and also more fitting for marriage? For the even number admits division, and its equal parts are contentious and opposed to one another, whereas the odd number cannot be split apart completely but always leaves something over, being divided in common. And of the odd numbers the five is especially nuptial, for three is the first odd number and two the first even number, and from these, as it were from male and female, the number five is compounded. Or rather, is it because light is a sign of birth, and a woman by nature bears at most five children at a single birth, that they use that many torches? Or is it because they think that those who marry need five gods — Zeus Teleios ("of Fulfillment") and Hera Teleia, and Aphrodite, and Peitho ("Persuasion"), and above all Artemis, whom women invoke in the pains and travails of childbirth?

Why is it that, though there are many temples of Artemis in Rome, men do not enter only the one in the street called the Street of the Patrician? Is it on account of the story that is told — that a woman who was worshipping the goddess there was assaulted by a man and torn apart by dogs, and that ever since, out of the superstitious fear arising from this, men do not enter?

Why is it that on the other temples of Artemis they commonly nail up the antlers of deer, but on the one on the Aventine, the horns of oxen? Is it in remembrance of the ancient event? For it is said that among the Sabines, a cow of surpassing appearance and size beyond all others was born to a man named Antron Coratius; and when a certain seer told him that it was fated that whoever should sacrifice that cow to Artemis on the Aventine would become greatest and would rule over the whole of Italy, the man came to Rome intending to sacrifice the cow. But a servant secretly disclosed the prophecy to King Servius, and Servius disclosed it to Cornelius the priest; and Cornelius instructed Antron to bathe before the sacrifice in the Tiber, since it was the custom for those making the sacrifice favorably to do so. Antron accordingly went off to bathe, but Servius, forestalling him, sacrificed the cow to the goddess and nailed its horns up in the temple. This story is related both by Juba and by Varro, except that Varro does not record the name of Antron, and says that the Sabine was tricked not by Cornelius the priest but by the temple warden.

Why is it that those who have been falsely reported to have died abroad, even if they return, are not received in through the door, but climb up onto the roof-tile and are let down inside? Varro gives an entirely mythical explanation for this. He says that during the war in Sicily, after a great naval battle, a false report spread that many men had died; and that when these men returned home a short time later, they all in fact died soon afterward, except for one man, for whom, as he was entering, the doors met him closed of their own accord and would not yield however hard they tried to open them. This man, falling asleep before the doors, saw in his dreams a vision instructing him to be let down into the house over the roof; having done this, he lived to a happy and prosperous old age, and from this the custom was established for those who came after. Consider, however, whether this custom in some way resembles Greek practice as well: for the Greeks did not consider such men pure, nor did they mix with them, nor allow them near sacred things, since a funeral procession and burial had already taken place for them as though they were dead. It is said that one of those affected by this superstition, Aristinus, sent to Delphi to beg the god's help and to be released from the difficulties the law imposed on him; and the Pythia replied that whatever a woman undergoes in childbed when giving birth, he must undergo again, and then sacrifice to the blessed gods. So Aristinus, understanding the oracle, presented himself to the women as though he were newly born, to be washed and swaddled and given the breast, and did this, and so too did all the others afterward who were called "those born again after their proper time." Some say, however, that this practice concerning such men existed even before Aristinus, and that the custom is an ancient one. It is therefore no wonder that the Romans too thought that men who were regarded as having already been buried once, and as belonging to the company of the dead, ought not to pass through the courtyard door, sacrificing as they go out and sacrificing as they come in, but were instead ordered to come down from above into the open air out from under a roof — for indeed they perform virtually all their rites of purification in the open air.

Why do women kiss their male relatives on the mouth? Is it, as most people suppose, because it was forbidden for women to drink wine, so that if they had been drinking they would not go unnoticed but would be caught out by their relatives when they met them, and so the custom of kissing arose? Or is it for the reason that the philosopher Aristotle records? That much-told story, which is said to have happened in many places, seems indeed to have been dared also by the Trojan women in Italy. For when the men had put ashore, the women burned the ships, wanting above all to be free of their wandering and their fear of the sea; but fearing the men's anger, they greeted their relatives and kinsmen with kisses and embraces as they met them. And when the men's anger subsided and they were reconciled, the women continued ever after to use this same show of affection toward them. Or rather, was this given to the women as conferring both honor and a kind of power for them, if they could be seen to have many good relatives and kinsmen? Or was it that, since it was not the custom to marry blood relations, the show of affection extended only as far as a kiss, and this alone was left as a token and shared mark of kinship? For in earlier times they did not marry those related by blood, just as even now they do not marry aunts or sisters; it was only later that they allowed marriage with cousins, and for the following reason: a man who was poor in money but otherwise of good character and well liked by the people among all those active in politics was thought to have married his cousin, an heiress, and to have grown wealthy from her; and when he was accused on this charge, the people, setting aside the need to prove the accusation, dismissed the charge, and voted that everyone should be permitted to marry as far as the degree of cousins, but that marriage with closer relations should remain forbidden.

Why is it forbidden for a husband to accept a gift from his wife, and a wife from her husband? Is it, as Solon wrote making gifts by the dying valid unless someone is compelled by necessity or persuaded by a woman — thus excluding necessity as involving force, and pleasure as involving deception — that gifts between wives and husbands came to be viewed with similar suspicion? Or was it because they considered giving the poorest sign of goodwill — since even strangers give gifts, and people who are merely fond of one another — that they abolished this kind of currying favor from marriage, so that being loved and loving might be without price, freely given, and for its own sake and not for any other reason? Or was it because, since women corrupted by receiving gifts are especially prone to welcome strangers, it seemed a mark of dignity to love one's own without giving gifts? Or rather is it because a husband and wife's possessions ought to be held in common, husband's and wife's alike — for the one who receives a gift learns to consider whatever is not given to be someone else's, so that by giving small things to each other they would in effect be taking away the whole?

Why is it forbidden for a bride and groom to accept a gift from a father-in-law or mother-in-law? Is it that from a father-in-law, so that the gift should not seem to pass to the wife by way of her husband's father? And from a mother-in-law, because it seemed just that one who does not give should not receive either?

Why is it that, whether returning from the countryside or from abroad, men who have wives at home send word ahead to let them know they are coming? Is it because this is a mark of trusting that one's wife is doing nothing amiss, whereas to arrive suddenly and unexpectedly is like setting a trap and keeping watch on her? Or do they hurry to bring the good news of their arrival to wives who they suppose are longing for and expecting them? Or rather, is it that they themselves are eager to learn about their wives — whether they will find them safe at home and longing for them? Or is it that wives, in their husbands' absence, are occupied with more household management and business, and with disputes and impulses directed at those within the household, so that the advance notice is given in order that, once free of these matters, she may offer her husband a welcome that is untroubled and pleasant?

Why is it that when men worship the gods they cover their heads, but when they meet with men who deserve honor, even if they happen to have their cloak over their head, they uncover it? This last fact seems to intensify that same puzzle. Now if the story told about Aeneas is true — that when Diomedes was passing by, he covered his head and completed the sacrifice — this makes sense, and it follows that covering oneself before enemies goes along with uncovering oneself when meeting friends and good men; for the practice toward the gods is not distinctive in itself but a matter of coincidence, and it has persisted as an observance from that time on. But if some other explanation must be given, consider that one need not seek only why men cover their heads when worshipping the gods — the other practice follows from it. For men uncover their heads before those more powerful than themselves, not so as to add to their honor but rather to take away their envy, so that they may not seem to be demanding the same honors as the gods, nor to tolerate or take pleasure in being served in the same way as the gods. And they used to worship the gods in this fashion either humbling themselves by covering the head, or rather, being wary lest some ill-omened and inauspicious sound from outside should fall upon them as they prayed, they drew the cloak up over their ears; for that they guarded strictly against this is clear from the fact that those who approach for divination surround themselves with the clashing noise of bronze vessels. Or, as Castor says, associating Roman practice with Pythagorean teaching, the divine spirit within us has need of the gods outside and supplicates them, and by the covering of the head hints at the enclosure and separation of the soul by the body.

Why do they sacrifice to Saturn with the head uncovered? Is it because Aeneas handed down the practice of covering the head, while the sacrifice to Saturn is far more ancient? Or is it that men cover their heads before the heavenly gods, while they consider Saturn a god of the underworld and the earth? Or is it that nothing of truth is hidden or overshadowed, and the Romans believe Saturn to be the father of truth?

Why do they consider Saturn the father of truth? Is it, as some philosophers hold, that they think Saturn to be time, and time discovers what is true? Or is it that the life mythically ascribed to the age of Saturn, if it was indeed most just, is likely to have had the greatest share of truth?

Why do they also sacrifice to the god called Honos with the head uncovered — Honos being a name one might translate as "reputation" or "honor"? Is it because reputation is bright and conspicuous and open to view, and for the same reason that they uncover their heads before good men who are honored, they also worship in this manner the god named for that same honor?

Why is it that at funerals sons carry out their parents with heads covered, while daughters do so with heads bare and hair unbound? Is it that fathers ought to be honored by their sons as gods, but mourned by their daughters as the dead, the law thereby assigning to each what is proper and, from the two together, producing what is fitting? Or is it that what belongs to mourning is what is not customary, and it is more customary for women to go out in public with heads covered, and for men with heads uncovered? For among the Greeks too, when some misfortune occurs, the women cut their hair while the men let it grow long, because for the one sex cutting the hair and for the other letting it grow is the custom. Or was it thought fitting that sons should cover their heads for the reason already given — for indeed at tombs, as Varro says, men turn themselves about, honoring their fathers' monuments as they would sacred shrines of the gods, and after cremating their parents, as soon as they come upon a bone, they say that the dead one has become a god — while women were not permitted to cover their heads at all? It is recorded, at any rate, that the first man to divorce his wife was Spurius Carvilius, on the grounds of childlessness; the second was Sulpicius Gallus, who saw his wife drawing her cloak up over her head; and the third was Publius Sempronius, who divorced his wife for watching a funeral games.

Why is it that, though they regard Terminus, to whom they celebrate the Terminalia, as a god, they used to sacrifice no living creature to him? Is it because Romulus set no boundaries for the territory, so that it should be possible to advance and to seize land and consider as one's own whatever a spear could reach, as the Spartan said; whereas Numa Pompilius, a just man, a statesman, and one who had become a philosopher, marked out the land in relation to their neighbors, and having assigned the name Terminus to the boundaries as an overseer and guardian of friendship and peace, thought it right to keep him pure and undefiled by blood and slaughter?

Why is the shrine of Leukothea forbidden to slave women, while the women who bring in a single one strike and slap her on the cheek? Is it that this woman's being struck is a token symbol of the fact that others are not permitted to enter, while the others are kept out on account of the myth? For it is said that Ino, out of jealousy over a slave woman on account of her husband, was driven mad in her fury against her own son; and the Greeks say the slave woman was Aetolian by birth and was called Antiphera. This is why, among us too, at Chaeronea, before the shrine of Leukothea, the temple warden takes up a whip and proclaims, "Let no male slave enter, nor female slave, no Aetolian man nor Aetolian woman."

Why is it that at the shrine of this goddess they do not pray for good things for their own children, but for those of their sisters? Is it that Ino was fond of her sister and nursed her sister's child, while she herself was unfortunate in regard to her own children? Or is it, quite apart from this, that the custom is a moral and admirable one, one that produces much goodwill among kinsfolk?

Why did many of the wealthy dedicate a tenth of their property to Heracles? Is it because Heracles too, in Rome, offered up a tenth of the cattle of Geryon in sacrifice, or because he freed the Romans when they were being made to pay a tenth to the Etruscans? Or is it rather that these explanations do not have reliable historical basis...
...or was it because to gluttonous, hearty-eating Hercules they sacrificed lavishly and without stint? Or rather, because, curbing wealth that had grown burdensome to their fellow citizens — excising it, as it were, the way an athlete at the peak of condition is trimmed back — they believed that this was the way Hercules was most honored, and that he delighted in such curtailments and reductions of excess, since he himself had lived a frugal, self-sufficient, unostentatious life?
"Why do they reckon the month of January as the beginning of the new year?" In old times, in fact, March used to be counted first, as is clear from many other proofs, and especially from the fact that the fifth month from March is called "the fifth" and the sixth "the sixth," and so on for the rest in order down to the last, which they call December, being reckoned the tenth from March. From this some have come to suppose and to say that the Romans of that time completed the year not with twelve months but with ten, adding to some of the months more than thirty days. Others record that December was the tenth month from March, January the eleventh, and February the twelfth, in which month they perform purifications and offer rites to the dead, since the year is ending.
They say that these months were transposed and January made first because on the new moon of this month — the day they call the Kalends of January — the first consuls were installed, once the kings had been expelled. But more plausible are those who say that Romulus, being warlike and battle-mad and reputed to be born of Ares, set March, which bears the name of Ares, before the other months; while Numa, who was in turn a man of peace and eager to turn the city toward the works of the earth and away from war, gave the leading place to January and advanced Janus to great honors, since Janus had become a figure of civic and agricultural rather than military character.
Consider, though, whether it was not rather Numa who, by nature, took the beginning of the year that is most fitting for us. For in general nothing that revolves in a circle is by nature either last or first; it is by convention that different peoples take different points as the beginning of time. But best of all are those who take as the beginning the time after the winter solstice, when the sun, having ceased advancing further away, turns and comes back again toward us. For then it happens for them, in a way, even by nature, that the time of light is increased for us and the time of darkness diminished, and the ruling and guiding power of all fluid substance is brought nearer.
"Why, when the women adorn the shrine of the goddess called the Good Goddess, do they not bring myrtle into the house, although they are eager to use all growing and flowering things?" Was it, as the mythographers relate, because she was the wife of Faunus the seer, and having secretly indulged in wine — and not escaping detection — she was beaten by her husband with rods of myrtle; and so they do not bring in myrtle, but pour libations of wine to her, calling it "milk"? Or is it rather that they perform that rite in a state of purity from many things, but especially from sexual intercourse? For they not only send the men out of the house, but drive out every male creature, whenever they perform the observances ordained for the goddess. They therefore keep away myrtle as sacred to Aphrodite — for indeed the goddess they now call Venus Murcia was, it seems, anciently named Myrtia.
"Why do the Latins hold the woodpecker in reverence, and why do all of them strictly abstain from harming this bird?" Was it because they say that Picus, transformed by his wife's drugs, changed his nature and, becoming a woodpecker, uttered oracles and gave responses to those who consulted him? But this tale is altogether incredible and monstrous. The other story is more plausible: that when Romulus and Remus were exposed, not only did a she-wolf offer them the teat, but also a woodpecker used to visit and feed them with morsels of food. For even now, it is generally true that in mountainous and wooded places wherever a woodpecker appears, a wolf appears there too, as Nigidius records. Or rather, is it that, just as one bird is sacred to one god and another to another, this bird too is held sacred to Ares,
since it is bold and high-spirited, and its beak is so strong that it can overturn oaks, when in pecking it reaches the core? "Why do they suppose that Janus came to have two faces, and so depict and mold him?" Was it because by birth he was a Greek, from Perrhaebia, as they relate, and having crossed over into Italy and settled among the barbarians there, he changed both his tongue and his manner of living?
Or rather was it because he took the people around Italy, who lived by wild and lawless customs, and transformed and refashioned them into another pattern of life, persuading them to till the soil and to live under civic order? "Why do they sell the equipment for burials within the precinct of Libitina, holding Libitina to be Venus?" Was this too one of the philosophical devices of King Numa,
so that people might learn not to be distressed by such things nor to shun them as pollution? Or rather is it a reminder that whatever is born is perishable, since it is a single goddess who oversees both births and deaths? For indeed at Delphi there is a small statue of Aphrodite of the Tomb, before which they call up the departed for their libations. "Why do they have three fixed beginnings and set dates in the month, not taking the same interval of days between them?"
Was it, as those around Juba relate, because on the Kalends the magistrates used to summon the people and announce the Nones for the fifth day, while they regarded the Ides as a sacred day? Or rather was it because, marking time by the phases of the moon, they observed that the moon undergoes, in the course of a month, three principal changes: the first when it is hidden, having come into conjunction with the sun;
the second when, escaping the sun's rays, it first becomes visible in the west; and the third, which concerns its fullness, when the moon becomes full. They call its disappearance and concealment the "Kalends," since everything hidden and secret is "clam" and "celare" means to be concealed; and they call the first appearance the "Nones," by the most fitting
of names, since it is a new moon — for they too, like us, call what is new and fresh by that term. And the "Ides" they name either from the beauty and the appearance (species) the moon presents when it is restored to fullness, or in giving that appellation in honor of Jupiter. One should not, however, chase after the most precise count of days, nor quibble over slight discrepancies, since even now, with astronomy having made such advances,
the irregularity of the moon's motion still eludes exact calculation, escaping the mathematicians' most careful observation. "Why do they set aside as unsuitable for setting out or traveling abroad the day after the Kalends, the Nones, and the Ides?" Was it, as most people suppose and as Livy records, because after the Ides of Quintilis — which they now call the Ides of July — the military tribunes led the army out and were defeated in battle by the Celts near the river Allia
and lost the city; and once the day after the Ides had come to be regarded as inauspicious, custom, as superstition is wont to do, carried the practice further and extended the same scruple to the day after the Nones and the day after the Kalends as well? Or does this explanation involve many inconsistencies? For it was on a different day that they suffered the defeat, the day which they call the day of Allia after the river, and which they hold in abhorrence for that reason;
and though there are many inauspicious days, they do not observe the corresponding days in every month, but only the particular day on which the event fell. And to extend the scruple, without qualification, to all the days after the Nones and the Kalends alike is quite implausible. Consider, then, whether it is not rather this: just as of the months they consecrated the first to the Olympian gods and the second to the gods of the underworld — in which month, too, they perform certain purifications and offer rites to the departed —
so too, of the days, they set apart the first as it were, the principal and governing days — three in number, as has been said — as festal and sacred, while the days that follow them they assigned to the spirits of the dead and to the departed, and regarded as inauspicious and unfit for business. Indeed the Greeks too, in honoring the gods at the new moon, assign the second day to heroes and spirits, and the second mixing-bowl is poured out for heroes and heroines. And
altogether, time is a kind of number, and the beginning of number is divine, for the unit is such a beginning. The dyad that comes after it is opposed to that beginning and is the first of the even numbers. And the even is deficient, incomplete, and indeterminate, just as, in turn, the odd is bounded, brings completion, and is perfect. That is why the Nones fall on the fifth day after the Kalends, and the Ides on the ninth day after the Nones —
for it is the odd numbers that mark the beginnings, whereas the numbers that come right after the beginnings, being even, have no rank or power, and hence people do not begin an undertaking or a journey on those days. Or there is also something in the story about Themistocles — that the day after a festival once quarreled with the festival day itself, complaining that the festival had much business and toil, while the day after offered leisure and quiet to enjoy
the things prepared for the festival; and that the Festival replied to this, "What you say is true, but if I had not existed, you would not exist either." This is what Themistocles used to say later to the generals of the Athenians, that they would have been nowhere had he not himself saved the city. Since, then, every journey and undertaking worth taking seriously requires management and
preparation, and since the Romans of old, during their festivals, managed and thought about nothing else, but were occupied only with matters concerning the gods and busied themselves with that alone — just as even now the priests, on their way to the sacrifices, make proclamation beforehand — it stands to reason that they did not immediately set out on journeys after the festivals, nor undertake business, for they were unprepared; instead they spent that day at home thinking things through and making their preparations. Or, just as even
now, after praying and doing reverence in the temples, people are accustomed to linger and sit a while, so too they did not immediately follow their sacred days with days of active business, but made some pause and interval, since many affairs bring difficulties and unwelcome complications. "Why do women wear white clothing and white headbands in mourning?" Was it, as they say the Magi do, opposing themselves to Hades and
to darkness, and so making themselves resemble what is bright and radiant, that they do this? Or is it rather that, just as they clothe the body of the deceased in white, they think it fitting that the relatives should do likewise? They adorn the body in this way since they cannot adorn the soul; but they wish to send off the soul bright and pure, as one now released and having fought through a great and varied contest to the end. Or is it that plainness and simplicity are especially fitting in
these circumstances, whereas dyed garments show either extravagance or over-elaborate artifice — for it is no less true of black than of purple to say, "Deceitful are the garments, deceitful the colors"; whereas black in its natural, undyed state is colored not by art but by nature, and being mixed with shadow, it has been overcome by it. White alone, then, is
pure and unmixed, unstained and inimitable by dye; it is therefore most fitting for the dead. For the deceased too has become something simple, unmixed, and utterly pure, having been released from the body, which is the source of dye that stains. In Argos, however, they wear white in mourning that has been washed in water, as Socrates says. "Why do they consider every wall sacred and inviolable, but not consider the gates so?"
Was it, as Varro wrote, that the wall must be held sacred, so that men might fight for it eagerly and be willing to die for it? For it is in this light that Romulus is thought to have killed his brother, on the ground that he was attempting to leap over an impassable, sacred spot and to make it passable and profane. As for the gates, it was not possible to consecrate them, since through them many necessities pass, and also
the dead are carried out through them. Hence those who found a city from the beginning, whenever they are about to build up a site, plow around it with a plow, yoking together a male and a female ox; and when they mark out the walls, they lift the plowshare where the gates are to be, measuring off those spaces, and so carry the plow across, so that the entire ground that is plowed will be sacred and inviolable. "Why, when boys swear
an oath by Hercules, do they forbid them to do this under a roof, and bid them go out into the open air?" Was it, as some say, because they believe that Hercules does not delight in staying indoors but in an outdoor life and living under the open sky? Or rather was it because this god is not a native one but comes from afar, a stranger? For indeed they do not swear by Dionysus under a roof either, since he too is a stranger, if indeed he is Dionysus.
Or is this said and done in play with the boys, while in truth it is a way of restraining the readiness and quickness with which people rush into an oath, as Favorinus used to say? For the delay, coming as it were from a kind of preparation, produces hesitation and allows time to deliberate. One might also support Favorinus by pointing out that this practice is peculiar to this god and not common, on the basis of what is said about Hercules.
For it is recorded that he was so scrupulous about oaths that he swore only once, and that only to Phyleus, the son of Augeas; and it is for this reason that the Pythia used to cite these oaths to the Lacedaemonians, as men who kept faith, saying, "It would be better and more advantageous." "Why do they not allow the bride to step over the threshold of the house herself, but those escorting her lift her over it?"
Was it because the first women too were carried in that way, having been seized by force, and did not enter of their own accord? Or do they wish it to appear that the brides enter under compulsion and not willingly, since they are about to have their virginity dissolved? Or is it a symbol that she is not to go out through it herself nor to leave the house, unless compelled, just as she entered it under compulsion? For indeed among us in Boeotia they burn the axle of the wagon before the door,
signifying that the bride must remain, since the means of taking her away has been destroyed. "Why, when they bring in the bride, do they instruct her to say, 'Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia'?" Was it that, as though under stated terms, she immediately enters upon sharing in everything and joint rule with him, the meaning being, "Where you are lord and master of the house, there I too am lady and mistress of the house"? Or do they use these names in another sense, since they are common names, just as
the jurists use "Gaius Seius" and "Lucius Titius," and the philosophers use "Dio" and "Theon"? Or is it because of Gaia Caecilia, a beautiful and virtuous woman who lived with one of the sons of Tarquin, whose bronze statue stands in the temple of Sancus? There used also to lie beside it, in olden times, sandals and a spindle, the one a symbol of her keeping house, the other of her industry. "Why is the much-celebrated song sung..."
Talasius' at weddings? Is it from talasia, wool-working — for they also call the basket a talasos; and when they bring in the bride they spread a fleece under her, and she herself brings in a distaff and spindle, and wreathes the door of the bridegroom's house with wool? Or is what the historians say true, that there was a certain young man, brilliant in war and excellent in other ways, named Talasius; and when the Romans were seizing the daughters of the Sabines who had come to watch the games, a maiden of striking beauty was being carried off for Talasius by some of the common people and his own clients, who shouted for her safety and that no one should approach or lay hold of the girl, since she was being carried off as a wife for Talasius. So the rest, honoring Talasius and joining in the good wishes and acclamations, followed and escorted her along; and from this, since the marriage turned out fortunate, people became accustomed to cry out 'Talasius' at other weddings too, just as the Greeks cry 'Hymenaeus.'
'Why, at the full moon of May, do they throw effigies of men from the wooden bridge into the river, calling the things thrown "Argei"?' Is it that in ancient times the barbarians who dwelt about that place used to destroy in this way any Greeks they captured; but Heracles, admired by them, put an end to the killing of strangers, and taught them the custom of imitating that superstitious practice by throwing effigies instead? And the ancients called all Greeks alike 'Argives' — unless, by Zeus, one supposes that the Arcadians, because of their proximity, regarded the Argives too as enemies, and that the followers of Evander, who had fled from Greece and settled there, kept up the old grudge and hostility.
'Why did they not, in old times, dine out apart from their sons, while these were still boys?' Is it that Lycurgus too instituted this practice, bringing the boys in to the public messes, so that they might grow accustomed not to approach their pleasures like wild animals or without discipline, but with due caution, having their elders as overseers and spectators, as it were? And this practice made the fathers themselves no less restrained and self-controlled in the presence of their sons — for where old men behave shamelessly, as Plato says, there the young are bound to be most shameless of all.
'Why, when the rest of the Romans make libations and offerings to the dead in the month of February, did Decimus Brutus, as Cicero has recorded, do this in December? This was the man who overran Lusitania and was the first to lead an army across the river of forgetfulness.' Is it, just as most people are accustomed to make offerings to the dead as the day ends and the month wanes, reasonable also that, as the year comes to its close, the dead should be honored in the last month — and December is the last of the months? Or is it that honors are due to the gods of the underworld, and it is timely to honor the powers below once all the crops have been gathered in? Or is it that when men break the earth to begin sowing, it is especially fitting to remember those below? Or is it that this month has been consecrated by the Romans to Saturn, and they hold Saturn to be one of the gods below, not of the gods above? Or is it that, since the greatest of their festivals, the Saturnalia, falls in this month, and seems to bring the most gatherings and enjoyments, they thought it right to set apart some of these first-fruits also for the dead? Or is it simply false that Brutus alone made offerings in this month? For indeed they perform the rite for Larentia too, and bring libations to her tomb, in the month of December.
'Why do they honor Larentia so, though she had been a courtesan?' They say there was another Larentia, called Acca, the nurse of Romulus, whom they honor in the month of April; but the courtesan Larentia, they say, had the surname Fabula, and became known for the following reason. A certain temple-attendant of Heracles, enjoying leisure as it seems, was in the habit of spending most of his days at draughts and dice; and once, when none of his usual companions happened to be present to play with him and share the pastime, in his frustration he challenged the god to cast dice against him as if on stated terms — if he won, he was to obtain some benefit from the god; but if he lost, he himself was to provide the god with a dinner, and a beautiful girl to spend the night with him. On these terms he set out the dice, cast one for himself and one for the god, and lost. So, abiding by his own challenge, he prepared a splendid table for the god, and taking Larentia, who was openly a courtesan, he feasted her and laid her to rest in the temple, and on leaving he shut the doors. It is said that in the night the god came to her, not in human fashion, and bade her go at dawn to the marketplace, and whomever she should meet first, to attach herself to him especially and make him her friend. So Larentia rose and went, and met one of the wealthy men, unmarried and past his prime, named Tarrutius; becoming known to him, she ruled his household while he lived, and inherited it when he died; and later, when she herself died in the course of time, she left her estate to the city — for which reason she is accorded these honors.
'Why do they call a certain gate a "window" (thyris) — for this is what "fenestra" signifies — and beside it stands the so-called chamber of Fortune?' Is it because King Servius, who was most fortunate, gained the reputation of being visited by Fortune, who came to him through a window? Or is this a myth, and the truth rather that, when King Tarquinius Priscus died, his wife Tanaquil, a woman of sense and royal bearing, leaned out through a window, addressed the citizens, and persuaded them to proclaim Servius king — and so the place received this name?
'Why is it customary, of all the things dedicated to the gods, to allow only spoils of war to be disregarded as time wears them away, neither doing them reverence nor repairing them?' Is it so that people, supposing the glory to fade along with the earliest trophies, may always seek to bring some fresh memorial of their valor? Or rather, because as time dims the marks of the quarrel with the enemy, it would be invidious and provocative of hostility for men to renew and refurbish them themselves? For among the Greeks too, those who first set up a trophy of stone or bronze do not win approval.
'Why did Quintus Metellus, when he became chief priest — a man otherwise reputed prudent and skilled in public affairs — forbid the taking of auspices after the month of Sextilis, now called August?' Is it that, just as we undertake such business when the day is at its height or just beginning, and when the month is waxing and increasing, but avoid the waning days as unfit for business, so likewise the period eight months into the year is to be reckoned like a kind of evening of the year, a late afternoon already declining and waning? Or is it also that one must use birds that are in their prime and full-grown? These are such before summer; but around autumn, some are weak and sickly, some are still fledglings and immature, and others have vanished altogether, migrating because of the season.
'Why was it not permitted to those who were not on active campaign, but were merely present about the camp in some other capacity, to strike or wound an enemy soldier?' This too Cato the Elder made clear in a certain letter, writing to his son and bidding him, if he had been discharged from the campaign after completing his term of service, to return home; or else, if he remained, to obtain from the general permission to wound and kill an enemy. Is it that necessity alone ought to be the warrant for killing a man, and one who does this without law or command is a murderer — for which reason Cyrus praised Chrysantas, because, though about to kill an enemy and with his sword already raised, on hearing the recall sounded he let the man go and did not strike him, as being now forbidden? Or is it that one who is engaged with the enemy and fighting, should he show cowardice, ought not to go unaccountable or unpunished — for a man does not help his side so much by striking and wounding someone as he harms it by fleeing and retreating. So he who has been discharged from service is released from the laws of the soldier, but he who has asked to be allowed to act as though still serving has once again made himself accountable to the law and to the general.
'Why is the priest of Jupiter not permitted to anoint himself in the open air?' Is it that it was neither holy nor decent for sons to be seen naked by their father, or a son-in-law by his father-in-law, and in old times men did not even bathe together with one another; and Jupiter is the father, and the open air seems, in a way, to be especially in the presence of Jupiter? Or is it that, just as it is forbidden to strip oneself naked in a temple or sanctuary, so they were careful to show the same reverence for the open air beneath the sky, which is likewise full of gods and spirits — for which reason we perform most of our necessary functions under a roof, concealing and covering ourselves within our houses out of respect for the divine? Or is it that some things are enjoined by law upon the priest alone, and others upon everyone through the priest? Thus among us too, the wearing of a garland, the growing of the hair, the not carrying iron, and the not stepping across the borders of the Phocians, are duties peculiar to the archon; but the not tasting of the autumn fruit before the autumnal equinox, nor pruning the vine before the spring equinox, is thereby made known to virtually everyone through the archon — for each is the proper season for that person. In the same way, it seems, it is peculiar to the priest among the Romans neither to ride a horse, nor to be away from home more than three nights, nor to lay aside the cap from which he is even called 'flamen.' But many other things are made known to all through the priest, and one of these is the not anointing oneself in the open air. For the Romans were greatly suspicious of dry-anointing, and they think that nothing has been so much a cause of slavery and softness among the Greeks as the gymnasia and wrestling-schools, which breed much idleness and leisure in their cities, and mischief born of leisure, and pederasty, and the ruin of the young men's bodies through sleep, walks, rhythmic movements, and strict regimens — through which they were unwittingly drained away from arms, and content, instead of being good hoplites and horsemen, to be called witty fellows and fine wrestlers. At any rate, this is a thing men manage to avoid by stripping in the open air; but those who anoint themselves at home and attend to their bodies there do nothing wrong.
'Why did the old coinage on one side bear the two-faced image of Janus, and on the other the stern or prow of a ship engraved upon it?' Is it, as most say, in honor of Saturn, who crossed over to Italy by ship — though this could be said of many, for Janus, Evander, and Aeneas too all arrived by sea? Rather one might conjecture this: that some things are honorable for cities, others necessary; and the greatest of the honorable things is good order, and of the necessary things, abundance of supply. Since, then, Janus established good order for them by civilizing their way of life, while the river, being navigable and bringing down goods both from the sea and from the countryside, supplies abundance of necessities, the coin bore as its symbol the two-faced image of the lawgiver, as has been said, on account of the change he brought, and the ferry-image of the river. They also used another coinage, bearing the device of an ox, a sheep, and a pig, since they derived their wealth chiefly from their livestock and had their property from these — for which reason many of the names among the ancients were Suillius, Bubulcus, and Porcius, as Fenestella has recorded.
'Why do they use the temple of Saturn as a treasury for the public funds, and at the same time as a repository for contracts?' Is it that the belief and tradition prevailed that there was no greed or injustice among men while Saturn reigned, but only good faith and justice? Or is it that the god presides over the excellence of crops, or of husbandry — for this is what the sickle signifies, and not, as Antimachus wrote, following Hesiod, that shaggy Saturn, cutting sideways with the sickle, was fashioned in requital against the genitals of his father Uranus, son of Acmon. Rather, abundance and disposal of crops is the origin of coined money, and so they make the god both the cause and the guardian of prosperity. This is confirmed by the fact that the gatherings held every ninth day for the market, called nundinae, are held sacred to Saturn — for it was the surplus from selling and buying crops that gave rise to the beginning of commerce. Or are these things ancient, while the first man to make the temple of Saturn a treasury, after the kings were overthrown, was Valerius Publicola, who believed the place well-fortified, conspicuous, and hard to plot against?
'And why do envoys arriving at Rome from wherever they come, on going to the temple of Saturn, register their names with the prefects of the treasury?' Is it because Saturn was once a stranger, and therefore delights in strangers; or is this too resolved by history? For it seems that in old times the quaestors used to send gifts of hospitality to envoys (the things sent were called "lautia"), and they took care of them when sick and buried them at public expense when they died; but now, because of the great number of envoys arriving, the practice of such expenditure has lapsed, though the custom of applying first to the prefects of the treasury by registering still remains.
'Why is the priest of Jupiter not permitted to take an oath?' Is it that an oath is a kind of test applied to free men, whereas the body and soul of the priest ought to be beyond all testing? Or is it that it is not fitting for a man entrusted with the greatest and most sacred matters to be distrusted in small ones? Or is it that every oath ends in a curse upon the perjurer, and a curse is an ill-omened and grim thing — for which reason it is not thought right for priests to curse others either. At any rate the priestess at Athens was praised for refusing to curse Alcibiades though the people ordered her to do so, for she said she had become a priestess of prayer, not of cursing. Or is it that the danger of perjury is a common one, if an impious and perjured man should be the one to begin the prayers and sacred rites on behalf of the city?
'Why, at the festival of the Veneralia, do they pour out much wine from the sanctuary of Venus?' Is it, as most say, that Mezentius, general of the Etruscans, sent word to Aeneas offering a truce in exchange for receiving the year's wine; and when Aeneas refused, Mezentius promised the Etruscans that, if victorious in battle, he would give them the wine — but Aeneas, learning of his promise, consecrated the wine to the gods, and after his victory gathered in the harvest and poured it out before the sanctuary of Venus? Or is this too a symbol that one ought to celebrate festivals sober rather than drunk, since the gods take more pleasure in those who pour out their strong wine than in those who drink it?
'Why did the ancients keep the temple of Horta continually open?' Is it, as Antistius Labeo has recorded, that since to urge on is called 'hortari,' they thought that the goddess called Horta, who as it were exhorts and urges men on toward what is honorable, ought, as being always active, never to be thought of as delaying, nor shut up, nor idle...
Or rather, as they now call her — Hora, with the first syllable lengthened — a watchful and much-caring goddess, whom they believed, since she was protective and thoughtful, was never careless or heedless of human affairs? Or, like many other such words, is this too one of the Greek names, and does it signify a goddess who watches over and oversees? Hence, as one unsleeping and unwearied, her shrine was open at all times.
If, however, Labeo is right in supposing that Hora is named from "urging on," then consider whether one ought to say that the "orator" — an exhortatory and urging kind of counselor or popular leader — was named accordingly, and not from "cursing" and "praying," as some say. "Why did Romulus establish the temple of Hephaestus outside the city?" Was it because of the jealousy fabled between Ares and Hephaestus over Aphrodite — since Romulus was thought to be the son of Ares — that he did not make Hephaestus his fellow resident or fellow citizen? Or is this too foolish an explanation, and rather the temple was built from the start as a private council-chamber and meeting place for himself and Tatius, his co-king, so that they might gather there with the elders and, without being disturbed, deliberate on affairs in peace? Or, since Rome from early on was in danger from fire, did they decide to honor the god but settle him outside the city?
"Why, at the festival of the Consualia, do they crown both horses and donkeys with garlands and let them rest from work?" Is it because they hold the festival for Poseidon Hippios, and the donkey shares in the horse's enjoyment and partakes of the immunity from work? Or is it because, once seafaring and transport by sea had appeared, the beasts of burden gained some measure of relief and rest?
"Why was it the custom, as Cato records, for those announcing their candidacy for office to do so wearing only a cloak, without a tunic?" Was it so that they should not bribe voters by carrying money concealed in a fold of the tunic, or rather because they used to judge those worthy to rule not by birth, nor wealth, nor reputation, but by wounds and scars? So that these might be visible to those they met, they went down to their canvassing without tunics. Or, just as by greeting people, calling to them, and bowing before them, so too by this nakedness they humbled themselves and courted the people's favor?
"Why did the priest of Jupiter, when his wife died, lay down his office, as Ateius records?" Was it because a man who had lost the wife he had taken was worse off than one who had never married at all — for the household of a man who has married is complete, while that of one who has married and then lost his wife is not merely incomplete but maimed? Or is it that the wife shares the priesthood with the husband, since many of the sacred rites cannot be performed without his wife being present, and to marry another immediately after losing the first was neither easily possible nor otherwise seemly? For this reason it was not formerly permitted for him even to divorce her, nor, it seems, is it permitted even now — though in our own time Domitian, on being petitioned, granted an exception.
The priests attended the dissolution of the marriage, performing many rites that were dreadful, strange, and grim. One might marvel at this less if one recalls also that when one of the censors died, the other was required to give up his office as well; and when the censor Livius Drusus died, his colleague Aemilius Scaurus refused to resign his office, until some of the tribunes of the people ordered him to be led off to prison.
"Why do the Lares, whom they specifically call 'Praestites,' have a dog standing beside them, while the Lares themselves are clothed in dogskins?" Is it that the 'Praestites' are those set over something, and it is fitting for those set over a household to be watchful guardians of it — fearsome to outsiders, as a dog is, but gentle and mild toward those who dwell within? Or rather is what some of the Romans say true: that, just as the philosophers of Chrysippus' school suppose that base spirits roam about, whom the gods employ as executioners and punishers against unholy and unjust men, so too the Lares are a kind of avenging, punitive spirits, overseers of lives and households — and this is why they are clothed in dogskins, and a dog sits beside them, since dogs are formidable at tracking down and pursuing wrongdoers?
"Why do they sacrifice a dog to the goddess called Geneta Mana, and pray that none of the household-born may turn out virtuous?" Is it because Geneta is a spirit concerned with births and childbirth among mortal things? For her name signifies a kind of flowing, or birth, or "flowing birth." Just as the Greeks sacrifice a dog to Hecate, so the Romans sacrifice a dog to Geneta on behalf of those born in the household. Socrates says that the Argives likewise sacrifice a dog to Eilioneia, because of the ease it brings to childbirth.
As for the prayer itself — is it perhaps not about household-born humans, that none of them turn out virtuous, but about dogs, since dogs need to be fierce and fearsome? Or, hinting darkly at the fact that the dead are politely called "the good," do they through this prayer ask that none of the household die? One need not be astonished at this, for Aristotle too says that in the treaty of the Arcadians with the Spartans it was written that none of the Tegeans loyal to Sparta should be made "good" for the sake of assistance — meaning that none should be put to death.
"Why, at the Capitoline Games, do they still now proclaim Sardians for sale, and lead forth, for mockery, some old man wearing a child's amulet called a bulla around his neck?" Is it because the people called the Veientes — Etruscans — waged war against Romulus for a long time, and this was the last city he captured, and he sold off many prisoners along with their king, mocking his stupidity and foolishness? And since the Etruscans were originally Lydians, and the mother-city of the Lydians is Sardis, they proclaimed the Veientes for sale in this manner, and preserve the custom to this day as a kind of game.
"Why do they call butcher shops 'macella' and 'macelli'?" Is the name corrupted from "magirus" (cook), as many other words have been, and has usage prevailed — for kappa and gamma are related among them, since they came late to using the letter gamma, which Spurius Carvilius introduced; and lambda in turn stands in for those who slip on the letter rho through a slurring of the tongue? Or must this too be resolved by the historical account? For it is said that in Rome a violent, robber-like man, who had plundered many people, named Macellus, was with difficulty caught and punished; and from his confiscated property a public building was constructed, taking its name from him.
"Why is it granted to flute-players, on the Ides of January, to go about the city wearing women's clothing?" Is it for the reason commonly given? For it seems they enjoyed great honors, granted to them by King Numa because of their sanctity in matters of the divine; but later, when these honors were taken from them by the proconsular board of ten, they withdrew from the city. There was then a search for them, and a certain religious scruple troubled the priests, since the sacrifices were being offered without flute music.
Since they would not be persuaded to return when summoned, but remained at Tibur, a freedman secretly promised the magistrates that he would bring them back. Having prepared a lavish feast, as if he had made a sacrifice to the gods, he invited the flute-players; women too were present along with the drinking, and an all-night revel was got up, with games and dancing. Then suddenly the man threw in the claim that his patron was coming upon him, and, feigning distress, persuaded the flute-players to climb onto wagons covered all around with hides, to be carried off to Tibur. But this was a deception: for he drove the wagons around, and, since they could not tell what was happening because of the wine and the darkness, he brought them all unnoticed into Rome by dawn.
Most of them, because of the all-night revel and the drinking, happened to be wearing brightly colored, womanish clothing. So, once they had been persuaded by the magistrates and reconciled, it became the custom that on that day they should parade through the city dressed in this fashion. "Why do the matrons seem to have founded the shrine of Carmenta from the beginning, and to honor it most especially even now?" A certain story is told, that the women were forbidden by the Senate to use yoked carriages; so they agreed among themselves not to conceive or bear children, in retaliation against the men, until the men changed their minds and granted them their wish. And once children had been born, being blessed with good and many children, they founded the shrine of Carmenta.
As for Carmenta — some say she was the mother of Evander, called originally Themis, or, as others say, Nicostrata, who came to Italy, and, because she sang oracles in verse, was called Carmenta by the Latins; for they call verses "carmina." Others hold that Carmenta is Fate herself, and that this is why the matrons sacrifice to her. The etymology of the name is "deprived of mind," because of her states of divine possession. Hence it was not the "carmina" that gave Carmenta her name, but rather she was called by that name because, in her ecstatic possession, she sang her oracles in verse and meter.
"Why, when sacrificing to Rumina, do they pour a libation of milk, and do not bring wine?" Is it because the Latins call the nipple "ruma," and she is said to have been named Ruminalis, since the she-wolf offered her nipple to Romulus? Just as we call women who nurse infants with milk "nurses" (thelonai) from "nipple" (thele), so Rumina, being a kind of nurse and rearer of children, does not accept unmixed wine, since it is harmful to infants.
"Why did they address some senators as 'the enrolled fathers' and others simply as 'fathers'?" Is it because they called those originally chosen by Romulus "fathers" and "patricians," as being well-born, able to name their own fathers, while those later enrolled from the plebeians they named "enrolled fathers"?
"Why was there a common altar of Hercules and the Muses?" Is it because Hercules taught letters to the followers of Evander, as Juba records? And the matter was regarded as a solemn one, teaching being done for friends and relatives; only later did they begin to teach for pay, and the first to open a school for letters was Spurius Carvilius, a freedman of the Carvilius who was the first to divorce his wife.
"Why, when there are two altars of Hercules, do women not partake or taste of what is sacrificed on the greater one?" Is it because those concerned with the rites of Carmenta arrived late, and the family of the Pinarii was also late, and so, being excluded from the feast while the others banqueted, they were named Pinarii? Or is it on account of the myths told about the tunic and Deianira?
"Why is it forbidden to speak of, seek out, or name that god — whether male or female — whose special charge it is to save and guard Rome, and why do they wrap this prohibition in superstitious dread, recounting how Valerius Soranus perished miserably for having revealed it?" Is it, as some Roman writers have recorded, that there are such things as the summoning-out and bewitching-away of gods, by which they believed that they themselves had once drawn certain gods away from their enemies and settled them among themselves; and they feared suffering the same thing at the hands of others?
Just as the Tyrians are said to have bound their images with chains, and others are said to demand sureties when sending a god forth to a bath or a purification, so the Romans thought that the unspoken and unknown was the safest and surest guard of a god — or, just as it is put in Homer, "the earth is still common to all," so that all men might revere and honor all the gods, holding the earth as common possession, so did the ancient Romans conceal the identity of the one in charge of their safety, wishing that not only this god but all the gods be honored by their citizens.
"Why, among those called the Fetiales — in Greek, something like peace-makers or treaty-bearers — was the one called 'pater patratus' held to be the greatest? (This is the man whose father is living and who has children of his own; and even now he retains a certain privilege and trust, for the praetors entrust to such men bodies that, on account of their beauty and youthful charm, require careful and chaste guarding.)" Is it because such men possess both the reverence children have and the fear owed to fathers? Or does the very name suggest the reason? For "patratus" is meant to signify one who is, so to speak, brought to completion and made whole, as being more perfect than others, in that he has come to have a son while his own father is still living.
Or must the one presiding over oaths and peace "look both ahead and behind," as Homer says? And such a man would be especially fit for this who has a son on whose behalf he deliberates, and a father with whom he deliberates. "Why is it forbidden for the one called 'rex sacrorum' — this is the 'king of the sacred rites' — both to hold office and to address the people?"
Is it because in ancient times the kings performed most and the greatest of the sacred rites themselves, and offered the sacrifices along with the priests? But since they did not act with moderation but were arrogant and oppressive, most of the Greeks took away their power but left them only the office of sacrificing to the gods, while the Romans expelled their kings altogether and appointed another to attend to the sacrifices, allowing him neither to hold office nor to court popular favor, so that they might seem to be ruled as kings only in matters of religion, and might tolerate kingship for the sake of the gods. There is, at any rate, a certain ancestral sacrifice performed in the forum near the place called the Comitium, after which the king performs it and departs quickly, fleeing from the forum.
"Why did they not allow the table to be cleared while still bare, but always insisted that something remain upon it?" Is it a hint that one should always leave something from the present for the future, and remember tomorrow even while in today? Or did they consider it refined to restrain and hold back desire even while enjoyment was still present? For people who have grown accustomed to abstaining from what is present desire what is absent less.
Or is the custom also one of kindness toward household slaves? For they are not so pleased by receiving as by sharing, feeling in some sense that they partake of their masters' table. Or is it that nothing sacred should ever be seen left empty, and the table is sacred?
"Why does the husband not first approach his bride by daylight, but rather in darkness?" Is it because he feels shame before consummation, regarding her still as a stranger, or because he is being accustomed to approach even his own wife with modesty? Or, just as Solon wrote that the bride should nibble a quince before entering the bridal chamber, so that the first kiss might not be unpleasant or graceless, so too did the Roman lawgiver, if there were anything unseemly or displeasing about her body, conceal it? Or is what happens rather a kind of veiled reproach against unlawful acts of love, implying that even lawful ones carry with them some measure of shame?
"Why is one of the racecourses called the Flaminian?" Is it because a certain Flaminius of old gave land to the city, and they used the revenues from it for horse races; and since money was still left over, they built a road, which they likewise named the Flaminian Way? "Why do they call the rod-bearers 'lictors'?" Is it because these men used to bind up wrongdoers, and attended upon Romulus carrying thongs in the folds of their garments — for most Romans call binding 'alligare'?
...while those who are careful in their speech say "ligare." Or is it rather that the kappa has now been inserted, and formerly they were called "litores," being a kind of public servants? For that the public treasury is to this day called "leiton" in many of the laws of the Greeks has, one might say, escaped no one's notice.
Why do the Luperci sacrifice a dog? (The Luperci are those who run naked, girt about the loins, through the Lupercalia, striking with strips of leather those they meet.) Is it because the rite performed is a purification of the city? For indeed they call the month "February," and by Zeus that day "februata," and "februare" means to touch with strips of leather, the word signifying "to purify." And nearly all the Greeks, one might say, made use of the dog, and some still do, as a victim for purifications; and they carry out puppies for Hecate along with the other purificatory offerings, and they wipe those who need to be cleansed with puppies, calling this kind of purification "periskylakismos." Or is it that the wolf (lupus) is "loupos," and the Lupercalia are the "Lykaia"; and since the dog is hostile to the wolf, it is for this reason sacrificed at the Lykaia? Or is it because the dogs in the city bark at the Luperci and harass them as they run about? Or is the sacrifice made to Pan, and is the dog dear to Pan on account of the flocks of goats?
Why, at the festival called the Septimontium, did they take care not to use yoked vehicles, and why do those today who do not despise the customs of the ancients still observe this? They date the Septimontium from the fact that a seventh district was added to the city and Rome became a city of seven hills. Is it, as some of the Roman antiquarians suppose, because the city had not yet been completely joined together in all its parts? Or rather, this has nothing to do with Dionysus; but since the great work of the union of the settlements had been accomplished, they thought that the city, having reached this point, had ceased its forward growth, and so they gave themselves a rest and rested also the draft animals that had labored with them, and allowed them to enjoy the leisure of the common festival? Or did they wish always to adorn and honor every festival with the citizens' presence, and especially the one held in celebration of the city's union? In order, then, that they might not leave the city whose festival it was, was it not permitted to make use of teams that day?
Why do they call those condemned for theft or certain other servile offenses "furciferi"? Is this too a proof of the diligence of the ancients? For when a household slave had been convicted of some misdeed of his own, the master would order him to take up the double piece of wood which they place under wagons, and carry it about, in full view of everyone, through the neighborhood or the quarter, so that people would distrust him and be on their guard against him for the future. This piece of wood we call a "prop," but the Romans call it a "furca"; and hence the man who has carried it about is called "furcifer."
Why do they tie hay to the horn of butting oxen, to warn anyone who meets them to be on guard? Is it because from repletion and excess of feeding oxen and horses and asses and even men grow insolent and wanton? As Sophocles somewhere has put it: "But you kick up your heels like a colt well fed, for your belly and your jaw are full." That is why the Romans said that Marcus Crassus "had hay on his horn": for those who tore at others in the political arena were on their guard against him, as a man dangerous and hard to attack. Later, however, it was said again that Caesar had taken the hay from Crassus; for Caesar was the first to stand up against him in politics and to show contempt for him.
Why did the priests concerned with divination by birds, whom they formerly called "auspices" but now call "augurs," think it necessary that their lanterns always be open and their lids not put on? Is it that, just as the Pythagoreans made small things symbols of great ones, forbidding people "to sit on a grain-measure" and "not to stir the fire with a knife," so too the ancients made use of many such riddling precepts, especially in dealing with priests, of which the precept about the lantern is one? For the lantern resembles the body that encloses the soul, since the light within is like the soul; and the intelligent and prudent part of it must always be kept open and clear-sighted, and never shut up or stifled. Now when there are winds, the birds are unsteady and give no reliable signs, on account of their wandering and irregular flight. The custom, then, teaches that the augurs should go about their observations not when there are winds but when there is calm and settled weather, since it is then that they are able to use their lanterns open.
Why, again, was it forbidden for priests who had a sore to sit as observers of the auspices? Is this too a symbol, that those who deal with divine matters should have nothing gnawing at them, no sore of their own so to speak, and no distress of soul, but should be free from grief, whole, and undistracted? Or is it simply reasonable, since one would not use for sacrifice a victim that had a sore, nor birds for augury that had one, that priests should guard against such things in themselves even more, and, having become pure and unharmed and whole, should proceed to the signs given by the gods? For a sore seems to be a kind of mutilation and defilement of the body.
Why did King Servius Tullius found a shrine of Fortuna Parva, which they call "Brevis"? Is it because, being small and engaged in humble occupations, and born of a captive mother, he came by fortune to reign over Rome? Or does this change rather display the greatness of Fortune than her smallness, and did Servius, more than anyone, seem to deify the power of Fortune and to ascribe to her every one of his actions? For he built shrines not only to Fortune of Good Hope, and Fortune Averter of Evil, and Gentle Fortune, and Fortune First-born, and Manly Fortune, but there is also a shrine of Private Fortune, another of Fortune Who Returns, another of Virgin Fortune; and why should one go on to list her other epithets, when there is even a shrine of Fortune the Fowler, whom they call "Viscata," as though we were caught by her from afar and made to cling fast to affairs? Consider, then, whether he had observed how great is the power that Fortune always exercises through small things, and how it has often happened to some that through a small thing happening or not happening they gained or missed the greatest prizes; and so he founded a shrine of Fortuna Parva, teaching men to attend to their affairs and not to despise, because of their smallness, the things that come their way.
Why did they not extinguish a lamp, but let it die out of its own accord? Is it because they reverenced it as kindred to and akin to the unquenchable and immortal fire? Or is this too a symbol, that one ought not to destroy or take the life of a living thing, if it does no harm, since fire resembles a living creature? For indeed it needs nourishment, and moves of itself, and when quenched gives off a sound as though it were being killed. Or does the custom teach us that we ought not to destroy in utter excess fire or water or any other necessity, when we ourselves have enough of it, but should allow those in need to use it, and leave it for others, when we ourselves no longer have need of it?
Why do those thought to excel in noble birth wear crescent moons on their shoes? Is it, as Castor says, a symbol of the dwelling said to be on the moon, and of the belief that after death souls will again have the moon beneath their feet? Or did this belong as a special privilege to the most ancient people, who were Arcadians of the race descended from Evander, called "Proselenians"? Or, like many other things, does this too remind those who are elated and think too highly of themselves of the vicissitude that befalls human affairs in both directions, taking the moon as their example — how it first comes from obscurity, a new face, growing more beautiful and filling out, and then, just when it appears at its fairest, wastes away again and comes to nothing? Or was it a lesson in obedience, that those who live under kings should not chafe, but, like the moon, should be willing to attend upon the greater power and always take the second rank, "gazing toward the rays of the sun," as Parmenides says, so being content with the second place, while enjoying the power and honor that come from the ruler?
Why do they reckon the year as belonging to Zeus, but the months to Hera? Is it because of the invisible and intelligible gods, Zeus and Hera are king and queen, while of the visible gods the sun and moon hold that place? And the sun makes the year, while the moon makes the months. But one must not think of these simply as images of those higher gods, but that Zeus himself is, in matter, the sun, and Hera herself is, in matter, the moon. That is why they call Hera "Iuno," the name signifying "the young" or "the younger," taking it from the moon; and they call Hera "Lucina," as it were "the bright one" or "she who gives light," and believe that she assists at childbirth and labor pains, just as the moon does — "through the dark vault of the stars, through the swift-bearing moon," for they think that women give birth most easily at the full moon.
Why is the bird called the "left" bird considered auspicious? Is this in fact not true, but is the common speech misleading many? For they call "left" "sinistrum," and "to let go" they call "sinere" and "sine," using these words when they bid one let something go. So the bird that lets a course of action go, being "sinisterius," is wrongly taken by most people for "sinistrum," and so named. Or is it, as Dionysius says, that when a flash of lightning bringing victory occurred on the left as Ascanius, son of Aeneas, was drawn up in battle against Mezentius, they took it as an omen and have observed the custom accordingly ever since? Or, as others say, because this happened to Aeneas himself? And indeed the Thebans, after routing and defeating the enemy with their left wing at Leuctra, continued in all their battles thereafter to give the place of command to the left. Or rather, as Juba says, for those who face the rising sun, the north falls on the left, which some reckon to be the right and superior side of the universe. Consider, however, whether it is not that, since the left side is naturally the weaker, those who preside over the auspices thereby, as it were, strengthen and support it, making up for its deficiency of power; or that, believing earthly and mortal things to be opposed to heavenly and divine ones, they supposed that the gods send what is on our left from their own right.
Why was it permitted, once a man who had celebrated a triumph had died and been cremated, to take a bone of his and carry it into the city and deposit it there, as Pyrrho of Lipara has recorded? Is it in honor of the dead man? For indeed to other men of distinction and to generals they granted burial in the forum, not only for themselves but for their descendants after them, as to Valerius and Fabricius; and they say that when the descendants of these men die and are brought to the forum, a burning torch is lowered toward them and then at once removed, they making use of the honor without arousing envy, and only establishing the right to do so.
Why, when they entertained triumphant generals at a public banquet, did they excuse the consuls, and send word asking them not to come to the dinner? Is it because the place of honor at table had to be given to the man who had triumphed, along with an escort home after dinner, and this could not be granted to another while the consuls were present, but only to him?
Why does the tribune of the people not wear the purple-bordered robe, though the other magistrates do? Is it because he is not, strictly speaking, a magistrate at all? For tribunes have no lictors, nor do they conduct business seated on the curule chair, nor do they enter office at the beginning of the year as all the other magistrates do, nor do they cease to hold office when a dictator is chosen — though he transfers to himself every other office — but they alone remain, as though they were not magistrates but held some other kind of position. Just as some orators do not wish the plea in bar to be counted a form of suit, since it acts in a manner opposite to a suit — for the one brings a case in and produces a judgment, the other does away with and dissolves one — in the same way they think the tribunate is more a check upon office and a stand taken against office than an office itself. For to resist the power of a magistrate and to strip away his excessive authority is itself a form of authority and power.
One might say this and other such things, using mere cleverness of argument; but since the tribunate derives its origin from the people, its popular character is a strong one, and it counts for much that the tribune should not think more highly of himself than the rest, but should make himself like the ordinary citizens he encounters, in bearing, dress, and way of life. For pomp befits a consul or a praetor, but the tribune, as Gaius Curio used to say, ought to be trodden underfoot, and should not be solemn in appearance, nor difficult of access, nor harsh to the many, but easy for the people to deal with, though he stands up for others. Hence it is the custom that the door of his house is never shut, but stands open both night and day, like a harbor and refuge for those in need. And the more he lowers himself in outward show, the more he grows in actual power. For they hold him, by virtue of his usefulness, to be common and accessible to all, like an altar; while by the honor paid him they make him sacred, holy, and inviolable — so that wherever he walks in public, it is the law for all to purify and cleanse their persons, as though they had been defiled.
Why are the rods of the praetors carried bound together with the axes fastened to them? Is it because this is a symbol that the anger of the ruler ought not to be quick and unrestrained; and the delay and postponement caused by loosening the rods, one by one and slowly, has often made him change his mind about the punishment? And since some wrongdoing is curable and some incurable, the rods admonish what is capable of being reformed, while the axes cut off what cannot be admonished.
Why, when they learned that the barbarians called the Blesionii had sacrificed a human being to the gods, did they send for their magistrates intending to punish them; but when it appeared that they had done this in accordance with some law of theirs, released them, though forbidding it for the future? Yet not many years before this, they themselves had buried alive two men and two women in the place called the Cattle Market — two Greeks and two Gauls. It seems strange that they should do this themselves while reproaching the barbarians for doing what is unholy.
Is it that they considered it unholy to sacrifice human beings to the gods, but necessary to do so for the daemons? Or did they think that those who did this as a matter of custom and law were doing wrong, while they themselves acted only because commanded by the Sibylline books? For it is said that a certain maiden, Helvia, riding on horseback, was struck by lightning, and the horse was found lying stripped, and she herself naked, her tunic drawn up as though on purpose from her private parts, while her shoes, rings, and hairnet were scattered about apart from one another, and her tongue was thrust out of her mouth. When the seers declared that this portended a terrible disgrace for the sacred virgins, one that would become notorious, and that some outrage would also touch the knights, the slave of a certain barbarian horseman gave information against three maidens...
...three of the Vestal virgins — Aemilia, Licinia, and Marcia — who had all been corrupted at the same time and had long consorted with men, one of whom was Butetius, a barbarian, the master of the informer. Those women were convicted and punished, but since the deed seemed so dreadful, it was resolved that the priests should consult the Sibylline books. And it is said that oracles were found which not only foretold that these things portended evil but also prescribed that, to avert the coming disaster, two Greeks and two Gauls should be buried alive on the spot.
Why do they reckon the beginning of the day from the middle of the night? Is it because the state's constitution was originally a military one, and most useful operations in campaigns are begun beforehand, at night? Or did they make the sunrise the beginning of action, but the night the beginning of preparation — for one must make one's preparations and then act, not act while still preparing, as Myson is said to have told Chilon the sage, when Myson was building a winnowing-fan in the middle of winter? Or, just as midday is, for most people, the limit for transacting public and serious business, so they thought it fitting to make midnight the beginning of the day? A strong proof of this is the fact that a Roman magistrate does not conclude treaties or agreements after midday.
Or is it impossible to take sunset and sunrise as the beginning and end of the day? For if, as most people do, we mark by sense-perception the beginning of day as the first appearance of the sun and the end of night as its final disappearance, we shall not get an equinox: rather, the night which we suppose to be most nearly equal to the day will appear shorter than the day, because of the size of the sun's disk. And this is the very absurdity that the astronomers, in turn, try to cure by positing that the moment when the sun's center touches the horizon marks the boundary of day and night — but this does away with plain observation. For it will follow that, while much light still remains above the earth and the sun is still shining upon us, we must agree that it is not yet day but still night.
Since, then, at the rising and setting of the sun the beginning of the day is hard to fix, for the reasons stated, what is left is to take as the beginning either the moment the sun is at the zenith or the moment it is at the nadir. The second is the better choice: for from midday the sun moves away from us toward its setting, but from midnight it moves toward us, toward its rising.
Why in old times did they not allow women to grind grain or cook? Is it because they were mindful of the pact they made with the Sabines? For after they had seized the Sabines' daughters and then made peace with them after the war, this term too was written into the other agreements: that no Roman wife should grind grain for her husband or do the cooking.
Why do they not marry women in the month of May? Is it because May falls between April and June, of which the one is sacred to Aphrodite and the other to Hera, both gods of marriage, and out of reverence they either take their weddings a little earlier or wait a little later? Or is it because in this month they perform their greatest rite of purification, nowadays throwing effigies from the bridge into the river, but in ancient times throwing in men? For this reason the Flaminica, who is held to be a priestess of Hera, is required by custom to look sorrowful and neither to bathe nor to adorn herself at that time. Or is it because many of the Latins in this month make offerings to the dead, and for that reason perhaps they also worship Hermes in it, since it is named after Maia?
Or, as some say, is the month of Maius named from the elder, and Junius from the younger, age of life? And the young is more suited to marriage, as Euripides too says: "old age dismisses Aphrodite gladly, and Aphrodite is displeased with the old." They do not marry, then, in May, but wait for June, which comes immediately after May.
Why do they part the hair of brides with the point of a spear? Is this a symbol of the fact that the first women were married by force and through war, or do they thus learn, in living with warlike and martial men, to accept an unadorned, unsoftened, and simple style of beautification — just as Lycurgus, by ordering that doors and roofs for houses be made only with saw and axe and that no other tool be used at all, banished every kind of elaborateness and extravagance? Or does what is done hint at the separation to come, as if the marriage were to be dissolved by iron alone? Or is it rather that most matters concerning marriage were attached to Hera, and the spear is held sacred to Hera, and most of her statues are supported by a spear, and the goddess is surnamed Quiritis — for the ancients called the spear "curis" — and hence they say that Enyalius too was named Quirinus.
Why do they call what is performed for public shows "Lucar"? Is it because there are many groves dedicated to the gods around the city, which they call "luci," and they used to spend the revenue from these on the shows? Why do they call the Quirinalia the "festival of fools"? Is it because, as Juba says, they had assigned this day to those who did not know their own curia — or rather to those who, unlike the rest, had not sacrificed by tribes at the Fornacalia, whether through preoccupation, or absence, or ignorance, and so this day was given them to make up for that festival?
Why, when a sacrifice is made to Heracles, do they name no other god, and no dog is seen within the precincts, as Varro has recorded? Is it that they name no other god because they consider him a demigod? And as some say, while Heracles was still living among men, Evander set up an altar to him and offered sacrifice. But of all animals he was most at war with the dog: for this creature caused him a great deal of trouble, both Cerberus himself, and, on top of everything, when Oeonus, son of Licymnius, was killed by the sons of Hippocoon because of a dog, he was forced to join battle and lost, along with many other friends, his own brother Iphicles.
Why were the patricians not permitted to dwell around the Capitol? Is it because Marcus Manlius, who lived there, attempted a tyranny, on whose account it is said to be forbidden by oath for any man of the house of the Manlii to bear the name Marcus? Or was this an old fear? At any rate, they never ceased maligning Publicola, a man most devoted to the people — the powerful slandering him, the many fearing him — because his house seemed to overhang the forum, until he himself tore it down.
Why do they give an oaken crown to the man who has saved a fellow-citizen in war? Is it because oak can be found everywhere and easily on campaign, or because the crown is sacred to Zeus and Hera, whom they consider protectors of the city? Or is this an ancient custom from the Arcadians, who have some kinship with the oak-tree — for they are held to be the first of men to have sprung from the earth, just as the oak is the first of plants?
Why do they use vultures above all for taking auspices? Is it because twelve vultures also appeared to Romulus at the founding of Rome, or because this bird is the least familiar and the least accustomed to human company of all birds? For it is not easy even to come across a vulture's nest; rather, they descend suddenly from somewhere far off — which is why their appearance is regarded as significant. Or did they learn this too from Heracles, if Herodorus speaks truly when he says that Heracles rejoiced more than at any other omen when vultures appeared at the outset of an undertaking, holding the vulture to be the most righteous of all flesh-eating creatures.
For, first, it does not touch anything living nor does it kill any living creature, as eagles and hawks and the night-hunting birds do, but makes use only of things that have died in some other way. And further, it even spares creatures of its own kind: no one has ever seen a vulture feeding on a bird, whereas eagles and hawks, above all, pursue and strike their own kin — and yet, as Aeschylus says, "how could bird be pure that feeds on bird?" And toward men, so to speak, it is the most harmless of creatures, destroying neither crop nor plant nor any tame animal.
But if, as the Egyptians relate in their myths, the whole race is female, and they conceive by taking in the east wind as it blows upon them, just as trees conceive from the west wind, then it is plausible that the signs derived from them are entirely unerring and reliable. In the case of other birds, on the other hand, the flutterings, and further the snatchings and flights and pursuits connected with mating, produce a great deal of confusion and disorder.
Why is the temple of Asclepius outside the city? Is it because they considered dwelling outside healthier than dwelling within the town — indeed the Greeks too have their sanctuaries of Asclepius situated, as a rule, in clean and elevated places? Or is it because they believe the god came summoned from Epidaurus — and at Epidaurus too the sanctuary of Asclepius is not within the city but some way off? Or is it because, when the serpent disembarked from the trireme onto the island and disappeared, they thought the god himself was indicating where his temple should be founded?
Why is it customary for those observing ritual purity to abstain from legumes? Is it, as the Pythagoreans held, that they consecrated beans as forbidden for the reasons commonly given, and likewise the vetch and the chickpea, as being named after Erebus and Lethe? Or is it because legumes are used above all for funeral banquets and for invocations of the dead? Or rather is it because for acts of purification and holiness the body must be kept clean and light — and legumes are gas-producing and create surplus matter requiring a great deal of purging? Or is it also because, on account of their windy and flatulent nature, they stir one toward sexual intercourse?
Why do they not punish in the ordinary way those of the all-holy virgins who have been corrupted, but instead bury them alive? Is it because they cremate the dead, and it was not right to bury with fire one who had not piously kept the divine fire? Or did they consider it not lawful to destroy a body that had been consecrated to the greatest rites of holiness, or to lay hands upon a sacred woman? And so, contriving that she die by her own agency, they brought her down under the earth into a chamber that had been built, where a lamp lay burning, and bread, and a little milk and water; then they covered the chamber over with earth from above. And not even in this way, having performed the rite, have they escaped superstition, but even to this day the priests go to the place and offer expiatory rites there.
Why, when a horse-race is held at the Ides of December, is the winning right-hand trace-horse sacrificed to Mars, while someone cuts off its tail and carries it to the place called the Regia and sprinkles the altar with the blood, while over its head men coming down from what is called the Sacred Way fight it out with men from the Subura? Is it, as some say, that they punish the horse because they believe Troy was captured by means of a horse, seeing that they themselves are the splendid offspring of Trojans mixed with the children of the Latins?
Or is it because the horse is a spirited, warlike, and martial creature, and they sacrifice to the gods the things that are dearest and most fitting to them, and the winner is sacrificed because the god is associated with victory and mastery? Or rather is it because the god's work is a matter of standing firm, and those who hold their ground in formation defeat those who do not hold it but flee — and so speed is punished as an accessory to cowardice, and men learn symbolically that there is no safety for those who flee?
Why, when the censors take up office, do they do nothing else before letting out the contract for feeding the sacred geese and gilding the statue? Is it because they begin from the least costly matters, which require neither much expense nor much trouble? Or is this an ancient gratitude remembered toward these creatures on account of the Gauls — because, when the barbarians were already climbing over the wall of the Capitol by night while the dogs slept, the geese noticed and roused the guards with their cries? Or is it that the censors, being guardians of the greatest matters, and it being fitting for them to oversee and busy themselves with sacred and public affairs, with lives, characters, and modes of living, immediately take account of the most watchful of animals, and at the same time, by their care for these creatures, exhort the citizens not to neglect or grow careless about sacred things? And the gilding of the statue is necessary, since the red pigment with which the ancient statues used to be colored quickly fades.
Why, when they suspend other priests who have been condemned and gone into exile and choose another in their place, do they not, in the case of the augur, take away the priesthood even if he is convicted of the greatest crimes, so long as he lives — though they call those who deal with omens "augurs"? Is it, as some say, that they wish no one who is not a priest to know the secrets of the priesthood? Or, since the augur is bound by oaths never to reveal the secrets of the sacred rites to anyone, are they unwilling to release him from those oaths by making him a private citizen? Or is "augur" not the name of an honor or an office at all, but of a branch of knowledge and skill?
The augur, then, is like a musician or a physician: forbidding a diviner to be a diviner by voting him out is like disqualifying a musician from being a musician or a physician from being a physician — men unable to take away his actual skill, even if they take away his title. And they do not appoint another in his place, quite reasonably keeping the original number of augurs.
Why, on the Ides of August, which used to be called the Sextilian Ides, do all the female and male slaves hold festival, and the women especially make a practice of washing and cleansing their heads? Is it because King Servius was born on this day, of a captive maidservant, and so the household slaves have license from their labors, and the practice of washing heads, having begun with the maidservants because of the festival, spread even to the freeborn?
Why do they adorn boys with the neck-ornaments they call bullae? Is it in honor of the ravished women, as with many other customs, and did they vote that this too should belong to the children born of them? Or is it in honor of the manly courage of Tarquin? For it is said that, while still a boy, in the battle against the Latins together with the Etruscans, he charged into the enemy, and when thrown from his horse he stood his ground boldly against those bearing down on him and rallied the Romans; and when a brilliant rout of the enemy followed, with sixteen thousand slain, he received this as a prize of valor from his father and king.
Or is it that among the ancients, while it was not disgraceful or shameful for men to love slave-boys who were in their prime, as the comedies even now attest, they strongly abstained from freeborn boys, and so that men might not mistake them even if they met them naked, the boys wore this distinguishing badge? Or is it also a safeguard against disorderly conduct, and in a way a bridle upon licentiousness, since boys were ashamed to become men before laying aside the badge of childhood? What the school of Varro says is not persuasive — that, since the bulla was called "bolla" by the Aeolians, the boys wore it as a symbol of good counsel (eubolia). But watch that they do not also wear it on account of the moon...
...the visible shape of the moon, when it is at the full, is not spherical but lens-shaped and disc-shaped, as Empedocles also supposes it to be in its underlying nature.

"Why do they give names to boys on the ninth day after birth, but to girls on the eighth?" Is it that for females the earlier day has its cause in nature? For the female grows, reaches its prime, and is completed sooner than the male.
As for the days, they take those after the seventh, for the seventh day is a dangerous one for newborns, both in other respects and with regard to the navel: most infants have the cord detach on the seventh day, and until it does, the infant resembles a plant more than an animal.

Or is it rather, as the Pythagoreans held, that of numbers the even is female and the odd is male? For the odd is generative and prevails over the even when combined with it; and when numbers are divided into their units, the even, like the female, yields an empty space between them, whereas of the odd a part always remains full — hence they consider the one suited to the male, the other to the female.

Or is it because, of all numbers, nine is the first square derived from three, an odd and perfect number, while eight is the first cube derived from two, an even number? The man ought to be square, odd, and perfect, while the woman, like the cube, ought to be steady, keeping to the house, and hard to move. To this must be added that eight is a cube from the dyad, while nine is a square from the triad; and women use two names, but men three.
"Why do they call fatherless sons 'spurii'?" It is not, as the Greeks suppose and as their orators say in the lawcourts, because they are born of some mixed and common seed; rather, Spurius is one of the first names, like Sextus, Decimus, and Gaius. Now the first names they do not write out in full, but either with one letter, as Titus, Lucius, and Marcus; or with two, as Tiberius and Gnaeus; or with three, as Sextus and Servius. Spurius, then, is among those written with two letters, S and P. And with these same letters they also write, for fatherless children, "sine patre," that is, "without a father," the S signifying "sine" and the P signifying "patre." This, then, gave rise to the error, that "sine patre" and "Spurius" are written with the same letters.

One must also mention the other account, which is more far-fetched: they say that the Sabines call a woman's genitals "spurium," and then, as if in mockery, call by this name a child born of an unmarried and unbetrothed woman.
"Why do they call Dionysus 'Liber Pater'?" Is it because he becomes, for those who drink, a father of freedom? For most people grow bold and are filled with frankness of speech in their cups. Or is it because he furnished the libation? Or, as Alexander says, is it from Eleutherae in Boeotia, after which Dionysus is called Eleuthereus?

"For what reason is it not customary at public festivals for virgins to be married, though widows are married then?" Is it, as Varro has said, because virgins are married with grief while women who remarry rejoice, and at a festival one ought to do nothing under compulsion or in grief? Or rather is it because for virgins it is honorable to be sought by not a few suitors, while for widows, since many seek them, it is shameful to marry amid such numbers? For a first marriage is enviable, but a second is something to be prayed against: women are ashamed to take another husband while the first still lives, and they lament if he has died. Hence they prefer quiet to noise and processions. And festivals draw the crowd away, so that people have no leisure for such things.

Or is it because, when they seized the daughters of the Sabines while they were virgins at a festival and thereby brought on war, they took this as an omen against marrying virgins on sacred days?
"Why do the Romans worship Fortuna Primigenia, which one might call 'first-born Fortune'?" Is it because it was by fortune, as they say, that Servius, born of a slave woman, came to reign over Rome with distinction — for so most Romans call it, "with distinction"? Or rather is it because Fortune furnished Rome's very beginning and origin? Or does the matter admit a more natural and more philosophical explanation, namely that Fortune is the origin of all things, and that nature itself arises out of what comes to be by chance, whenever order comes upon things that had been randomly disposed?
"Why do the Romans call the performers associated with Dionysus 'histriones'?" Is it for the reason that Cluvius Rufus has recorded? For he says that in very ancient times, when Gaius Sulpicius and Licinius Stolo were consuls, a plague occurred in Rome that killed indiscriminately all who came forward onto the stage. When the Romans sent for help, many skilled performers came from Etruria, and the one among them who was most esteemed and who enjoyed the longest success on the stage was named Hister; and it is on account of him, they say, that all such performers came to be called "histriones."

"Why do they not marry close relatives?" Is it because, wishing to extend their family connections through marriage, they sought to acquire many kinsmen by giving their women to others and receiving women from others in turn? Or is it because they feared the disputes that arise in marriages between relatives, since such quarrels would destroy even the ties that are naturally just between them? Or is it that, seeing how much help wives need on account of their weakness, they were unwilling to marry them to close relations, so that if their husbands should wrong them, their own kinsmen would be there to help them?
"Why was the priest of Jupiter, whom they call the Flamen Dialis, not permitted to touch flour or leaven?" Is it because flour is an incomplete and unconcocted food? For the wheat has neither remained what it was, nor yet become what it must become, namely bread; rather it has lost the generative power of the seed while not yet acquiring the usefulness of food. Hence the poet, by a figure of speech, called barley-groats "ground by the mill," as though it were something slain and destroyed in the grinding. Leaven, too, arises out of a kind of corruption, and itself corrupts the dough with which it is mixed; for it becomes weak and enervated, and fermentation seems altogether to resemble putrefaction — indeed, in excess it turns entirely sour and spoils the flour.

"Why is the priest also forbidden to touch raw flesh?" Is it that the custom turns him far away from raw-eating altogether, or is it for the same reason that they hold flour to be forbidden that they also treat meat as unhallowed? For it is no longer a living creature, nor yet has it become food. Boiling and roasting are a kind of alteration and transformation that change its form; but what is fresh and raw does not even present a clean and unsullied appearance, but rather one that is repulsive and wound-like.
"Why did they order the priest to abstain from dog and goat, neither touching them nor even naming them?" Is it that they abhorred the goat for its lechery and foul smell, or that they feared its liability to disease? For of all animals the goat is thought most subject to seizure by epilepsy, and to communicate the affliction to those who eat or touch it while it is in the grip of the malady. They say the cause is a frequent narrowing of its breathing passages, inferring this from the thinness of its voice; for indeed among men, those who are prone to epileptic fits emit, when they speak, a voice resembling a bleat.

As for the dog, it perhaps shares less in lechery and foul odor — though some say that no dog sets foot on the Athenian Acropolis nor on the island of Delos, because of its open mating, just as oxen, pigs, and horses mate in enclosed places but dogs mate openly and without restraint. But such people do not know the true reason: it is that, because the dog is a fighting animal, they exclude it from inviolable and holy sanctuaries, so as to provide suppliants a safe refuge.

It is likely, then, that the priest of Jupiter too, being himself, as it were, a living and holy image affording refuge, was to be open to those in need and to suppliants, with no one keeping them away or frightening them off. For this reason a small couch of his stood in the entrance-hall of his house, and whoever fell at his knees had, for that day, immunity from blows and punishment; and if a prisoner in bonds managed to reach him first, he was freed — and his fetters were then thrown out, not through the door, but over the roof. It would have been of no use for the priest to present himself as so gentle and humane if a dog stood guard, frightening off and driving away those who needed to take refuge.

Yet the ancients did not consider the dog an altogether pure animal either: it is consecrated to none of the Olympian gods, but is sent as a dinner offering to chthonic Hecate at the crossroads, and so holds a place among things apotropaic and purificatory. At Sparta they sacrifice puppies to Enyalius, the most murderous of the gods; among the Boeotians there is a public rite of purification in which they pass between the two halves of a dog cut in two; and the Romans themselves, at the Lycaea, which they call the Lupercalia, sacrifice a dog in the month of purification. Hence it is not out of keeping that, for those who have taken on the service of the highest and purest of the gods, it is forbidden to keep a dog as a companion and housemate.
"For what reason was the priest of Jupiter forbidden even to touch ivy, or to pass along a road over which a trained vine was trailed from above?" Is this like the prohibitions against "eating from a stool," "sitting on a grain-measure," or "stepping over a broom" — not that the Pythagoreans feared and guarded against these things themselves, but that under these expressions they were forbidding other things? Indeed, passing beneath a vine carried a reference to wine, implying that it was not lawful for the priest to become drunk; for over the heads of those who are drunk hangs wine, and they are weighed down and humbled by it, whereas one ought to be above this pleasure and always master of it rather than mastered by it.

As for ivy, is it because, being unfruitful and useless to men, feeble and needing the support of others because of its weakness, yet bewitching most people with its shade and the sight of its greenness, they thought it should not be kept and trained about their houses to no purpose, since, clinging to the plants of the earth that support it, it is harmful to them? For this reason it is excluded from the Olympian sanctuaries, and one would see ivy neither in the temple of Hera at Athens nor in that of Aphrodite at Thebes; but at the Agrionia and the Nyctelia, most of whose rites are performed in darkness, it is present. Or was this too a symbolic prohibition of revel-bands and Bacchic rites? For women subject to Bacchic frenzy rush at once upon the ivy, tearing it apart, seizing it with their hands and devouring it with their mouths; so that those are not entirely unpersuasive who say that ivy, possessing a spirit that rouses and stirs madness, drives people out of their senses and disturbs them, and altogether induces a wineless drunkenness and a pleasure for those who are already disposed to ecstatic frenzy.
"Why were these priests never permitted to seek or hold public office, yet they make use of a lictor and have an official chair as an honor and consolation for not holding office?" Is it, as in some parts of Greece, that the dignity of the priesthood was held to counterbalance that of kingship, and those who failed to obtain the kingship were appointed priests instead? Or rather is it because priests have duties that are fixed, while magistrates have duties that are irregular and undefined, so that it was not possible for the same man to be present at both when the occasions of each coincided at once; rather he would often have had to neglect one or the other when both pressed upon him at the same time, and so at one moment fail in his duty to the gods, at another do harm to the citizens? Or was it that, seeing in human offices necessity attaching no less than power, and that the ruler of the people, as Hippocrates said of the physician, looks upon dreadful things and lays hands upon dreadful things, and reaps private griefs from others' misfortunes, they thought it not holy for a man to sacrifice to the gods and begin sacred rites once he had been involved in the condemnation and execution of citizens — often, indeed, of kinsmen and intimates, as also befell Brutus?

======== Moralia: Quomodo Adolescens Poetas Audire Debeat ========

If, as the poet Philoxenus used to say, my dear Marcus Sedatus, the tastiest of meats are those that are not meat, and the tastiest of fish are those that are not fish, let us leave the declaring of that opinion to those of whom Cato said that their palate is more sensitive than their heart. But it is plain to us that among the things said in philosophy, the very young take more pleasure in those that do not seem to be spoken philosophically or in earnest, and make themselves obedient and tractable to such things. For it is not only Aesop's little fables and the subjects of the poets, but also the Abaris of Heraclides and the Lycon of Ariston, and the doctrines about souls mixed with mythology, that they enthusiastically enjoy. For this reason we must not only keep them well-behaved in the pleasures of eating and drinking, but still more accustom them, when they are listening to lectures and doing their reading, to use what delights them in moderation, as one uses a relish, while pursuing what is useful and salutary from it. For closed gates do not keep a city safe from capture if it admits the enemy through even one of them, nor does self-control in other pleasures protect a young man if, without his noticing, he lets himself go through what he hears; rather, the more this pleasure touches the part of him naturally suited for thought and reasoning, the more it harms and corrupts the one who receives it, if it is neglected.
Since, then, it is perhaps neither possible nor beneficial to keep someone of the age of my Soclarus now, or your Cleander, away from poems altogether, let us keep close watch over them, on the ground that in their reading, even more than on the road, they need a guide. What occurred to me the other day to say about poems, then, I have decided now to send to you in writing. Take this and go through it, and if it seems to you to be no worse than the so-called amethysts which some people wear and take beforehand at drinking parties, pass it on to Cleander, and get a head start on his nature, since it is never sluggish but everywhere vehement and keen-sighted, and is the more easily led by such things.
In the octopus's head there is something bad, and also something good: it is that while it is most pleasant to eat, it produces troubled sleep, filling one with turbulent and strange visions, so they say. So too in poetry there is much that is sweet and nourishing for a young soul, but no less that is disturbing and deranging, if the hearing of it does not happen to have the right guidance. For it seems that not only about the land of the Egyptians, but also about poetry, one can say that it yields drugs, many good when mixed, and many harmful, to those who use it: "Therein is love, therein desire, therein beguiling converse, which steals away the wits even of the very sensible" — for its power to deceive does not touch those who are utterly simple and thoughtless.
For this reason Simonides, when someone asked him, "Why is it that you don't deceive the Thessalians alone?" answered, "Because they are too ignorant to be deceived by me." And Gorgias called tragedy a deception, in which the one who deceives is more just than the one who does not deceive, and the one who is deceived is wiser than the one who is not deceived. Should we, then, like the men of Ithaca, plaster the ears of the young with some hard and unyielding wax and force them to hoist the Epicurean skiff and flee and steer clear of poetry altogether, or rather set their judgment upright by some correct reasoning and bind it fast, so that it is not carried away by what delights it toward what harms it, and so guide and watch over them?
For not even Lycurgus, the mighty son of Dryas, was of sound mind when, because many men were getting drunk and behaving badly, he went about cutting down the vines, instead of bringing the springs nearer and, as Plato says, chastening "the god who is mad" by means of "another, sober god." For the mixing of water removes the harm of the wine without also removing its usefulness. So let us not, either, cut down or destroy the cultivated vine of the Muses that is poetry; but where its mythical and theatrical element runs riot and grows wild, insolently emboldened by unmixed pleasure toward mere reputation, there let us take hold of it and check and press it back; but where it touches something of the Muses' own grace, and the sweetness and charm of its language is not fruitless or empty, there let us introduce philosophy and mix it in.
For just as the mandrake, growing alongside the vines and passing its power into the wine, makes the intoxication gentler for those who drink it, so poetry, taking its arguments from philosophy and mixing them with the mythical element, renders learning light and welcome to the young. Hence poems are not to be avoided by those who intend to study philosophy; rather, they should study philosophy beforehand by means of poems, becoming accustomed, in what delights them, to seek and love what is useful — and if this is not present, to fight against it and find it distasteful. For this is the beginning of education, and it is likely that, according to Sophocles, if a work is begun well, its ending will be of the same character.
First, then, the young person must be brought to the poems having nothing so well-rehearsed and ready at hand as the saying, "the singers lie about many things," partly willingly and partly unwillingly. Willingly, because for the pleasure and charm of the ear, which most people pursue, they consider truth harsher than falsehood. For truth, since it happens in fact, even if it has an unpleasant ending, does not turn aside from its course; but what is fashioned in words very easily shifts and turns from the painful to the more pleasant. For neither meter nor figure nor grandeur of diction nor timeliness of metaphor nor harmony and arrangement possesses as much seductive charm as a well-woven plot of mythical narrative; but just as in paintings color is more moving than line, because of its lifelike and deceptive quality, so in poems a falsehood mixed with plausibility is more striking and more welcome than a composition, in meter and diction, that lacks story and invention.
For this reason Socrates, when he took up poetry because of certain dreams, was himself, as one who had been throughout his whole life a champion of truth, not persuasive nor naturally gifted as a fashioner of falsehoods; and so he set Aesop's fables to verse, since a poetry without falsehood is no poetry at all. For we know of sacrifices without dancers and without flute-players, but we do not know of a poetry without myth or without falsehood. The verses of Empedocles and Parmenides, the poems on snakebites of Nicander, and the maxims of Theognis are discourses that have borrowed from poetry, as a vehicle, its meter and grandeur, in order to escape being prose.
Whenever, then, something strange and disturbing is said in poems about gods or spirits or virtue by a man of note and reputation, the one who accepts the account as true goes off carried away and has his opinion corrupted, while the one who always remembers and clearly holds on to poetry's sorcery in the matter of falsehood, and is able each time to say to it: "O contrivance more dappled than the lynx, why do you knit your brows in play, and why, deceiving, do you pretend to teach?" — such a one will suffer nothing terrible and believe nothing base, but he will catch out the poet who fears Poseidon and dreads that he will burst open the earth and lay Hades bare, and he will catch out the poet who has Apollo angry on behalf of the foremost of the Achaeans, though it is Apollo himself who, having sung at the feast, having himself been present, having himself spoken these very things, is himself the one who kills him.
He will make Achilles stop weeping for the dead, and Agamemnon too, weeping in the house of Hades and stretching out powerless, feeble hands in longing for life. And if at some point he is thrown into confusion by the emotions and overpowered, drugged as it were, he will not hesitate to say to himself, "But make haste to the light," and "Know all these things, that hereafter you may tell them to your wife" — for this too Homer said gracefully, placing it in the Book of the Dead, implying that it is an audience fit for a woman, on account of its mythical character.
Such, then, are the things that the poets fashion willingly. But there are more things which they do not fashion, but which, believing and holding them as opinions themselves, they smear onto us as falsehood — as, for instance, when Homer says of Zeus: "And he set therein two fates of woeful death, one for Achilles, one for horse-taming Hector; he took it by the middle and raised it, and Hector's appointed day sank down, and he went to the house of Hades, and Phoebus Apollo left him." Aeschylus fashioned a whole tragedy out of this myth, entitling it The Weighing of Souls, and set before the scales of Zeus, on one side Thetis, on the other Dawn, pleading on behalf of their sons who were fighting. This is plain to everyone: that it is a piece of myth-making and fiction produced for the pleasure or the amazement of the hearer.
But the line "Zeus, who is made steward of war for men," and the line "a god plants a cause in mortals, when he wishes utterly to ruin a house," these are already spoken according to the actual opinion and belief that the poets hold, revealing and passing on to us the delusion and ignorance they themselves have about the gods. Again, the monstrous fabrications concerning descents to the dead, and the arrangements which, with fearful names, contrive apparitions and phantoms of burning rivers and savage regions and grim punishments, do not escape the notice of quite a few people, that there is much of the mythical and the false mixed into them, as a drug is mixed into food.
And neither Homer nor Pindar nor Sophocles wrote the following as being persuaded that things really are so: "whence the sluggish rivers of murky night belch forth boundless darkness," and "and they went past the streams of Ocean and the Leucadian rock, and the narrow strait of Hades, and the backward-flowing depth." Yet as many as, lamenting death as pitiable, or the state of being unburied as terrible, have uttered cries of grief and fear, have used such words as: "do not, in going hence, leave me unwept and unburied behind you," and "and the soul, flying from his limbs, went to the house of Hades, bewailing its fate, leaving behind its vigor and youth," and "do not destroy me before my time; for it is sweet to look upon the light; do not force me to see what is beneath the earth" — these are the words of men who have suffered and been captured beforehand by opinion and delusion. For this reason they take hold of us and disturb us all the more, filling us with the very passion and weakness out of which they are said to arise.
Against these things, then, let us again prepare, having it ready at hand from the very start, that poetry is not very much concerned with the truth, and that the truth in these matters is, even for those whose whole business is nothing else but the knowledge and understanding of what is, extremely difficult to hunt down and to grasp, as they themselves admit. Let this saying of Empedocles be at hand: "Thus these things are neither to be seen nor heard by men, nor grasped by the mind"; and this of Xenophanes... and "No man has ever known, nor will any man know, the clear truth about the gods and about all the things of which I speak"; and, by Zeus, the words of Socrates in Plato, disclaiming any knowledge about these matters. For they will pay less heed to the poets as though they knew something about these things, when they see the philosophers themselves growing dizzy in dealing with them.
We will make him still more attentive by explaining to him, as we bring him to the poems, that the poetic art is an art of imitation and a power the counterpart of painting. And let him not merely have heard that oft-repeated saying, that poetry is painting that speaks, and painting is poetry that is silent; but beyond this let us teach him that when we see a painted lizard or ape or the face of Thersites, we take pleasure and marvel at it not as something beautiful but as something lifelike. For in its essence what is ugly cannot become beautiful; but the imitation, whether it achieves its likeness in dealing with something base or with something good, is praised. And conversely, if it presents a beautiful image of an ugly body, it has failed to render what is fitting and likely.
Some painters, too, depict strange actions, as Timomachus painted Medea's killing of her children, and Theon the matricide of Orestes, and Parrhasius the pretended madness of Odysseus, and Chaerephanes the licentious relations of women with men. In these especially the young must be trained, being taught that we do not praise the action which has been the subject of the imitation, but the art, if it has fittingly imitated the thing set before it. Since, then, poetry too often reports, by way of imitation, base deeds and wicked passions and characters, the young person must not accept as true, nor approve as good, what is admired and successfully achieved in such passages, but must praise it only as being fitted and appropriate to the character portrayed.
For just as we are troubled and displeased when we hear the grunting of a pig, the creaking of a pulley, and the howling of winds and the crashing of the sea, but take pleasure in it if someone imitates these things convincingly, as Parmenon did the pig and Theodorus the pulleys; and just as we flee from a diseased and festering man as an unpleasant sight, yet delight to look at Aristophon's Philoctetes and Silanion's Jocasta, made to resemble people wasting away and dying — in the same way, the young person, when reading what Thersites the jester, or Sisyphus the seducer, or Batrachus the pimp, is made to say or do, should be taught to praise the power and art that imitates these things, but to reject and censure the dispositions and actions that they imitate as being corrupting.
For it is not the same thing to imitate something beautiful and to imitate something well; for to do it well is to do it fittingly and appropriately, and things fitting and appropriate to shameful subjects are themselves shameful. Indeed, the sandals of Damonidas the lame man, which, when he lost them, he prayed might fit the feet of the thief, were poor things, yet they suited that man. And so with: "If wrong must be done at all, it is most noble to do wrong for the sake of a kingdom," and "claim for yourself the reputation of justice, but let your deeds be those of the man who does everything for gain — there the profit lies, and the dowry too — shall I not take it? Is life possible for me if I scorn a whole talent? Shall I get any sleep if I let it go? Shall I not pay the penalty even in Hades for having sinned against a talent of silver?" — these are wicked and false sentiments, but fitting for Eteocles and Ixion and an old money-lender.
If, then, we remind the children that the poets do not write these things in praise or approval, but attach what is strange and base to base and strange characters and persons, they will not be harmed by the reputation of the poets. On the contrary, the suspicion cast on the character discredits both the deed and the word alike, as being base speech and base action from a base source. Such is also the case of the sleeping together of Paris, when he has run away from the battle; for by making no other man in the world sleep with a woman by day except the unrestrained and adulterous one, Homer plainly puts such incontinence in a shameful and blameworthy light. And in these things...
We must pay very close attention to whether the poet himself gives some indication, in what he says, that he disapproves of it. Take Menander in the prologue of the Thais: he has made her sing, "Sing me such a one, goddess, bold," fair to look at yet also persuasive, wronging, shutting her door, forever asking for more, loving no one, but always pretending to. Homer, best of all, has made use of this device: for he discredits in advance the base things that are said, and vouches beforehand for the good ones. He vouches for the good in this way: "at once he spoke a gentle and cunning word," and "drawing near he checked him with mild words"; and by discrediting in advance he all but calls witnesses and openly declares that such things should be neither followed nor heeded, as being strange and base. For instance, when he is about to narrate how Agamemnon dealt harshly with the priest, he has said beforehand, "it did not please the heart of Atreus' son Agamemnon," but "he sent him away roughly" — that is, savagely and arrogantly and beyond what was fitting. And to Achilles he assigns the bold words — "you heavy with wine, having the eyes of a dog but the heart of a deer" — having first stated his own judgment: "the son of Peleus in turn addressed the son of Atreus with harsh words, and his anger had not yet ceased." For it is likely that nothing said in anger and with harshness is fair.
So too with deeds: "and he devised shameful deeds against noble Hector, stretching him out prone beside the bier of Menoetius' son." And he makes good use of comments as well, bringing to bear, as it were, his own private verdict on what is done or said — as in the case of Ares' adultery, where he makes the gods say, "evil deeds do not prosper: the slow overtakes the swift"; and in the case of Hector's arrogance and boastfulness, "so he spoke in prayer, but the lady Hera felt indignation"; and in the case of Pandarus' bowshot, "so spoke Athena, and she persuaded his witless mind." These, then, are pronouncements and judgments upon the sayings, plain for anyone attentive to see. But other lessons the poet provides from the very facts themselves — just as Euripides is said to have replied to those who reviled Ixion as impious and vile: "I did not, however, bring him off the stage before nailing him to the wheel." In Homer this kind of instruction is passed over in silence, yet it contains a helpful reflection, especially concerning the most impugned myths, which some people, forcing and twisting them by what were once called "undermeanings" and are now called "allegories," claim mean this: that Aphrodite is said to commit adultery with Ares because when the star of Ares comes into conjunction with that of Aphrodite, it produces adulterous births, and this does not escape notice when the Sun rises upon them and catches them out; and that Hera's adorning of herself for Zeus and her enchantments with the girdle mean some purification of the air as it draws near the fiery element — as if the poet himself did not offer solutions to these things.
For in the passage about Aphrodite he teaches attentive readers that base music and wicked songs and stories taking up depraved subjects produce licentious characters and unmanly lives, and men enamored of luxury, softness, and effeminacy — "changes of raiment, warm baths, and beds." That is why he has made Odysseus command the singer, "Come now, change your song, and sing of the ordering of the horse" — excellently suggesting that musicians and poets ought to take their subjects from what the wise and sensible approve. And in the passage about Hera he has shown, as well as possible, that intercourse with men achieved through drugs, sorcery, and deceit, and the favor it brings, is not only fleeting, quickly sated, and unstable, but even turns to hatred and anger once the pleasure has withered away. For such are Zeus's threats and words to her: "so that you may see whether love and the bed profit you at all, into which you came from among the gods and deceived me." For indeed the very disposition to base deeds, and their imitation, if it renders in return the shame and harm that attend them, benefits rather than harms the hearer.
Philosophers, at any rate, use examples, admonishing and instructing from things already established; poets do the very same, though they themselves fashion the events and weave the stories. Melanthius, whether in jest or in earnest, used to say that the city of the Athenians was preserved by the discord and turmoil of its orators, since not everyone leaned toward the same side, but a counterpull arose against whatever was doing harm, out of the very disagreement among the statesmen. So too the poets' inconsistencies with themselves, referring the claim of truth back and forth, do not allow a strong tilt toward what is harmful. Where, then, their placement of things side by side makes the contradictions manifest, we must plead the case for the better side, as in these lines: "in many things, my child, the gods trip men up." — "That is the easiest thing to say, to blame the gods." And again: "though you are rich in gold, these men are not bound to rejoice; it is boorish to be wealthy and know nothing else." — "And why, then, must you, who are going to die, offer sacrifice? No labor is better than piety toward the gods." Such passages have their solutions ready at hand, provided that, as has been said, we steer the young toward the better judgment. But whatever is said perversely and is not immediately resolved must be countered by setting it against things said elsewhere by the same poets to the contrary effect, without being vexed or angry at the poet, but receiving it good-humoredly and with a touch of play.
Take at once, if you will, the Homeric hurlings of the gods against one another, and their wounding at the hands of men, and their quarrels and harsh dealings: "do you know, and can you conceive another story better than this one?" — you do know it, by Zeus, and you can say it: it is put better and more excellently elsewhere: "the gods, living at ease—" and "and in this the blessed gods take pleasure all their days"; and "for so the gods have spun the thread for wretched mortals, to live in grief, while they themselves are free of care." For these are the sound and true opinions about the gods, while those other passages are fashioned to strike men with terror. Again, when Euripides says, "in many forms the gods, being wiser than our devices, trip us up," it is no worse to bear in mind what is better said by the same poet: "if the gods do anything base, they are not gods." And where Pindar has spoken very bitterly and provocatively, "one must, in every deed, darken one's enemy," you yourself nonetheless say that "the sweetness that comes against justice ends in the bitterest outcome"; and Sophocles says, "gain is sweet, even if it comes from lies," yet we have also heard from you that "false words bear no fruit."
And against that other passage about wealth — "for wealth is clever at creeping into the impassable as well as the passable places, even from afar; but a poor man, even meeting with what he desires, could not attain it. Indeed it makes an ugly and ill-named body appear wise of speech, and fair to behold" — one should set against it many of Sophocles' own lines, among them these: "even a man without wealth might, if he thinks rightly, be honored and no worse than a beggar"; and "but what pleasure is there in the many good things, if wicked scheming nurtures the fortunate wealth?" Menander, for his part, on the one hand elevated the love of pleasure and puffed it up for those fervent, passionate lovers, with all his "whoever lives and looks upon the sun we share is a slave to pleasure"; but on the other hand he turned back and redirected us toward the good, and cut off the boldness of licentiousness, saying, "a shameful life is a disgrace, even if it is pleasant." These lines stand opposed to the former ones, yet are better and more useful. Such a juxtaposition and comparison of opposites will do one of two things: it will either lead toward the better, or it will strip away belief in the worse.
And if the poets themselves do not supply solutions for what has been said improperly, it is no worse to set the pronouncements of other esteemed men against them, tipping the scale, as it were, toward the better — as, for instance, when Alexis unsettles some by saying, "the wise man must gather up pleasures; there are but three that truly have the power to benefit life in earnest: eating, drinking, and the enjoyment of Aphrodite; all else must be called mere additions," one must remind them that Socrates said the opposite: that base men live in order to eat and drink, while good men eat and drink in order to live. And against the man who wrote, "villainy is no useless weapon," in effect bidding us to make ourselves somewhat like the villainous, one may set alongside it the saying of Diogenes: for when asked how one might defend oneself against an enemy, he said, "by becoming noble and good oneself."
And Diogenes must also be brought to bear against Sophocles: for he filled many tens of thousands of people with despondency about the mysteries by writing this: "thrice blessed are those among mortals who, having beheld these rites, go to the house of Hades; for to them alone is it given to live there — for the rest, all there is evil." Diogenes, hearing something of this sort, said, "What are you saying? Will Pataecion the thief have a better lot after death than Epaminondas, just because he has been initiated?" For when Timotheus was singing of Artemis in the theater as "maddened, frenzied, prophetic, raging," Cinesias at once retorted, "may you have such a daughter!" Charming too is Bion's remark to Theognis, who says, "every man overcome by poverty can neither say nor do anything; his tongue is bound" — "how then, being poor yourself, do you talk so much nonsense and prattle on at us so?"
One must also not overlook the resources offered by neighboring or surrounding words for the purpose of correction, but rather, just as physicians believe that, although the cantharis beetle is deadly, its feet and wings nonetheless help and dissolve its potency, so too in poems, if some noun or verb lying close by blunts the tendency toward the worse reading, one should seize upon it and further clarify it — as some do with these lines: "this, surely, is a kind of privilege for wretched mortals, to cut off one's hair and let a tear fall from one's cheeks," and "for so the gods have spun the thread for wretched mortals, to live in grief." For he did not simply say, and mean, that a painful life has been spun by the gods for all men alike, but for the foolish and senseless, whom, because of their wickedness, he is accustomed to call "wretched" and "miserable" on account of their pitiable and lamentable condition.
There is, then, another way of shifting the suspicious passages in poems toward the better sense, out of the worse one: it is the one that works through the ordinary meanings of words, and it is in this that the young man ought to be trained more than in the so-called rare glosses. That other pursuit is philological and not unpleasant — knowing, for instance, that "rigedanos" means one who has died a wretched death, since the Macedonians call death "danos," and the Aeolians call victory won through endurance and persistence "kammonia," and the Dryopians call daemons "popoi." But this other kind of knowledge is necessary and useful, if we are to be benefited by poems and not harmed by them: to recognize how the poets use the names of the gods, and again the names of evils and goods, and what they mean when they name "Fortune" and what they mean when they name "Fate," and whether these words are, among the poets, used in a single sense or in many senses, as is true of many other words. For instance, they sometimes use "house" to mean the dwelling — "a house with a high roof" — and sometimes to mean one's substance — "my house is being eaten up."
And "bios" sometimes means life itself — "dark-haired Poseidon weakened his spear-point, begrudging him his life" — and sometimes it means one's property — "others are eating up my livelihood." And the word "alyein" is sometimes used in the sense of being stung and at a loss — "so he spoke, and she went off in distress, and was terribly worn" — and sometimes in the sense of exulting and rejoicing — "are you exulting because you defeated Irus the beggar?" And the word "thoazein" they use to signify either motion, as Euripides does — "a sea-monster darting from the Atlantic sea" — or sitting and being seated, as Sophocles does — "why do you sit crowded here before me on these seats, wreathed with suppliant boughs?" Charming too is the way of appropriating the ordinary meanings of words to the matters at hand, as the grammarians teach, taking each word for a different force, as in: "to praise a small ship, but to place one's cargo in a large one" — for by "praise" is signified "to commend," yet he now uses the very word "to commend" in the sense of "to decline," just as in ordinary usage we say "fare well" and bid someone "rejoice" when we want nothing further from them and are not receiving anything.
In just this way, some say that "the dread Persephone" is spoken of as one who is to be entreated to decline. Preserving, then, this same distinction and discrimination among words in matters greater and more serious, let us begin teaching the young, starting from the gods, that the poets use the names of the gods sometimes referring in thought to those very gods themselves, and sometimes to certain powers of which the gods are the givers and guides, calling them by the same names. Archilochus, for instance, when he prays and says, "hear me, lord Hephaestus, and be gracious to me as I kneel before you as an ally, and grant me such favors as you grant," is clearly invoking the god himself; but when, lamenting his sister's husband who had vanished at sea and had not obtained the customary burial, he says he would have borne the misfortune more moderately "if Hephaestus had tended his head and graceful limbs in clean garments amid the fire," in this way he did not mean the god, but the fire itself.
Again, Euripides, when in an oath he says, "by Zeus among the stars, and by bloody Ares," named the gods themselves; but when Sophocles says, "for blind, women, and seeing nothing, Ares with the boar's face throws all into confusion," one may understand this as referring to war — just as, in turn, when Homer speaks of bronze, "of those now, dark blood spread swift Ares around the fair-flowing Scamander." Since, then, many things are spoken of in this way, one must know and remember that by the name of "Zeus" and "Zen" the poets sometimes mean the god himself, sometimes fortune, and often fate. For when they say, "Father Zeus, ruling from Ida," and "O Zeus, who, they say, is wiser than you?", they mean the god himself; but when they attach the name of Zeus to the causes of all that happens, and say, "he sent forth to Hades many mighty souls—and the will of Zeus was being fulfilled," they mean fate. For the poet does not think that the god himself contrives evils for men, but rather that—
…rightly indicates the necessity inherent in events: that for cities, armies, and generals, if they are prudent, it is fated to prosper and to overcome their enemies, but if, falling into passions and errors, they quarrel with one another and form factions, as these men did, it is fated for them to behave shamefully, to be thrown into confusion, and to fare badly. For it is fated that men reap evil returns for evil counsels. And indeed Hesiod, when he represents Prometheus urging Epimetheus never to accept gifts from Olympian Zeus but to send them back, is using the name of Zeus for the power of fortune; for he has called the good things that come by chance "gifts of Zeus" — riches, marriages, offices, and in general all external goods, the possession of which is unprofitable to those who do not know how to use them well. That is why he thinks that Epimetheus, being foolish, ought to guard against and fear good fortune, since he will be harmed and ruined by it. And again, when he says, "Never, in the face of soul-destroying poverty, bear to reproach a man, poverty that is the gift of the ever-living blessed gods," he here calls what comes by chance "god-given," meaning that it is not right to reproach those who are poor through fortune, but rather to condemn as shameful and disgraceful the poverty that comes from idleness, softness, and extravagance.
For they were not yet using the actual word "fortune," but knowing that the power of the cause which moves about in disorderly and undefined fashion is strong and beyond the guard of human reasoning, they expressed it by the names of the gods — just as we ourselves are accustomed to call certain events, characters, and, by Zeus, even words and men "divine" and "godlike." In this same way, then, most of the things that seem to be said oddly about Zeus must be set right — among them these lines: "For two urns are set upon the floor of Zeus, filled with gifts, the one of blessings, the other of evils"; and "The son of Cronos, throned on high, did not fulfill the oaths, but, plotting evil, ordains woe for both sides"; and "For then indeed there began to roll the beginning of woe for both Trojans and Danaans, through the designs of great Zeus." These are spoken as if about fortune or fate, in which the incalculability of the cause is signified to us, and its being altogether beyond our control. But wherever what happens is fitting, reasonable, and likely, there let us hold that the god is properly named — as in these lines: "but he was passing along the ranks of other men, and he avoided battle with Ajax son of Telamon, for Zeus was indignant with him if he fought with a better man"; and "For Zeus takes thought for the greatest of mortal affairs, but leaves the small ones to other divinities."
One must also pay very close attention to the other names, since they are shifted about and altered by the poets in application to many different matters. Such is the case with the word "virtue." Since it not only makes men sensible, just, and good in deeds and words, but also procures for them, in a reasonable way, reputation and power, on this account people also call reputation and power "virtue," naming them just as they call the fruit of the olive tree "olive" and the fruit of the oak "acorn," using the same name as the tree that bears it. So our young man, whenever he hears such lines as "the gods set sweat before virtue" and "then by their own valor the Danaans broke the ranks" and "if it is right to die, this is a noble way to die, sinking down into virtue as into life itself," should at once suppose that these are said of the best and most divine condition within us, which we understand to be rectitude of reason and the highest point of our rational nature, a settled disposition of the soul in agreement with itself. But when he reads again the lines "Zeus both increases and diminishes virtue in men" and "wealth is attended by virtue and glory," he should not "sit dumbstruck" and awestruck at the rich, as though they possessed virtue as something bought outright with silver, nor suppose that his own good sense is increased or curtailed depending on fortune; rather, let him consider that the poet has used the word "virtue" in place of "reputation," "power," "good fortune," or something similar.
And indeed with the word "badness" (kakotēs) too, poets sometimes mean specifically the vice and wickedness of the soul, as Hesiod does when he says, "badness may be taken in abundance, easily," and sometimes some other kind of affliction or misfortune, as Homer does when he says, "for quickly do mortals grow old in badness." So too one might be deceived about the word "happiness" (eudaimonia), supposing that the poets mean by it what the philosophers mean — the complete possession or acquisition of good things, or the perfection of a life that flows in accordance with nature — rather than using the term loosely, as people often do, calling the rich man "happy" or "blessed," and calling power or reputation "happiness." Homer, for his part, uses the words correctly: "Not indeed rejoicing in these possessions do I hold my rule." So too Menander: "I have great wealth, and am called rich by everyone, but blessed by no one." But Euripides creates a great deal of confusion and disturbance when he says, "May no grievous life of happiness be mine," and "Why do you honor tyranny, a happy injustice?" — unless one follows, as has been said, the metaphorical and loose uses of the words. So much, then, for these matters.
But this next point must be impressed upon the young repeatedly, not just once: that poetry, having imitation as its foundation, employs adornment and brilliance with regard to the actions and characters it presents, yet does not thereby abandon its resemblance to the truth, since the persuasiveness of the imitation lies precisely in its being convincing. That is why the imitation which does not wholly disregard the truth carries along with the actions it depicts signs of both vice and virtue mingled together — as Homer's does, bidding a very fond farewell to much of what the Stoics maintain, who hold that nothing base attaches to virtue and nothing decent to vice, but that the ignorant man is altogether sinful in everything, while the man of refinement acts rightly in everything. Such is what we hear in the philosophical schools; but in actual affairs and in the life of the majority, in accordance with Euripides, "good and evil could not exist apart, but there is some mixture of the two." Poetry, in the absence of truth, makes the greatest use of variety and versatility. For it is the emotional, the unexpected, and the surprising — which produce the greatest astonishment and the greatest delight — that the changes of fortune supply to stories, whereas the simple and untroubled makes for a story without incident. That is why poets do not make the same people always victorious, always prosperous, always successful in everything; nor even do they represent the gods, when they become involved in human affairs, as free from passion and error, so that nowhere does the disturbing and astonishing element go idle, poetry thereby becoming free of danger and devoid of struggle.
This being so, then, let us bring the young man to the poems without his holding such opinions about those fine and grand names, as though the men in question were wise and just, consummate kings and models of every virtue and rectitude. For he will be harmed if he admires everything as great and is awestruck by it, feeling no distaste, and neither listening to nor accepting the poet's censure of them when they act and speak in such ways as: "Would that, O father Zeus, and Athena, and Apollo, not one of all the Trojans might escape death, nor one of the Argives, but that we two alone might survive to loose the sacred headbands of Troy"; and "And I heard the most pitiful voice of Priam's daughter Cassandra, whom crafty Clytemnestra slew beside me"; and "to have union with the concubine, so as to make the old man hate her; her I obeyed, and I did the deed"; and "Father Zeus, no other of the gods is more destructive than you." The young man must not be trained to praise anything of this sort, nor, by inventing plausible excuses and specious digressions for base actions, become himself persuasive and unscrupulous; rather let him think instead that poetry is an imitation of characters and lives, and of men who are not perfect, pure, or altogether blameless, but mixed with passions, false opinions, and ignorance, though through their natural gifts they often change themselves for the better.
For such a disposition and cast of mind in the young man — being roused and sharing the enthusiasm for what is well said and well done, while not accepting the base but feeling distaste for it — will render his listening harmless. But the one who admires everything, makes himself at home with everything, and has enslaved his judgment to the reputation of the heroic names, like those who imitate Plato's stooped shoulders or Aristotle's lisp, will unwittingly become complaisant toward many base things as well. One must not, however, act timidly, as though shuddering and bowing down before everything in a temple out of superstition; rather, one should grow accustomed to declaring boldly, no less than "rightly" and "fittingly," also "not rightly" and "not fittingly." For example: Achilles calls an assembly of the soldiers when they are sick, being more troubled than anyone else by the war's inactivity because of the fame and reputation it brings him in campaigns; and being knowledgeable in medicine and aware that such things naturally come to a crisis on the ninth day, and perceiving that the sickness is not of the usual kind nor arising from common causes, he rises — not to play the demagogue before the crowd, but to become an adviser to the king: "Son of Atreus, now I think we shall be driven back and return home again" — this rightly, moderately, and fittingly. But when the seer says he fears the anger of the most powerful of the Greeks, no longer rightly or moderately does he swear that no one shall lay hands upon him while he lives, adding "not even if you name Agamemnon," showing contempt and disdain for the ruler.
Provoked still further by this, he rushes for his sword intending to kill him, acting rightly neither for what is honorable nor for what is expedient. Then, changing his mind again, "he thrust the great sword back into its sheath, and did not disobey the word of Athena" — rightly and nobly again, in that, though unable to root out his anger entirely, he nevertheless, before doing anything irreparable, changed course and restrained himself, becoming obedient to reason. Again, Agamemnon, in what he does and says at the assembly, is ridiculous, but in the matter concerning Chryseis he is more dignified and more kingly. For while Achilles, when Briseis was being led away, "wept, and sat apart from his companions, withdrawing from them," Agamemnon himself put the woman aboard the ship, handed her over, and sent her away — the very woman he had just said he preferred to his own wedded wife — without doing anything erotic or shameful. And indeed Phoenix, who was cursed by his father because of a concubine, says: "I resolved to kill him with the sharp bronze, but one of the immortals stayed my anger, putting into my mind the talk of the people and the many reproaches of men, so that I might not be called a father-slayer among the Achaeans" — Aristarchus removed these lines out of fear, but they are actually appropriate to the occasion, since Phoenix is teaching Achilles what anger is and what things men dare to do because of passion, when they do not use reason and do not listen to those who try to calm them.
And indeed he brings Meleager on stage as angry with his fellow citizens, and then softened — rightly censuring the passions, while praising as noble and expedient the failure to follow them through, but rather to resist, to master them, and to change one's mind. Here, then, the distinction is clear; but where the poet's intention is unclear, the young man must be guided by drawing distinctions in some such way as this. If Nausicaa, having seen the stranger Odysseus and having experienced toward him the same feeling as Calypso did — being a young girl of luxurious life and of an age for marriage — babbles such things to her handmaids as "Would that such a husband as this might be called mine, dwelling here, and that it might please him to remain here," then her boldness and lack of restraint deserve censure. But if, having discerned the man's character in his words and having admired his encounter with her as full of good sense, she prays to live with such a man rather than with one of the citizens who is merely a sailor or a dancer, this is worthy of admiration.
Again, when Penelope converses with the suitors not inhumanely, and they give her presents of garments and other adornments, while Odysseus is pleased "because he was drawing gifts from them, and beguiling their hearts" — if he takes pleasure in the bribe-taking and in the acquisitiveness itself, he surpasses in procuring even the comic figure of Poliagros, "happy Poliagros, who keeps a heaven-sent, wealth-bearing goat"; but if he supposes he will have them more in his power because of their hope, being confident and not expecting what is to come, then his being pleased and confident makes sense. Likewise with the counting of the treasures which the Phaeacians set ashore with him and then sailed away: if he truly, being in such solitude and in such obscurity and uncertainty about his own circumstances, fears about the goods lest "they may have gone off with some of them aboard their hollow ship," this deserves pity, or, by Zeus, one might rather detest such love of wealth; but if, as some say, being in doubt about whether this is really Ithaca, he thinks the safety of his goods to be proof of the Phaeacians' honesty — this is no poor piece of evidence, and his foresight deserves praise.
Some also censure the very scene of his being set ashore, if it really happened while he was asleep, and say that the Tyrrhenians preserve some tradition that Odysseus was by nature drowsy and for this reason hard to engage in conversation with most people. But if the sleep was not real, but rather, being ashamed to send the Phaeacians away without gifts of hospitality and friendliness, and being unable to escape the notice of his enemies while they were present, he used the pretense as a cover for his difficulty, making himself appear to be sleeping — this interpretation is accepted. And by pointing these things out to the young, we shall not allow their characters to drift toward what is base, but rather shall foster emulation of and preference for what is better, at once assigning blame to some things and praise to others.
This must be done especially in the case of tragedies, which contain persuasive and cunning speeches attached to disreputable and wicked actions. For Sophocles' saying is not altogether true, that "there are no fine words apart from fine deeds"; indeed he himself is accustomed to furnish base characters and outrageous actions with speeches that are charming and humane in their pretexts. His fellow-tent-companion, again, you see has made Phaedra even reproach Theseus, as though it were because of his transgressions that she fell in love with Hippolytus. And he gives similar license to Helen against Hecuba in the Trojan Women, in her view that Hecuba deserves punishment rather, because she bore Paris, the adulterer. None of these things, then, should be considered clever or artful,
...let the young man train himself, and let him not smile approvingly at such ingenious excuse-making, but rather loathe the words even more than the deeds of licentiousness. In every case, moreover, it is useful to seek out the reason for each thing that is said. Cato, while still a small boy, would do whatever his tutor ordered, but he demanded the reason and rationale for the order; poets, by contrast, are not to be believed as one believes tutors or lawgivers, unless the point being made has some reasoning behind it. And it will have one, if it is sound; but if it is base, it will be seen to be empty and foolish. Yet most people harshly demand reasons for trivial statements of this sort and ask searchingly how such lines as 'never set the wine-jug above the mixing-bowl for those who are drinking' or 'whatever man comes upon another's chariot from his own, let him reach out his spear' are meant — while they accept without any scrutiny the persuasiveness of far weightier statements, such as these: 'it enslaves a man, however bold his spirit, when he is conscious of the wrongdoing of his mother or father,' and 'the man who has fared badly ought to think small of himself' — even though such lines touch character and disturb people's lives, implanting base judgments and ignoble opinions in them, unless we are in the habit of saying, in response to each one, 'Why ought the man who has fared badly think small of himself, rather than rise up against fortune and hold himself high and unbowed? And why, if I am born of a base and foolish father but am myself good and prudent, should it not be fitting for me to think highly of myself because of my own virtue, but instead be cowed and humbled on account of my father's ignorance?' For the one who meets such lines in this way, standing his ground, and who does not surrender himself to every argument as if carried sideways by a gust of wind, but believes it right to hold to the saying, 'a foolish man loves to be startled by every argument,' will parry off many things that are said neither truthfully nor usefully.
This much, then, will render the hearing of poetry harmless. But since, just as among the leaves and thriving shoots of a vine the fruit is often hidden and escapes notice, shaded over as it is, so too in poetic diction and elaborately woven myths much that is beneficial and useful eludes the young reader — and he must not suffer this, but must avoid wandering away from the matters at hand, and must cling especially to whatever tends toward virtue and is capable of shaping character — it is no bad thing to go through these points too briefly, touching on the subject matter only in outline, and leaving lengthy treatments, elaborate constructions, and a crowd of examples to those who write in a more showy, display-oriented manner.
First, then, the young man, distinguishing what is good from what is base, should attend also to the characters to whom the things said are attributed, and to the actions which the poet assigns, fittingly, to each of the two sorts. For example, Achilles says to Agamemnon, though speaking in anger, 'for I shall never again have a prize equal to yours, whenever the Achaeans sack some well-inhabited citadel of the Trojans' — whereas Thersites, railing at the very same man, says, 'your huts are full of bronze, and there are many choice women in your huts, whom we Achaeans give to you first of all, whenever we take a citadel.' And again Achilles says, 'if only Zeus should somewhere grant that the well-walled city of Troy be sacked,' while Thersites says, 'whomever I lead off in bonds, or any other of the Achaeans.'
Again, when Agamemnon, in his review of the troops, rebuked Diomedes, Diomedes said nothing in reply, out of respect for 'the rebuke of a revered king'; but Sthenelus, a man of no account, said, 'Son of Atreus, do not lie, since you know well how to speak the truth — we declare ourselves to be far better men than our fathers.' This difference, if not overlooked, will teach the young man to regard freedom from conceit and moderation as admirable, and to be wary of boastfulness and self-praise as base.
It is also useful to note Agamemnon's own behavior here: he passed by Sthenelus without a word, but did not neglect Odysseus — instead he answered him and addressed him, 'so that he might know he was angry; and then again he took up his speech.' For to defend oneself to everyone is obsequious and beneath one's dignity, while to despise everyone is arrogant and foolish.
Diomedes behaves best of all: during the battle he keeps silent while being spoken ill of by the king, but after the battle he speaks his mind freely to him, saying, 'first you reproached my courage among the Danaans.' It is also good not to pass over the difference between a prudent man and a boastful seer. Calchas failed to grasp the right occasion, but before the assembled crowd made nothing of accusing the king of having brought the plague upon them; Nestor, on the other hand, wishing to introduce a proposal for reconciliation with Achilles, and not wanting to seem to be slandering Agamemnon before the multitude as one who had erred and acted out of anger, said instead, 'give a feast for the elders — that is fitting, not at all improper; and when many are gathered, you will follow the man who gives the best counsel.' And after the meal he sends out the envoys — for this was a correction of the error, whereas the other course would have been accusation and insult.
Further, one must also observe the differences characteristic of different peoples, which are of the following kind. The Trojans advance with shouting and boldness, while the Achaeans advance in silence, fearing their commanders — for to fear one's leaders while the enemy is close at hand is a sign both of courage and of discipline. Hence Plato trains men to fear blame and disgrace more than toil and danger, while Cato used to say that he loved men who blush more than men who go pale.
There is also a character distinctive of the way different men make promises. Dolon promises, 'for I shall go straight through the army until I reach Agamemnon's ship,' whereas Diomedes promises nothing, but says he would be less afraid if sent along with another man. Forethought, then, is Greek and refined, whereas rashness is barbarian and base; and one ought to emulate the one and be displeased by the other.
There is also a certain not unprofitable observation to be made concerning the feeling shown toward the Trojans and toward Hector, when Ajax is about to fight him in single combat. Aeschylus, when a boxer was struck in the face at the Isthmian games and a shout went up from the crowd, said, 'what a thing training is — the spectators shout, but the man who was struck stays silent.' So too, when the poet says that as Ajax's armor made him shine, the Greeks rejoiced to see it, 'but a terrible trembling came over the limbs of every Trojan, and Hector's own heart pounded within his breast,' who would not admire the difference? The heart of the man actually in danger merely beats, as though he were only about to wrestle or run a race, by Zeus — but the bodies of the spectators tremble and throb from goodwill and fear on behalf of their champion.
Here too one should observe the difference between the best man and the worst. Thersites 'was most hateful to Achilles above all, and to Odysseus,' whereas Ajax was always dear to Achilles, and says of him to Hector, 'now indeed you will know clearly, all on your own, what other champions there are besides among the Danaans, apart from Achilles, breaker of men, the lion-hearted' — and this is a eulogy of Achilles; but what follows is spoken usefully on behalf of everyone: 'we are the sort of men who could meet you, and many of us too' — showing himself to be neither the only nor the best, but one capable, along with many others, of defending equally well.
This much, then, is enough concerning such differences, unless we wish to add this point as well: that many of the Trojans have been taken captive alive, but none of the Achaeans; and some of the Trojans have thrown themselves at the feet of their enemies — Adrastus, the sons of Antimachus, Lycaon, and Hector himself, begging for the burial of his body from Achilles — but none of the Achaeans has done so, since supplicating and grovelling in contests of arms is barbarian, while it is Greek to conquer fighting or to die.
Since, just as in pastures the bee pursues the flower, the goat the young shoot, the pig the root, and other animals the seed and the fruit, so too in the reading of poems one man plucks out the narrative, another clings to the beauty and craftsmanship of the words — as Aristophanes says of Euripides, 'for I make use of the roundness of his very mouth' — while others attend to what is said usefully with a view to character. It is to these last that our discussion is now addressed; let us remind them that it is a strange thing if the lover of stories does not miss what is told in a novel and extraordinary way, and the lover of language does not let slip what is expressed with purity and rhetorical skill, but the man who is ambitious for honor and love of beauty, and who takes up poems not for amusement but for education, listens lazily and carelessly to what is proclaimed concerning courage or self-control or justice — such as these lines: 'Son of Tydeus, what has come over us, that we have forgotten our furious valor? Come now, dear friend, stand by me; for it will indeed be a disgrace if crest-waving Hector takes the ships.' For to see the most prudent man, in the midst of danger of being destroyed and perishing along with everyone else, fearing disgrace and reproach rather than death, will instill in the young man a passionate devotion to virtue.
And by the line 'Athena rejoiced in the prudent, just man,' the poet supplies this same reflection, representing the goddess as rejoicing not in a rich man, nor in one handsome of body, nor in a strong one, but in a prudent and just man; and again, when she says of Odysseus that she does not overlook or abandon him 'because he is courteous and quick of mind and sensible,' she shows that virtue alone among our qualities is dear to the gods and divine — if indeed like things are by nature pleasing to like.
And since, though mastering one's anger seems and is a great thing, it is a still greater thing to guard against and take forethought so as not to fall into anger at all or be overcome by it, this too must be pointed out to readers, not carelessly: that Achilles, though not inclined to forbearance nor gentle, bids Priam keep quiet and not provoke him, thus: 'Provoke me no longer now, old man; I myself intend to release Hector to you, for a messenger came to me from Zeus. Do not, old man — I will not allow even you yourself into my hut, suppliant though you are, lest I transgress the commands of Zeus.' And having washed Hector's body and laid it out properly, he himself places it on the wagon before it can be seen by his father in its mangled state — lest the old man, seeing his son, be unable to hold back his wrath in his grieving heart, and Achilles' own heart be stirred and he kill him, thereby transgressing the commands of Zeus.
For it is a mark of remarkable foresight that a man prone to anger, naturally harsh and passionate, should not fail to notice this about himself, but should guard against and watch out for the occasions of it, and forestall them far in advance by reasoning, so that he will not fall into that passion even unwillingly.
In the same way, the man fond of wine must guard himself against drunkenness, and the man prone to love must guard himself against passion — just as Agesilaus would not endure being kissed by the handsome youth who approached him, and Cyrus did not even dare to look upon Panthea, whereas uneducated men, on the contrary, gather kindling for their passions and expose themselves precisely to those things toward which they are most prone to slip and fail.
Odysseus not only restrains himself when angered, but also, perceiving from what Telemachus says that he is harsh and hates wrongdoing, blunts his edge and prepares him well in advance to keep quiet and endure, bidding him: 'and if they dishonor me throughout the house, let your own dear heart endure it, though I suffer ill, even if they drag me by the feet through the house to the door, or hit me with missiles; you, watching, must endure it.' For just as horses are not reined in during the actual races but before the races, so too men who are hard to restrain in the face of terrors, and high-spirited, are led into contests only after being taken in hand and prepared in advance by reasoning.
One must also not listen carelessly to the names used, but should reject the playful ingenuity of Cleanthes; for he sometimes indulges in irony, pretending to explain 'Zeus, father, ruling from Ida' and 'Zeus, lord of Dodona,' bidding that they be read as one and the same, on the ground that the vapor rising from the earth, because of its dispersal, is 'Ana-dodonaean.' Chrysippus too is often tediously subtle in many places, not playing but forcing implausible ingenuities, straining to make 'wide-browed son of Cronus' mean the one skilled in dialectic and preeminent in the power of reasoning. It is better to leave such matters to the grammarians and instead press upon those points which combine usefulness with plausibility, such as 'nor did my spirit bid me otherwise, since I learned to be noble' and 'for he knew how to be gentle to all' — for by showing that courage is something learned, and by holding that dealing with people affectionately and graciously comes from knowledge and follows from reason, the poet urges us not to neglect ourselves, but to learn what is good and attend to those who teach, on the ground that both clumsiness and cowardice are ignorance and lack of understanding.
Very much in harmony with these are also the words he speaks concerning Zeus and Poseidon: 'truly the two of us are of one stock and one lineage, yet Zeus was born first and knows more' — for the poet shows that prudence is the most divine and most kingly of qualities, in which he places the greatest superiority of Zeus, since he believes that the other virtues follow from it as well.
At the same time, the young man must be trained to listen alertly to passages such as these: 'he will not tell a lie, for he is a very prudent man,' and 'Antilochus, you who were once so prudent, what have you done? You have shamed my valor and harmed my horses,' and 'Glaucus, why, being such a man, have you spoken so arrogantly? My friend, I truly thought you were wiser in mind than others' — teaching that prudent men neither lie, nor fight unfairly in contests, nor accuse others undeservedly.
And by saying that Pandarus was persuaded, through folly, to violate the oaths, the poet makes it clear that he does not think a prudent man would ever act unjustly. Similar lessons can also be shown concerning self-control, by drawing attention to lines such as these: 'and the wife of Proetus, divine Anteia, fell madly in love with him, desiring to unite with him in secret intimacy; but she could not persuade the wise-hearted Bellerophon, whose thoughts were set on what was good,' and 'she indeed at first refused the shameful deed, divine Clytemnestra, for she was possessed of a good mind.'
In these passages, then, the poet attributes the cause of self-control to prudence; while in his exhortations before battles he repeatedly says such things as, 'shame, o Lycians! Where are you fleeing? Now be swift and...
...but lay to heart, each of you, shame and indignation, for indeed a great battle has arisen." Self-controlled men, it seems, become brave precisely because, by feeling shame at what is base, they are able to master their pleasures and to stand firm against dangers. Starting from this very point, Timotheus was not wrong when, in his Persians, he exhorted the Greeks: "Revere shame, ally of war-loving valor." Aeschylus too, on the subject of
caring for one's reputation without vanity, and of not being carried away or puffed up by the praises of the crowd, places this under the heading of prudence when he writes of Amphiaraus: "For he wishes not to seem best but to be, reaping a deep furrow through his mind, from which noble counsels spring." For to be great-minded on the strength of oneself and of one's own truly excellent disposition belongs to a man of sense.
Since everything, then, is referred back to prudence, it is shown that every form of virtue arises out of reason and teaching. The bee, by nature, finds in the sharpest flowers and the roughest thorns the smoothest and most useful honey; so too children, if rightly nourished on poetry, will manage to draw something useful and beneficial even from lines that carry base and strange suspicions.
Take Agamemnon, for instance: he is at once made suspect, as a man who, for a bribe, let off from the campaign that rich fellow who had given him the mare Aithe as a gift, so that he might not have to follow him to windy Ilion but might stay behind and enjoy himself at home—"for Zeus had given him great wealth." Yet, as Aristotle says, he acted rightly in preferring a good horse to a man of that sort; for
"a cowardly, spiritless man, dissolved by wealth and softness, is not worth a dog, no, by Zeus, nor even a donkey." Again, Thetis seems most shamefully to call her son to pleasures and to remind him of the delights of love. But here too one must set alongside it Achilles' self-restraint: although he loves Briseis, who has come back to him, and though he knows the end of his life is near, he does not hasten toward
the enjoyment of pleasures, nor, like most men, does he mourn his friend in idleness and in neglect of his duties; rather, he abstains from pleasures because of his grief, yet remains active in deeds and in command. Again, Archilochus is not praised for grieving over the man whose sister was destroyed at sea, while planning to fight his grief with wine and revelry. Yet the reason he gave is not without sense:
"for neither by weeping shall I heal it, nor shall I make it worse by pursuing delights and festivities." For if he supposed he would do nothing worse by pursuing delights and festivities, how will our present circumstances be any the worse for us who philosophize, and engage in public affairs, and go up to the marketplace, and go down to the Academy, and attend to farming? Hence the practice of amending such lines is not ill employed, a practice which
both Cleanthes and Antisthenes used. The latter, seeing the Athenians applauding loudly in the theater at "What is shameful, if it does not seem so to those who practice it?", at once countered it: "the shameful is shameful, whether it seems so or not." And Cleanthes, on the subject of wealth, rewrote "to give one's body to friends, and, should it fall into sickness, to save it by expense," thus: "to give one's body to whores,
and, should it fall into sickness, to ruin it by expense." And Zeno, correcting the line of Sophocles, "whoever goes to a tyrant's court is his slave, even though he came there free," rewrote it as "he is not a slave, if he came there free," thereby making "free" signify the fearless, high-minded, and unhumbled man. What, then, prevents us too from urging the young toward what is better by such rephrasings,
making use of what is said in some such fashion as this? "This is what men should envy: that the bow of one's care fall upon what one wishes." No—rather, "that the bow of one's care fall upon what is advantageous." For to want and to obtain what one ought not is pitiable and not to be envied. And: "not upon every good thing did Atreus beget you, Agamemnon; you must both rejoice and grieve"—
no, by Zeus, we shall say instead: "you must rejoice, and not grieve, when you obtain what is moderate; for not upon every good thing did Atreus beget you, Agamemnon." "Alas, this by now is a god-sent evil among men, when one knows the good but does not act on it." It is indeed bestial, irrational, and pitiable for a man who knows the better course to be led by the worse through lack of self-control and softness. "It is the speaker's character that persuades,
not his argument." Rather: "character, and argument, or character working through argument"—just as a rider works through the bit and a helmsman through the rudder, virtue possessing no instrument so humane and so akin to itself as reason. "Does it incline more to the female than to the male? Wherever beauty is present, it is impartial." It would have been better to say, "wherever self-control is present, it is impartial"—
truly so, and evenly balanced; whereas the man swayed this way and that by pleasure and by youthful bloom is left-handed and unsteady. "Fear of the divine belongs to the self-controlled among mortals." And yet not at all—rather, "confidence in the divine belongs to the self-controlled among mortals," while fear belongs to the senseless, the foolish, and the thankless, because they regard with suspicion, as something harmful, the very power and source of every good, and are afraid of it.
Such, then, is the kind of correction in question. But the further use one may make of such sayings was rightly pointed out by Chrysippus: that one must transfer and carry over their usefulness to things of the same kind. For Hesiod, when he says, "not even an ox would perish, were it not for a bad neighbor," says the same, in effect, about a dog and about a donkey, and about everything else alike that is capable of perishing.
And again, when Euripides says, "who is a slave, if he takes no thought of death?", one must understand that he has said the same thing about pain and about disease. For just as physicians, having learned the power of a drug suited to one disease, transfer it and apply it to everything similar, so too a saying capable of being made common and put to public use ought not to be left tied narrowly to one single matter,
but should be set in motion toward everything of the same kind; and the young should be trained to perceive this commonality and to transfer swiftly what applies, practicing and exercising their quickness of perception on many examples, so that when Menander says, "blessed is the man who has both substance and sense," they may suppose this said also of reputation, of leadership, and of the power of eloquence; and likewise the rebuke addressed to
Achilles, sitting among the maidens on Scyros, by Odysseus—"But you, who quench the bright light of your line, do you card wool, born as you are of the noblest of the Greeks?"—they should suppose is meant also for the prodigal, and for the shamefully greedy man, and for the careless and uneducated man: "You drink, born of the noblest of the Greeks," or "you gamble at dice, or bet on quails, or keep a shop, or lend at usury,
thinking nothing great and nothing worthy of your noble birth." Do not say "wealth"—"I do not marvel at a possession which even the basest man readily acquires." Then do not say "reputation" either, nor "bodily beauty," nor "a general's cloak," nor "a priest's crown," things which we see even the basest men obtaining. For cowardice bears shameful children, and, yes, by Zeus, so do licentiousness, superstition, and envy,
and all the other diseases of the soul besides. And Homer has spoken most aptly in "Paris, best in looks" and "Hector, best in looks"—for he shows this to be worthy of censure and reproach, in one who has nothing better to offer than good looks. This too must be applied to similar cases, checking those who think highly of themselves over things worth nothing, and teaching the young to regard as an insult and a reproach "best at making money," and
"best at dining," and "best among slaves or pack-animals," and, by Zeus, even the bare word "best" said straightaway on its own—for one ought to pursue eminence starting from noble things, being first among the first and great among the greatest; whereas a reputation drawn from small and trivial things is inglorious and unworthy of ambition. This is brought home to us at once by the example
one finds in surveying the terms of censure and of praise, above all in Homer's poems: for it becomes strikingly clear from them that bodily and fortuitous advantages are not to be reckoned worthy of great concern. For, in the first place, in their greetings and forms of address, they do not call men handsome, or rich, or strong, but use such honorific epithets as "Zeus-born son of Laertes, resourceful Odysseus," and "Hector, son of Priam, equal to Zeus in counsel,"
and "Achilles, son of Peleus, great glory of the Achaeans," and "noble son of Menoetius, dear to my heart." But then, when they revile one another, they touch on nothing bodily at all, but direct their censures at faults: "heavy with wine, with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a deer," and "wretched in strife, ill-counseled fool," and "Idomeneus, why do you boast so before your time? It does not become you to play the braggart," and "wretched in speech, blustering oaf"—
and finally Thersites is reviled by Odysseus not as lame, or bald, or hunchbacked, but as "confused of speech"; whereas Hephaestus, though lame, is addressed by his own mother in affection, on account of that very lameness, as "Rise up, my crook-footed child." Thus Homer mocks those who feel shame over lameness or blindness, holding that what is not disgraceful should not be blamed, and that what comes about not through our own fault but by chance is not disgraceful either.
Two great benefits, then, accrue to those carefully trained to listen to poetry in this way: the one tending toward moderation—not to reproach anyone harshly and thoughtlessly for his fortune; the other tending toward greatness of spirit—that when they themselves meet with reversals of fortune, they not be humbled or disturbed, but bear mockery, abuse, and ridicule with equanimity, keeping especially ready at hand the saying of Philemon: "nothing is sweeter, nor more in tune, than to be able to bear being reviled."
But if someone appears actually to need correction, one should take hold of his faults and his passions—just as the tragic Adrastus did when Alcmaeon said to him, "you are born kin to a murderous woman," and he replied, "but you, with your own hand, killed the mother who bore you." For just as those who beat clothing do not touch the body within, so those who reproach certain misfortunes or low birth are directing their blows at what is external,
emptily and thoughtlessly, without touching the soul or the things that truly stand in need of correction and of biting reproof. And just as before, against base and harmful poetry, we set in array the sayings and maxims of famous statesmen, and thereby seemed to undermine and check belief in the poets, so too, whatever we find among them that is fine and useful, we ought to nurture and strengthen with the demonstrations
and testimonies of the philosophers, crediting the discovery to those philosophers—for this is both just and beneficial, since belief gains in strength and authority when what is said on the stage, sung to the lyre, and rehearsed in school agrees with the doctrines of Pythagoras and of Plato, and when the precepts of Chilon and of Bias lead to the same conclusions as those childhood readings. Hence
one must point out, and not merely in passing, that "my child, deeds of war are not given to you; rather you must pursue the lovely deeds of marriage" is no different from "Zeus is jealous of you, if you fight with a better man"—it carries the very same thought. And "fools, who do not know how much more the half is than the whole" is the same as "an evil counsel is worst for the one who counseled it"—this is identical
with Plato's doctrines in the Gorgias and the Republic, concerning the claim that "doing wrong is worse than suffering wrong," and that to do evil is more harmful than to suffer it. One must add to this, too, the confident line of Aeschylus, "toil has no long duration at its peak," for this is the very thing constantly repeated and admired as coming from Epicurus, namely that
"great pains bring a swift end, while long-lasting ones carry no great weight." Of these two sayings, Aeschylus stated the one plainly, while the other lies close beside what he said: for if the toil that is great and intense does not last, then what does last is not great, nor hard to endure. And as for the words of Thespis, these: "you see that Zeus is foremost among the gods in this, that he practices no falsehood, no boasting,
and no foolish laughter"—how does this differ from "the divine is set far apart from pleasure and pain," as Plato used to say? And "let us affirm that virtue holds a glory to be trusted; but wealth keeps company even with cowards," a saying of Bacchylides; and again, similarly, from Euripides: "and I count nothing more venerable
than self-control, since it is always found among the good"—and "you strive to honor wealth, and think that by it you will achieve virtue, yet, for all your noble company, you will sit there unblessed"—is this not a demonstration of what the philosophers say about wealth and about external goods, namely that apart from virtue they are useless and unprofitable even to those who possess them? For to connect and align these lines so closely with philosophical doctrines draws the poems out
of the realm of myth and of the theatrical mask, and lends weight to them as things usefully said; moreover, it opens up in advance and sets in motion beforehand the young person's soul toward the arguments of philosophy. For he then comes to those arguments not wholly untasted of them, nor unaccustomed to hearing them, nor uncritically full only of what he has always heard from his mother and his nurse, and, by Zeus, from his father and his tutor—people who count the rich blessed and honor them,
while shuddering at death and at toil, who regard virtue as nothing to be envied, and who think nothing matters apart from money and reputation. When such young people hear the philosophers saying the opposite of all this, at first bewilderment, confusion, and astonishment seize them, and they neither accept it nor endure it, unless, as though about to see the sun after long being in darkness, they have first grown accustomed, in a kind of dim, blended light—truth mixed with myth—
a gentle radiance, to look steadily at such things without discomfort and without turning away. For having already heard it in poetry, and having already read it, that one should mourn for the one who is born, considering into how many evils he is coming, but should send off the dead man, who has ceased from his toils, rejoicing and with words of good omen, from the house; and "for what more, mortals, do we need than these two things only, the fruit of Demeter and a draught of water?"; and "O tyranny, dear to barbarian men"; and
"the prosperity of mortals"—those who are troubled least by such things become less disturbed and less resentful when they hear from the philosophers that "death is nothing to us," and that "the wealth that nature requires has its limits," and that "happiness and blessedness lie not in abundance of money, nor in bulk of possessions, nor in any offices or positions of power, but in freedom from pain, in gentleness of the passions, and in a disposition of soul in accordance with...
...that is defined according to nature."
For these reasons, then, and because of everything said before, the young man needs good guidance in his reading, so that, rather than being prejudiced beforehand, he may instead be prepared in advance — made well-disposed, friendly, and akin to philosophy by poetry, and so sent forward toward it.

======== Moralia: Quomodo Adulator Ab Amico Internoscatur ========

To the man who declares himself intensely fond of himself, Antiochus Philopappus, Plato says that all people grant pardon, though the very greatest of vices grows up along with many others because of it, a vice on account of which one cannot be a just and unbiased judge of oneself: "for the one who loves is blinded regarding the beloved," unless someone has learned and been trained to honor and pursue what is noble more than what is merely one's own and akin to oneself. This gives the flatterer a wide field to operate in, between friendship and himself, since he has in our self-love a natural base of operations against us; for each of us, being first and foremost a flatterer of himself, readily admits the outside flatterer as a witness and confirmer of the very opinions he already holds and wishes to be true about himself. The man commonly reviled as "fond of flatterers" is in fact intensely fond of himself: out of goodwill toward himself he wants everything good to belong to him, and believes that it does — a wish that is not absurd in itself, but a belief that is precarious and requires great caution.
Now if truth is indeed something divine, and is, according to Plato, "the source of all good things for the gods and of all good things for men," then it is likely that the flatterer is an enemy of the gods, and especially of Pythian Apollo; for he is forever arrayed against the precept "know thyself," implanting in each person a delusion about himself, an ignorance of himself and of the good and bad things that pertain to him — making some of these defective and incomplete, others wholly incapable of correction. Now if, like most of the other vices, flattery attacked only or mainly the base and worthless, it would not be so terrible or so hard to guard against; but since, just as woodworms burrow especially into the soft and sweet-tasting timbers, so too the ambitious, decent, and reasonable characters are the ones that receive the flatterer and nourish him as he attaches himself to them — and further, just as Simonides says that "horse-breeding" does not accompany Zacynthus but the wheat-bearing plains, so we observe that flattery does not follow the poor, the obscure, or the powerless, but becomes a besetting slip and disease of great households and great affairs, and often overturns kingdoms and dominions. The examination of flattery is thus no small task, nor one that calls for slight forethought, if it is, being so exceedingly hard to detect, not to harm or slander friendship.
For lice leave the dying and abandon their bodies once the blood on which they feed grows cold, but flatterers are never at all to be seen approaching affairs that are dry and chilled; rather, they fasten themselves upon reputations and positions of power and grow there, but quickly slip away in times of change. Yet one ought not to wait for that late experience, which is unprofitable — or rather harmful and not without danger. For in a time of need for friends, the perception that one's supposed friends are not friends at all is a grievous thing, offering no exchange of something sound and secure for something unsound and counterfeit. Rather, just as one must have a coin tested and approved before the moment of need, not put to the proof by the need itself, so too with a friend: we ought not to become aware of the harm only after being harmed, but should gain experience and understanding of the flatterer precisely in order not to be harmed. Otherwise we shall suffer the same fate as those who realize, from having already tasted them, that certain drugs are deadly only once the poison is working to destroy and corrupt them.
For we praise neither these people nor those who, setting down as the mark of a friend what is noble and beneficial, suppose that they can immediately catch in the very act, as flatterers, those who converse pleasantly. For a friend is not unpleasant or unmixed with charm, nor is friendship a solemn thing that is bitter and harsh; rather, this very nobility and solemnity of friendship is itself sweet and something to be longed for, and the Graces and Desire have made their home beside it. And it is not only to a man in misfortune that it is sweet, as Euripides says, to look into the eyes of a well-disposed man; friendship brings pleasure and grace to the good no less than it removes pains and perplexities from the unfortunate, and attends them. And just as Evenus said that fire is the best of seasonings, so the god, by mixing friendship into life, has made all things bright and sweet and dear to us when friendship is present and sharing in the enjoyment. Indeed, how could the flatterer slip in among our pleasures, if he saw that friendship nowhere admitted what is pleasant? It cannot be said. But just as false gold and counterfeit coin imitate only the brightness and gleam of real gold, so too the flatterer, imitating the pleasant and gratifying quality of the friend, always tries to present himself as cheerful and blooming and never opposing or standing against anyone. Hence we ought not straightway to suspect, simply as flatterers, those who praise us; for praise belongs to friendship no less than blame does, when the occasion calls for it — or rather, a wholly difficult and fault-finding temper is unfriendly and unsociable, whereas we readily and without pain endure the admonition and outspokenness, in turn, of the goodwill that generously and eagerly bestows praise on what is noble, trusting and loving such a person as one who blames only out of necessity, since he praises gladly.
One might therefore say it is a hard thing to distinguish the flatterer from the friend, if they do not differ either in giving pleasure or in giving praise; for indeed in services and attentions too one can often see friendship being overtaken and outrun by flattery. "Why should it not be so," we shall reply, "if we are pursuing the true flatterer, one who handles the matter with cleverness and art, rather than — as most people do — reckoning as flatterers those so-called self-invited guests and table-companions, spoken of as being heard from only after the water for washing hands has been passed round, men whose lack of freedom becomes obvious to all over a single dish and cup amid buffoonery and coarseness?" Surely there was no need to expose Melanthius, the parasite of Alexander of Pherae, who, to those who asked how Alexander had been stabbed, would say, "Through the ribs — into my own belly"; nor those who circle around a rich table, whom neither fire nor iron nor bronze keeps from frequenting a dinner; nor the flattering women of Cyprus who, once they crossed over into Syria, were called "ladder-women," because they would bend down and offer themselves as steps for the wives of kings to climb up onto their carriages.
Whom, then, must we guard against? The one who does not seem, and does not admit, to be flattering — who cannot be caught hanging about the kitchen, nor detected measuring out shadows for a dinner invitation, nor found sprawled out drunk however it happens to fall out, but is for the most part sober and meddlesome, and thinks he ought to have a share in one's affairs, and wants to be a partner in one's secret words, and is altogether a tragic, not a satyric or comic, actor of friendship. For just as Plato says it is "the extreme of injustice to seem just without being so," so too we must regard as dangerous the flattery that goes undetected, not the kind that admits itself; not the kind that is playful, but the kind that is in earnest — for this kind fills even genuine friendship with distrust, often falling in together with it, if we are not on our guard.
Now Gobryas, having rushed together with the Magus into a dark chamber as he fled, and finding himself grappling with him, when Darius stood over them hesitating, told him to thrust his sword through both of them alike; but as for us — if we in no way at all approve the saying "let friend perish along with foe" — in seeking to tear the flatterer away from the friend, entangled with him as he is through many resemblances, we must be very much on our guard lest we either cast out the useful along with the bad, or, in sparing what is our own, fall victim to what does us harm. For just as, I think, wild seeds that are similar in shape and size to wheat and are mixed in with it are hard to winnow out — since they do not fall through the narrower openings of the sieve, or else fall through together with it through the wider ones — so too flattery, mingling itself with every feeling and every movement of friendship, and with its needs and its habitual intimacy, is hard to separate from it.
That friendship is indeed the sweetest thing of all, and that nothing else gives more joy, is precisely why the flatterer too works by means of pleasures and is occupied with pleasures. And because gratitude and usefulness attend upon friendship — which is why a friend is said to be more necessary than fire and water — the flatterer, for this reason, throws himself into acts of service and competes to appear always eager, tireless, and zealous. And since what most holds together the beginning of a friendship is a likeness of pursuits and characters, and, in general, the fact of delighting in the same things and avoiding the same things is what first draws people together and unites them through a shared experience of feeling, the flatterer, having observed this, molds and shapes himself like some piece of material, seeking to fit and mold himself, through imitation, to whomever he attempts to catch — being pliable and easily changed and persuasive in his assumed likenesses, so that one might say, not "the son of Achilles," but "that very man himself, you are he."
And what is the most villainous thing of all about him is this: perceiving that outspokenness — both the word and the reputation for it — is thought to be, as it were, the peculiar voice of friendship as a kind of living creature, and that the lack of outspokenness is unfriendly and ignoble, he has not left even this uncounterfeited; but just as skilled cooks use bitter flavors and harsh seasonings to take away the cloying quality of sweet foods, so flatterers offer not a true and beneficial outspokenness but one that is, so to speak, mocking from beneath a raised eyebrow and merely tickling. The man is thus hard to catch out for these reasons — like those animals which, being naturally able to change color, blend themselves in with the colors and terrain beneath them. But since he deceives and conceals himself by means of resemblances, it is our task to uncover him through his differences and strip him bare, as Plato says, "adorned with colors and shapes not his own, for want of his own."
Let us, then, examine this from the very starting point. We said that the starting point of friendship, for most people, is a disposition and nature that readily embraces the same customs and characters, and takes pleasure in the same pursuits, affairs, and pastimes, sharing a common feeling — a disposition of which it has also been said: an old man has the sweetest speech for an old man, a child for a child, and a woman is congenial to a woman, and a sick man to one who is sick, and a man seized by misfortune is a charm to one undergoing trial. The flatterer, then, knowing that delighting in what is alike, and using and loving it, is something innate, tries first, by this means, to draw near to each person and pitch his tent beside him, as it were, in certain pasturing grounds, quietly grazing alongside him and taking on his color in the same pursuits and pastimes, the same concerns and ways of life, until he affords a handhold and, as one touches him, becomes tame and familiar — blaming the very things, lives, and people that he perceives the other man is annoyed by, and praising what pleases him, not moderately, but so as to go to excess with astonishment and wonder, and confirming the other's loves and hatreds as arising from judgment rather than mere feeling.
How, then, is he exposed, and by what differences is he caught, since he is not actually alike nor becomes so, but only imitates likeness? First, one must observe the evenness of his purpose and its consistency — whether he always delights in the same things and always praises the same things and directs and establishes his own life toward one single model, as befits a free man who is a lover of a friendship and an intimacy of like character. For such is the friend. The flatterer, on the other hand, having no single, fixed hearth of character, and living no life of his own choosing, but molding and fitting himself to another and toward another, is not simple or single but manifold and versatile — flowing, like water being poured from vessel to vessel, always into some other place and taking the shape of whatever receives him. For the monkey, it seems, in trying to imitate a man, is caught out by moving and dancing along with him; but the flatterer himself lures and entices others, imitating them not all in the same way, but dancing and singing along with one man, while wrestling and getting covered in dust along with another; and if he lays hold of one devoted to hunting with hounds, he all but cries out the words of Phaedra: "By the gods, I long to halloo the hounds as I pursue the dappled deer" — and it is no concern of his what the quarry is, but he nets and ensnares the hunter himself. And if he is hunting a young man fond of learning and literature, he is at once found among books, with a beard let grow down to his feet, wearing the philosopher's cloak as his hallmark, and an air of indifference, and numbers and Plato's right-angled triangles are forever on his lips.
And if some easy-going, wine-loving, wealthy man has fallen into his snares, then "much-devising Odysseus was stripped bare of his rags" — the cloak is thrown off, the beard is shorn like a fruitless harvest, and wine-coolers and drinking bowls and laughter in the promenades and jibes against those who philosophize appear instead — just as they say happened at Syracuse, when Plato arrived and Dionysius was seized with a mad passion for philosophy, and the palace was full of dust from the crowd of men drawing geometrical figures; but when Plato gave offense, Dionysius, falling away from philosophy, came rushing back again into drinking bouts and trifling women and nonsense and dissipation, and all his court alike, as if transformed in the house of Circe, were overtaken by a forgetfulness of culture and by simple-mindedness.
The deeds of great flatterers, too, and of demagogues, bear witness to this — the greatest of whom was Alcibiades: at Athens jesting, keeping horses, and living with wit and grace; at Sparta having his hair cropped close, wearing the coarse cloak, and bathing in cold water; in Thrace warring and drinking; and when he came to Tissaphernes, adopting luxury, softness, and ostentation — he won over and ingratiated himself with each people by assimilating and making himself at home with them all. Yet Epaminondas was not such a man, nor was Agesilaus; rather, though they associated with very many men, cities, and ways of life, they everywhere preserved the character proper to themselves, in dress, in manner of living, in speech, and in life. So too Plato at Syracuse was the same man he was in the Academy, and toward Dionysius the same as he was toward Dion. But one could most easily detect the flatterer's shifts — like those of a polyp — by oneself appearing to turn in many directions and by finding fault with a way of life he had previously praised, while suddenly embracing, as though they pleased him, the very affairs, ways of living, or arguments that he had before been annoyed by.
For one will see that he is nowhere steady or truly his own, nor does he love and hate and rejoice and grieve out of feelings that are his own, but, like a mirror, he takes up images of feelings, ways of life, and movements that belong to someone else. Such a man is he that, if you find fault with one of your friends in his presence, he will say, "You have been slow to detect the man; for I myself never liked him either." But if, changing course, you praise the man instead, he will swear by Zeus that he shares your delight and is grateful on the man's behalf, and that he trusts him. And if you say that you must change to a different way of life — say, from public affairs to a life of retirement and quiet —
"...changing," he says, "long ago we ought to have been rid of tumults and envies." But if you seem again to be starting up to act and speak, he chimes in: "You think thoughts worthy of yourself; but freedom from business is sweet, yet inglorious and low." One must say straightaway to such a person: "You appear changed to me, stranger, from what you were before" — I have no need of a friend who shifts along with me and
nods along with me, for a shadow does this even better; I need one who shares in truth-telling and shares in judgment with me. This, then, is one manner of testing; but there is another difference to watch for among the resemblances: the true friend is neither an imitator of everything nor an eager praiser of everything, but only of the best things — for he is disposed, in the words of Sophocles, not to join in hating but to join in loving, and, by Zeus, to join in setting right and
to join in loving the good, not to join in erring or in wrongdoing together — unless someone, like the discharge and staining of an eye infection, unwillingly fills him through association and habit with some fault or offense. It is said, for instance, that Plato's intimates imitated his stoop, Aristotle's imitated his lisp, and King Alexander's imitated the tilt of his neck and the roughness of voice in conversation — for
many people unwittingly pick up a great deal both from characters and from ways of life. But the flatterer has exactly the experience of the chameleon. That creature assimilates itself to every color except white, and the flatterer, being unable to make himself like his patron in matters worthy of seriousness, leaves nothing shameful unimitated; rather, like poor painters who cannot attain to what is beautiful
and so, through weakness, transfer their likenesses into wrinkles and moles and scars, so he becomes an imitator of intemperance, of superstition, of irascibility, of bitterness toward servants, of distrust toward relatives and kin. For by nature he is inclined of himself toward the worse, and seems to be very far from finding fault with what is shameful while he is imitating it. For those who emulate the better things and appear vexed
and displeased at their friends' faults are objects of suspicion — this is exactly what slandered and destroyed Dion in the eyes of Dionysius, Samius in the eyes of Philip, and Cleomenes in the eyes of Ptolemy. But the man who wishes both to be and to seem equally pleasant and trustworthy pretends rather to rejoice even at the worse things, as though, out of excessive affection, he is not even displeased by what is base, but becomes sympathetic with and of one nature with everyone. Hence such men do not even
think it right to be exempt from the misfortunes and chance mishaps of their friends, but pretend to be sick in like manner, flattering the sickly, and pretend neither to see sharply nor to hear well, if they keep company with the somewhat blind or somewhat deaf — just as the flatterers of Dionysius, feigning dim sight, would stumble into one another and knock over the side-dishes at dinner. Some, laying hold even more closely of their patrons' sufferings, insinuate themselves still deeper and mix their show of shared feeling in as far as secrets. For on perceiving
that men are unfortunate in marriage, or suspicious of their sons, or wary of their kin, they themselves spare nothing of their own and lament over their own children or wife or relatives or household, revealing certain secret grievances of their own; for likeness makes people more sympathetic toward one another, and, having as it were received the other's confidences as hostages, they let slip some of their own secrets in return — and having let them slip, they trade on them, and are afraid to abandon the
trust placed in them. I myself know of a man who joined in casting out his own wife when his friend dismissed his; yet he was secretly visiting her and exchanging messages with her, and was caught out when the friend's wife noticed it herself. So inexperienced was that friend of what a flatterer is, thinking that these iambic lines belonged rather to the crab than to the flatterer: "a belly is his whole body; an eye that looks everywhere; a beast that crawls upon its teeth." For
such a portrait as this belongs rather to those who are friends of the frying-pan and of the morning after breakfast, as Eupolis says. However that may be, let us set these matters aside for their proper place in the discourse; but let us not pass over this piece of sophistry in the flatterer's imitations — that even when he imitates something fine belonging to the man he is flattering, he still preserves the superiority for that man. For among true friends there is
no rivalry toward one another and no envy; even if they are equal in success, or even lesser, they bear it without resentment and with moderation. But the flatterer, always mindful of taking second place, concedes the appearance of equality, admitting that he is inferior and left behind in everything except in base things. In base things, however, he does not concede first place, but says, if the other is ill-tempered,
that he himself is melancholic; if the other is superstitious, that he himself is possessed by a god; that the other is in love, but he himself is mad. "You laughed out of season," he says, "but I was dying of laughter." In good things, though, it is the opposite. He himself says he runs fast, but the other flies; he himself rides fairly well — "but what is that next to this centaur? I am a naturally gifted poet and write no mean verse, but
the thundering is not mine, but Zeus's." For by imitating, he seems at the same time to be declaring the other's disposition to be fine, and by conceding defeat, to be declaring the other's power unattainable. Such, then, are some of the differences between the flatterer and the friend in the matter of imitation. But since, as has been said, the element of pleasure is also common to both — for the good man rejoices in his friends no less than
the base man rejoices in his flatterers — come, let us mark out this distinction too. The distinction lies in the relation of the pleasure to its end. Consider it this way. Fragrance is present in perfume, and it is present also in a medicinal remedy. But they differ in that the one exists for pleasure and for nothing else, while in the other the purging, or warming, or fleshing
effect of the remedy's power is what is fragrant, incidentally. Again, painters mix bright colors and dyes, and some medical drugs too have a bright appearance and a color that is not unpleasant. What, then, is the difference? Clearly we shall distinguish them by the end for which they are used. So too, in the same way, the favors of friends have their delightfulness blooming, as it were, upon some fine and beneficial purpose,
though there are times when they make use also of play and the table and wine and, by Zeus, of laughter and banter with one another, as seasonings to what is fine and serious. It is to this that the line applies: "they delighted in telling tales to one another," and "nor would anything else have parted us, loving and delighting in each other." But for the flatterer, this trifling is his whole business and
his whole end: always to cook up and season some game or act or word for the sake of pleasure and toward pleasure. To put it briefly: the one man thinks he must do everything so as to be pleasant, while the other, always doing what is needful, is often pleasant and often unpleasant — not aiming at the latter, yet not avoiding it either, if it should prove better. For just as a physician, if it is advantageous,
adds saffron or spikenard, and often, by Zeus, bathes his patient gently and nourishes him kindly, yet at other times sets these aside and administers castor oil or the heavy-smelling germander, which indeed smells most dreadful — so the friend, when leading someone toward the good with praise and grace, magnifying and delighting him, is like the man who says, "Teucer, dear head, son of Telamon, lord of men, shoot thus"; or, at other times, he forces someone, grinding it up, to drink hellebore,
making neither the unpleasantness in the one case nor the pleasure in the other his end, but through both leading the one under his care toward the single goal of what is advantageous. So too the friend, sometimes magnifying and delighting with praise and grace, leads toward the good, as in this line — "Teucer, dear head, son of Telamon, lord of men, shoot thus" — and "how then could I forget godlike Odysseus?" —
but again, where correction is needed, he takes hold with a biting word and a caring frankness: "You are foolish, Menelaus, nurtured by Zeus; you have no need of this folly." And there are times when he joins the deed to the word as well, as Menedemus did when, by shutting his door on the dissolute and disorderly son of his friend Asclepiades and refusing to speak to him, he brought the young man to his senses; and as Arcesilaus did when he barred Bato from his school, after
Bato had written a verse against Cleanthes for a comedy; but when Cleanthes had persuaded him and he had repented, they were reconciled. For a friend must pain us while benefiting us, but must not destroy the friendship by paining us; rather he must use his frankness like a biting medicine, one that saves and preserves the patient it treats. Hence the friend, like a musician, by his shifting toward what is fine and advantageous, now relaxing, now tightening,
is often pleasant but always beneficial. The flatterer, however, accustomed always to strum the same single note of pleasure and favor, knows neither a resisting deed nor a painful word, but attends only to what his patron wishes, always singing and speaking in tune with him. Just as Xenophon says that Agesilaus was glad to be praised by those who were also willing to blame him, so one must
consider that which delights and gratifies to be a mark of friendship only if it can also sometimes pain and resist; but one must suspect the company that offers a continuous stream of pleasures and holds always to an unmixed and unbiting favor — and indeed, by Zeus, one should keep ready the saying of the Spartan who, when King Charillus was being praised, said, "How can this man be good, when he is not even harsh to the wicked?" Now,
they say the gadfly settles in near the ear on bulls, and the tick on dogs; but among the ambitious, it is the flatterer who, taking hold of their ears with praise and clinging fast there, is hard to shake off. For this reason one must keep one's judgment especially wide awake and watchful here, observing whether the praise is directed at the deed or at the man. Praise is of the deed if people praise us more when we are absent
than when we are present; if, wishing the same things themselves and pursuing the same goals, they praise not us alone but everyone who acts similarly; if they do not appear now doing and saying one thing, now the opposite; and, greatest of all, if we ourselves recognize that we are not regretting the things for which we are praised, nor ashamed of them, nor wishing rather that the opposite of these things had been done and said by us. For
the inner judgment that testifies against us and refuses to admit the praise is unaffected and untouched and unconquerable by the flatterer. Yet somehow most people do not endure consolation in their misfortunes, but are led rather by those who join in lamenting and mourning with them; whereas when they have erred and gone wrong, the one who by rebuke and blame produces a sting of conscience and repentance seems
to be an enemy and an accuser, while they welcome and consider well-disposed and a friend the one who praises and extols what has been done. Now, those who readily praise and applaud any act or word, whether done in earnest or in jest, are harmful only for the present moment and in what lies immediately at hand; but those whose praises reach as far as a man's character, and, by Zeus, touch his disposition
with flattery, do the same thing as those household servants who steal not from the grain heap but from the seed-stock — for they pervert the disposition and character, which is the seed of one's actions and the source and spring of one's life, clothing vice in the names of virtue. For in times of civil strife and war, Thucydides says, "men exchanged the customary
meaning of words for deeds, according to their own judgment. Reckless daring was accounted courage loyal to one's comrades; prudent hesitation, a specious cowardice; moderation, a cloak for unmanliness; and being intelligent about everything meant being idle about everything." So too in flatteries one must watch and be on guard: prodigality being called generosity, and cowardice called caution, rashness called quickness of mind, and pettiness
called self-control; while the lustful man is called devoted and affectionate, the irascible and arrogant man is called courageous, and the mean and abject man is called kind to his fellow men. So too, Plato says, the lover, being a flatterer of his beloved, calls the snub-nosed boy "charming," the hook-nosed one "kingly," dark-skinned boys "manly," and pale ones "children of the gods"; and the sallow complexion is altogether the lover's own invention, born of his pet-naming
and easy tolerance of the boy's paleness. And yet a man persuaded that he is handsome when he is ugly, or tall when he is short, does not remain long in the deception, and suffers only a light harm, not an incurable one. But the praise that accustoms a person to treat vices as though they were virtues, not resenting them but delighting in them, and that strips away shame for one's own wrongdoing — this is what ruined the Sicilians, calling the cruelty of Dionysius and Phalaris
a hatred of wickedness; this is what destroyed Egypt, naming Ptolemy's effeminacy, his fits of possession, his shrieking, and his gashing to the sound of drums "piety" and "service of the gods"; this very nearly overturned and destroyed the character of the Romans at that time, calling Antony's luxuries and licentiousness and revelries cheerful and generous doings, when the power and fortune that dealt with him so ungrudgingly gave those doings pet names; and what else did it fasten upon Ptolemy but
a halter and pipes, and what did it fix upon Nero but a tragic stage and masks and buskins? Was this not the praise of flatterers? Most kings, if they hum a tune, are hailed as Apollos; if they get drunk, as Dionysuses; if they wrestle, as Heracleses — and, delighting in being so addressed, they are led by flattery into every kind of disgrace. For this reason one must guard most of all against the flatterer in the matter of
praise. And this has not escaped the flatterer himself either — he is clever at guarding against suspicion. If he lays hold of some purple-bordered official or boorish man of thick hide, he uses the whole force of his nose, so to speak, just as Struthias did, strutting about at Bias's side and dancing over the man's insensibility with his praises: "You have drunk more than Alexander the king, and I laugh when I think of the Cyprian." But when he sees more refined men
paying especially close attention to him at just this point, and guarding this very territory and ground, he does not bring on his praise directly, but leads it far around in a circle and only then approaches, as though touching and testing a wild creature noiselessly. For at one moment he reports to the man the praises of certain others concerning him, just as orators do, making use of another's persona, saying that strangers or elders in the marketplace were most glad to be in his company, recalling
many good things about him and admiring him; and then again, at another time, having fabricated and pieced together some light and false charges against him, he arrives as though he had heard them from others, with an air of earnestness, inquiring where the man said this or where he did that. And when the man denies it, as is likely, he seizes on this at once and flings him headlong into praises: "But I was amazed that you would have spoken ill of any of your intimates,"
— when you yourself, who were not even born to hate your enemies, have gone after your own friends, though you give away so much of your own?" Others again, like painters who intensify their bright and luminous colors by setting them beside shadow and darkness, so by blaming the opposite qualities, by abuse or mockery or ridicule, disguise the faults that cling to the men they flatter, praising and fostering them under cover of censure. They condemn self-control, for instance, as boorishness
in men who are dissolute, and among the grasping and the criminal and those who grow rich from shameful and wicked dealings they condemn contentment and justice as timidity and want of enterprise. And when they keep company with idle triflers who shun public affairs and the middle course of civic life, they are not ashamed to call political engagement "meddlesome drudgery" and honorable ambition "barren vanity." There are even times when a rhetorician's flattery disparages a philosopher,
and among unchaste women those who call faithful, husband-loving wives "frigid" and "provincial" win high esteem. But the flatterers exceed all bounds of villainy in not even sparing themselves. Just as wrestlers make their own bodies low so as to throw their opponents, so by belittling themselves they slip into making their neighbors objects of admiration. "I am a coward slave at sea," one says, "I give up before hardships,
I fly into a rage when I am spoken ill of" — but of him," he says, "there is nothing to fear, nothing malicious; he is a man apart, who bears everything calmly, everything without distress." And if there is someone who thinks himself a man of great sense and wishes to be thought stern and outspoken, and out of a kind of rectitude is always ready to quote, "Son of Tydeus, neither praise me overmuch nor find fault," the skilled flatterer does not approach him
in that way at all, but has another device for such a case. He comes to him about some private business of his own, as though to consult a superior wisdom, and says that though he has other intimate friends, he is compelled to trouble this man: "For where," he says, "are we to turn who need advice? Whom are we to trust?" Then, having heard whatever the man says, he goes away declaring that he has received not counsel but an oracle.
And if he sees the man laying claim also to some skill in literature, he hands him something he himself has written, asking him to read it over and correct it. Some of King Mithridates' companions, since he had a passion for medicine, offered themselves to be cut and cauterized by him, flattering him in deed rather than in word; for by being trusted by him they were made to seem to bear witness to his skill. Many are the forms this spirit takes, and this class of flatterers, who decline outright praise, requires a shrewder
caution to expose them: deliberately proposing absurd counsels and suggestions and making groundless corrections. For by contradicting nothing, but nodding assent to everything and accepting everything and crying out at every point, "Well done, excellent!" he becomes plainly detectable as one asking for the password, hunting for some other prize, wishing to praise and to join in the general infatuation. And further, just as some have declared painting to be silent poetry, so there is a kind of flattery
that praises in silence. For just as hunters, if they seem to be doing something other than hunting — traveling, or pasturing flocks, or farming — escape the notice of their quarry all the more, so flatterers most effectively lay hold of men with their praise when they do not seem to be praising but doing something else. The man who yields his seat and his couch to one approaching, or who, speaking before the people or the council, notices that one of the rich wishes to speak,
breaks off in the middle and yields him the platform and the floor — he shows by his silence, more than by any shout, that he considers that man his superior and outstanding in judgment. Hence one can see such men securing the front seats at lectures and in theaters, not because they think themselves worthy of them, but so that they may flatter the rich by giving way to them; and taking the lead in speaking at meetings and councils, then yielding
as to their betters, and shifting most readily to the opposite view, provided the man who disagrees is powerful or rich or held in honor. It is especially in the case of such crouching and retreating that one must expose the flatterer — men who yield not to experience, nor to virtue, nor to age, but to wealth and reputation. For when Megabyzus sat down beside the painter Apelles and wished to talk about line and shadow, Apelles said,
"Do you see these boys grinding the pigment? While you were silent they paid close attention to you and admired your purple robe and your gold ornaments; but now they are laughing at you, since you have begun to talk about things you have not learned." And Solon, when Croesus asked him about happiness, declared a certain Tellus, a man of no distinction at Athens, and Cleobis and Biton, to have been more fortunate. But flatterers proclaim kings and
rich men and rulers to be not merely blessed and fortunate, but foremost in wisdom and skill and every virtue. And whereas some cannot bear even to hear the Stoics call the wise man at once rich, handsome, well-born, and a king, flatterers declare the rich man to be at once orator and poet, and if he wishes, painter and flute-player too, and swift of foot and
strong of body, letting themselves be thrown in wrestling and falling behind him in running — just as Crison of Himera let himself fall behind Alexander in a race, and Alexander, perceiving it, was angry. And Carneades used to say that the sons of the rich and of kings learn nothing well and properly except horsemanship; for in their studies their teacher flatters them by praising them, and their wrestling partner lets himself be thrown, whereas the horse,
not knowing or caring who is a commoner or a ruler, rich or poor, throws off those who cannot ride it. So Bion's remark was simple and foolish: "If a man, by praising a field, were going to make it productive and fruitful, then surely he would not be thought mistaken in doing this rather than digging and laboring over it; so too a man would not be strange for loving praise, if praise
were of benefit and profit to the one praised." But a field does not become worse for being praised, whereas men are puffed up and ruined by those who praise falsely and beyond their desert. Let this suffice, then, on this subject; let us next examine the matter of frankness of speech. For it was fitting that, just as Patroclus, when he put on Achilles' armor and drove out his horses to battle, did not dare to touch the spear
of Pelion alone, but left it behind, so the flatterer, though he equips and fashions himself with all the badges and tokens of a friend, should leave untouched and unimitated frankness alone, as the special and weighty and mighty burden proper to friendship. But since, in fleeing the kind of frank reproof that comes with laughter and unrestrained jesting and mockery and playfulness, they now raise the matter to a grave and solemn pitch and flatter with a scowling face,
mixing in some blame and admonition, come, let us not leave this untested either. I think that, just as in Menander's comedy the false Heracles comes forward carrying a club that is not solid or strong but a hollow, empty sham, so the frankness of the flatterer will appear, to those who test it, soft and light and lacking any real tension, but doing just what women's pillows do: they seem
to push back and resist the head, but instead give way and yield all the more. So this counterfeit frankness, being an empty, false, and treacherous swelling, is puffed up and swollen, so that when it collapses and gives way, it may receive and drag down along with itself the one who falls upon it. For true and friendly frankness fastens upon actual faults, bringing a pain that is salutary and solicitous, like honey biting into wounds
and cleansing them, but otherwise beneficial and sweet — a subject on which there will be a discussion of its own. The flatterer, on the other hand, first displays himself as harsh and impetuous and inexorable toward others — for he is severe with his own servants, and quick to pounce on the failings of relatives and household members, admiring and respecting no one outside his circle, but looking down on them, and unforgiving and
slanderous in provoking others to anger, hunting for a reputation as a hater of wickedness, as one who would never willingly relax his frankness with them, nor do nor say anything to please them; and then, while pretending to know and recognize none of their real and great faults, he is quick to pounce with vehemence and force upon their small and external shortcomings — if he sees a utensil
carelessly left lying about, if a house kept badly, if someone neglecting a haircut, or a cloak, or a dog, or a horse, not caring for it properly; but neglect of parents, and carelessness toward children, and dishonoring a wife, and contempt for one's own household, and the ruin of one's fortune, are nothing to him — he is voiceless and timid about these, like a trainer who lets his athlete get drunk and indulge himself, and then is severe about
an oil-flask or a scraper; or like a grammar teacher who scolds a boy about his writing tablet and pen, but seems not to hear when he makes solecisms and barbarisms in speech. For such is the flatterer, just as it is with a bad and ridiculous public speaker: he says nothing about the speech itself, but finds fault with the voice, and complains bitterly that he is ruining his throat by drinking cold water, and when told, against his will, to go through a wretched composition, he blames the paper
as being too rough, and calls the copyist filthy and careless. So too, when courting Ptolemy, who fancied himself a lover of learning, they would fight until midnight over a point of grammar or a line of verse or a piece of history, but when he indulged in cruelty and violence, and in torturing and executing men, not one of all that number stood in his way. It is as if someone, faced with a man covered in tumors and fistulas, were to use a surgeon's scalpel to trim his hair and his
nails: just so flatterers apply frankness only to the parts that give no pain and cause no distress. And still others, more cunning than these, employ frankness and fault-finding for the sake of pleasure. So Agis the Argive, when Alexander was giving great gifts to a certain buffoon, cried out from envy and vexation, "Oh, what utter absurdity!" and when the king turned on him in anger and said, "What
is it you are saying?" he replied, "I confess I am vexed and indignant, seeing that all of you who are born of Zeus alike take delight in flatterers and ridiculous men; for Heracles too took pleasure in certain Cercopes, and Dionysus in Sileni, and among your own court one can see men of that sort held in high favor." And when Tiberius Caesar once entered the senate, one of his flatterers stood up and said that free men
ought to speak frankly and hold nothing back, nor keep silent about what was to their advantage; and having thus aroused everyone's attention, when silence fell and Tiberius was listening intently, he said, "Hear me, Caesar. There is a thing we all charge against you, and no one dares to say it openly: you neglect yourself and expose your body and wear yourself out continually with cares and toils on our behalf, resting neither by day nor by night." And as he
went on stringing together many such things, they say the orator Cassius Severus remarked, "This frankness will be the death of this man." These, however, are lesser matters. Those that follow are already grievous and injurious to fools, whenever flatterers accuse men of the opposite passions and maladies — as Himerius the flatterer reviled one of the richest and stingiest and most miserly men in Athens as a spendthrift and careless, one who would go hungry
along with his children, or as, conversely, they reproach the extravagant and lavish for pettiness and meanness, as Titus Petronius did with Nero, or as they urge rulers who treat their subjects harshly and cruelly to lay aside their excessive leniency and their untimely and unprofitable pity. Like these too is the man who pretends to be on his guard against, and to fear, someone who is really simple-minded and dull and foolish, as though he were formidable and cunning, and
the flatterer of the envious man, who always delights in speaking ill of others and finding fault, if ever, being drawn out, he praises one of the distinguished, taking hold of him and contradicting him as though he had a disease, this praising of men who are worthless: "Who indeed is this man, or what brilliant thing has he said or done?" But it is above all in matters of love that flatterers set upon those they flatter and fan the flames further.
For seeing brothers at odds, or men scorning their parents or looking down upon their own wives, they neither admonish nor reproach them, but even intensify their anger further, saying, "You do not realize your own worth," and "You are the cause of this, always behaving obsequiously and with servility." But if against a courtesan or an adulterous mistress some itch of anger and jealousy should arise, flattery is at once on hand with brilliant frankness,
bringing fire to fire, pleading the case and accusing the lover of doing many unlovely, harsh, and reprehensible things: "O ungrateful man," of her frequent kisses. So did Antony's friends persuade him, burning with love for the Egyptian queen, that it was he who was loved by her, and, reviling him, called him unfeeling and arrogant: "For the woman, having abandoned so great a kingdom and a life of happy pursuits,
wastes away campaigning at your side, keeping the guise of a mere concubine; while you have an unmoved heart within your breast," and you look on unconcerned while she grieves. And he, delighted to be convicted of wrongdoing, and pleased with his accusers no less than with those who praised him, did not notice that he was being further corrupted by the one who seemed to be admonishing him. For this kind of frankness resembles the love-bites of unchaste women, arousing and titillating, under the pretense of causing pain,
the very pleasure it seems to hurt. And just as, when men mix unmixed wine — which is otherwise a remedy — with hemlock, they make the drug's power entirely beyond help, since it is carried up quickly to the heart by the wine's heat, so wicked men, knowing that frankness is a great help against flattery, use frankness itself as an instrument of flattery. This is why Bias did not answer well the man who asked him which
creature was the most savage; he replied that among wild creatures it is the tyrant, and among tame ones the flatterer. It would have been truer to say that among flatterers some are tame — those found around the bathhouse and the dinner table — while the one who extends his meddling, slanderous, malicious reach, like tentacles, into the private chambers and the women's quarters, is savage and
beastlike and hard to handle. There seems to be one particular way of guarding against him: to recognize and always remember that the soul has one part that is truthful, that loves what is noble, and rational, and another part that is irrational, prone to falsehood, and given to passion. The friend is always present as counselor and advocate to the better part, like a physician fostering and preserving what is healthy, while the flatterer sits beside the passionate
and irrational part, and scratches and tickles it and wins it over, and draws it away from reason, contriving for it certain base pleasures. Just as, among foods, there are some that attach themselves neither to the blood nor to the breath, nor lend any strength to sinew or marrow, but instead stir the genitals and rouse the belly and make the flesh flabby and unsound, so the flatterer's talk contributes nothing
...to the part of the soul that thinks and reasons, but instead tames some pleasure of desire, or stretches an irrational spirit of anger, or stirs up envy, or breeds a heavy and empty swelling of pride, or joins in lamenting over grief, or makes the malicious, illiberal, and faithless part of the soul forever sharp, jumpy, and suspicious with certain slanders and premonitions — such talk will not escape the notice of those who pay attention. For he always lurks beneath some passion and fattens it, appearing each time, like a swollen gland, at whatever part of the soul is ulcerous and inflamed.
“Are you angry? Punish him. Do you desire something? Buy it. Are you afraid? Let us flee. Do you suspect something? Believe it.” But if the passions in these matters are hard to detect, because reason has been knocked out by their violence and magnitude, the flatterer will offer his hand more readily in small things, being the same man throughout. For instance, when someone under suspicion of some hangover or overindulgence hesitates about bathing or eating, the friend will hold him back, urging caution and attention, but the flatterer drags him off to the bathhouse and tells him to have some fresh dish served and not to torment his body by holding back. And seeing him growing faint-hearted about a journey, a voyage, or some undertaking, he will say the occasion is not urgent, and that the same thing can be accomplished by postponing it or by sending someone else.
And if a man, having promised to lend or give money to a relative, regrets it but is ashamed to go back on his word, the flatterer, adding his weight to the worse side of the scale, strengthens his resolve to protect his purse and cuts away his sense of shame, urging him to be sparing on the ground that he spends a great deal already and ought to be enough help to many people as it is. Hence, if we do not conceal from ourselves our own desire, shamelessness, and cowardice, the flatterer will not escape our notice either. For he is always pleading the case of these very passions, and speaking with apparent frankness about how they will turn out. So much, then, on this subject.
Let us now turn to services and acts of assistance; for here too the flatterer creates great confusion, blurring his difference from the true friend, by seeming tireless and eager in everything and never making excuses. For the friend's manner, like the story of truth according to Euripides, is simple, plain, and unaffected, whereas the flatterer's manner, being genuinely diseased in itself, needs many clever and, by Zeus, elaborate remedies.
Just as, in chance meetings, the friend sometimes says nothing and hears nothing but simply glances, smiles, gives and receives an inward look of goodwill and familiarity, and passes on — while the flatterer runs, chases after, greets from far off, and if he is spoken to first after being seen, excuses himself again and again with witnesses and oaths — so too, in practical affairs, friends leave many small things aside, not scrupulously working out every detail, not meddling, and not thrusting themselves into every service. The flatterer, by contrast, is here constant, persistent, and tireless, leaving no room or place for anyone else's service, wanting always to be given orders, and if he is not, feeling stung — or rather utterly despondent and full of complaint.
These, then, are signs, to men of sense, not of true or sound friendship but of a friendship that plays the courtesan, entangling itself too readily around those in need. Still, one must first look for the difference in their promises. It was well said by those before us that the friend's promise is, “if I am able to accomplish it, and if it is something that can be accomplished,” while the flatterer's is, “say whatever is on your mind.” Indeed the comic poets bring characters like this on stage: “Set me, Nicomachus, against the soldier — if I don't beat him into a ripe melon all over,” “if I don't make his face softer than a sponge.”
Again, no true friend becomes a partner in an undertaking unless he has first become its advisor, and only after he has tested it and helped judge that it is fitting or advantageous. The flatterer, however, even if he is granted a role in testing and giving his opinion on the matter, is eager not only to yield and to please, but also fears seeming hesitant or reluctant to act, and so he gives way and joins in spurring the desire onward. For scarcely any rich man or king is ready to say, “let me have a poor man — or, if he likes, one worse than poor — who, being well disposed toward me, will set fear aside and speak from the heart,” but instead, like tragic actors, such men need a chorus of friends singing along with them, or a theater applauding in unison.
Hence tragic Merope advises: “As your friends, keep those who do not go slack in speech, and let the bolted door of your house shut out those base men who speak only to please and gratify you.” But such men do just the opposite: those who do not go slack in speech, but resist them for their own good, they shun; while those base men who speak to please — the illiberal, the tricksters — they admit not only within their bolted doors but into their most secret feelings and affairs.
Of these flatterers, the simpler sort does not think it his place, nor does he claim, to be an advisor in matters of such weight, but merely an assistant and servant. The more cunning sort, however, stands sharing in the perplexity, knitting his brows and nodding along with his face, yet saying nothing — until the other man states his own opinion, whereupon he says, “Heracles, you just beat me to it! I was about to say the very same thing.” For just as mathematicians say that surfaces and lines neither bend nor stretch nor move on their own, being purely intelligible and incorporeal, but bend, stretch, and shift together with the bodies whose boundaries they are, so too you will always catch the flatterer agreeing, declaring the same opinion, rejoicing — yes, by Zeus, and growing angry — right along with his patron, so that in these matters at least the difference is entirely easy to detect.
Still more, however, is it evident in the manner of their service. For the kindness that comes from a friend, like a living creature, keeps its most essential powers deep within, and nothing showy or ostentatious attends it; often, just as a doctor cures a patient without his even knowing it, a friend does good by intervening or by settling some matter, caring for someone while he remains unaware of it.
Such a man was Arcesilaus. Among other instances, learning that Apelles of Chios, who was ill, was also in poverty, he came back to him bringing twenty drachmas, and sitting down beside him said, “Here there is nothing but these elements of Empedocles — fire and water and earth and the gentle height of air — but you are not even lying comfortably,” and while adjusting his pillow, he quietly slipped the coins underneath it. When the old woman who attended him found the money and, astonished, reported it to Apelles, he laughed and said, “This is one of Arcesilaus' thefts.”
And indeed, in philosophy, children born do resemble their parents. Lacydes, for instance, a pupil of Arcesilaus, stood by Cephisocrates, together with his other friends, when Cephisocrates was on trial on an impeachment charge. When the accuser asked for his signet ring, Cephisocrates quietly set it down beside him; Lacydes, noticing, stepped on it with his foot and hid it — for the proof of guilt lay in that ring. After the verdict, while Cephisocrates was thanking the jurors, one of them, who it seems had seen what happened, told him to be grateful to Lacydes and related the whole affair, since Lacydes himself had told no one. In just this way, I think, the gods too do most of their good deeds unseen, taking pleasure by their very nature in the act of giving and doing good.
The flatterer's work, however, has nothing just, true, simple, or generous about it; instead there is sweat, shouting, running to and fro, and a straining of the face that produces an impression and appearance of laborious, urgent service — like an overworked painting that, with garish colors, broken folds of drapery, wrinkles, and sharp angles, manufactures an illusion of vividness.
He is also tiresome in recounting how he acted on your behalf — rehearsing his wanderings and worries, then his quarrels with others, then countless troubles and great sufferings — until one is tempted to say the reward was not worth all that. For every kindness thrown back in one's face is oppressive, thankless, and unbearable, but with the favors of flatterers, the reproachful, embarrassing quality is present not later but from the very moment they are being performed. The true friend, if it becomes necessary to mention the matter at all, reports it modestly and says nothing about himself.
Thus, when the Spartans sent grain to the Smyrnaeans in their need, and the Smyrnaeans marveled at the kindness, they said, “It is nothing much — we simply voted to go without our own breakfast, and that of our pack animals, for a single day, and gathered this from what we saved.” Such a kindness is not only generous but also more pleasant to those who receive it, because they believe that those who benefit them are not being greatly harmed by it.
One would not, then, recognize the flatterer's true nature chiefly from the tiresomeness of his services or the readiness of his promises, but rather from whether the service itself is honorable or shameful, and whether it aims at pleasure or at benefit. For the true friend does not, as Gorgias maintained, expect his friend to render him just services while he himself performs many unjust ones in return; his nature is to share in soundness of mind, not to share in sickness. He will rather turn his friend away from what is not fitting; and if he cannot persuade him, there is that fine saying of Phocion to Antipater: “You cannot have me as both friend and flatterer” — that is, as both a friend and no friend at all.
For one must work together with a friend, not join in his knavery; take counsel with him, not join in his scheming; bear witness with him, not join in deceiving; and share his misfortune, by Zeus, not share in his wrongdoing. Indeed, merely sharing knowledge of a friend's shameful acts is not even desirable — how much less desirable, then, is joining in doing them and sharing the disgrace? Just as the Spartans, defeated in battle by Antipater and negotiating terms, asked him to impose on them whatever penalty he wished, so long as it was not shameful, so too the true friend, when some need arises involving expense, danger, or toil, insists on being called first and taking part without excuse and eagerly — but where shame is involved, he asks only to be left alone and spared.
Flattery does just the opposite: in laborious and dangerous services it begs off, and if you test it by tapping, it rings back hollow and base under some pretext; but in shameful, lowly, and disreputable services — “use me up,” “trample on me” — it considers nothing terrible or degrading. You see the monkey? It cannot guard the house like the dog, nor carry burdens like the horse, nor plow the earth like the oxen; so it submits to abuse and buffoonery and puts up with being toyed with, offering itself as an instrument of laughter.
So too the flatterer, unable to plead a case, contribute funds, or join in a struggle, and falling short in every kind of labor and earnest effort, is unstinting in clandestine, under-the-table affairs: a faithful servant of love affairs, meticulous in settling a prostitute's fee, careful in working out the cost of a drinking party, never lazy in preparing dinners, attentive in tending mistresses — and when ordered to be insolent toward in-laws or to help drive out a wife, he is unyielding and unashamed. So the man is not hard to detect on this front either: ordered to do whatever disreputable, dishonorable thing you like, he is ready to spare nothing of himself, so long as it pleases the one giving the order.
And not least of all, one might see how very different he is from the true friend in his attitude toward that friend's other friends. For the true friend finds it most pleasant to love and be loved along with many others, and constantly works to make his friend widely loved and widely honored; holding that friends' possessions are held in common, he thinks nothing ought to be so common as friends themselves. The flatterer, being false, spurious, and alloyed with base metal, and knowing above all that he is wronging friendship — counterfeiting it, as it were, like debased coinage — is envious by nature, but directs his envy against his equals, competing to outdo them in buffoonery and idle gossip, while he trembles and fears his superior — not, by Zeus, like “a foot soldier racing beside a Lydian chariot,” but rather, as Simonides says, like lead set “beside refined gold, unmixed.”
So then, being light, fusible, and deceptive, when he is set up close beside a true, weighty, hammered-solid friendship for comparison, he cannot bear the test but is exposed — and does just what that painter did who painted roosters so badly: he used to order his slave-boy to chase the real roosters as far as possible from his picture, and this flatterer likewise chases away true friends and does not let them come near. But if he cannot manage that, he openly fawns on the true friends, dances attendance on them, and pretends to be in awe of them as his betters, while secretly he lets slip and sows the seeds of slander against them.
And when his hidden word has scratched open a wound, even if it does not do its full work at once, he keeps in mind and holds to the maxim of Medius. Medius was, as it were, the choir-leader of the flatterers around Alexander, a master sophist arrayed in chief against the best men. He used to urge his fellows to attack boldly and bite with their slanders, teaching that even if the man bitten heals the wound, the scar of the slander will remain. And indeed, eaten away by such scars — or rather by gangrenes and cancers — Alexander destroyed Callisthenes, Parmenio, and Philotas; while to men like Hagnon, Bagoas, Agesias, and Demetrius he gave himself unstintingly to be tripped up, letting himself be bowed down to, dressed up, and remolded by them like some barbarian idol.
So great a power has the desire to please, and it seems, it would appear, to be greatest of all in those thought to be the greatest of men; for believing oneself to possess the finest qualities, joined with the wish that it be so, gives the flatterer both credibility and courage. For while, among physical places, the heights are hard of approach and hard for plotters to reach, the height and pride that arise in a soul lacking sense — whether from good fortune or from natural gifts — is most readily accessible of all to the small and the lowly.
Hence, at the beginning of this discourse we urged, and now we urge again, that we cut out from ourselves self-love and self-conceit; for this, flattering us in advance, makes us softer prey for the flatterers who wait at our door, as though we were already prepared for them. But if, obeying the god, we learn how valuable “know thyself” is to each of us above all else, and so review our own nature, upbringing, and education, finding them to have countless deficiencies in goodness and much that is base and haphazardly mixed in among our actions, our words, and our passions, we will not so easily offer ourselves as a place for flatterers to walk about in.
Alexander, for one, said he most distrusted those who proclaimed him a god whenever it came to sleeping and to sex, since in these matters he found himself becoming more ignoble and more subject to passion than his ordinary self. We too, seeing many shameful, distressing, incomplete, and mistaken things in ourselves in many places, will constantly discover that we stand in need not of a friend who praises and showers us with fine words, but of one who examines us, speaks frankly, and — by Zeus — blames us when we act wrongly.
For among the many, few are those who dare to speak frankly rather than to please their friends; and even among that few you will not easily find those who know how to do it, but rather those who suppose that if they scold and find fault, they are using frankness. And yet, like any other drug, frank speech that misses its proper occasion has the effect of causing needless pain and disturbance, and produces, in a way, distress of the sort that flattery produces pleasure. For people are harmed not only by being praised out of season but also by being blamed; and this above all delivers them, easily caught and off balance, into the hands of flatterers, who, deflected from what is too harsh and resistant, slip toward what is soft and yielding, like water toward hollow ground. For this reason frank speech must be tempered with good character and must have reasoning that removes its excess and its unmixed intensity, as one tempers light, so that people, not being disturbed or pained by those who find fault with everything and blame everyone, may not take refuge in the shadow of the flatterer and turn away toward whatever gives no pain.
For every vice, Philopappus, must be fled by way of virtue, not by way of the opposite vice, as some seem to think — fleeing bashfulness by shamelessness, and boorishness by buffoonery, while placing their character as far as possible from cowardice and softness, so that they appear very close to recklessness and rashness. Some also make of atheism and unscrupulousness an excuse for escaping superstition and folly, twisting their character, like a piece of wood bent the wrong way, from one crooked extreme to the opposite one out of inexperience in setting it straight. And the most shameful renunciation of flattery is to be needlessly unpleasant, and, out of sheer tastelessness and lack of skill in dealing kindly with people, to flee, through mere disagreeableness and harshness, what is ignoble and servile in friendship — like the freedman in comedy who thinks that giving offense is the enjoyment of free speech.
Since, then, it is shameful to fall into flattery by pursuing what is pleasing, and shameful also, in fleeing flattery, to destroy what is friendly and caring through an excess of frankness, and one must suffer neither fault but, as with anything else, draw from frank speech what is good by way of moderation — the argument itself, in demanding what comes next, seems to be putting the finishing touch to our essay.
So then, seeing that there are, as it were, a good many banes attached to frank speech, let us first remove from it self-love, being very much on guard lest, on account of some private matter — feeling wronged and pained, say — we seem to be reproaching our friend. For people suppose that the speech made on behalf of the speaker himself arises not from goodwill but from anger, and that it is not admonition but complaint. For frank speech is a mark of friendship and dignity, while complaint is self-regarding and petty. Hence people respect and admire those who speak frankly, but return the charge against, and despise, those who merely complain — just as Agamemnon could not tolerate Achilles, who seemed to speak with moderate frankness, yet yielded to and endured Odysseus, though he attacked him bitterly, saying, "Accursed one, would that you were commanding some other, inglorious army," restraining himself before the caring and sensible character of the speech. For Odysseus, having no private grievance of his own, spoke frankly to him on behalf of Greece, whereas the other seemed to be angry chiefly on his own account.
As for Achilles himself — though he was no sweet-tempered or gentle man, but a formidable one, of the kind who could make even an innocent man feel blamed — he allowed Patroclus in silence to heap up many such reproaches against him as "pitiless one; surely then your father was not the horseman Peleus, nor Thetis your mother; rather the grey sea bore you, and the sheer cliffs, since your mind is so unyielding." For just as Hyperides the orator thought the Athenians should consider not only whether a man is harsh, but whether he is harsh gratis — without personal stake — so too the admonition of a friend, when it is free of all private feeling, commands respect, dignity, and cannot be met with a defiant stare.
But if someone, in the very act of speaking frankly, is plainly seen to pass over and leave entirely aside the wrongs his friend has done to him personally, while exposing and censuring, without sparing him, certain other faults committed against others, the force of such frank speech is irresistible, and by the sweetness of the one giving admonition he only intensifies the sharpness and severity of the reproof. Hence it has been well said that in anger and in disputes with friends one ought especially to do and consider something for their advantage or propriety; but no less a mark of friendship than this is to speak frankly and to remind people, on behalf of others who are being neglected, of the very fact that they themselves seem to be overlooked and disregarded. So Plato acted in his dealings with Dionysius amid suspicions and disputes: he asked for a time to meet him privately; Dionysius granted it, supposing that Plato had some complaint of his own to lodge and explain. But Plato addressed him something like this: "If you perceived, Dionysius, that some ill-disposed man had sailed to Sicily wishing to do you some harm, but lacking opportunity, would you let him sail away and allow him to depart unpunished?"
"Far from it," said Dionysius, "Plato; for one must hate and punish not only the deeds of enemies but their intentions too." "Well then," said Plato, "if someone has come here out of goodwill toward you, wishing to be the cause of some good for you, but you afford him no opportunity, is it right to let him go away thanklessly and with neglect?" When Dionysius asked who this man was, Plato said, "Aeschines — a man whose character is as decent as that of any of Socrates' companions, and whose speech is capable of improving those who keep his company; and having sailed here over a great expanse of sea, in order to associate with you through philosophy, he has been neglected." This so moved Dionysius that he immediately threw his arms around Plato and embraced him, admiring his kindness and magnanimity, and saw to it that Aeschines was cared for handsomely and generously.
In the second place, then, let us purge frank speech, as it were, of all insolence, mockery, jeering, and buffoonery — vicious seasonings of frankness. For just as when a doctor cuts flesh, a certain rhythm and cleanliness must attend his work, while a dancer's flourish, recklessness, roving suppleness, and fussiness must be absent from the hand, so too frank speech admits of wit and cleverness, provided the charm preserves its dignity, but insolence, foulness, and outrage, when they attach themselves to it, utterly corrupt and destroy it. Hence the lyre player, not without persuasiveness or tact, silenced Philip when he tried to argue with him about points of music, saying, "God forbid, O king, that you should ever fare so badly as to know these things better than I do."
Epicharmus, however, spoke wrongly when, after Hiero had put some of his acquaintances to death and a few days later invited him to dinner, he said, "But the other day, when you were sacrificing, you did not invite your friends." Antiphon too spoke badly when, in a discussion at Dionysius' court about what bronze is best, he said, "That from which they made at Athens the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton." For such remarks neither help by their sharpness and bitterness, nor please by their buffoonish playfulness, but are rather a kind of licentiousness mixed with malice and hostility — a sort by which those who use it destroy themselves as well, literally dancing the dance around the well's edge. Indeed Antiphon was put to death by Dionysius, and Timagenes was cast out of Caesar's friendship, though he never used free speech, but at drinking parties and walks, on every occasion, without any serious purpose, kept bringing up, as though it were a clever jibe, whatever occurred to him as a laughing matter — "a cause of friendship for the Argives."
For even the comic poets composed much that was harsh and political for their theater audiences, but the laughable and buffoonish element mixed into it, like a bad relish added to food, made their frankness ineffective and useless, so that its speakers gained a reputation for malice and foulness, while their hearers gained nothing useful from what was said. In general, then, playfulness and laughter must be brought to friends in one manner, but frank speech must have seriousness and character. And if it concerns weightier matters, the speech must be made credible and moving by feeling, posture, and tone of voice; and occasion, when neglected in anything, does great harm, but it especially ruins the usefulness of frank speech.
That such frankness must be guarded against in wine and drunkenness is entirely clear. For he who stirs up talk amid play and friendliness brings a cloud upon a clear sky, drawing up the brow and composing the face into a scowl, as though setting himself against the god Lyaeus and against "him who looses the brow's furrow of hard cares," as Pindar says. And ill-timedness in this carries great danger besides. For souls are especially prone to anger on account of wine, and often drunkenness, seizing upon frank speech, has turned it into enmity. And in general it is neither noble nor courageous, but rather unmanly, to indulge in frank speech at the table when sober silence would have been more frank — like cowardly dogs. There is no need, then, to dwell at length on these matters.
But since many people, when their friends are faring well in their affairs, neither think it right nor dare to correct them, but consider good fortune wholly inaccessible and unreachable by admonition — yet when those same friends stumble and trip, they set upon them and trample them underfoot once they have been brought low, releasing upon them, all at once and against nature, like a stream that had been dammed up, their frank speech, and gladly enjoying the change on account of their former disdain for those men's arrogance and their own former weakness — it is no worse to go through this matter too, and to answer Euripides, who says, "When the god gives good things, what need is there of friends?" — that it is precisely when friends are prospering that they most need frank-speaking friends, ones who will restrain their excess of pride. For few are those to whom good sense comes along with good fortune; most people need borrowed wits and outside reasoning to press upon them, since they are being puffed up and tossed about by fortune.
But when the god casts down and strips away their pretension, in the very circumstances themselves lies the power to admonish and to instill repentance. Hence there is then no need of a friend's frank speech, nor of words carrying weight and sting, but truly, in such reversals, it is sweet to look into the eyes of a kindly light that comforts and encourages — just as Xenophon says that Clearchus' face, seen amid battles and dangers, being kindly and humane, made those in danger more confident. But the man who brings frank speech and biting words to someone in misfortune, like a sharp probe to an eye already troubled and inflamed, heals nothing and removes nothing of what is causing pain, but adds anger to grief and further provokes the sufferer.
For instance, a man in good health is not harsh or altogether savage toward a friend who criticizes his drinking bouts and companions, or criticizes his idleness, lack of exercise, constant bathing, and untimely overindulgence; but a man who is sick cannot bear it — it is a greater sickness still to hear that these things have happened to him from intemperance and softness, and from delicacies and women. "Oh, what bad timing, man! I am writing my will, and my doctors are preparing castor oil or scammony for me, and you are moralizing and philosophizing at me!" So too the affairs of the unfortunate do not admit of frank speech and moralizing, but need gentleness and help. For nurses too, when children fall down, do not run up to scold them, but lift them, wash them off, and set them right, and only then do they rebuke and punish them.
It is said too that Demetrius of Phalerum, when he had been driven from his country and was living near Thebes in disgrace and low circumstances, was not glad to see Crates approaching, expecting Cynic frankness and harsh words; but when Crates met him gently and spoke with him about exile — saying that it held nothing bad, nor anything worth taking hard, since he had been freed from precarious and unstable affairs, and at the same time urging him to take courage in himself and in his own disposition — Demetrius, growing more cheerful and regaining his confidence, said to his friends, "Alas for those activities and preoccupations, on account of which I never came to know such a man as this!" For to one who is grieving, a kindly tale from friends is fitting, but admonitions are for one who is behaving too foolishly.
This is the way of noble friends; but the ignoble and lowly are flatterers of the fortunate, who, as Demosthenes says of ruptures and sprains, "are stirred up whenever some illness seizes the body" — such men fasten upon reversals of fortune, as though delighting and taking pleasure in them. And indeed, if he should need some reminder in matters where he stumbled through his own poor judgment, it is enough to say: "Not at all according to our mind; for I indeed strongly advised against it many times." In what circumstances, then, must a friend be forceful, and when should he use the full intensity of frank speech?
When the occasions call for checking someone carried away by pleasure, anger, or arrogance — either to curb greed, or when it would be senseless to tolerate carelessness. So Solon spoke frankly to Croesus, who had been corrupted and made soft by unstable good fortune, bidding him look to the end. So Socrates used to check Alcibiades, and drew from him genuine tears when he was refuted, and turned his heart around. Such too were the words of Cyrus to Cyaxares, and those of Plato to Dion, at the time when Dion was at the height of his brilliance and was turning all men's eyes upon himself because of the splendor and greatness of his deeds — Plato urging him to guard against and fear "self-will, since it dwells with solitude." Speusippus too wrote to him not to be proud that he had great repute among boys and women, but to see to it that, by adorning Sicily with piety, justice, and the best laws, he would "bring renown" to the Academy.
Euctus and Eulaeus, companions of Perseus, always spoke to please him and nodded agreement while he was fortunate, following along like the rest; but when he had engaged the Romans at Pydna, stumbled, and fled, they fell upon him and reproached him bitterly, reminding him of the wrongs he had done or overlooked, casting up each one to him, until the man, overcome with grief and anger, struck them both down with his dagger and killed them. Let the occasion common to all cases, then, be marked out in this way; but the occasions that people themselves frequently provide, a friend who truly cares for them ought not to let pass, but should make use of. For a question, or a narration, or blame of similar faults committed by others, or praise, serve as a kind of opening for frank speech in some cases. For example, they say that Demaratus came to Macedonia at the time when Philip was at odds with his wife and son;
and when Philip greeted him and asked how the Greeks stood toward one another in concord, Demaratus — being well disposed toward him and on familiar terms — said, "It is indeed a fine thing for you, Philip, to be inquiring about the concord of the Athenians and the Peloponnesians, while you overlook your own household, embroiled in so great a discord."
...full of strife and discord." Diogenes too spoke well: when he came into Philip's camp, at the time Philip was marching out to fight the Greeks, he was brought before him, and Philip, not recognizing him, asked whether he was a spy. "Certainly," he said, "a spy, Philip, of your poor judgment and folly, on account of which, with no one forcing you, you come to gamble away your kingdom and your life in a single hour."
This, perhaps, was rather too harsh. But there is another occasion for admonition: whenever people, reviled by others for the faults they commit, become humbled and subdued. A tactful man would make skillful use of such an occasion, checking and deflecting those who revile, while privately taking his friend aside and reminding him that, if for no other reason, he should attend to the matter so that his enemies not be emboldened. "For where will they find room to open their mouths, what will they have left to say, if you let this go and cast off the very things for which you are spoken ill of?" In this way the pain becomes the reviler's, and the benefit the admonisher's.
Some manage this more cleverly: by finding fault with others, they turn their own acquaintances around, since they accuse other people of doing the very things they know their friends are doing. Our own teacher Ammonius, during an afternoon class, on noticing that some of his students had eaten an extravagant lunch, ordered his son's freedman to give his own boy a beating, adding that the boy could not lunch without a dash of vinegar. And at the same time he looked toward us, so that the reproof landed on those who were actually guilty.
Further, one must be cautious about using frankness with a friend on many occasions, bearing Plato's remark in mind. For when Socrates had taken one of his companions to task rather sharply while conversing at table, Plato said, "Would it not have been better to say this privately?" And Socrates replied, "And would you not have done better to say this to me privately?" And they say that when Pythagoras treated an acquaintance rather roughly in front of many people, the young man hanged himself, and from that time on Pythagoras never again admonished anyone in the presence of another.
For, like a disease that is not decent to expose, the admonition and uncovering of a fault must be kept private, not turned into a public festival or a display, nor made to gather witnesses and spectators. It is not the mark of a friend but of a sophist to build a reputation on other people's errors, preening himself before the bystanders, like those doctors who perform surgery in the theaters for a fee.
But apart from the insolence which it is right that no course of treatment should carry, one must also consider that vice is quarrelsome and stubborn: for, as Euripides says, love does not press harder simply because it is admonished plainly - rather, if someone admonishes without restraint and before many witnesses, he drives every disease and every passion into shamelessness. Just as Plato holds that those who would instill a sense of shame in the young must themselves, as old men, first feel shame before the young, so too among friends the frankness that itself shows restraint is the frankness that abashes most effectively; and approaching the offender gently and cautiously, taking hold of him with care, undermines and works upon the vice, filling it with shame at the very shame it meets.
Hence it is best to "hold one's head close," so that others may not overhear; and it is least fitting to expose a husband with his wife listening, a father with his children looking on, a lover with his beloved present, or a teacher with his acquaintances present. For people, refuted before those in whose eyes they wish to have a good name, are driven beside themselves by pain and anger. I think too that Cleitus was provoked less by the wine than by the fact that, with many looking on, he seemed to be cutting Alexander down. And Aristomenes, Ptolemy's tutor, gave the flatterers a handle against him because he struck the king to wake him when he was nodding off during an audience with ambassadors - they pretended to be indignant on the king's behalf and said,
"If you were so overcome by toil and lack of sleep, we ought to have admonished you privately, not laid hands on you in front of so many people." And so he sent the man a cup of poison and ordered him to drink it down. Aristophanes says that this too was the charge brought against Cleon, that with foreigners present he spoke ill of the city and provoked the Athenians. For this reason those who wish to use frankness usefully and therapeutically, rather than to make a display of it or curry favor with a crowd, must guard against this as well, along with everything else.
And indeed, what Thucydides has the Corinthians say of themselves - that they "deserve" to "bring reproach" upon others, a remark well made - ought to hold true of those who speak frankly. Lysander, it seems, said to the man from Megara who was speaking frankly among the allies on Greece's behalf, that his words needed a city behind them; but frankness, perhaps, needs the backing of a man's whole character, and this is truest of all when said of those who admonish and bring others to their senses.
Plato, at any rate, used to say that he admonished Speusippus simply by the example of his own life, just as Xenocrates, merely by being seen in the school and turning his gaze on Polemo, converted and transformed him. But it is the mark of a shallow and worthless character for a man who takes up the language of frankness to have it said of him, in addition, that he is "himself a healer teeming with others' sores."
Nevertheless, since men who are themselves flawed, and who keep company with others of the same kind, are often driven by circumstance to admonish, the most reasonable approach is the one that links the frank speaker himself, in some way, to the very fault he charges - the sort of thing meant by "Son of Tydeus, what has come over us, that we have forgotten our furious valor?" and
"now we are not worth even a single Hector." Socrates too used to refute the young so gently, not as one already free of ignorance, but as one who thought he needed, together with them, to pursue virtue and seek the truth. For those who fall into the same faults, and yet think they are correcting their friends as they would correct themselves, win goodwill and trust; whereas the man who exalts himself while cutting another down, as though he alone were pure and untouched by passion - unless he is well advanced in years or has an acknowledged reputation for virtue and standing - only comes across as burdensome and oppressive, and does no good.
Hence Phoenix did not simply relate his own misfortunes at random - how in anger he had once tried to kill his father and quickly repented, "lest I be called a father-killer among the Achaeans" - but did so precisely so as not to seem to be admonishing Achilles as one himself untouched by anger and free of fault. For such things work on people morally, and men yield more readily to those who seem to share their affliction than to those who look down on them.
And since one must not bring a bright light to an inflamed eye, nor can a soul in the grip of passion accept frankness and unmixed admonition, one of the most useful remedies is a touch of praise mixed in, as in these lines: "But you, no longer let go your furious might, you who are the best men in the whole army. I would not fight with a man who let go of war, being a coward; but I am angry at heart with you two, Pandarus - where is your bow, and your winged arrows, and the fame in which no man here can rival you?"
And still more openly Homer calls back to themselves those who are slipping, as when he has one say, "Oedipus, where now are your famous riddles?" and another, "This is the speech of Heracles, who has endured much." For such words not only relieve the harshness and sting of blame, but also instill in the shamed man a rivalry with his own better self, by reminding him of his noble deeds and making himself his own model for something better. But whenever we set others beside him - his peers, say, or fellow citizens, or kinsmen - the contentiousness of his vice grows resentful and savage,
and this often provokes the angry retort: "Why then don't you go off to those better than I am, instead of giving me trouble?" One must therefore be careful about praising others when speaking frankly to someone, unless, of course, they happen to be his parents - as when Agamemnon says, "Truly Tydeus begot a son little like himself," and as the Odysseus of the Scyrians says, "You who
disgrace the bright light of your lineage, spinning wool, though born of the noblest of the Greeks" - such comparisons are not fitting elsewhere. It is least fitting of all for a man being admonished to counter-admonish in turn, answering frankness with frankness; for this quickly inflames matters and breeds a quarrel, and altogether such pushing back looks not like a reply in kind but like a man who simply cannot bear frankness at all. It is better, then, to put up with the friend who seems to be admonishing; for if he himself later goes wrong and needs admonition, this very fact
gives, in a sense, license to one's own frankness in return. For being reminded, without any bitterness, that he too used to refuse to overlook his friends' faults but would expose and instruct them, he will yield more readily and accept the correction, since it will seem a repayment of goodwill and gratitude rather than of blame or anger. Further, Thucydides says: "Whoever takes on the envy that attaches to the greatest matters plans rightly";
and it is fitting for a friend to bear the odium that comes from admonishing, when the matters at stake are great and truly important. But if he is difficult about everything and with everyone, and treats his companions not as a friend but as a schoolmaster, he will be blunted and ineffective when admonishing in matters of real weight - like a doctor who has spent a sharp or bitter medicine on many trivial and unnecessary things, and so has none left
for what is truly necessary, having used up his frankness on it. He himself, then, will be very careful to avoid constant fault-finding; but if someone else is petty about everything and prone to false accusation, this will serve him, as it were, as an opening for the more serious faults. Indeed the physician Philotimus, when a man with an abscessed liver showed him his ulcerated finger, said, "My good man, this is no time to talk about hangnails." So too
the occasion gives a friend the chance to say to one who complains about small and worthless matters: "Why do we speak of games and drinking parties and trifles? Let the man, my good sir, get rid of his mistress, or stop gambling, and in every other respect he is a marvelous fellow as far as we are concerned." For the man who has received indulgence in small things does not find it unpleasant to grant his friend frankness in greater ones; whereas the man who is forever
harping on everything, everywhere and always bitter and joyless, knowing everything and meddling in everything, is unbearable even to his own children or brothers, and indeed insufferable even to his slaves. And since, as Euripides says, not every evil belongs to old age, nor does every evil belong to the folly of friends, one must watch one's friends not only when they err but also when they succeed, and, by Zeus, be eager to praise first; then, just as
iron is hardened by cooling and takes its temper only after first being softened by heat, so with friends: when they are relaxed and warmed by praise, one should apply frankness gently, like a tempering. For the occasion allows one to say: "Is it really worth setting that beside this? Do you see what fine fruit nobility yields? This is what we, your friends, require of you; this is what truly belongs to you; for this you were
born - but those other things must be cast off, to the mountain, or into the waves of the loud-roaring sea." For just as a sensible doctor would rather resolve a patient's illness by sleep and diet than by castor oil and scammony, so too a reasonable friend, a good father, and a teacher take more pleasure in using praise than blame for the correction of character; for nothing else pains the man being spoken to frankly so little, and heals him so much,
as the sparing of anger and an approach made with good character and goodwill toward those who err. Hence one must neither harshly refute those who deny their fault, nor prevent those who wish to make their defense, but must somehow help supply decent excuses too, and, as people draw back from the worse charge on their own, allow them a milder one - as Hector does: "Strange man, do not harbor this anger in your heart" - toward his brother, treating
his withdrawal from the battle not as flight or cowardice but as the result of anger. And Nestor says to Agamemnon: "But you yielded to your great-hearted spirit." For I think it more considerate to say "you did not attend to it" and "you were unaware" than "you did wrong" and "you behaved shamefully," and to say "do not quarrel with your brother" rather than "do not envy your brother," and
"flee the woman who is ruining you" rather than "stop being ruined by the woman." For this is the manner that therapeutic frankness seeks, while practical frankness seeks the opposite. For whenever it is necessary to check people who are about to go wrong, standing against some violent impulse carrying them the wrong way, or to urge on and stir those who are soft and reluctant toward noble action, one must attribute what is happening to
strange and inappropriate causes - as Odysseus does in Sophocles, provoking Achilles: he does not say that Achilles is angry over the dinner, but says instead, "Are you afraid, now that you see the seats of Troy before you?" And again, when Achilles grows indignant at this and says he will sail away, Odysseus replies: "I know what you are fleeing - not the fear of being spoken ill of, but because Hector is near; it is not good to stay..." The man,
then, who is spirited and manly, they frighten with the prospect of a reputation for cowardice; the one who is moderate and well-ordered, with a reputation for licentiousness; the one who is generous and magnanimous, with a reputation for stinginess and love of money - thereby urging him on toward noble conduct and driving him away from disgrace: moderate when dealing with irreversible matters, showing more of the pain of shared suffering than of blame in their frank speech, but vehement, relentless, and persistent in checking faults still in progress and in
struggles against the passions. For this is the occasion for goodwill that holds nothing back and for genuine frankness. But we observe enemies employing the practice of finding fault with each other's actions - just as Diogenes used to say that a man who is to be saved needs either good friends or fiery enemies, since the one kind instructs while the other refutes. It is better, though,
to guard against faults by heeding those who advise us than to repent of a fault because of those who speak ill of us. And for this reason one must cultivate real skill even in frankness, since it is the greatest and most powerful remedy in friendship, and always requires good aim in timing together with a measured blend. Since, then, as has been said, frankness is often by nature painful to the one being treated, one must imitate physicians:
for they, too, when cutting, do not leave the affected part in pain and suffering, but bathe it gently and soothe it with washes; likewise those who admonish skillfully do not, after inflicting something bitter and cutting, simply walk away, but with other kinds of conversation and reasonable words they soften and dissolve the sting - just as stone-carvers, after chipping and cutting their statues, smooth and polish them afterward. But the man who has been struck by frankness
and marked by it, if left while still rough, swollen, and disturbed by anger, is again hard to call back and hard to console. For this reason those who admonish must especially guard against this too: not to leave too soon, and not to make the pain and irritation of their companion the very point at which they end the conversation and the meeting.

======== Moralia: Quomodo Quis Suos In Virtute Sentiat Profectus ========

What account of reason, Sossius Senecio, will preserve for a man who is improving in virtue an awareness of his own improvement, if the advances he makes bring no relief from folly, but vice, like a lead weight fastened with equal measure on all alike, drags down the net just the same? For no one making progress in music or grammar would recognize any lessening of his ignorance about these subjects while he is still learning, if his lack of skill remained equally present to him throughout,
nor would a sick man, whose treatment produced no ease or relief as the disease somehow yielded and relaxed, get any sense of a difference before the opposite condition had come about, entirely pure, once his body had been fully restored to health. But just as in these cases people do not, while making progress, perceive the change if they are being lifted, as it were, out from under a burden on a balance-scale moving toward the opposite state without their realizing it, so too in philosophy
one must suppose there is neither progress nor any awareness of progress, if the soul lets go of nothing and is not in the least purged of its folly, but instead continues to make use of unmixed evil until it has grasped the good in its pure and perfect form. For it is not in a mere fleeting moment of time that the wise man shifts to the disposition of virtue, of which no small part is removed even over a long span, and then suddenly escapes the whole of vice at once. And yet, you surely know that those who make this argument again cause themselves great trouble and great perplexities about the moment that escapes notice, in which a man has not yet grasped that he himself has become wise, but is ignorant of it and remains in doubt, given that the increase comes about little by little over a long time, now taking something away
and now adding something, so that the advance toward virtue, like a journey, has crept up on him imperceptibly and gently. But if the speed and magnitude of the change were so great that the man who was worst in the morning had become best by evening, or if it should happen to someone in such a way that, having fallen asleep base, he woke up wise and could say, releasing from his soul yesterday's follies and false deceptions,
"farewell, you were nothing after all" — who could fail to recognize so great a difference occurring within himself, and a sudden blaze of understanding? For it seems to me that a man could more easily fail to notice his transformation if he became, like Caeneus, a man from a woman in answer to a prayer, than if a man who has become moderate, prudent, and courageous instead of cowardly, foolish, and unrestrained, and has changed from a beast-like life into a divine one,
should remain unaware of himself even for a moment. It is rightly said that one ought to set the stone against the level, not the level against the stone; but those who do not set their doctrines against the facts, but rather force the facts to agree with their own hypotheses when they are not naturally disposed to do so, have filled philosophy with many perplexities — and the greatest of these perplexities arises from placing all mankind, except for the one perfect man, in a single category of vice,
a doctrine under which so-called progress has become a riddle, falling only a little short of utter folly, since it makes those who are not yet freed all at once from every passion and disease appear no less wretched than those who have been released from none of the worst vices at all. These people, then, refute themselves: in their lecture-halls they hold that the injustice of Aristides is equal to that of Phalaris, and the cowardice of Brasidas equal
to that of Dolon, and, by Zeus, that Meletus's malice differs not one bit from Plato's ill-judgment; yet in life and in practical affairs they avoid and flee the one sort of men as merciless, while they trust and make use of the other sort in the greatest matters, as men worthy of much confidence. We, however, since we observe that every kind of evil, and especially the disorder and indefiniteness attending the soul, admits of more and less,
and that the stages of progress differ accordingly — just as when a shadow lightens as the wickedness recedes and reason gradually illuminates and purifies the soul — do not think it unreasonable to suppose that an awareness of the change exists, as though for men being brought up from some depth, but that this awareness involves calculations of its own. Consider the first of these straightaway. Just as men sailing with their sails set toward a vast expanse of sea measure their course, as time goes on, against the strength of the wind,
reckoning how far they are likely to have traveled in such a time under so great a force, so too in philosophy a man might make for himself a proof of progress out of the steadiness and continuity of his journey, if he makes not many pauses along the way, and then again sudden dashes and leaps, but instead smoothly and evenly keeps hold of what lies ahead and passes through it without stumbling by means of reason.
For the saying "if you lay down even a little upon a little, and do this often" was well said not only with respect to the growth of money, but it applies to everything, and especially to the increase of virtue, since reason, once habit is added, brings great and completing power; whereas the unevenness and dullness of those who philosophize produce not only pauses in their progress, as on a road, but also relapses,
since vice always presses in at its leisure wherever it finds an opening, and pushes back in the opposite direction. For the astronomers say that the planets come to a standstill once their forward motion has ceased, but in philosophy there is no interval where progress simply stops, no standing still; rather, nature, always having some motion, wishes, as on a balance-scale, to incline either toward the better, or, under the opposite influences,
to be carried off toward the worse. If, then, in accordance with the oracle given by the god — "to war with the men of Cirrha all the days and all the nights" — you find that you are in this way perpetually at war with vice, day and night, and that you have not often relaxed your guard, nor repeatedly admitted from it, as it were, heralds in the form of certain pleasures or indulgences or preoccupations under a truce,
then you would reasonably walk forward with confidence and eagerness toward what remains. And yet, even if there do occur intervals in your philosophizing, if the later ones are steadier and longer than the earlier, that is no small sign that laziness is being squeezed out by toil and practice; but the opposite is a bad sign — many frequent setbacks occurring after only a short time, as though one's eagerness were withering away. For just as the shooting
of a reed, which has the greatest impulse from the start toward smooth and continuous growth in length, at first meets with only a few collisions and obstructions over long intervals, but then, as though gasping for breath, falters upward through weakness and becomes clogged with many close-set joints as the breath of growth takes blows and tremors, so too those who at first make great forward dashes toward philosophy, but then meet many
continuous collisions and rendings, without perceiving any real difference toward the better, end up worn out and give up. "But wings, in turn, grew upon him," for one who is borne along for his own benefit and who cuts through his excuses as though they were a crowd standing in the way of the strength and eagerness of his advance. Just as, then, the sign of love beginning is not delight in the presence of the beloved — for that is common to all — but rather the pain and
anguish of being torn away, so too many are led on by philosophy and seem to lay hold of learning with great ambition, but if they are drawn away by other business and preoccupations, that passion of theirs drains away, and they bear the separation easily. But the man who has the bite of a lover's passion for his beloved would seem to you moderate and gentle while he is present and sharing in philosophy together with you; but when he is torn away and separated,
watch him then — burning, distressed, and irritable toward all his business and occupations, and pursuing philosophy in memory as though driven by an irrational longing for it. For one ought not to take delight in reasoned discourse only while present with it, as with perfumes, and then, once separated, neither seek it nor be troubled — but rather, feeling something like hunger and thirst in these separations, cling to the man who is truly making progress, whether it be
marriage, or wealth, or some friendship, or a military campaign that has come along and caused the separation. For the greater the share a man has taken on from philosophy, the more the part left behind troubles him. And closely related to this, or nearly the same thing, is the oldest indication of progress given by Hesiod — that the road is no longer steep or overly uphill, but easy and smooth and traveled with facility,
as though it were being made level by practice, and produced light and brightness in one's philosophizing out of the perplexity, wandering, and regrets that beginners in philosophy encounter at first, like men who have left behind the land they know but do not yet see clearly the land toward which they are sailing. For having let go of the common and familiar things before learning and grasping the better ones, they are often carried about in the middle,
turning back. This is said to have happened to Sextius the Roman, who had given up honors and offices in the city for the sake of philosophy, but then, in turn, chafed against philosophizing itself and found the reasoning harsh to bear at first, so that he came close to throwing himself from some height. And they tell a similar story about Diogenes of Sinope when he was beginning to philosophize: that while the Athenians were holding a festival, with public feasts and theatrical performances,
and were spending time together in revelry and all-night celebrations, he curled up in some corner as though about to sleep, and fell into a train of reasoning that shook and troubled him no small amount — that he had come, under no compulsion at all, to a laborious and strange way of life, and now sat there, by his own doing, deprived of every good thing. Then, they say, a mouse crept up and busied itself among the crumbs near
him, and he, in turn, roused his resolve and said to himself, as though rebuking and reproaching himself, "What are you saying, Diogenes? This creature feasts on your leavings, and you, noble as you are, because you are not lying drunk over there on soft flowered coverlets, lament your own condition?" So then, when such downward pulls occur not often, and the pushbacks and rallies of one's resolve against them
come quickly, as after a rout, and easily dissolve the distress and disquiet, one must consider one's progress to be secure in some way. But since it is not only from within themselves that the things which shake and turn men who philosophize toward the opposite arise out of weakness, but also the earnest advice of friends and the objections of rivals, offered in laughter and jest,
bend and soften some, and have even shaken others entirely out of philosophy altogether, it would be no small sign of progress if each man shows gentleness toward these things, and is not disturbed or stung by those who speak of and name certain age-mates flourishing at the courts of kings, or receiving dowries in marriage, or coming down to the marketplace attended by crowds for some office or
advocacy. For the man who is unshaken and unmoved by these things has already plainly taken hold of the grip that philosophy properly gives. For it is not possible to stop envying what the many admire, unless the admiration of virtue has taken root in someone. Against men, indeed, some have found the boldness to show contempt, whether out of anger or out of derangement; but of the things men admire, there is none
one can despise without a resolve that is truly firm and secure. That is why men set these things against those and take pride in themselves, as Solon did: "But we will not exchange our virtue for their wealth, since virtue is forever steadfast, while riches now belong to one man, now to another." And Diogenes compared his own move from Athens to Corinth and back again from Corinth to Athens to the Great King's residences — in spring
at Susa, in winter at Babylon, and in summer in Media. And Agesilaus said of the Great King, "How is he greater than I, unless he is also more just?" And Aristotle, writing to Antipater about Alexander, said that it belonged not to him alone to think highly of himself because he ruled over many, but no less to anyone who has correct understanding about the gods.
And Zeno, seeing Theophrastus admired for having many pupils, said, "His chorus is larger, but mine sings more in tune." So then, whenever you set the things of virtue against external things in this way and thereby pour out the envies and jealousies and the stinging, humbling feelings that trouble many who are beginning to philosophize, you make this too a great proof to yourself of your own progress. And the change in one's manner of speaking
is no small thing either. For nearly all who begin to philosophize pursue, above all, arguments aimed at reputation — some, like birds, swooping down for the brilliance and loftiness of natural philosophy out of vanity and ambition, others, as Plato says, "like puppies, delighting in pulling and tearing," rushing toward disputes and puzzles
and sophistries, while most, once they have put on dialectic, immediately provision themselves for sophistry, and some, gathering up useful facts and bits of history, go about it the way Anacharsis said the Greeks used coined money for nothing but counting — in just this way they tally up and measure out arguments, but hold nothing else to be of any benefit to themselves. And so what Antiphanes said comes to pass —
something he said of Plato's own companions. For Antiphanes used to joke that in a certain city, words spoken were instantly frozen by the cold, and only later, once they thawed, would people hear in summer what had been said in winter. He said the same held for the things spoken by Plato to young men: most people only barely came to perceive them, and late, once they had become old men. And they suffer the same thing with regard to the whole of philosophy,
until judgment, having reached a settled condition, begins to converge on and seek out the arguments that produce character and greatness of soul — arguments whose tracks, in Aesop's phrase, turn inward rather than outward. For just as Sophocles said that, having played with the grandeur of Aeschylus, and then with the bitter and artful quality of his own style, he arrived, third, at the kind of diction that is most true to character
and best — so too those who philosophize, when they pass from the showy, artful style to the kind of discourse that touches character and feeling, begin to make true and unpretentious progress. Watch, then, not only when going through the writings of philosophers and listening to their discourses, whether you attend more to words alone than to matters, and whether you leap more eagerly toward what is difficult and out of the ordinary rather than
toward what is useful, substantial, and beneficial — but also, in your engagement with poetry and history, keep watch on yourself to see whether nothing escapes you of what is aptly said toward the correction of character or the relief of passion. For just as Simonides says the bee busies itself among the flowers, seeking out golden honey, while other creatures care only for their color and scent and take nothing else, so too the philosopher
of the others who spend their time with poetry for pleasure and amusement, the man who himself finds and gathers something worth serious attention already seems, through familiarity and love of what is beautiful and akin to him, to have become discerning. As for those who resort to Plato and Xenophon for their diction alone, culling nothing else but their purity and Attic style as if it were dew or down, what else could you call them but people who love the fragrance and bloom of a drug while refusing to admit or even recognize the one that is painless and purgative? But those who are making still greater progress are able to profit not only from words but from spectacles and from everything that happens, and to gather from them what is proper and useful — as they say of Aeschylus and others like him.
Aeschylus, watching a boxing match at the Isthmus, when the theater cried out at a blow one of the boxers took, nudged Ion of Chios and said, "Do you see what training is? The man who was struck says nothing, but the spectators shout." Brasidas, having caught a mouse among some dried figs and been bitten, let it go, then said to himself, "By Heracles, how nothing is so small or weak that it will not fight back if it dares." Diogenes, seeing a man drinking from cupped hands, threw the cup out of his beggar's pouch. So it is that attentiveness and a mind kept taut make training sensitive and receptive to whatever leads toward virtue, from every direction. And this happens all the more when men mix their reasoning with their actions — not only, as Thucydides said, "making their exercises amid dangers," but also amid pleasures and rivalries, in judgments and advocacies and offices, giving themselves as it were proof of their principles, or rather making their principles real by putting them to use. Those who are still learning and working through their studies and considering what they have taken from philosophy, but then straightaway wheel it out into the marketplace or the company of young men or a royal banquet, should be thought no more to be philosophizing than those who sell drugs are practicing medicine.
Indeed such a sophist differs not at all from Homer's bird, which brings to its unfledged nestlings through its mouth whatever it has caught; and it goes badly for him, since he gains nothing of benefit for himself, and digests nothing of what he takes in. Hence it is necessary to examine whether we use reason toward ourselves usefully, and toward others not for the sake of vain reputation or out of ambition, but because we wish rather to learn something and to teach it — and especially whether the contentiousness and combativeness in our inquiries has relaxed, and whether we have stopped binding up our arguments like straps or balls to fling at one another, delighting more in striking down an opponent than in learning or teaching something. For the fairness and gentleness in such exchanges, and not contending as if in a match, nor breaking off in anger, nor mocking after refuting someone or growing bitter when refuted oneself, belong to one who is making sufficient progress.
Aristippus showed this in a certain discussion, when he had been outwitted by a man who had boldness but was otherwise foolish and half-mad. Seeing the man delighted and puffed up, he said, "For my part, I who was refuted will go away to sleep more pleasantly than you who refuted me." One should also take a test of oneself when speaking: whether, when a crowd gathers beyond expectation, we do not shrink back out of cowardice, nor lose heart when contending before few, nor, when it is necessary to speak before the people or before some magistracy, let the occasion slip through lack of preparation in expression — as they say happened with Demosthenes and Alcibiades. For Alcibiades too, though most formidable at grasping the substance of things, was less bold in expression and would hold himself back.
in the midst of his subject matter, and often, while actually speaking, in searching for and pursuing some word or phrase that eluded him, he would fall short. Homer, by contrast, was not troubled at having produced his very first verse unmetrical — such was the confidence his power gave him for what followed. It is therefore all the more likely that those whose rivalry is for virtue and nobility should attend to the occasion and the matter at hand, caring least of all for the noise and applause that greet fine phrasing. And one ought to examine not only one's words but also one's actions, to see whether there is more in them of festival display, of showing off, than of truth. For if genuine love for a boy or a woman seeks no witnesses, but enjoys its pleasure and accomplishes its longing even in secret,
it is all the more likely that the man who loves what is noble and loves wisdom, keeping company with virtue through his actions and putting it to use within himself in silence, should think greatly of himself, needing no one to praise or listen to him — unlike that man who used to call his maidservant at home and shout, "Look, Dionysia, I have stopped being vain!" So too the man who has done something graceful and clever, and then goes about recounting and displaying it everywhere, plainly still looks outward and is still drawn toward reputation; he has not yet become a spectator of virtue, nor seen her waking but only in a dream, wandering among shadows and images, and then, like someone setting up a painting for display, exhibits what he has done. It belongs, then, to the one who is progressing not only to give to a friend or benefit an acquaintance without telling others of it,
but also, having cast the one just vote among many unjust ones, and having refused a shameful request from some rich man or ruler, and having spurned gifts, and — by Zeus — having thirsted in the night and not drunk, or having struggled against the kiss of a beautiful woman or a beautiful youth, as Agesilaus did, to hold this within himself and say nothing of it. For by thus being well pleased with himself — not out of contempt but out of joy
and affection, as being sufficient both witness and spectator of noble deeds — he shows that reason is already taking root and growing within him, and that, in Democritus's phrase, he is becoming accustomed "to draw his delights from himself." Farmers, then, are more pleased to see the ears of grain bending and nodding to the ground, while those that are lifted upward by their own lightness they consider empty and boastful. So too,
among young men who wish to philosophize, those who are most empty and lack any real weight have the boldness, the bearing, the gait, and the countenance of arrogance and disdain, sparing nothing; but as they begin to be filled and to gather fruit from their studies, they lay aside their pomposity and husk. And just as when empty vessels receive liquid the air within escapes, squeezed out, so with men who are being filled
with true goods, vanity gives way and self-conceit grows softer; and as they cease to think highly of themselves on account of a beard and a cloak, they transfer their discipline to the soul instead, and turn what is biting and harsh chiefly against themselves, while dealing more gently with everyone else. The name of philosophy, and the reputation of philosophizing, they no longer seize for themselves as before, nor
claim in writing; rather, if addressed by someone else with that title, a well-bred young man, blushing, would quickly say, "I am no god — why do you liken me to the immortals?" For "of a young woman," as Aeschylus says, the eye that has tasted a man does not fail to betray its blaze; and to a young man who has tasted true progress in philosophy, these words of Sappho apply: "my tongue is broken,"
"and at once a subtle fire has run beneath my skin; my eyes see nothing, and my ears hum" — his gaze appears untroubled and gentle, and hearing him speak you would long to listen. For just as those being initiated at the outset come together amid tumult and shouting, pushing against one another, but when the sacred rites are performed and displayed they attend now with fear and silence, so too at the beginning of philosophy, and around its threshold, one sees much tumult
and chatter and boldness, as some push their way toward reputation crudely and violently; but the one who has come inside and seen the great light, as when the inner shrine is thrown open, takes on another bearing, and follows the reasoning "humbled and composed," in silence and awe, as before a god. To such men applies well what was said in jest about Menedemus: he said that the many who sail to Athens for their studies
are wise at first, then become philosophers, then rhetoricians, and as time goes on, ordinary men — the more they take hold of reason, the more they lay aside their self-conceit and vanity. Now, among those who need medical treatment, those suffering from a toothache or an injured finger go at once, on their own, to those who treat such things, while those with a fever call the doctor to their house and beg for help; but those who have fallen into melancholy
or delirium or derangement cannot even bear, in some cases, to have such men visit them, but drive them away or flee from them, not even perceiving that they are sick, so far gone is their sickness. So too, among wrongdoers, those are incurable who are hostile and savage toward those who reprove and admonish them and grow angry at them, while those who submit to it and welcome it are in a gentler state. To present oneself, though at fault,
to one's reprovers, to speak of one's own failing and lay bare one's own corruption, and not to rejoice in going unnoticed nor be content to remain unrecognized, but to confess and to entreat the one who takes hold of the matter and admonishes — this would be no small sign of progress. As Diogenes somewhere said, one in need of safety ought to seek either a devoted friend or a fiercely hostile enemy, so that, whether refuted or cared for, he might escape vice. But as for the man who,
while displaying a stain or spot on his tunic, or a torn shoe, preens himself before outsiders for an empty freedom from vanity, and, by Zeus, mocks himself as small or hunchbacked, thinking he is thereby playing the bold young man, while the inward shames of his soul — his life's deficiencies, his pettiness, his love of pleasure, his ill nature, his envies — he wraps up and hides like sores, allowing no one
to touch or even look upon them, out of fear of scrutiny — such a man has little share in progress, or rather none at all. But the one who meets these faults head-on, and above all pains and rebukes himself for his own errors, and, second best, presents himself to someone else who admonishes him, enduring it and being purified by such correction, both able and willing to be so — this man truly resembles someone scouring off and loathing his own depravity. For while it is necessary
to feel shame at and avoid even the appearance of wickedness, the man who is more troubled by the reality of vice than by his reputation does not shrink from being spoken ill of, or from speaking ill of himself, if it will make him better. There is a charming remark of Diogenes to a young man who was seen going into a tavern, and who then, to hide it, fled further into the tavern: "The further in you flee," he said, "the more you are in the
tavern." And so it is with the base: the more each of them denies his fault, the more he clothes himself in it and shuts himself up within his vice. Indeed, of the poor, those who pretend to be rich become poorer still because of their pretense; but the man who is truly making progress takes Hippocrates as his model, who confessed and wrote down his own error about the sutures of the skull, reckoning it a terrible thing
that that man, so that others might not suffer the same mistake, should denounce his own error, while he himself, on the way to being saved, should not dare to be corrected, nor to admit his own foolishness and ignorance. And indeed one would set down the sayings of Bias and of Pyrrho as signs not of mere progress but of a greater and more complete state of virtue. For the one thought his companions were making progress whenever, hearing those who reviled them,
they could take it as though the words were, "Stranger, since you seem neither base nor senseless — hail, and rejoice greatly, and may the gods grant you good fortune." And they say that Pyrrho, sailing once and in danger during a storm, pointed to a little pig on board that was calmly eating some scattered barley, and said to his companions that such freedom from disturbance is what one must secure for oneself, through reason and philosophy, if one does not wish to be shaken by whatever chance brings.
Consider too what Zeno used to say. He held that each man should judge his own progress from his dreams: whether he sees himself, in his sleep, neither taking pleasure in anything shameful nor consenting to nor doing any of the terrible and monstrous things that occur in dreams, but rather, as in the depths of an unrippled calm, the soul's imaginative and passionate part shines through clear, diffused by reason.
This too, it seems, Plato had already understood, and so he depicted and gave shape to the imaginative and irrational part of a soul that is by nature tyrannical, showing what it does in sleep: it "attempts to have intercourse with its mother," and rushes after food of every kind, transgressing every law and using its own desires as though they had been set loose — desires which, by day, law confines with shame and fear. Just as, then, well-trained
draft animals, even if their driver lets go the reins, do not attempt to turn aside and leave the road, but proceed in their accustomed order, keeping their course unstumbling, so too in those in whom the irrational part has already become obedient and gentle, tamed by reason, neither during sleep nor under the pressure of illness does it readily wish to run riot or transgress the law in following its desires,
but it keeps and remembers its training, which lends strength and firmness to its self-command. For if the body too, through training in freedom from passion, can naturally render itself and its parts obedient — as when the eyes are held back from tears at pitiful sights, and the heart from leaping in moments of fear, and the private parts are kept modestly still and cause no disturbance in the presence of beautiful men or women — how is it not
all the more likely that the soul's training of its passionate part, once it has taken hold, should, as it were, smooth over and reshape its images and impulses, pressing its effect even into sleep? Such is what is told of the philosopher Stilpo, who seemed in a dream to see Poseidon angry with him for not having sacrificed an ox, as was the custom among the Megarians; and Stilpo, not at all alarmed, said, "What are you saying, O
Poseidon? You come like a child complaining that I did not borrow money to fill the city with the smell of roasting meat, but sacrificed to you moderately, from what I actually had at home?" And indeed it seemed to him that Poseidon smiled, held out his right hand, and said that for his sake he would grant the Megarians a great catch of anchovies. To those, then, whose dreams are so auspicious and bright and untroubled, with nothing fearful or harsh or malicious or
crooked emerging from their sleep, these dreams, they say, are certain reflected gleams of their progress; whereas frenzies and terrors and ignoble flights and childish exultations, and lamentations over pitiful and strange dreams, they liken to a kind of surf and swell — the soul not yet possessing its own principle of order, but still being shaped by opinions and laws, from which, becoming most distant during sleep, it dissolves again and...
and unwound by the emotions. Examine these things yourself as well, whether they belong to progress or to some settled state that already possesses firmness and mastery, unshaken in the face of arguments. Since complete freedom from passion is a great and divine thing, while progress, as they say, resembles a certain relaxation of the passions and a gentleness, we must judge the differences by looking both at the passions themselves and at them in relation to one another.
In relation to themselves: whether we now feel desires, fears, and angers that are gentler than before, quickly removing, by reason, whatever in them is inflamed and burning. In relation to one another: whether we are now more ashamed than afraid, more given to emulation than to envy, and more fond of honor than of money, and in general whether, like singers who err by excess in the Dorian mode rather than the Lydian, we err by being too harsh rather than too soft in our way of living, too slow in our actions rather than too rash, and admirers, beyond what is fitting, of words and of men rather than despisers of them.
For just as the diversion of diseases into the less vital parts of the body is no small sign of improvement, so too the vice of those making progress seems, little by little, to be effaced as it shifts into milder passions.
For the ephors, when Phrynis had added two strings beyond the seven, asked him which he wished to give them leave to cut out, the upper or the lower; and in our case both the upper and the lower parts need some pruning, if we are to settle into the middle and the moderate. Progress relaxes first the excesses and the sharp extremities of the passions, toward which those who rage most fiercely are, in the words of Sophocles, most tightly strung.
Moreover, it has already been said that turning one's judgments toward deeds, and not leaving words as mere words but making them into actions, is especially characteristic of progress. A proof of this is, first, zeal for what is praised, and readiness to do what we admire, while being unwilling even to tolerate what we blame. For while it was natural for all Athenians to praise the daring and courage of Miltiades, Themistocles, by saying that the trophy of Miltiades did not let him sleep but roused him from his slumbers, showed himself at once not merely praising or admiring, but also emulating and imitating. One should therefore think one is making little progress so long as our admiration for those who succeed remains idle and produces no motion of its own toward imitation.
For neither is bodily desire active unless jealousy accompanies it, nor is praise of virtue fervent and effective unless it goads and stings, and instead of envy produces emulation, a longing to be filled with what is noble. For it is not right that only the heart of the philosopher's hearer should be turned, and tears fall, as Alcibiades used to say happens with him under the influence of words; rather, the one who is truly making progress, comparing himself more with the deeds and actions of a good and perfect man, is stung at the same time by the awareness of his own deficiency, yet rejoices because of hope and longing, and is full of a restless impulse, able, in the words of Simonides, "like a foal running beside its dam," to run alongside the good man, longing almost to grow together with him.
For this too is a peculiar mark of true progress: to love and cherish the character of those whose deeds we emulate, and always, with goodwill that renders honor and good report, to be assimilated to it. But whoever has rivalry and envy instilled toward his betters should know that he is stung by jealousy for some reputation or power, not honoring or admiring virtue itself. When, then, we begin to love the good in such a way that we not only, following Plato, consider blessed the self-controlled man himself, "and blessed too the one who hears the words that come from the self-controlled man's mouth," but also, admiring and cherishing even his bearing, his walk, his look, and his smile, are eager to fit and weld ourselves to him, then we must believe we are truly making progress.
And still more, if we admire good men not only when they are prospering, but, just as lovers embrace even the lisping speech and the pallor of those in their prime, and just as the tears and the downcast, grief-stricken, afflicted look of Panthea struck Araspes with amazement, so too we should not shrink in fear from the exile of Aristides, nor the imprisonment of Anaxagoras, nor the poverty of Socrates, nor the condemnation of Phocion, but, deeming virtue worthy of love even along with these things, go to meet it, uttering over each instance the line of Euripides: "Alas, for the noble, how all that is theirs is fair."
For anyone who, up to the point of not being distressed even by what appears dreadful, but rather admiring and emulating it, has reached this pitch of enthusiasm, no one could any longer turn away from noble things. And already, close upon such dispositions, follows the habit, when setting out upon certain actions, or taking up office, or meeting with fortune, of setting before one's eyes those who are or have been good men, and reflecting: "What would Plato have done in this case? What would Epaminondas have said? How would Lycurgus or Agesilaus have appeared?" — adorning and reshaping themselves as before mirrors, and correcting some ignoble tone of voice or resisting some passion. For just as those who have thoroughly learned the names of the Idaean Dactyls use them against their fears as apotropaic charms, calmly reciting each one in turn, so the thought and memory of good men, swiftly present and taking hold of those who are making progress amid every passion and every perplexity, keeps them upright and unfallen.
Let this too, then, be for you a sign of one advancing toward virtue. In addition to this, no longer being greatly disturbed, nor blushing, nor hiding or disguising anything about oneself when a man of reputation and self-control suddenly appears, but facing such situations boldly, carries with it a certain confirmation from one's own conscience. Alexander, for instance, so it seems, on seeing a messenger running up to him overjoyed and holding out his right hand, said, "What, my good fellow, are you about to announce to me — that Homer has come back to life?" — believing that nothing was lacking to his own achievements except a poet to celebrate them after his death. But in a young man improving in character, no love takes root more than the love of adorning himself before noble and good men, and of making his household, his table, his wife, his amusements and his earnest pursuits, and his words spoken or written, open to their view — so that he even feels a pang, remembering a dead father or teacher, that they were not given to see him in such a disposition, and he would pray for nothing from the gods so much as that they, brought back to life, should become witnesses of his life and his actions. Just the opposite, in turn, is true of those who have neglected and corrupted themselves: not even in sleep can they look calmly and fearlessly upon their own kin.
Take, then, in addition to what has been said, no small sign, if you wish: no longer regarding any of one's failings as trivial, but being cautious and attentive to all of them. For just as those who have despaired of becoming wealthy set no store by small expenditures, thinking that nothing great will come of adding a little to a little, while hope, as it draws nearer to its goal, increases along with the wealth one's love of wealth, so too in matters concerning virtue: the man who does not readily concede much to the excuse "what difference does this make?" or "this time it is so, but next time better," but pays attention to each particular, and if ever vice, even in the smallest of his faults, creeps in and wins pardon for itself, chafes and is vexed, shows plainly that he is already acquiring for himself something pure, and does not think it right to be sullied in any way whatsoever. Whereas thinking that nothing is important where shame is concerned makes people careless and heedless about small things.
For indeed, in building a rough stone wall or a coping, it makes no difference whether one throws in any chance piece of wood, or a common stone, or sets underneath some broken slab fallen from a tomb — which is what the base sort of people do, heaping together and piling up every piece of work and action as it happens to come. But those who are making progress, for whom already, as for some sacred and royal edifice of life, a golden foundation has been laid, admit nothing at random among what occurs, but bring and fit each thing into place, as it were, by the plumb-line of reason. It is of this, I think, that Polyclitus was speaking when he said that the work is hardest at the point where the clay comes to the fingernail.

======== Moralia: Regum Et Imperatorum Apophthegmata ========

Artaxerxes, king of the Persians, most mighty imperator Caesar Trajan, thought it no less kingly and humane a thing to receive small gifts graciously and eagerly than to give great ones; for when he was riding along the road and a common laborer, a private man who had nothing else, scooped up water from the river in both hands and offered it to him, he received it gladly and smiled, measuring the gift by the giver's eagerness and not by the usefulness of what was given.
Lycurgus made the sacrifices at Sparta very inexpensive, so that the Spartans might always be able to honor the gods readily and easily from whatever they had at hand. It is in some such spirit that I too now offer you simple gifts and guest-tokens, common firstfruits from philosophy; and along with the eagerness, please accept also the usefulness of these memorable sayings, if indeed they provide
some standard for understanding the characters and the guiding purposes of leading men, since these are revealed more clearly in their words than in their deeds. And yet this collection also contains Lives of the most illustrious among both Romans and Greeks — commanders, lawgivers, and emperors. But most of their actions have chance mixed into them, whereas the things that occur alongside their deeds and their passions and
their fortunes — declarations and exclamations — as though in mirrors, present each man's mind for clear observation. It was for this reason too that Seiramnes the Persian, to those who marveled that although his words showed good sense, his actions did not turn out well, said that he himself was master of his words, but that fortune, together with the king, was master of his actions. There, then, the declarations of these men, together
with their corresponding actions placed beside them, wait for a listener with leisure to spare; but here the sayings themselves, gathered by themselves, like samples and seeds of their lives, will, I think, cause you no trouble in the reading, since in brief compass you get a review of many men worthy of remembrance. The Persians are fond of griffins, because Cyrus, who was the most beloved of their kings, had a hooked, griffin-like appearance. Cyrus used to say
that men force others to provide good things for them when they are unwilling to provide them for themselves, and that it belongs to no one to rule who is not better than those he rules. When the Persians wished to exchange their own mountainous and rugged land for a level and soft country, he did not allow it, saying that both the seeds of plants and the lives of men grow to resemble the lands they live in. Darius, the father of Xerxes,
used to praise himself by saying that in battles and amid dangers he became more prudent. Having set the tribute for his subjects, he summoned the leading men of the provinces and asked them about the tribute, whether it was oppressive; and when they said it was moderate, he ordered each to pay only half. And once, having opened a large pomegranate, when someone asked him what he would wish to have in such quantity as the number of its seeds,
he said, "Men like Zopyrus" — for Zopyrus was a good man and a friend of his. And when Zopyrus mutilated himself, cutting off his own nose and ears, and thereby deceived the Babylonians and, being trusted by them, handed the city over to Darius, Darius often said he would not wish to have a hundred Babylons at the price of not having Zopyrus whole. Semiramis, for her part,
had a tomb built for herself and inscribed on it, "Whatever king has need of money, let him open this monument and take as much as he wishes." So Darius opened it, but found no money; instead he came upon other writing which said, "If you were not an evil man and insatiable for money, you would not have disturbed the resting places of the dead." When Ariamenes, the brother of Xerxes son of Darius, was disputing with him over the kingship, he was coming down from Bactria;
so Xerxes sent him gifts, ordering those who delivered them to say, "With these Xerxes your brother honors you now; but if he is proclaimed king, you shall be greatest of all in his court." And when Xerxes was declared king, Ariamenes at once did obeisance to him and put the diadem on him, and Xerxes in turn gave him the rank second after himself. Angered at the Babylonians when they revolted, and having overpowered them, he ordered
that they should carry no weapons, but should play the harp and the flute, keep brothels, run taverns, and wear robes with folds like women's garments. He said he would not eat Attic dried figs brought to him for sale, but only when he had won the land that produces them. When he caught Greek spies in his camp, he did them no harm, but ordered them to be shown the army freely and then let them go. Artaxerxes son of Xerxes, called Longhand because his
one hand was longer than the other, used to say that it was more kingly to add than to take away; and he was the first to order that, among those hunting with him, whoever was willing and able should throw the first spear. He was also the first to establish a punishment for offending officials that, instead of having their bodies whipped and their heads plucked bald, they should be whipped after removing their garments, and have their tiaras removed instead of having their hair plucked. When he learned that Satibarzanes, his chamberlain, had asked
him for something unjust, and discovered that he had done this for thirty thousand darics, he ordered his treasurer to bring thirty thousand darics; and giving them to him he said, "Take these, Satibarzanes; for by giving them I shall not be poorer, but by doing what you asked I would have become more unjust." Cyrus the Younger, urging the Spartans to be his allies, said that his brother had a heavier heart, could drink more unmixed wine than he,
and bore it better; but that his brother could scarcely stay on his horse when hunting, and in dangers could not even stay on his throne. He urged them to send men to him, promising to give horses to those who came on foot, chariots to those with horses, villages to those who owned land, and to make masters of cities those who owned villages; and as for silver and gold, he promised there would be no counting it,
only weighing. Artaxerxes, the brother of this man, called Mnemon, not only made himself freely accessible to all who approached him, but also ordered his lawful wife to have the curtains of her carriage removed, so that those with requests might approach her along the road. When a poor man brought him an apple of extraordinary size, he received it gladly and said, "By Mithras, this man seems to me
capable, if entrusted with a small city, of making it great." And once, in a certain flight, when his baggage had been plundered, he ate dried figs and barley bread and said, "What pleasure I had never known!" Parysatis, the mother of Cyrus and Artaxerxes, used to tell anyone who was about to speak frankly to the king to use words of fine linen. Orontes, son-in-law of King Artaxerxes, having fallen into disgrace through the king's anger and been condemned, said
that just as the fingers of accountants can represent now tens of thousands, now single units, so too the friends of kings can at one time have all power and at another the least. Memnon, who fought against Alexander on behalf of King Darius, struck with his spear a mercenary soldier who was speaking many abusive and insolent things about Alexander, and said, "I feed you to fight,
not to abuse Alexander." The kings of Egypt, by their own law, made their judges swear an oath that even if the king should order them to render some unjust judgment, they would not render it. Poltys, king of the Thracians, at the time of the Trojan War, when envoys came to him from both the Trojans and the Achaeans together, told Alexander (Paris) that he should give back Helen and take from him two beautiful women instead. Teres, father of Sitalces,
used to say that whenever he was at leisure and not on campaign, he thought he differed in no way from his own grooms. Cotys, in return for a gift of a leopard, gave back a lion. Being by nature quick to anger and a harsh punisher of those who erred in his service, when a stranger once brought him fragile and delicate earthenware vessels, cleverly and exquisitely worked with carvings and engravings, he gave gifts to the stranger, but the vessels
he smashed all of them, saying, "So that I may not, out of anger, punish more harshly those who break them." Idanthyrsus, king of the Scythians, against whom Darius crossed the river, tried to persuade the tyrants of the Ionians to break the bridge over the Ister and depart; and when they were unwilling to do so, out of loyalty to Darius, he called them good and unresisting slaves. Anteas wrote to Philip, "You rule the Macedonians, men trained to make war on
men; but I rule the Scythians, who can also fight hunger and thirst." When Philip's envoys came to him, he was currycombing his own horse and asked them, "Does Philip do this too?" And when he took Ismenias, the finest flute-player, captive, he ordered him to play the flute; and when the others marveled at the playing, he himself swore that he found more pleasure in hearing his horse neigh. Scyluros, who left behind eighty sons,
when he was about to die, held out a bundle of javelins to each of them and told them to break it; and when all of them gave up, he himself drew out the javelins one by one and easily broke every one, teaching them thereby that as long as they stood together they would remain strong, but if they broke apart and fell into faction they would be weak. Gelon the tyrant, when he had defeated the Carthaginians in war, in making peace with them forced them to write into the treaty that they would also stop sacrificing their children to Cronus. He often led the Syracusans out, as though on campaign,
but really to planting, so that the land might be improved through cultivation and the men themselves not grow worse through idleness. And when he asked money from the citizens and they raised an uproar, he told them to ask for it back as a loan to be repaid, and he repaid it after the war. Once at a banquet, when the lyre was being passed around and the others in turn tuned it and sang, he ordered his horse brought in and leapt lightly and easily onto it. Hiero, who
was tyrant after Gelon, used to say that no one who spoke frankly to him was ever untimely in doing so. He thought that those who divulged a secret wronged not only themselves but also those to whom they divulged it; for we hate not only those who reveal things but also those who hear what we do not wish revealed. When someone reproached him for the bad smell of his mouth, he blamed his wife for never having told him of it; and she said,
"I thought that all men smelled that way." To Xenophanes of Colophon, who said that he could scarcely support two servants, he replied, "But Homer, whom you disparage, supports more than ten thousand even though he is dead." He fined Epicharmus the comic poet because he had said something indecent in the presence of Hiero's own wife. Dionysius the Elder, when the public speakers were being chosen by lot according to letter, and the letter M fell to him,
when someone said, "You talk foolishly, Dionysius" (using a word beginning with M), replied, "No, I shall be a monarch" (also beginning with M); and having spoken publicly he was immediately chosen general by the Syracusans. And when at the beginning of his tyranny he was under siege, the citizens having risen up against him, his friends advised him to give up his power, if he did not wish to be killed after being overpowered; but when he saw an ox being slaughtered quickly by a butcher and falling, he said, "Is it not shameful
that we, fearing a death so brief, should abandon so great a power out of fear?" And when he learned that his son, to whom he intended to leave his rule, had seduced the wife of a free man, he asked him angrily what he was conscious of that had made him do such a thing; and when the young man said, "You did not have a tyrant for a father," he replied, "Nor will you have a son, unless you stop doing such things." Again, when he went in to see him
and saw a great quantity of gold and silver cups, he cried out, "There is no tyrant in you, since with the very cups you take from me you have made no friend for yourself." When he was exacting money from the Syracusans, and then saw them wailing and begging and saying they had none, he ordered other demands made of them, and did this two or three times; but when, after imposing still more, he heard
that they were laughing and joking as they went about the marketplace, he ordered it stopped, saying, "Now they have nothing, since they hold us in contempt." When his mother, past marriageable age, wished to be given to a husband, he said that he could compel the laws of the city, but not the laws of nature. Though he punished other wrongdoers harshly, he spared the cutpurses, so that the Syracusans
might stop dining and getting drunk together. When a certain stranger claimed he would tell him privately, and teach him, how to foreknow those who plotted against him, he told him to speak; and when the man came forward and said, "Give me a talent, so that you may seem to have heard the signs of the plotters," he gave it, pretending he had heard something and marveling at the man's method. To one who asked whether he had any leisure he said, "May that never happen to me."
And when he heard that two young men, over their wine, had said many abusive things about him and about his tyranny, he invited both to dinner; and seeing that one grew drunk and talkative, while the other drank sparingly and cautiously, he released the first as one who had spoken badly through drunkenness by nature, but put to death the second as ill-disposed and hostile by deliberate choice. When some
blamed him for honoring and advancing a wicked man who was disliked by the citizens, he said, "But I actually want the man who is hated more than I am." And when envoys from Corinth, to whom he was offering gifts, declined them on account of the law which did not allow envoys to accept gifts from a ruler, he said they were doing a terrible thing, in doing away with the one good thing tyrannies have, and teaching
that even to be well treated by a tyrant is a fearful thing. Hearing that one of his citizens had gold buried at home, he ordered him to bring it to him; and when the man secretly kept back a little and, moving to another city, bought a piece of land with it, Dionysius summoned him and ordered him to take back the whole amount, since he had begun to make use of his wealth and no longer rendered the useful useless. Dionysius the Younger used to say
that he supported many sophists, not because he admired them, but because he wished to be admired through them. When Polyxenus the dialectician said he refuted him, he replied, "To be sure, in words; but I refute you in deeds — for having abandoned your own affairs, you attend to me and to mine." After he fell from power, to one who asked him, "What good did Plato and philosophy do you?" he said,
"That I bear so great a change of fortune easily." And when asked how it was that his father, though poor and a private citizen, acquired the rule of Syracuse, while he himself, though he had it and was the son of a tyrant, lost it, he said, "My father entered upon his course of action when democracy was hated, but I when tyranny was envied." And when someone else asked him the same question, he said, "My father
left me his own tyranny, but not his own fortune." Agathocles was the son of a potter, and when he became master of Sicily and was proclaimed king, he used to have earthenware cups set out alongside the golden ones, and would show them to the young men, saying that by such humble work as he had once done he had now achieved such things, through diligence and courage. And once, while he was besieging a city, some of the men on the wall taunted him, saying, "O potter,
"How will you pay the soldiers' wages?" And he answered gently, smiling, "Whenever I take this city." When he had taken it by force he sold the captives, and said, "If you abuse me again, I shall have to take the matter up with your masters." When the sailors of the Ithacans complained that his men, landing on their island, had carried off some of their livestock, he said, "Why, your own king came to us once, and not only took our sheep but blinded the shepherd besides."
Dion, who had driven Dionysius out of his tyranny, on hearing that Callippus — the man he trusted most among his friends and guests — was plotting against him, could not bring himself to put him to the test, saying it was better to die than to live guarding oneself not only against enemies but against friends.
Archelaus, asked at a drinking party by one of his companions — a man agreeable enough but not exactly refined — for a golden cup, ordered his slave to give it to Euripides instead. When the man expressed surprise, Archelaus said, "You are fit to ask, but he is fit to receive even without asking." When a chattering barber asked him, "How shall I cut your hair?" he replied, "In silence." When Euripides, at a banquet, embraced and kissed the handsome Agathon, who by then had a beard,
Archelaus said to his friends, "Do not be surprised — for even the autumn of the beautiful is beautiful." When Timotheus the singer to the lyre, having hoped for more and received less, showed plainly that he held it against him, and once, singing a certain little song with the words "and you praise earth-born silver," aimed the jibe at him, Archelaus struck back at him: "And you ask for it." And when someone once splashed water on him,
and his friends urged him to be angry at the man, he said, "No — he did not splash it on me, but on the man he took me to be." Theophrastus records of Philip, father of Alexander, that he surpassed the other kings not only in fortune but also in character, being more moderate than they. He used to say that the Athenians were fortunate, since they could find ten generals every year;
for he himself, in all his many years, had found only one general — Parmenio. When many successes and fine achievements were reported to him all in a single day, he said, "O Fortune, do me some small ill in return for so many and so great goods." And when, after defeating the Greeks, some advised him to hold the cities with garrisons, he said he preferred to be called a good man for a long time rather than a master for a short one.
When his friends urged him to banish a slanderer, he refused, saying he did not want the man going about elsewhere speaking ill of him. When Smicythus accused Nicanor of always speaking ill of Philip, and his companions thought he should be summoned and punished, Philip said, "But surely Nicanor is not the worst of the Macedonians; we must look into it, in case the fault lies with us." So when he learned that
Nicanor was hard pressed by poverty and had been neglected by him, he ordered that a gift be given to him. And when Smicythus again reported that Nicanor now went about praising him wonderfully to everyone, Philip said, "You see, then, that it lies with ourselves whether we are spoken well of or ill." He said he was grateful to the popular leaders of the Athenians, because by abusing him
they made him a better man, both in speech and in character: "for I try to prove them liars in both my words and my deeds at once." When those Athenians who had been captured at Chaeronea were released by him without ransom, but then demanded back their cloaks and bedding as well and complained to the Macedonians about it, Philip laughed and said, "Do the Athenians not think that they have been beaten by us at dice?"
When his collarbone was broken in war, and the attending doctor kept asking for something every day, he said, "Take whatever you like — you hold the key." Of two brothers, Amphoterus and Hecaterus, seeing that Hecaterus was sensible and capable while Amphoterus was foolish and dull, he said that Hecaterus was "both," and Amphoterus was "neither."
He said that those who advised him to treat the Athenians harshly were absurd, since they were urging a man who did everything and suffered everything for the sake of reputation to throw away the very theater of that reputation. Called on once to judge between two scoundrels, he ordered the one to flee Macedonia and the other to pursue him. When he was about to encamp in a fine spot and learned there was no fodder for the pack animals, he said,
"Such is our life — must we live even by the schedule of donkeys?" Wishing to take a certain stronghold, and being told by his scouts that it was altogether difficult and impregnable, he asked whether it was so difficult that not even a donkey laden with gold could approach it. When the followers of Lasthenes of Olynthus complained and grew angry that some of Philip's men called them traitors,
he said that Macedonians were by nature blunt and rustic, and called a spade a spade. He advised his son to deal graciously with the Macedonians, winning for himself the goodwill of the many, while it was still possible to be kindly toward them under another's rule as king. He advised that among the men of power in the cities one should acquire both the good as friends and the bad as well, and then make use of the one
and use up the other. To Philo the Theban, who had been his benefactor and host when he lived in Thebes as a hostage, and who later would accept no gift from him in return, he said, "Do not deprive me of the one thing I cannot be beaten in — being overcome by kindness and gratitude." When many captives had been taken, he sold them sitting there himself, his tunic drawn up in an unseemly way; one of those being sold cried out, "Spare me, Philip,
for I am your father's friend." When Philip asked, "How did that come about, and how, my good man?" the man said, "Come closer, I want to tell you privately." So when he was brought near, he said, "Pull your cloak down a little lower — you are sitting indecently like that." And Philip said, "Let him go, for he really was well-disposed and a friend all along, unnoticed." Once, invited to dinner by a stranger,
he brought many companions along the way, and seeing his host flustered because the preparations were not enough, he went ahead of his friends and told each of them to leave room for the cake course; and they, obeying and expecting it, ate little, and so there was enough for everyone. When Hipparchus of Euboea died, Philip was clearly grieved, and when someone said, "But surely he died in the prime of life," Philip answered, "For himself, yes,
but for me too soon — for he died before I could repay him a gratitude worthy of our friendship." Learning that Alexander held it against him that he was fathering children by several women, he said, "Well then, since you will have many rivals for the kingship, prove yourself noble and good, so that you may win the kingdom not through me but through yourself." He also urged Alexander to attend to Aristotle and study philosophy,
"so that," he said, "you may not do many of the things which I now regret having done." When he had appointed one of Antipater's friends to be a judge, and then noticed that the man dyed his beard and his hair, he removed him from office, saying that a man not to be trusted in his hair should not be considered trustworthy in his affairs. Once, judging a case brought by a certain Machaetas, and dozing off, he did not pay full attention to what was just and condemned the man; and when Machaetas
cried out that he was appealing the verdict, Philip, angered, said, "To whom?" And Machaetas said, "To you yourself, O king — if you will listen wide awake and paying attention." At the time Philip got up and left it there; but afterward, being more himself and realizing that Machaetas had been wronged, he did not overturn the verdict, but paid the fine of the judgment himself. When Harpalus, on behalf of his kinsman and relative Crates, who was on trial
for wrongdoing, asked that the penalty be paid so that Crates might be released from the trial and not be reviled, Philip said, "It is better that this man himself, rather than we, be spoken ill of on his account." When his friends grew indignant that the Peloponnesians, who had received good treatment from him, hissed him at the Olympic games, he said, "What then, if they should suffer ill?" Having slept a long while on campaign and then risen, he said, "I slept safely, for Antipater
was keeping watch." And again, when he was sleeping by day and the Greeks gathered at his doors grew indignant and complained, Parmenio said, "Do not be surprised that Philip is sleeping now — for while you were sleeping, this man was awake." When a lyre-player at dinner wished to correct him and lecture him about music, the player said, "May it never happen to you, O king, to fare so badly
that you should know these matters better than I do." When he had quarreled with his wife Olympias and his son, and Demaratus of Corinth arrived, Philip asked him how the Greeks stood with one another; and Demaratus said, "You are certainly well placed to talk about the harmony of the Greeks, when your own household stands like this toward you." Philip, taking the point, put aside his anger and was reconciled with
them. When a poor old woman insisted on having her case judged by him personally and kept pestering him, he said he had no time; and the old woman cried out, "Then do not be king either." He was so struck by what she said that he heard not only her case but everyone else's at once. Alexander, while still a boy, took no joy in Philip's many successes, but said to the boys raised with him, "My father
will leave nothing for me." And when the boys said, "But he is winning all this for you," he answered, "What good is it if I have much but achieve nothing?" Being light and swift of foot, and urged by his father to run the sprint at Olympia, he said, "Only if I were to have kings as my rivals." When a slave girl was brought to him late one evening to spend the night with him, he asked her,
"why so late?" And when she said, "I was waiting for my husband to go to bed," he sharply rebuked his attendants, as having very nearly made him an adulterer through their fault. When he was burning incense to the gods lavishly and taking great handfuls of frankincense, Leonidas his tutor, who was present, said, "You may burn incense so extravagantly, my boy, once you have conquered the land that produces it." So when he had conquered it, he sent Leonidas a letter: "I have sent you a hundred talents
of frankincense and cassia, so that you need no longer be stingy toward the gods, knowing that we now hold the land that bears these spices too." When he was about to fight the battle at the Granicus, he urged the Macedonians to dine without stint and bring everything out into the open, since tomorrow they would be dining on the enemy's provisions. When a certain Perillus, one of his friends, asked for a dowry for his little daughters, he ordered fifty talents given to him; and when Perillus said
ten would be enough, Alexander said, "Enough for you to receive, perhaps, but not enough for me to give." He instructed his treasurer to give Anaxarchus the philosopher whatever he might ask; and when the treasurer reported that he was asking for a hundred talents, Alexander said, "He does well to ask, since he knows he has a friend both able and willing to give such a sum." At Miletus, having seen many statues of athletes who had won at Olympia and Delphi,
he said, "And where were such bodies as these when the barbarians were besieging your city?" When Ada, the queen of the Carians, kept sending him, out of her eagerness to please, dainties and pastries prepared with extravagant care by her own cooks and bakers, he said that he had better cooks of his own: for breakfast, a night march, and for dinner, a light breakfast. Once, when everything had been made ready for battle,
the generals asked whether there was anything further needed besides these preparations; he said nothing, except that the beards of the Macedonians should be shaved. When Parmenio expressed surprise, he said, "Do you not know that in battle there is no better handhold than a beard?" When Darius offered him ten thousand talents and to divide Asia between them equally, and Parmenio said, "I would accept, if I were Alexander," Alexander replied, "And so would I, by Zeus,
if I were Parmenio." He answered Darius that the earth could not endure two suns, nor Asia two kings. When he was about to risk everything at Arbela, against a million men drawn up against him, his friends came to him accusing the soldiers of talking among themselves in their tents and agreeing among themselves to bring none of the spoils to the royal treasury but to keep the gain for themselves.
He smiled and said, "You bring good news — for I hear the talk of men preparing to win, not to flee." And many of the soldiers, coming up to him, said, "O king, take courage, and do not fear the multitude of the enemy, for they will not withstand even our stench." As the army was being drawn up in battle order, seeing one of the soldiers fitting the throwing-strap to his javelin, he expelled him from the phalanx as useless, for the man
"is only now getting ready, when the time has come to use his weapons." When he was reading a letter from his mother containing secret accusations against Antipater, with Hephaestion, as usual, reading along beside him, he did not stop him; but when he had finished reading it, he took off his own ring and pressed the seal to Hephaestion's lips. When the prophet at the temple of Ammon addressed him as son of Zeus, he said it was no
wonder, "for Zeus is by nature the father of all, but he makes the best of them his own." When he was struck by an arrow in the leg, and many of those who habitually called him a god ran up to him, he said, with a smile spreading over his face, "This, as you see, is blood, and not the ichor that flows in the veins of the blessed gods." When some praised Antipater's frugality, for living simply and austerely,
Alexander said, "On the outside Antipater wears a plain white border, but within he is purple through and through." Once in winter and cold weather, when one of his friends was entertaining him and brought in a small brazier with a meager fire, Alexander told him to bring in either more wood or frankincense instead. When Antipatrides brought a beautiful lyre-girl to dinner, Alexander, struck by her looks, asked Antipatrides whether
he happened to be in love with the woman; and when the man admitted it, Alexander said, "You wretch, will you not take the woman away from the banquet at once?" Again, when Cassander tried to force a kiss from Pytho, the beloved of Euius the flute-player, Alexander, seeing Euius distressed, leapt up in anger against Cassander, crying out, "Is it not even permitted, thanks to you, for a man to be in love?" When he was sending the sick and disabled Macedonians back to the sea,
one man who was not sick had himself enrolled among the sick. When he was brought before Alexander and questioned, he admitted that he had given a false excuse because he was in love with Telesippa, who was leaving for the coast. Alexander asked, "To whom should one apply about Telesippa?" and on learning that she was a free woman, said, "Well then, Antigenes, let us persuade Telesippa to stay with us — for to force her
— for since she is free, it is not for us to force her.
When some Greek mercenaries in the enemy's service fell into his hands, he ordered the Athenians kept in chains, on the ground that they took pay for soldiering while drawing public support from home, and likewise the Thessalians, because they neglected to farm the best land in Greece; but he released the Thebans, saying, "These alone, because of us, have neither city nor country left."
When an Indian reputed to be the best of archers, said to be able to shoot an arrow through a ring, was taken prisoner, Alexander ordered him to give a demonstration; when the man refused, Alexander grew angry and ordered him put to death. But as the man was being led away he told his escort that he had not practiced for many days and was afraid of missing. When Alexander heard this he was astonished, and released him with gifts, because the man had preferred to die rather than appear unworthy of his own reputation.
When Taxiles, one of the kings of India, met him and urged him neither to fight nor to make war, but — if Alexander were the weaker — to accept good treatment, and if the stronger, to do good in turn, Alexander answered that this very question, which of them should prevail by doing good, was what must be fought over. And hearing about the famous Rock of Aornos in India, that the place was hard to take but its holder was a coward, he said, "Now the place is easy to take." When another man who held a rock thought impregnable surrendered himself along with the rock to Alexander, Alexander ordered him to command his own forces and added territory besides, saying, "This man seems to me to have good sense, for he trusted himself to a good man rather than to a strong position."
After the capture of the rock, when his friends said that he had surpassed Heracles in his exploits, he replied, "But I do not consider my own achievements, together with my command, worth a single word of Heracles'." When he noticed that some of his friends were not playing but gambling in earnest at dice, he fined them. Among his foremost and best friends he seemed to honor Craterus most of all, but to love Hephaestion; "for Craterus," he said, "loves the king, but Hephaestion loves Alexander."
When he sent fifty talents to Xenocrates the philosopher and Xenocrates would not accept them, saying he had no need of them, Alexander asked, "Does Xenocrates then have no friend either? For my part," he said, "even the wealth of Darius has barely sufficed for my friends." When Porus, after the battle, was asked by Alexander, "How am I to treat you?" he said, "Like a king," and on being asked further, "Nothing else?" he replied, "Everything is contained in 'like a king.'" Alexander, admiring both his good sense and his manly courage, added to him more territory than he had held before. On learning that someone was slandering him, he said, "It is a king's lot to be spoken ill of for doing good." As he lay dying, looking upon his companions, he said, "I see that my funeral will be a great one." When he had died, Demades the orator said that the Macedonian camp, through lack of a leader, looked like the blinded Cyclops.
Ptolemy, son of Lagus, for the most part dined and slept at his friends' houses; and whenever he himself gave a dinner, he would send for their cups and coverlets and tables, since he himself possessed nothing beyond what was necessary, but said that it was more kingly to make others rich than to be rich oneself.
Antigonus collected money strenuously; and when someone said, "But Alexander was not like this," he replied, "Naturally — he was reaping Asia, but I am gleaning after him." Seeing some of his soldiers playing ball in their breastplates and helmets, he was pleased, and summoned their officers, wishing to praise them; but when he heard that the men were in fact drinking, he gave those officers' commands to the soldiers instead. When all marveled that, now an old man, he behaved gently and mildly in his affairs, he said, "Formerly I had need of power, but now of glory and goodwill." When his son Philip, in the presence of a good many people, asked him, "When are we going to break camp?" he said, "Are you afraid you alone will not hear the trumpet?" When the young man was eager to take lodging with a widow who had three attractive daughters, Antigonus called the officer in charge of billeting and said, "Will you not get my son out of these cramped quarters?" After a long illness, when he had recovered, he said, "It was no bad thing; the illness reminded us not to think too highly of ourselves, since we are mortal." When Hermodotus, in his poems, called him a son of the Sun, he said, "My chamber-pot bearer knows nothing of this." When someone said that all things are fine and just for kings, he said, "Yes, by Zeus, for the kings of barbarians; but for us, only fine things are fine, and only just things are just." When his brother Marsyas was on trial and asked that his case be heard privately at home, he said, "No — it shall be in the market-place, before everyone, if we are doing nothing wrong." Once, in winter, in a region short of supplies, he was forced to encamp, and some of the soldiers, not knowing he was nearby, cursed him; parting the tent-flap with his staff he said, "You will be sorry, unless you move further off before you curse us." When Aristodemus, one of his friends who was reputed to have been a cook's son, advised him to cut back his expenditures and gifts, he said, "Your words, Aristodemus, smell of the apron." When the Athenians enrolled one of his slaves as a citizen, honoring him as a free man, he said, "I would not wish a single Athenian to be flogged by me." When a young pupil of Anaximenes the rhetorician delivered before him a speech he had carefully prepared beforehand, Antigonus, wishing to learn something, questioned him; and when the young man fell silent, he said, "What do you say — or is this exactly what was written on your tablets?" Hearing another orator say that the season, bringing snow, had left the country bare of fodder, he said, "Will you not stop treating me as a crowd?" When Thrasyllus the Cynic asked him for a drachma, he said, "That is not a kingly gift." And when the man said, "Then give me a talent," he replied, "That is not a Cynic's due to receive."
When he sent his son Demetrius with many ships and forces to free the Greeks, he said that this glory would be kindled, like a beacon from a watchtower in Greece, over the whole inhabited world. When Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger-eel and shaking the pan himself, Antigonus, standing behind him, said, "Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote of the deeds of Agamemnon?" And Antagoras replied, "But do you, O king, think that Agamemnon, while doing those deeds, busied himself with finding out whether anyone in the camp was boiling a conger?"
Having seen in a dream Mithridates reaping a golden harvest, Antigonus resolved to kill him, and telling his son Demetrius, bound him by oath to silence; but Demetrius took Mithridates along and, walking with him beside the sea, wrote on the sand with the butt-spike of his spear, "Flee, Mithridates." Understanding, the man fled to Pontus, and there he continued to reign.
Demetrius, while besieging the Rhodians, captured in a certain suburb a panel painted by Protogenes the painter, depicting Ialysus. When the Rhodians sent envoys begging him to spare the painting, he said he would rather destroy the portraits of his own father than that picture. Having made a truce with the Rhodians, he left the siege-engine behind with them, a monument at once of his own grandeur and of their courage. When the Athenians revolted, he captured the city, already suffering badly from famine, and immediately, an assembly having been convened for him, gave them a free gift of grain; and while addressing them about this, he made a slip in grammar. When one of those seated said how the word ought to have been pronounced, correcting him, he said, "Well then, for this correction too I grant you five thousand more measures."
Antigonus the Second, when his father Demetrius had been captured, and one of his friends sent word urging him to pay no attention to anything his father might write under compulsion from Seleucus, nor to give up any of the cities, wrote instead to Seleucus himself, surrendering to him his whole realm and offering himself as a hostage, on condition that his father Demetrius be released. When he was about to fight a naval battle against Ptolemy's generals, and the helmsman said the enemy's ships were far more numerous, he said, "And how many ships do you reckon me, myself present, worth?" Once, retreating before an advancing enemy, he said he was not fleeing but pursuing an advantage that lay behind him. When a young man, son of a brave father but himself not thought a particularly good soldier, claimed he ought to receive his father's allowances, Antigonus said, "But I, young man, give pay and gifts for manly courage, not for having a courageous father." When Zeno of Citium died, the philosopher he admired most of all, he said that the theater of his own achievements had been taken away.
Lysimachus, overpowered by Dromichaetes in Thrace, and, through thirst, surrendering both himself and his army, when he had drunk after being taken prisoner, said, "O gods, for how small a pleasure have I made myself a slave instead of a king!" To Philippides the comic poet, his friend and intimate, he said, "What of mine shall I share with you?" and Philippides replied, "Whatever you wish, except your secrets."
Antipater, on hearing of Parmenio's death at Alexander's hands, said, "If Parmenio was plotting against Alexander, whom can one trust? But if not, what is to be done?" Of Demades the orator, now grown an old man, he said that, like a sacrificial victim, all that was left of him was the belly and the tongue.
Antiochus the Third wrote to the cities that if he should ever issue an order contrary to the laws, they should disregard it, as issued in ignorance. Seeing the priestess of Artemis, who appeared exceedingly beautiful, he at once broke camp and left Ephesus, fearing lest he be forced against his judgment to do something unholy.
Antiochus, son of Hierax. Antiochus, surnamed Hawk, made war on his brother Seleucus for the kingship; and when Seleucus, defeated by the Gauls, was nowhere to be found and was believed to have been cut down, Antiochus set aside his purple robe and put on a gray cloak. But shortly afterward, learning that his brother was safe, he offered thank-offerings to the gods and had the cities under his rule wear garlands.
Eumenes, plotted against by Perseus, was thought to have died; and when the report reached Pergamum, his brother Attalus put on the diadem, married his wife, and became king. But when he learned that his brother was approaching, alive, he went to meet him just as he was accustomed, with his bodyguards, spear in hand. Eumenes greeted him warmly and, whispering in his ear, said, "Do not be in such a hurry to marry, before you see me dead" — and for the rest of his life said or did nothing else suspicious toward him, but even at his death left him his wife and kingdom. In return, Attalus, though he had many children of his own, raised none of them, but handed over the kingdom, while still living, to Eumenes' son once he had come of age.
Pyrrhus' sons, while still boys, asked him to whom he would leave the kingdom; and Pyrrhus said, "To whichever of you keeps the sharper sword." Asked whether Python or Caphisias was the better flute-player, he said, "Polyperchon is the better general." When, having engaged the Romans, he won two victories but lost many of his friends and officers, he said, "If we win one more battle against the Romans, we are undone." When he sailed away from Sicily after his failure there, turning back to his friends he said, "What a wrestling-ground we are leaving for the Romans and the Carthaginians!" When his soldiers addressed him as "Eagle," he said, "Of course — how could I not be, when I am borne aloft by your weapons as by swift wings?" Hearing that some young men, while drinking, had said much that was abusive about him, he ordered them all brought before him the next day. When they were brought, he asked the first whether they had said these things about him, and the young man replied, "We did say that, O king — and we would have said more, if we had had more wine."
Antiochus, who campaigned a second time against the Parthians, having strayed from his friends and attendants during a hunt and pursuit, entered unrecognized a farmstead of poor people; and over dinner, when the talk turned to the king, he heard it said that in other respects he was a good man, but, entrusting too much to worthless friends, he overlooked most things and often neglected what was necessary because he was too fond of hunting. At the time he said nothing; but at daybreak, when his guardsmen arrived at the farmstead and he was revealed, and the purple robe and diadem were brought to him, he said, "But it is only from this day that I have adopted you — yesterday, for the first time, I heard true words about myself." When the Jews, while he was besieging Jerusalem, asked for a seven-day truce for their greatest festival, he not only granted it, but also had bulls with gilded horns and a quantity of incense and spices paraded up to the very gates, and, handing the sacrifice over to their priests, himself returned to his camp. The Jews, in astonishment, surrendered themselves to him immediately after the festival.
Themistocles, while still a young man, used to roll about in drinking bouts and with women; but once Miltiades, as general, defeated the barbarians at Marathon, Themistocles was no longer to be found behaving disorderly. To those who marveled at the change, he said that Miltiades' trophy would not let him sleep or be idle.
Asked whether he would rather have been Achilles or Homer, he said, "Would you yourself rather be the man who wins at Olympia, or the one who proclaims the winners?" When Xerxes was coming down upon Greece with his great armada, Themistocles, fearing that Epicydes the demagogue, a greedy and cowardly man, might become general and ruin the city, persuaded him with money to withdraw from the generalship. When Adeimantus, who did not dare to fight at sea, said to Themistocles, as he was urging and exhorting the Greeks, "Themistocles, at the games they whip those who start before the signal," Themistocles replied, "Yes, Adeimantus — but they do not crown those left behind." When Eurybiades raised his staff as if to strike him, Themistocles said, "Strike, if you will — but hear me out." Failing to persuade Eurybiades to fight in the straits, he secretly sent word to the barbarian king urging him not to fear the Greeks' flight; and when the king, persuaded, was defeated in the sea-battle fought where it favored the Greeks, Themistocles again sent to him, urging him to flee to the Hellespont with all speed, as the Greeks were planning to break the bridge — so that in saving the Greeks he might also seem to be saving him. When a man of Seriphus told him that he owed his fame not to himself but to his city, Themistocles said, "True — but I would not have become famous had I been a Seriphian, nor would you, had you been an Athenian." When Antiphates the handsome, who had once spurned and scorned Themistocles' love, later, once Themistocles had won great reputation and power, began to approach him and flatter him, Themistocles said, "Young man, we have both come to our senses late, but we have come to them." To Simonides, who was asking a favor for someone
...unjust verdict from Simonides, he said that Simonides would no more become a good poet by singing out of tune than he himself would become a good magistrate by judging contrary to law. He used to say that his son, who ordered his mother about, had more power than anyone in Greece: for the Athenians ruled the Greeks, he ruled the Athenians, the boy's mother ruled him, and the boy ruled his mother. Of the suitors for his daughter, preferring the decent man to the wealthy one, he said he was looking for a man in need of money rather than money in need of a man. When selling a piece of land, he ordered the crier to announce that it also had a good neighbor. When the Athenians were abusing him, he said, "Why do you tire of being well served so often by the same man?" He compared himself to plane trees, under which people run for shelter when caught in a storm, but which, once fair weather returns, they strip and lop as they pass by. Mocking the Eretrians, he said that, like cuttlefish, they had a blade but no heart.
When he was first driven out of Athens, and then out of Greece, he went up to the Persian king, and, being ordered to speak, said that speech resembled embroidered tapestries: like them, when unrolled it displayed its patterns, but when folded up it hid and spoiled them. He also asked for time, so that, having learned the Persian language, he might address the king himself and not through an interpreter. Having been honored with many gifts and quickly become rich, he said to his children, "Children, we would have been ruined, if we had not been ruined."
Myronides, leading a campaign against the Boeotians, ordered the Athenians to march out; when the hour arrived and the captains said not everyone was yet present, he said, "Those who are going to fight are present" — and using these eager men, he defeated the enemy.
Aristides the Just always conducted his political affairs on his own and avoided political clubs, on the ground that the power derived from friends encourages wrongdoing. When the Athenians were setting about an ostracism, an illiterate and uncouth man came up to him holding a potsherd and asked him to write on it the name of Aristides. "Do you actually know Aristides?" he asked. When the man said he did not know him, but was simply annoyed at his being called "the Just," Aristides said nothing, wrote his own name on the shard, and gave it back. Though an enemy of Themistocles, when sent out as an envoy together with him he said, "Themistocles, shall we leave our enmity behind at the border? For if it seems good, we can take it up again when we return." After assessing the tribute for the Greeks, he returned poorer by exactly the amount he had spent on the mission. When Aeschylus, writing of Amphiaraus, composed the lines, "For he wishes not to seem but to be the best, reaping the deep furrow of his mind, from which good counsels spring," at these words everyone turned to look at Aristides.
Pericles, whenever he was about to take command, would say to himself as he put on his cloak, "Watch yourself, Pericles — you are about to rule free men, both Greeks and Athenians." He urged the Athenians to remove Aegina, like a piece of rheum, from the eye of the Piraeus. When a friend asked him for false testimony that was also to be given under oath, he said he was a friend only as far as the altar. When he was about to die, he counted himself blessed that no Athenian had ever put on mourning clothes because of him.
Alcibiades, while still a boy, was caught in a hold in the wrestling school; unable to escape, he bit the hand of the one throwing him. When the other said, "You bite like a woman," he replied, "No indeed — like a lion." Owning a very beautiful dog he had bought for seven thousand drachmas, he cut off its tail, saying, "so that the Athenians will talk about this and pry into nothing else about me." Going into a schoolroom, he asked for a copy of a book of the Iliad; when the teacher said he had nothing of Homer's, Alcibiades gave him a punch and walked on. Coming to Pericles' door and learning that he had no time free because he was working out how to render his accounts to the Athenians, he said, "Would it not be better to work out how not to render them at all?" When summoned by the Athenians from Sicily to stand trial on a capital charge, he went into hiding, saying it was foolish, when facing a court case, to seek acquittal when one could simply flee instead. When someone said, "Do you not trust your homeland to judge your case?" he replied, "No — not even my mother, for fear she might cast the black pebble by mistake instead of the white one." On hearing that a death sentence had been passed against him and those with him, he said, "Let us then show them that we are alive" — and, turning to the Spartans, he stirred up the Decelean War against the Athenians.
Lamachus was reprimanding one of his captains for an error; when the man said he would not do it again, Lamachus said, "In war there is no doing it twice."
Iphicrates, thought to be the son of a shoemaker, was despised for it; he first won renown when, though wounded, he seized an enemy soldier alive together with his weapons and carried him off to his own trireme. Once, encamped in a friendly and allied country, he was carefully building a palisade and digging a trench; when someone said, "What is there for us to fear?" he replied that the worst thing a general could say was "I did not expect it." When drawing up his forces against the barbarians, he said he was afraid that they did not know Iphicrates, the name with which he terrified his other enemies. Standing trial on a capital charge, he said to his accuser, "What are you doing, man — with war upon us, persuading the city to deliberate about me instead of with me?" To Harmodius, descendant of the ancient Harmodius, who taunted him for his low birth, he said, "My family begins with me; yours ends with you." When an orator in the assembly asked him, "Just what are you, that you think so highly of yourself — a cavalryman, a hoplite, an archer, or a peltast?" he replied, "None of these — but the man who knows how to command all of them."
Timotheus was considered a lucky general, and some who envied him used to paint pictures of cities walking into a fishing-net of their own accord while he slept. Timotheus would say, "If I capture such great cities while asleep, what do you suppose I would do awake?" When one of the daring generals was displaying a wound to the Athenians, Timotheus said, "As for me, I was ashamed that, while I was your general at Samos, a catapult bolt fell anywhere near me." When the orators were promoting Chares and claiming that this was the sort of man the Athenian general should be, Timotheus said, "Not the general — rather the man who carries the general's bedding."
Chabrias used to say that the best generals were those who knew the enemy's affairs best. When standing trial for treason together with Iphicrates, Iphicrates rebuked him for going to the gymnasium and eating lunch at his usual hour even while in such danger. Chabrias said, "Well then, if the Athenians decide against us for any other reason, they will put you to death squalid and unfed, and me well-lunched and freshly oiled." He used to say that an army of deer led by a lion was more fearsome than an army of lions led by a deer.
When Hegesippus, nicknamed Crobylus, was urging the Athenians on against Philip, someone in the assembly shouted out, "You're proposing war!" "Yes, by Zeus," he said, "and black mourning garments, public funerals, and funeral orations too, if we are to live as free men and not do what the Macedonians order." Pytheas, while still a young man, came forward to speak against the decrees being drawn up in honor of Alexander. When someone said, "You dare, young as you are, to speak on matters of such magnitude?" he replied, "Well, Alexander, whom you are voting to be a god, is younger than I am."
Phocion the Athenian was seen by no one either laughing or weeping. Once in the assembly, when someone said, "You look as though you're thinking hard, Phocion," he replied, "You guess rightly — I am thinking whether I can cut anything out of what I am about to say to the Athenians." When an oracle was given to the Athenians that there was one man in the city who opposed the opinions of everyone else, and the Athenians called out demanding to know who he was, Phocion said that he himself was that man; for he alone was pleased by none of what the majority did and said. Once, when he was delivering an opinion to the assembly and finding favor, and saw everyone alike approving his speech, he turned to his friends and said, "Surely I haven't said something bad without realizing it?" When the Athenians were asking for contributions toward some sacrifice and everyone else was contributing, and he was called on repeatedly, he said, "I would be ashamed to give to you while not repaying this man" — pointing at the same time to his creditor.
When Demosthenes the orator said, "The Athenians will kill you, if they go mad," he replied, "Yes — me, if they go mad; you, if they come to their senses." When Aristogeiton the informer, condemned and about to die in prison, sent asking Phocion to come to him, and his friends tried to stop him from going to see such a wicked man, Phocion said, "And where would one more gladly talk with Aristogeiton?" When the Athenians were angry at the Byzantines for not admitting into their city Chares, who had been sent with a force to help them against Philip, Phocion said, "We should be angry not at the allies who distrust us, but at the generals who are distrusted" — and he himself was chosen general; and, being trusted by the Byzantines, he made Philip withdraw having accomplished nothing.
When King Alexander sent him a gift of a hundred talents, he asked the men bringing it why, when there were so many Athenians, Alexander was giving this to him alone; and when they said it was because Alexander considered him alone to be a true gentleman, he said, "Then let him allow me both to seem and to be such a man." When Alexander was demanding triremes and the people called on Phocion by name to come forward and give his advice, he stood up and said, "My advice to you, then, is either to be masters by force of arms, or to be friends of those who are masters." When an unverified report of Alexander's death arrived, and the orators leapt straight up onto the platform urging that there be no delay but that they go to war at once, Phocion insisted on waiting and finding out for certain. "For if he is dead today," he said, "he will still be dead tomorrow and the day after."
When Leosthenes plunged the city into war, its spirits raised by bright hopes tied to the name of freedom and of leadership, Phocion compared his speeches to cypress trees: "For though they are handsome and tall," he said, "they bear no fruit." When the first engagements succeeded and the city was offering sacrifices of good news, he was asked whether he would have wished these things to have been done by him; he said, "I would wish these deeds to have been done, but not that policy to have been decided on." When the Macedonians attacked Attica and were ravaging the coast, he led out the men of military age; and when many ran up to him urging him to seize that hill or station his forces there, he said, "Heracles, how many generals I see, and how few soldiers!" Nevertheless, he engaged them, prevailed, and killed Nicion, the Macedonian commander.
A little later, the Athenians, defeated in the war, accepted a garrison from Antipater; and when Menyllus, the commander of the garrison, offered Phocion money, he angrily replied that Menyllus was no better than Alexander, and that the pretext on which he would now be taking it was worse — since he had refused it then. Antipater used to say that of his two friends at Athens, he had never persuaded Phocion to accept anything, nor had he ever managed to satisfy Demades by giving. When Antipater asked him to do something unjust, he said, "You cannot, Antipater, have Phocion both as a friend and as a flatterer."
After Antipater's death, when democracy was restored to the Athenians, a sentence of death was passed in the assembly against Phocion and his friends. The others were led off weeping; but as Phocion walked in silence, one of his enemies came up and spat in his face. Looking toward the magistrates, he said, "Will no one stop this man's disgraceful behavior?" When one of those about to die with him was lamenting and complaining, he said, "Are you not content, Thoudippus, to die together with Phocion?" As the cup was already being brought to him, he was asked whether he had any word for his son. "I charge you," he said, "and urge you to bear the Athenians no grudge."
Peisistratus, tyrant of the Athenians, when some of his friends broke away from him and seized Phyle, went to them himself, carrying his own bedroll. When they asked what he wanted, he said, "I have come packed and ready either to persuade you to come away with me, or, if I fail to persuade you, to stay here with you — that is why I've come with my baggage." When his mother was maligned to him for being in love with a certain young man and secretly meeting with him, though the youth was fearful and mostly kept his distance, Peisistratus invited the young man to dinner and, after the meal, asked him how it had gone. When he said, "Pleasantly," Peisistratus said, "You shall have the same, every day, if you please my mother." When Thrasybulus, in love with his daughter, met her and kissed her, his wife urged him to be angry at Thrasybulus; but he said, "If we are to hate those who love us, what shall we do to those who hate us?" — and he gave the girl to Thrasybulus in marriage. When some revelers ran into his wife and did and said many outrageous things to her, and the next day came to Peisistratus begging and weeping, he said, "For your part, try to behave yourselves from now on — as for my wife, she did not so much as leave the house at all yesterday." When he was about to marry another wife, and his children asked anxiously whether he had some fault to find with them, he said, "Not at all — quite the opposite, I am praising you, and wish to have other children just like you."
Demetrius of Phalerum advised King Ptolemy to acquire and read books on kingship and rule: "for the things that friends do not dare to advise kings, these are written in books."
Lycurgus the Spartan accustomed the citizens to wear their hair long, saying that for the handsome it made them more comely, and for the ugly it made them more terrifying. To the man who urged him to establish democracy in the city, he said, "You first establish democracy in your own household." He ordered that houses be built using only the saw and the axe, since men would be ashamed to bring costly cups, bedding, and tables into houses built so plainly. He forbade contests in boxing and the pancration, so that the citizens would not grow accustomed to giving up even in play. He forbade campaigning against the same enemies too often, so as not to make them more warlike. Indeed, later, when Agesilaus was wounded, Antalcidas remarked that he was getting fine tuition fees from the Thebans, whom he had trained and taught to fight though they were unwilling.
King Charillus, asked why Lycurgus had established so few laws, replied that men who used few words had no need of many laws. When one of the helots behaved rather insolently toward him, he said, "By the Twin Gods, I would have killed you, if I were not angry." To one who asked why they wore their hair long, he said that of all ornaments, this one cost the least.
King Teleclus, to his brother, who was complaining that the citizens treated him rather ungraciously,
“No,” he said, “for you do not know how to suffer wrong.” When Theopompus, in a certain city, was shown its wall by a man who asked him whether he thought it fine and lofty, he said, “Not even if it belonged to women.” Archidamus, when in the Peloponnesian War the allies demanded that their contributions be fixed, said, “War does not feed on a fixed ration.” Brasidas, having caught a mouse among some dried figs and been bitten by it, let it go, and then said to those present, “Nothing is so small that it cannot save itself if it dares to defend itself against its attackers.” In battle, having been struck through his shield by a spear, he pulled the spear out of the wound and with that very weapon killed the enemy soldier; and when asked how he had been wounded, he said, “My shield betrayed me.” Since it happened that he fell while freeing the Greeks of Thrace,
and the envoys sent to Lacedaemon called upon his mother, she first asked whether Brasidas had died nobly; and when the Thracians praised him and said that there would never be another like him, she said, “You are mistaken, strangers — Brasidas was indeed a good man, but Lacedaemon has many better than he.” King Agis said that the Lacedaemonians do not ask how many the enemy are, but where they are. And when he was being prevented at Mantinea from fighting the enemy, who were more numerous, he said, “Whoever wishes to rule over many must fight against many.” When the Eleans were being praised for conducting the Olympic games so well, he said, “What is so wonderful in their doing, once every four years, on a single day, what is just?” And when they persisted in their praise, he said,
“What is so wonderful if they handle a fine matter finely — namely, justice?” To a wicked man who kept asking who was the best of the Spartans, he said, “The one most unlike you.” When another asked how many the Lacedaemonians were, he said, “Enough to keep off the wicked.” And when another asked the same thing, he said, “They will seem many to you if you see them fighting.” Lysander, when Dionysius the tyrant sent expensive garments for his daughters, would not accept them, saying he feared they would appear the more shameful on their account. To those who reproached him for accomplishing most things by deceit, as unworthy of Heracles, he used to say that where the lion’s skin does not reach, the fox’s skin must be sewn on. When the Argives seemed to speak more justly than the Lacedaemonians about the disputed territory,
he drew his sword and said, “Whoever holds this argues best about the boundaries of land.” And when he saw the Lacedaemonians reluctant to press the attack on the walls of the Corinthians, on seeing a hare leap out of the ditch he said, “Are these the sort of enemies you fear, whose hares sleep undisturbed within their walls out of sheer idleness?” And when a man of Megara spoke to him with frankness in a public gathering, he said, “Your words need a city behind them.” Agesilaus used to say that those who dwell in Asia were bad as free men but good as slaves. Since they were accustomed to call the King of the Persians “Great,” he said, “How is he greater than I, unless he is also more just and more temperate?” When asked, concerning courage and justice, which was the better, he said, “We have no need of courage at all, if all of us are just.” When one night, as he was about to
withdraw in haste from enemy territory, he saw his beloved being left behind through weakness, weeping, he said, “It is hard to feel both pity and sound judgment at once.” When Menecrates the physician, who was called Zeus, wrote him a letter that began, “Menecrates Zeus to King Agesilaus, greetings,” he wrote back, “King Agesilaus to Menecrates, good health.” When the Lacedaemonians defeated the Athenians and their allies at Corinth, and he learned the number of the
enemy dead, he said, “Alas for Greece, which has destroyed by her own hand so many men as would have sufficed to conquer all the barbarians!” Having received at Olympia from Zeus the oracle he wished, and then, when the ephors bade him ask the Pythian god about the same matters, he went to Delphi and asked the god whether he too approved what his father approved. When he was begging off some favor for one of his
friends from Idrieus the Carian, he wrote to him: “If Nicias is not guilty, release him; if he is guilty, release him for my sake; in any case, release him.” When someone who imitated the voice of the nightingale invited him to listen to it, he said, “I have often heard the bird itself.” After the battle at Leuctra, since the law required that all who had fled be disenfranchised, the ephors, seeing the city bereft
of men, wished to suspend the disenfranchisement, and they appointed Agesilaus lawgiver; and he, coming forward into their midst, ordered that the laws should take effect from the next day onward. When, having been sent as an ally to the king of the Egyptians, he was being besieged along with him, the enemy being many times more numerous and digging a trench around the camp, and the king urged him to sally out and fight it out, he said he would not prevent the enemy
from making themselves equal to his own numbers if they wished. But when only a small gap remained for the ditch to close, he drew up his forces at that point where it was still open, and fighting against equal numbers, equal to equal, he won. As he was dying, he ordered his friends to make no image of him, molded or modeled, saying, “If I have done any noble deed, that is my monument; but if I have done none, not even all the statues in the world will help.” Archidamus, son
of Agesilaus, on seeing a catapult bolt, then brought for the first time from Sicily, cried out, “O Heracles, the valor of man is done for!” And the younger Agis, when Demades said that Laconian swords were so short that jugglers could swallow them, said, “And yet it is the Lacedaemonians above all who reach the enemy with their swords.” When the ephors ordered him to hand over soldiers to the traitor, he said he did not trust foreigners to a man who
had betrayed his own people. Cleomenes, to a man who promised to give him fighting cocks that would die in battle, said, “Not those — rather give me the ones that kill in battle.” Paedaretus, not having been chosen among the Three Hundred, which was the foremost honor in the city in rank, went away cheerful and smiling, saying he was glad that the city had three hundred citizens better than himself.
Damonidas, having been assigned to the last place in the chorus by the man arranging it, said, “Well done — you have discovered how this place too may become honored.” Nicostratus, the general of the Argives, when urged by Archidamus to betray a certain place for a great sum of money and marriage to a Laconian woman of his choosing, apart from the royal family, replied that Archidamus was no descendant of Heracles; for
Heracles went about punishing the wicked, but Archidamus made the good wicked. Eudamidas, seeing in the Academy Xenocrates, already an old man, philosophizing with his pupils, and learning that he was in search of virtue, said, “Then when will he make use of it?” Again, on hearing a philosopher argue that only the wise man is a good general, he said, “The argument is admirable, but the speaker
has not sounded the trumpet.” Antiochus, while ephor, on hearing that Philip had given the Messenians their land, asked whether he had also given them the power to hold it by fighting for it. Antalcidas, to the Athenian who called the Lacedaemonians ignorant, said, “At any rate, we alone have learned no evil from you.” And when another Athenian said to him, “But we have often driven you back
from the Cephisus,” he said, “But we have never driven you back from the Eurotas.” When a sophist was about to read a eulogy of Heracles, he said, “Who, then, finds fault with him?” While Epaminondas the Theban was general, no panic ever fell upon the camp. He used to say that death in war was the noblest death, and he declared that the bodies of hoplites ought to be trained not only athletically but also for military service; for this reason
he made war on the corpulent, and he drove one such man out of the army, saying that three or four shields could scarcely cover his belly, on account of which he had not seen his own genitals. So frugal was he in his way of living that, having been invited to dinner by a neighbor, on finding a display of cakes and delicacies and perfumes he left at once, saying, “I thought you were making a sacrifice,
not committing an outrage.” When the cook was rendering an account to his fellow officials of the expense of several days, he was vexed only at the quantity of oil; and when his colleagues wondered at this, he said it was not the expense that troubled him, but whether so much oil had been taken into his body. When the city was celebrating a festival and everyone was engaged in drinking and revelry, he met one of his acquaintances, unkempt
and walking with a troubled look; and when the man wondered and asked why he alone went about in such a state, he said, “So that it may be possible for all of you to get drunk and take your ease.” When a worthless man had committed some minor offense, though Pelopidas pleaded for him he would not release him, but when the man’s mistress begged for him he released him, saying that such favors were fit to be granted to courtesans, but not to generals. And when, as the Lacedaemonians were making war, oracles were being brought to the
Thebans, some foretelling defeat and others victory, he ordered those who brought them to place the ones on the right side of the platform and the others on the left. When all had been placed, he stood up and said, “If you are willing to obey your commanders and go to meet the enemy, these are the oracles for you” — pointing to the better ones — “but if you lose heart before the danger, then those are” — looking toward the worse ones.
Again, as he was advancing upon the enemy, there was a clap of thunder, and when those around him asked what he thought the god meant by it, he said the enemy had been thunderstruck, “because, with such ground nearby, they are encamping in such a place as this.” He said that of all the fine and good things that had happened to him, the most pleasant was that his father and mother were still living when he conquered the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra. Though he was accustomed to appear at other times
anointed in body and cheerful in countenance, on the day after that battle he came forward unkempt and downcast; and when his friends asked whether some misfortune had befallen him, he said, “Nothing — but yesterday I perceived that I had felt a greater pride than is proper, and so today I am chastening the excess of my joy.” Knowing that the Spartans concealed such misfortunes, and
wishing to expose the magnitude of their disaster, he did not grant them all together the recovery of their dead, but to each city separately, so that the Lacedaemonian dead, being more than a thousand, were seen to be so many. When Jason, the monarch of the Thessalians, came to Thebes as an ally, and sent Epaminondas, who was in dire poverty, two thousand pieces of gold, he did not accept the gold, but on seeing Jason he said, “You are exercising
an unjust power.” He himself, having borrowed fifty drachmas from one of the citizens as travel money for the campaign, invaded the Peloponnese. Again, when the King of the Persians sent him thirty thousand darics, he bitterly rebuked Diomedon for having sailed so long a voyage to corrupt Epaminondas; and he bade him tell the king that if he had in mind what was advantageous to the Thebans, he would have Epaminondas as a friend for nothing, but if not,
as an enemy. When the Argives became allies of the Thebans, and Athenian envoys, arriving in Arcadia, accused both peoples, and Callistratus the orator reproached the two cities with Orestes and Oedipus, Epaminondas rose up and said, “We admit that among us a father-slayer was born, and among the Argives a mother-slayer; but those who did these deeds we cast out, while the Athenians received them.” And to
the Spartans, who had leveled many grave charges against the Thebans, he said, “It was these men, at any rate, who cured you of speaking so briefly.” When Alexander, tyrant of Pherae, an enemy of the Thebans, was made a friend and ally by the Athenians, having promised to supply them meat by the pound at half an obol, Epaminondas said, “We for our part will supply the Athenians with firewood for free for that
meat, for we shall cut down their land, if they meddle in affairs not their own.” Wishing always to keep the Boeotians, who grew slack through idleness, under arms, whenever he was chosen Boeotarch he would say by way of exhortation, “Consider well, men; for if I am your general, you will have to go on campaign.” And he called their country, being flat and open, “the dancing-floor of war,” since they could not hold it unless they kept their hand through the shield-strap. When Chabrias, near
Corinth, cut down a few Thebans who loved to fight beneath the walls and set up a trophy, Epaminondas mocked him, saying, “There ought to stand there not a trophy but a shrine of Hecate” — for it was customary to set up shrines of Hecate at the crossroads before the gates. And when someone reported that the Athenians had sent to the Peloponnese an army equipped with new arms, he said, “Why, then, does Antigenides groan because Telles
has new pipes?” — Telles being a very poor flute-player, and Antigenides a very fine one. And on perceiving that his shield-bearer had taken a great sum of money from a man who had become a prisoner of war, he said, “Give me back my shield, and buy yourself a tavern to live out your life in; for you will no longer wish to run the same risks now that you have become one of the rich and fortunate.” When asked whether he considered himself a better general than
Chabrias or Iphicrates, he said, “That is hard to judge while we are still alive.” When, on returning from Laconia, he was tried for his life along with his fellow generals, for having held the office of Boeotarch four months beyond what the law allowed, he bade his colleagues lay the blame on him, as having been forced into it, while he himself said he had no better words than his deeds; but if he must say anything at all to
the judges, he asked, if they condemned him to death, that they inscribe on the pillar recording his sentence, so that the Greeks might know that Epaminondas had compelled the Thebans, against their will, to burn Laconia, which had gone unravaged for five hundred years; to resettle Messene after two hundred and thirty years; to organize and bring together the Arcadians into one body; and to restore to the Greeks their independence — for these were the deeds accomplished on
that campaign. So the judges went out amid much laughter, without even taking up the ballots against him. In the last battle, having been wounded and carried to his tent, he called for Daiphantus, and then, after him, for Iolaidas; and on learning that these men were dead, he ordered that terms be made with the enemy, since they had no general left. And his deed bore out his word, as one who knew
the citizens best of all. Pelopidas, the fellow general of Epaminondas, when his friends said he was neglecting a necessary matter — the gathering of money — said, “Necessary indeed is money, by Zeus, for this man,” pointing to Nicodemus, a lame and crippled man. And when his wife, as he was setting out for battle, begged him to save himself, he said that this was advice to give to others, but that a ruler and general must save his fellow citizens. And when one of the
When one of the soldiers said, "We have fallen into the enemy's hands," he replied, "How is that different from their falling into ours?" When he had been treacherously seized by Alexander, tyrant of Pherae, and was speaking harshly to him despite being in chains, and Alexander said, "Are you in a hurry to die?" he answered, "Certainly, so that the Thebans will be roused all the more, and you will pay the penalty sooner." When Thebe, the tyrant's wife, came to Pelopidas and said she was amazed that he was so cheerful even in chains, he said he was amazed at her even more, that she endured Alexander without being in chains. When Epaminondas ransomed him, he said he was grateful to Alexander, for he had now tested himself most fully, and found himself of good courage not only toward war but also toward death.
Manius Curius, when some accused him of distributing only a small portion of the captured land to each man and making the greater part public property, prayed that no Roman would ever consider the land that feeds him too little. When the Samnites came to him after their defeat and offered gold, he happened to be boiling turnips in earthen pots, and he answered the Samnites that he had no need of gold while dining on such a meal; it was better for him to rule those who possessed gold than to possess it himself. Gaius Fabricius, on learning of the Roman defeat under Laevinus, said, "It was Pyrrhus, not the Epirotes, who defeated the Romans."
When he went to Pyrrhus to negotiate the release of prisoners, and Pyrrhus offered him much gold, he refused to take it. The next day Pyrrhus had his largest elephant positioned behind Fabricius, who did not know it was there, and had it let out a cry to make it suddenly appear; and when this happened, Fabricius turned around, smiled, and said, "Neither your gold yesterday nor your beast today has frightened me." When Pyrrhus urged him to stay with him and hold the second command after himself, he said, "That would not even be to your advantage: for if the Epirotes come to know us both, they will prefer to be ruled by me rather than by you."
While Fabricius was consul, Pyrrhus's physician sent him a letter, offering, if he ordered it, to kill Pyrrhus with poison. Fabricius sent the letter on to Pyrrhus, urging him to realize that he was a poor judge both of friends and of enemies. When Pyrrhus discovered the plot, he had the physician hanged, and returned the prisoners to Fabricius without ransom; but Fabricius did not accept them as a gift, and instead gave back an equal number in return, so that he might not seem to be taking a reward — for he had not disclosed the plot as a favor to Pyrrhus, but so that the Romans would not seem to kill by treachery, as if unable to win openly.
Fabius Maximus, unwilling to fight Hannibal but preferring to wear down his forces over time — forces that were short of both money and provisions — kept following him through rough and mountainous country, marching alongside him at a distance. When the crowd mocked him and called him Hannibal's tutor, he paid little heed and followed his own reasoning, telling his friends that he considered a man who feared taunts and abuse more cowardly than one who fled from the enemy. When his co-commander Minucius struck down some of the enemy and there was much talk of him as a man worthy of Rome, Fabius said he feared Minucius's good fortune more than his bad fortune; and shortly afterward, when Minucius fell into an ambush and was in danger of perishing with his entire force, Fabius came to his aid, destroyed many of the enemy, and saved him.
Hannibal then said to his friends, "Did I not often tell you about that cloud coming down from the mountains, that it would one day break in a storm upon us?" After the disaster at Cannae, when Fabius was made commander of the city together with Claudius Marcellus, a man of daring who always loved to fight Hannibal, Fabius hoped that if no one engaged him, Hannibal's forces, being stretched thin, would soon give out. So Hannibal said that he feared Fabius, who did not fight, more than Marcellus, who did. When a certain Lucanian soldier was accused before him of repeatedly slipping away from camp at night out of love for a woman, though otherwise reported to be an admirable man in arms, he ordered the man's beloved to be secretly seized and brought to him.
When the man was brought before him, Fabius summoned him and said, "You have not escaped notice, wandering about at night against the law; but neither had your merit escaped notice before. Let your faults be canceled out by your good deeds, and from now on you shall remain with us — for I have a surety for you." And bringing the woman forward, he presented her to him. When Fabius, holding the Tarentines under blockade except for the acropolis, drew Hannibal far away by a ruse and captured and plundered the city, and his secretary asked what he had decided about the sacred statues, he replied, "Let us leave the Tarentines their angry gods." When Marcus Livius, who had held the acropolis, said that it was because of him that the city had been recovered, the others laughed, but Fabius said, "You speak the truth: for if you had not lost the city, I would never have retaken it."
By now an old man, when his son was consul and was conducting public business in the presence of a large crowd, Fabius rode up on horseback toward him. The young man sent a lictor and ordered him to dismount; the others present were taken aback, but Fabius himself leapt down from his horse and, running toward his son with a speed beyond his years, embraced him and said, "Well done, my son, for understanding whom you rule and what greatness of office you have taken up." Scipio the Elder, spending his leisure away from campaigns and public life in literary pursuits, used to say that when he was at leisure he accomplished more. When he had taken Carthage by storm and some soldiers, having captured a beautiful young woman, brought her to him as a gift, he said, "I would gladly have accepted her, if I were a private citizen and not a commander."
While besieging the city of Bathea, above which a temple of Aphrodite could be seen, he ordered that legal pledges be sworn there, saying that on the third day he would hear the disputants in the temple of Aphrodite; and this he did, just as he had foretold, once the city had been captured. When someone in Sicily asked him what he was relying on when he intended to cross with his fleet against Carthage, he pointed to three hundred armed men training and a high tower overlooking the sea, and said, "There is not one of these men who, if I ordered it, would not climb that tower and throw himself down headfirst." When he had crossed over and gained control of the land and burned the enemy's camps, the Carthaginians sent envoys and made a treaty, agreeing to give up their war elephants, their ships, and their money; but when Hannibal sailed back from Italy, they began to regret the agreement, emboldened by his return.
When Scipio learned of this, he said that even if they now wished it, he would no longer keep the treaty with them unless they paid an additional five thousand talents, because they had sent for Hannibal. When the Carthaginians, decisively defeated, sent envoys to him concerning a truce and peace, he ordered those who had come to leave at once, saying he would not hear them until they brought Lucius Terentius to him; Terentius was a Roman, a decent man, who had been taken prisoner by the Carthaginians. When they came bringing the man, Scipio seated him beside himself on the tribunal in the council, and in this way he dealt with the Carthaginians and brought the war to an end. Terentius followed him in his triumph wearing the cap of a freedman; and when Scipio died, Terentius provided honeyed wine to those who came to the funeral, and showed every mark of devotion in the burial arrangements. But these things belong to a later time.
When King Antiochus, after the Romans had crossed over into Asia against him, sent envoys to Scipio about a settlement, Scipio said, "You should have done this earlier, not now, when you have already accepted both the bridle and the rider." When the Senate voted that he should receive money from the treasury, and the treasurers were unwilling to open it that day, he said he would open it himself: for it was on his account that the treasury was closed, since he had filled it with so much money. When Petillius and Quintus brought many accusations against him before the people, he said that on that very day he had defeated the Carthaginians and Hannibal, and that he himself would go up, crowned, to the Capitol to offer sacrifice, and told anyone who wished to cast a vote against him to do so; and having said this, he began to go up, and the people followed him, leaving his accusers behind still speaking.
Titus Quinctius was so distinguished from the very outset that he was elected consul before holding the offices of tribune, praetor, or aedile. Sent as general against Philip, he was persuaded to meet him for a conference; and when Philip demanded that he take hostages, on the ground that Philip himself was with many Romans while he was alone among Macedonians, Quinctius replied, "It was you yourself who made yourself alone, by killing your friends and kinsmen." Having defeated Philip in battle, he proclaimed at the Isthmian Games that he set the Greeks free and released them to their own laws. As for those Romans who had been taken captive and enslaved among the Greeks in the time of Hannibal, the Greeks ransomed each of them for five hundred drachmas and gave them to him as a gift, and they too followed him in his triumph at Rome, wearing caps upon their heads,
just as is the custom for those who have been freed. He ordered the Achaeans, who were planning a campaign against the island of Zacynthus, to be on their guard, lest, like tortoises stretching their heads out beyond the Peloponnese, they put themselves in danger. When King Antiochus came into Greece with a great force, and everyone was terrified at the size of his multitudes and his armaments, Quinctius made a speech of this kind to the Achaeans: he said that
once, dining in Chalcis at the house of a foreign friend, he had marveled at the quantity of meat, and his host told him that all of it was actually pork, differing only in seasoning and preparation. "So do not you either," he said, "marvel at the king's forces when you hear of lancers and cataphracts and foot-companions and mounted archers: they are all Syrians, differing from one another only in their equipment." To Philopoemen, the Achaean general, who had many cavalry and infantry but was short of money, he joked that "Philopoemen has hands and legs, but no belly" — for in fact Philopoemen was built that way in body as well.
Gnaeus Domitius, whom Scipio the Great placed in his own stead under his brother Lucius in the war against Antiochus, having reconnoitered the enemy's phalanx, and though the officers around him urged him to attack at once, said that the hour was too late to allow them, after cutting down so many tens of thousands and plundering their baggage, to return to their own camp and attend to their needs; he would do the same the next day at the proper hour. And engaging the enemy the following day, he killed fifty thousand of them. Publius Licinius, consul and general, defeated by Perseus, king of the Macedonians, in a cavalry battle, lost two thousand eight hundred men,
some killed, others taken prisoner. When after the battle Perseus sent envoys concerning a truce and peace, the defeated commander ordered that the victor should leave matters concerning himself to the Romans. Paulus Aemilius, standing for a second consulship, had failed to win it; but when the war against Perseus and the Macedonians dragged on because of the inexperience and softness of the generals, they appointed him consul, and he said he was not grateful to them for it —
for he had not sought office as one desiring to rule over them, but had been chosen general as one who was to rule them. Coming home from the forum and finding his little daughter Tertia in tears, he asked the reason; she said that Perseus had died — meaning a little dog by that name — and he said, "By good fortune, my daughter, and I accept the omen." Finding in the camp a great deal of insolence and idle talk among those who were meddling and giving unwanted advice as if they were generals themselves, he ordered them to keep quiet and do nothing but sharpen their swords, and that he would see to everything else. He ordered the night watches to be kept without spear or sword, so that, despairing of being able to defend themselves against the enemy, they would fight all the harder against sleep. Marching through the highlands into Macedonia and seeing the enemy drawn up in battle order,
when Nasica urged him to attack at once, he said, "If I had your youth — but my many experiences forbid me to fight against a phalanx drawn up in order, straight from the march." Having defeated Perseus and holding victory feasts, he said that it took the same skill to make an army most fearsome to enemies and a banquet most pleasant to friends. When Perseus, now a prisoner, tried to avoid being led in the triumph, Paulus said, "That is up to you," giving him the choice of taking his own life. Though immense wealth was found, he took none of it himself, but gave his son-in-law Tubero a silver bowl weighing five pounds as a prize for valor — and this, they say, was the first silver vessel to enter the household of the Aelii. He had had four sons; two of them had earlier been given up in adoption to other families; of the two remaining
in his own household, one died five days before the triumph, at the age of fourteen, and the other died five days after the triumph, at the age of twelve. Coming forward while the people grieved and shared in his sorrow, he said that now he had no fear or danger to feel for his country, since fortune, in venting her retribution for his successes upon his own household, had made him alone bear it on behalf of all.
Cato the Elder, attacking extravagance and luxury before the people, said, "How hard it is to speak to a belly that has no ears." He said he marveled how a city could survive in which a fish sold for more than an ox. Once, denouncing the growing dominance of women, he said, "All men rule their wives, we rule all men, and our wives rule us." He said he would rather do a good deed and receive no thanks for it than commit a wrong and escape punishment for it,
and that he was always ready to grant pardon to all who erred, except himself. Urging magistrates to reprimand wrongdoers, he said that those who have the power to stop wrongdoers, if they fail to stop them, are in effect commanding them to do wrong. He said that of the young he preferred those who blushed to those who turned pale. He said he despised a soldier who, while marching, moved his hands, but while fighting, moved his feet, and who snored louder than he shouted in battle.
He used to say that the worst kind of ruler is one who cannot rule himself. He held that above all each man ought to feel reverence before himself, for no one is ever without himself. Seeing many statues being set up for people, he said, "I would rather have men ask why there is no statue of Cato than why there is one." He urged those in power to be sparing in the use of their authority, so that the power to act would always remain with them. He said that those who take away the honor due to virtue take away virtue itself from the young; and he said that a ruler or judge ought neither to be entreated on behalf of just causes nor to be pressed into abandoning them on behalf of unjust ones. He said that wrongdoing, even if...
...even if it brings no danger to those committing it, it brings danger to everyone. In old age, when many shameful things already attend it, he thought one should not add to them the shame that comes from wickedness. He believed that the angry man differs from the madman only in the length of time. "Those who use good fortune with fairness and moderation are least envied," he said, "for people envy not us but those around us." He said that those who are earnest about ridiculous things will become ridiculous when it comes to serious ones.
He said that fine deeds ought to be followed up with more fine deeds, lest they lose their luster. He used to rebuke citizens who always elected the same men to office: "You will seem," he said, "either to think the office not worth much, or to think that not many men are worthy of it." Of a man who had sold his estates by the sea, he pretended to admire him as stronger than the sea itself: "What the sea can barely flood, this man has swallowed with ease."
When he was campaigning for the censorship and saw the other candidates courting and flattering the masses, he himself cried out that the people needed a harsh physician and a great purge, and that they ought to choose not the most agreeable man but the most inexorable one — and by saying this he was elected before all the others.
Teaching young men to fight with courage, he often said that the word turns more on the sword and the voice than on the hand, and that it is this that terrifies the enemy.
When, at war with the peoples living around the river Baetis, he found himself in danger from the sheer number of the enemy, and the Celtiberians were willing to help for two hundred talents while the Romans would not consent to promise pay to barbarians, he said they were mistaken: for if victorious, they would repay it not from their own funds but from the enemy's; and if defeated, there would be neither anyone left to demand it nor anyone left to pay it.
Though he took more cities, as he himself says, than the number of days he spent among the enemy, he himself took nothing more from enemy territory than what he ate and drank. Having distributed a pound of silver to each of the soldiers, he said it was better that many return from the campaign with silver than that a few return with gold; for commanders in the provinces ought to seek nothing but the growth of their own reputation.
He kept five servants on campaign. One of them, who had bought three captives without Cato's knowledge, hanged himself before coming into his sight, once it became clear he could not escape detection.
When urged by Scipio Africanus to help the Achaean exiles return to their homeland, he pretended to have no concern for the matter; but when, after much discussion in the Senate, he rose and said, "As if we had nothing else to do, we sit here debating about some little old Greek men — whether they are to be carried out by our undertakers or by theirs."
When Postumius Albinus, having written a history in Greek, asked his readers' indulgence, Cato said ironically that indulgence ought indeed to be granted, if he had written it under compulsion, having been ordered to do so by a vote of the Amphictyons.
They say that Scipio the Younger, in the fifty-four years he lived, bought nothing, sold nothing, and built nothing, and left, out of a great estate, only thirty-three pounds of silver and two of gold — and this though he was master of Carthage and had enriched his soldiers more than any other general. Keeping faithfully to Polybius's precept, he made it a rule never to leave the marketplace before he had made some acquaintance and friend, in one way or another, among those he met.
Even while still young he had such a reputation for courage and good sense that Cato the Elder, when asked about the men campaigning at Carthage, among whom Scipio also served, said: "He alone has understanding; the rest flit about like shadows." When he returned to Rome from the campaign, people called on him not out of favor to him but because they expected that through him they would take Carthage quickly and easily. And indeed, once he had made his way onto the wall while the Carthaginians defended it from the citadel, and Polybius advised him to scatter iron caltrops or throw down spiked planks across the middle of the ditch, which was not very deep, so that the enemy could not cross and attack the earthworks, he said it was absurd, now that they had taken the walls and were inside the city, to be arranging things so as not to fight the enemy.
Finding the city full of Greek statues and dedications carried off from Sicily, he had it proclaimed that people from those cities should come and identify and reclaim their property. Of the plunder, he allowed neither slave nor freedman to take anything, nor even to buy anything, though everyone else was carrying off and taking whatever they pleased.
When he was helping his dearest friend Gaius Laelius in his campaign for the consulship, he asked Pompeius whether he too intended to stand for the consulship — this Pompeius was thought to be the son of a flute-player. When the man said he did not intend to stand, but promised also to accompany Laelius and canvass together with him, they trusted him and waited for him — and were deceived, for word came that he was going about the marketplace greeting the citizens on his own behalf. When the others grew indignant, Scipio laughed and said, "What fools we are, as if we were about to summon not men but gods, to have wasted so much time waiting for a flute-player!"
When Appius Claudius, contending with him for the censorship, said that he himself greeted all the Romans by name while Scipio scarcely knew any of them, Scipio replied, "You speak the truth; for my concern has been not to know many, but to be unknown to no one."
He urged the citizens, since they happened to be at war with the Celtiberians, whenever they sent out both legates and tribunes on campaign, to take as witnesses and judges of each man's valor the very men who were fighting the war.
When appointed censor, he took the horse away from a young man who, at a time when Carthage was under siege, had given an extravagant dinner at which he molded a honey-cake into the shape of the city, called it Carthage, and set it out for the guests to plunder. When the young man asked why his horse had been taken from him, Scipio said, "Because you plundered Carthage before I did."
Seeing Gaius Licinius pass by, he said, "I know this man has committed perjury; but since no one is accusing him, I cannot be both his accuser and his judge."
Having been sent out a third time by the Senate, as Clitomachus says, "to observe the insolence and the good order of men, an overseer of cities, nations, and kings," when he came to Alexandria and disembarked, walking with his cloak drawn over his head, the Alexandrians ran about begging him to uncover his face and show it to them, since they longed to see it; and when he uncovered it, they raised a shout and clapped their hands. As the king could barely keep pace with them while they walked, being slowed by idleness and soft living, Scipio quietly whispered to Panaetius, "The Alexandrians have already gained something from our visit here: because of us they have seen their king walking on foot."
His traveling companions were a single philosopher friend, Panaetius, and five servants; and when one of these died abroad, since he did not wish to buy another, he sent for a replacement from Rome.
Since the Numantines were thought to be unconquerable and had defeated many generals, the people appointed Scipio consul a second time for the war against them. Although many were eager to join the campaign, the Senate prevented this too, fearing that Italy would be left empty. They also would not allow him to take money that was readily available, but assigned him the tax revenues instead, which had not yet come due. Scipio said he had no need of money, for his own resources and those of his friends would suffice; but he did complain about the soldiers, for it was a hard war to fight — hard, because if they had been beaten so many times by the courage of the enemy, it meant they were fighting worthy foes, but if by the cowardice of the citizens, it meant they were fighting alongside unworthy men.
When he came to the camp and found much disorder, licentiousness, superstition, and luxury, he at once drove out the diviners, the sacrificers, and the brothel-keepers, and ordered all equipment sent away except a pot, a spit, and an earthenware cup. He allowed those who wished to keep a silver drinking-cup, but no heavier than two pounds; he forbade bathing, and ordered that those who anointed themselves rub each other down, since pack-animals, lacking hands, needed someone else to rub them down. He ordered them to take their midday meal standing, with food requiring no fire, and to dine lying down on bread or simple porridge and roasted or boiled meat. He himself went about wrapped in a plain black cloak, saying he was mourning the army's disgrace.
Taking pack-animals from a tribune named Memmius that were carrying jeweled wine-coolers and cups of Thericlean ware, he said, "For me you are useful for thirty days, and for your country; but for yourself, being such a man for your whole life, you have made yourself useless." When another showed off a finely adorned shield, he said, "The shield is handsome, young man, but it is more fitting for a Roman to place his hopes in his right hand than in his left." When one soldier, after raising the rampart, complained that he was terribly worn out, he said, "Naturally — you trust in that piece of wood more than in your sword." Seeing the recklessness of the enemy, he said he was buying safety with time; for a good general, like a good physician, ought to resort to the cure by iron only as a last necessity.
Nevertheless, attacking the Numantines at the right moment, he put them to flight. When the older men reproached the defeated soldiers, asking why they had fled from men they had so often pursued, one of the Numantines is said to have replied that the sheep were the same as before, but the shepherd was different.
After he had taken Numantia and celebrated a second triumph, he came into conflict with Gaius Gracchus on behalf of the Senate and the allies; and when the people, aggrieved, raised an uproar against him from the rostrum, he said, "The clamor of armies never troubled me — certainly not that of a rabble of men, whom I know Italy to be not a mother but a stepmother." When Gaius's followers shouted for the tyrant to be killed, he said, "Naturally, those who make war on their country want to destroy me first; for it cannot be that Rome should fall while Scipio stands, nor that Scipio should live while Rome has fallen."
Caecilius Metellus, deliberating whether to advance against a fortified position, was told by a centurion that if he lost only ten men he would take the place; he asked the man whether he himself would like to be one of the ten. When one of the younger tribunes asked what he intended to do, he said, "If I thought my own tunic knew this plan of mine, I would take it off and burn it in the fire." Though he had been at war with Scipio while the latter lived, he grieved at his death, ordered his own sons to take up the bier and carry it, and said he owed thanks to the gods on Rome's behalf, that Scipio had not been born among any other people.
Gaius Marius, advancing into public life from an undistinguished family by way of military service, ran for the higher aedileship; and perceiving on the very day of the election that he was losing, he switched to the lower office. Having failed at that too, he still did not give up hope of becoming first among the Romans. Having varicose veins in both legs, he offered them to the surgeon to be cut without being bound, and endured the operation without a groan or so much as a frown; but when the doctor moved to the other leg, he would not allow it, saying the cure was not worth the pain.
When his nephew Lucius, during Marius's second consulship, tried to force himself on one of the young men serving in the army, named Trebonius, and Trebonius killed him, and many brought charges against Trebonius for it, he did not deny killing the officer but stated and proved his reason; whereupon Marius ordered the crown given for valor to be brought, and placed it on Trebonius.
Encamped opposite the Teutones in a place with little water, when his soldiers said they were thirsty, he pointed to a river flowing near the enemy's camp and said, "There is drink for you, to be bought with blood." They called on him to lead them there at once, while their blood was still liquid and not yet all dried up by thirst.
In the wars against the Cimbri, he made a thousand brave men of Camerinum into Romans on the spot, contrary to any law; and to those who objected he said that amid the clash of arms he could not hear the laws.
In the civil war, surrounded by a trench and besieged, he held out, waiting for his own moment. When Pompaedius Silo said to him, "If you are a great general, Marius, come down and fight it out," he replied, "No — if you are a great general, force me to fight it out even against my will."
Catulus Lutatius, encamped by the river Atiso in the Cimbrian war, when the Romans, seeing the barbarians attempting to cross, began to retreat, and he was unable to hold them back, rushed in among the foremost of those running away, so that it might appear they were not fleeing the enemy but following their general.
Sulla, hailed as "the Fortunate," counted two things among his greatest strokes of fortune: his friendship with Metellus Pius, and his not razing Athens but sparing the city.
Gaius Popillius was sent to Antiochus bearing a letter from the Senate ordering him to withdraw his army from Egypt and not seize the kingdom belonging to Ptolemy's orphaned children. As he approached through the camp, Antiochus greeted him warmly from a distance, but Popillius, without returning the greeting, handed over the document; and when, after reading it, Antiochus said he would deliberate and give his answer, Popillius drew a circle around him with his staff and said, "Deliberate and answer right there where you stand." Everyone was struck by the man's resolve, and when Antiochus agreed to do what the Romans wished, only then did Popillius greet him and embrace him.
Lucullus in Armenia, with ten thousand infantry and a thousand cavalry, advanced against Tigranes, who had a hundred and fifty thousand troops, on the day before the Nones of October — the day on which, long before, the army under Caepio had been destroyed by the Cimbri. When someone said that the Romans regarded that day as ill-omened and dreaded it, he replied, "Then let us fight eagerly today, so that we may turn this day too from one of gloom and mourning into one bright and dear to the Romans." When his soldiers were especially afraid of the enemy's armored cavalry, he told them to take courage, for it would be more work to strip these men of their armor than to defeat them. Advancing up the hill first and seeing the movement of the barbarians, he cried out, "We have won, fellow soldiers!" And with no one standing against them, in the pursuit he lost only five Romans killed, while he killed more than a hundred thousand of the enemy.
Gnaeus Pompeius was as much beloved by the Romans as his father had been hated. Still young, he attached himself wholly to Sulla's party, and though holding no office and not yet a senator, he raised many soldiers from Italy. When Sulla summoned him, he refused to show his forces to the commander without spoils and without having drawn blood, and did not come until he had defeated the enemy's generals in many battles. When, sent by Sulla as commander to Sicily, he learned that the soldiers on the march were turning aside to plunder and use violence,
...those who wandered off and roamed about carelessly he punished, but on the swords of those he sent out on missions he affixed his seal. As for the Mamertines, who had taken the opposing side, he was ready to put every one of them to death; but when Sthennius, their popular leader, said that he was acting unjustly in punishing many who were innocent for the sake of one who was guilty—namely himself, since he had persuaded his friends and compelled his enemies to take Marius's side—Pompey, astonished, said he was willing to pardon the Mamertines for having been persuaded by such a man, one who valued his country above his own life, and he released both the city and Sthennius.
Crossing over into Libya against Domitius and defeating him in a great battle, when the soldiers hailed him as imperator he said he would not accept the honor while the enemy's rampart still stood upright. But some of them, though a heavy rain was falling, rushed out and sacked the camp. When he returned, Sulla welcomed him warmly with other honors and was the first to call him "Magnus" (the Great); but when Pompey wished to celebrate a triumph, Sulla would not allow it, since he did not yet belong to the Senate. When Pompey remarked to those present that Sulla did not realize that more people worship the rising sun than the setting one, Sulla cried out,
"Let him triumph!" Servilius, a man of aristocratic temper, was indignant at this, and many of the soldiers pressed hard for the triumph, demanding certain gifts. When Pompey said he would rather give up the triumph than flatter them, Servilius said that now he truly saw a man who was great and worthy of a triumph. Now it was the custom at Rome that when knights had served their legal term of duty,
they would lead their horse into the forum before the two men called censors, and after listing their campaigns and the generals under whom they had served, they would receive the praise or blame they deserved. When Pompey was consul, he himself led his horse down to the censors Gellius and Lentulus; and when they, following custom, asked whether he had served all his campaigns, he said "all of them,"
"under myself as imperator." When he got hold of Sertorius's letters in Spain, which contained correspondence from many leading men inviting Sertorius to Rome for the sake of revolution and a change of government, he burned them all, thereby giving the wicked a chance to repent and become better men. When Phraates, king of the Parthians, sent to him demanding that the Euphrates be used as the boundary, he said that the Romans would use the boundary
that justice required against the Parthians. When Lucius Lucullus, after his campaigns, gave himself over to pleasure and lived extravagantly, and criticized Pompey for craving so much activity beyond his years, Pompey said that indulgence was less fitting for an old man than the exercise of command was unfitting for one below the proper age. Once, when he was ill, his physician ordered him to take a thrush to eat; but his attendants, searching, could not find one, for it was out of
season. Someone said that thrushes could be found the year round at Lucullus's estate. "Well then," he said, "if Lucullus were not so extravagant, would Pompey not have lived?" And dismissing the doctor, he took some ordinary food that was readily available. When a severe grain shortage struck Rome, he was appointed, nominally, overseer of the grain market, but in fact master of land and sea, and he sailed to Libya, Sardinia, and Sicily; and having gathered a great quantity
of grain, he hastened to bring it to Rome. When a great storm arose and the ship captains hesitated, he was the first to board and, ordering the anchor raised, cried out, "To sail is necessary; to live is not necessary." When the quarrel with Caesar was coming into the open, and a certain Marcellinus, one of the men thought to have been advanced by Pompey, had gone over to Caesar's side and made many attacks on him in the Senate, Pompey said, "Are you not ashamed, Marcellinus,"
"to abuse me, when it is through me that you have gone from being speechless to being eloquent, and from being starved to being sick from overeating?" To Cato, who had bitterly attacked him because, though Cato had often warned in advance that Caesar's power and growth were not for the good of the republic, Pompey himself had worked against him, he replied, "Your words are more prophetic, but mine were more the acts of a friend." Speaking frankly about himself, he said that he had obtained every office sooner
than he had expected, and had laid each one down sooner than had been expected. After the battle at Pharsalus, fleeing to Egypt, as he was about to cross from the trireme to the fishing boat sent by the king, he turned to his wife and son and said nothing else but the line of Sophocles: "Whoever goes as a suitor to a tyrant's court is that man's slave, even though he arrives a free man." Then, changing boats,
and being struck with a sword, he groaned once, said nothing further, but covered his face and gave himself up. Cicero the orator, mocked over his name, was urged by his friends to change it, but he said he would make the name of Cicero more famous than those of the Catos, the Catuli, and the Scauri. When he dedicated a silver cup to the gods, he inscribed the first letters of his other names, but in place of "Cicero" he engraved
a chickpea (cicer). Of orators who shouted loudly, he said that from weakness they resorted to shouting, like lame men mounting a horse. When Verres's son, who had made poor use of his good looks, abused Cicero for effeminacy and called him a pervert, Cicero said, "Do you not know that it is proper for children to be abused only within doors?" When Metellus Nepos said to him that
"you have put more men to death as a witness than you have saved as an advocate," he replied, "Yes, for I have more good faith than eloquence." When Metellus asked who his father was, he said, "Your mother has made that question harder for you to answer" than for me—for Metellus's mother was unchaste, and Metellus himself was rather flighty and unsteady, carried about by his impulses. When his teacher of rhetoric, Diodotus,
died, and someone set up a stone raven over his grave, Cicero said this was a fitting recompense, "for he taught this bird to fly, not to speak." Having heard that Vatinius, a man at odds with him and generally worthless, had died, and then learning afterward that he was alive, he said, "May the liar come to a bad end, badly." To a man who was thought to be of Libyan descent, who claimed he could not hear what Cicero was saying, he said, "And yet
your ear is not unpierced." When Castus Popillius, who wished to be thought a legal expert but was in fact ignorant and untalented, was summoned by Cicero as a witness in a certain case, and said he knew nothing, Cicero said, "Perhaps you think you are being asked about points of law." When Hortensius the orator had taken a silver sphinx as payment from Verres, and, when Cicero made some oblique remark to him, said he was inexperienced in solving riddles,
Cicero said, "And yet the sphinx is right there with you." Meeting Voconius, who had three extremely ugly daughters, he quietly remarked to his friends, "He sowed children though Phoebus forbade it." When Faustus, the son of Sulla, because of the great number of his debts, posted a notice of sale of his property, Cicero said, "I welcome this proscription of his more than his father's." When Pompey and Caesar
had come to a parting of ways, he said, "I know whom I am fleeing, though I do not know whom I am fleeing to." And he blamed Pompey for abandoning the city and for imitating Themistocles rather than Pericles, though the circumstances resembled the latter's, not the former's. When he went over to Pompey and then again had second thoughts, and was asked by Pompey where he had left his son-in-law Piso, he said, "With your own father-in-law." When someone changed sides from
Caesar to Pompey, and said he had left his horse behind in his haste and eagerness, Cicero said that the man had made a better decision about the horse than about himself. To one who reported that Caesar's friends were gloomy, he said, "You mean they are ill-disposed toward Caesar." After the battle at Pharsalus, when Pompey had fled and a certain Nonius said that they still had seven eagles among them
and urged confidence for that reason, Cicero said, "Your advice would be good, if we were fighting jackdaws." When Caesar, after his victory, restored with honor the statues of Pompey that had been thrown down, Cicero remarked of him that "by setting up Pompey's statues, Caesar is fixing his own in place." So highly did he value the art of speaking well, and so eagerly did he strive for it, that once, when a case was pending before
the court of the Hundred Men and the day was close at hand, he freed his household slave Eros because he had told him the trial had been postponed to the following day. Gaius Caesar, when he was still a young man fleeing from Sulla, fell in with pirates; and first, when they demanded a certain sum of money, he laughed at the robbers for not knowing whom they held, and promised to pay twice as much; then, while under guard while the ransom was being collected, he ordered them
to keep quiet and be still while he slept. He also composed speeches and poems and read them aloud to the pirates, and called those who did not praise them enough uncultured barbarians, and jokingly threatened to hang them—which, not long after, he actually did; for once the ransom had arrived and he was set free, he gathered men and ships from Asia, seized the pirates, and had them crucified. At Rome, when he entered a contest against Catulus, who held first rank among
the Romans, for the office of Pontifex Maximus, and his mother escorted him to the door, he said, "Today, mother, you will have your son either as Pontifex Maximus or as an exile." Having divorced his wife Pompeia because of the scandal with Clodius, when Clodius was later put on trial over the same affair and Caesar was summoned as a witness, he said nothing unfavorable about his wife; and when the prosecutor asked, "Why then
did you divorce her?" he said, "Because Caesar's wife must be free of even the suspicion of scandal." Reading of the exploits of Alexander, he wept, and said to his friends, "At my age he had already conquered Darius, but I have accomplished nothing yet." Passing through a poor little town in the Alps, when his friends wondered, half in jest, whether there too there were factions
and rivalries for the first place, he stopped, grew thoughtful, and said, "I would rather be first here than second in Rome." Of bold undertakings, he said that great and risky ones ought to be carried out, not merely deliberated about. And he crossed the river Rubicon from his Gallic province against Pompey, saying, "Let the die be cast." When Pompey fled toward the sea from
Rome, and Metellus, who was in charge of the treasury, tried to prevent Caesar from taking money and shut the treasury, Caesar threatened to kill him; and when Metellus was terrified, he said, "This, young man, was harder for me to say than it would be to do." When his soldiers were slow in crossing from Brundisium to Dyrrhachium, he slipped away from everyone, boarded a small boat, and tried to cross the sea alone;
and when the boat was being swamped by the waves, he revealed himself to the helmsman and cried out, "Trust to fortune, and know that you carry Caesar." On that occasion he was prevented from crossing, since the storm grew violent and his soldiers ran to him in great distress, fearing that he was waiting for another army because he distrusted them. When a battle was fought and Pompey, though victorious, did not follow up his advantage but withdrew into his camp, Caesar said, "Today
the victory belonged to the enemy, but they have no one who knows how to win it." At Pharsalus, when Pompey had ordered his line of battle to stand its ground and await the enemy's charge, Caesar said he had made a mistake in relaxing the intensity and momentum his soldiers had gained from their headlong, inspired charge. Having defeated Pharnaces of Pontus at the first assault, he wrote to his friends, "I came, I saw, I conquered."
After the rout in Libya of Scipio's forces and Cato's death by his own hand, he said, "Cato, I begrudge you your death, for you too begrudged me the saving of your life." When some, suspicious of Antony and Dolabella, urged him to be on his guard, he said he did not fear those fat and long-haired men, but rather those thin, pale ones—pointing to Brutus and
Cassius. When a conversation arose at dinner about what kind of death was best, he said, "The unexpected one." Caesar, the first to be called Augustus, while still a young man, demanded from Antony twenty-five million drachmas out of the estate of the elder Caesar, after his murder, from the property which Antony had transferred to his own house, wishing to give back to the Romans what Caesar had bequeathed to them—seventy-five drachmas to each citizen. But when Antony kept
the money and told him to forget about demanding it, if he were wise, he put his own inheritance up for public auction and sold it; and by paying out the gift he won for himself the goodwill, and for Antony the hatred, of the citizens. When Rhoemetalces, king of the Thracians, who had gone over from Antony to his side, behaved without restraint at drinking parties and was offensively insistent in reminding him of their alliance, Caesar, drinking a toast to one
of the other kings, said, "I love treachery, but I do not praise traitors." When the people of Alexandria, after the city's capture, expected to suffer the worst, he went up onto the platform, and, bringing forward Arius the Alexandrian, said he would spare the city, first because of its size and beauty, second because of its founder Alexander, and third for the sake of his friend Arius.
Hearing that Eros, the administrator of affairs in Egypt, had bought a quail that was undefeated and the champion of all fighting quails, and had roasted and eaten it, he sent for him and questioned him; and when the man confessed, he ordered him nailed to a ship's mast. In Sicily he appointed Arius as administrator in place of Theodorus; and when someone handed him a note on which was written, "Theodorus of Tarsus is bald, or a thief:
what do you think?" Caesar read it and wrote underneath, "I think so." From Maecenas, his companion in life, he received each year on his birthday the gift of a cup. When Athenodorus the philosopher asked, because of his old age, to be allowed to go home, he granted the request. But when Athenodorus, embracing him in farewell, said, "Caesar, whenever you are angry, say and do nothing until you have gone through the twenty-four letters of the alphabet to
yourself," Caesar took hold of his hand and said, "I still have need of you present," and kept him for a whole year, saying, "There is a safe reward even for silence." Hearing that Alexander, at thirty-two years old, having conquered most of the world, was at a loss as to what he should do with the rest of his life, he wondered that Alexander did not consider it a greater task
to set in order what he already possessed than to acquire his empire in the first place. Having written the law concerning adulterers, in which it is determined how those accused should be tried and how those convicted should be punished, he then, carried away by anger, struck with his own hands a young man who was accused in connection with his daughter Julia; and when the young man cried out, "You made the law, Caesar," he was so filled with remorse that he refrained from acting on that impulse that day.
... so that he excused himself from that day's dinner.
When he sent Gaius, his grandson, to Armenia, he prayed to the gods that Pompey's goodwill, Alexander's daring, and his own fortune might attend him. He used to say he would leave the Romans as successor to the empire a man who had never twice deliberated about the same matter — meaning Tiberius.
Wishing to quiet the young men of rank who were making a disturbance, when they paid no heed but kept on making noise, he said, "Listen, young men, to an old man to whom old men listened when he was young."
When the Athenian people seemed to have committed some offense, he wrote from Aegina that he supposed they were not unaware that he was angry, for otherwise he would not be wintering in Aegina; but beyond this he neither said nor did anything else to them.
One of the accusers of Eurycles spoke with unsparing and excessive frankness, and was carried so far as to say something like this: "If these things do not seem serious to you, Caesar, order him to give me back the seventh book of Thucydides." At this Augustus grew angry and ordered the man led away; but on learning that he was the last surviving descendant of Brasidas, he sent for him, and after a mild rebuke let him go.
When Piso was carefully building his house from the foundations up to the very roof, Augustus said, "You make me cheerful, building like this, as though Rome were going to last forever."

======== Moralia: Septem Sapientium Convivium ========

Surely, Nicarchus, as time goes on it will bring much obscurity and confusion to these matters, if even now, when the events are so recent and fresh, false accounts composed about them already win credence. For the banquet was not, as you have heard, attended by the Seven alone, but by more than twice that number, among whom I myself was present, being on familiar terms with Periander because of my profession, and a guest-friend of Thales; for the man lodged with me at Periander's bidding. Nor did whoever it was that told you the story remember the conversation correctly; indeed, as it seems, none of those who were actually present told it. But since we have ample leisure now, and old age is not to be trusted to guarantee any postponement of the tale, I will relate the whole of it from the beginning, since you are so eager to hear it.
Periander had prepared the reception not in the city, but at the banqueting-hall near Lechaeum, beside the temple of Aphrodite, to whom the sacrifice was also being offered. For after his mother's passion, when she had willingly given up her life, he had not sacrificed to Aphrodite until then; but now, prompted by certain dreams sent by Melissa, he set out to honor and serve the goddess. To each of the invited guests a pair of horses, suitably adorned, had been sent; for it was summertime, and the whole road down to the sea was filled with dust and commotion from the crowd of carriages and people. Thales, however, on seeing the team of horses at his door, smiled and sent it away. So we set out on foot, turning aside through the fields, at our leisure, and with us as a third companion was Niloxenus of Naucratis, a decent man who had also become acquainted with Solon and Thales in Egypt, and who happened now to have been sent again to Bias. Even he himself did not know for what reason, except that he suspected he was bringing him a second problem, sealed up in a scroll; for he had been instructed, if Bias declined it, to show the scroll to the wisest of the Greeks.
"It is a stroke of luck for me," Niloxenus said, "to have found all of you gathered here, and I am bringing the scroll, as you see, to the dinner." And as he spoke he showed it to us. Thales laughed and said, "If it is anything troublesome, it will go back again to Priene; for Bias will settle it, just as he himself settled the first one." "And what was the first?" I asked. "He sent him," Thales said, "a sacrificial animal, with instructions to cut out the worst piece of meat and send back the best. And our friend did well: he cut out the tongue and sent that back — a fine and clever answer, which is why he is so esteemed and admired." "It is not only for that," said Niloxenus, "that he does not shrink from being called and counted a friend of kings, as you all are — since your king too admires you greatly for other things, and was extraordinarily delighted by your measurement of the pyramid, because without any elaborate procedure and without needing any instrument at all, you simply set your staff upright at the end of the shadow which the pyramid cast, and since the rays of the sun, touching both, produced two triangles, you showed that the shadow had the same ratio to the shadow as the pyramid had to the staff.
"But, as I was saying, you have been slandered as a hater of kings, and certain insolent remarks of yours about tyrants have been reported to him — that when Molpagoras the Ionian asked you what was the strangest thing you had ever seen, you answered, 'An old tyrant'; and again, at some drinking-party, when the talk turned to wild beasts, you said that the worst of the wild beasts was the tyrant, and the worst of the tame ones was the flatterer. These remarks, however much kings pretend to be different from tyrants, they do not hear with favor." "But that," said Thales, "belongs to Pittacus, spoken once in jest to Myrsilus. For my part I should be surprised," he said, "if it were not an old helmsman rather than an old tyrant that I had seen. As for the substitution, I feel as the young man felt who, meaning to throw a stone at the dog, struck his stepmother instead, and said, 'Not such a bad shot after all.' That is also why I have judged Solon to be the wisest of men, for refusing to become a tyrant. And this Pittacus, too — had he not taken up sole rule, he would never have said, 'It is hard to be a good man.' Periander, however, seems, as though gripped by an inherited disease in his tyranny, not to be handling it badly, seeking relief through wholesome company, up to now at least, and drawing to himself the society of men of good sense — though the curtailments of extreme power which Thrasybulus, my own fellow-citizen, urges upon him, he does not accept.
For it makes no difference whether a farmer, wishing to gather darnel and rest-harrow instead of wheat and barley, or a tyrant, wishing to rule slaves rather than men: for one single good, in place of many evils, the possession of power has — honor and reputation, provided the rulers govern as being better than good men and appear greater than great ones; but those who are content merely with safety, without honor, would do better to rule over many sheep and horses and cattle, and not over men." "But indeed," he said, "our friend here has drawn us into talk that is quite beside the point, neglecting to say and to seek what is fitting for men on their way to dinner. Do you not think that just as there is some preparation needed by the man who is going to give a feast, there is also one needed by the man who is going to dine? The Sybarites, it seems, issue their invitations to the women a year in advance, so that they may have leisure to prepare themselves with fine clothing and gold before going to the dinner; but I think that the true preparation of one who is going to dine properly requires still more time, because it is harder to find the adornment suited to one's character than the superfluous and useless adornment for the body. For the sensible man does not come to a dinner bringing himself merely as a vessel to be filled, but ready also to be earnest in something, to jest, to listen, and to say whatever the occasion calls upon those present to say and hear, if they are to enjoy one another's company.
For even poor fare can be set aside, and even if the wine is inferior, one can take refuge with the Nymphs; but a fellow-diner who is heavy-headed, oppressive, and ill-mannered spoils and ruins the charm of every wine and every dish and every musician, and such unpleasantness is not even easy to purge away, but for some it remains for their whole lives, this mutual displeasure with one another, like the stale dregs of some insult or anger that arose over wine. That is why Chilon acted best of all: invited yesterday, he did not agree to come until he had first learned who each of the other guests was to be. For he said that one must put up with an unreasonable fellow-passenger on a ship or a fellow-tent-mate on campaign, where sailing or serving is a necessity; but for a man of sense to throw himself in among fellow-drinkers at random is not the mark of good judgment. As for the Egyptian skeleton, which they bring in fittingly and set before the company at their banquets, urging them to remember that they too will soon be such as it is — though it comes as an unwelcome and untimely intruder on the festivity — it nevertheless has its use, if it turns the guests, not toward drinking and self-indulgence, but toward friendship and affection for one another, and urges them not to make life, which is already short in time, long in troubles."
Talking in this fashion along the road, we arrived at the house; and Thales did not wish to bathe, since we had already been anointed with oil; but as he went along he looked at the running-tracks and the wrestling-grounds and the grove by the sea, all suitably adorned — not that he was struck with wonder by any such things, but so that he might not seem to be disdaining or looking down upon Periander's lavish display. As for the rest of the company, when each had been anointed or bathed, the servants led them into the men's hall through the colonnade. Anacharsis was sitting in the colonnade, and a young slave-girl stood before him, parting his hair with her hands. Thales, as she ran up to him quite freely, kissed her and said with a laugh, "Make our guest handsome in this way, so that being so gentle he may not appear frightening or wild to us in looks." When I asked about the girl, who she was, he said, "Do you not know the wise and famous Eumetis? For that is what her father himself calls her, though most people, from her father's name, call her Cleobulina." And Niloxenus said, "Surely you are praising the girl's skill and wisdom in riddles — for some of the ones she has proposed have even reached Egypt."
"Not I," said Thales... she uses them playfully as one might use knucklebones, whenever she happens upon someone to try them on; but there is also political sense in her, and she makes her father gentler and more democratic toward the citizens." "Very well," he said, "and it shows too, looking at her plainness and simplicity of dress. But why does she care for Anacharsis so affectionately?" "Because," he said, "he is a temperate and learned man, and he has generously and eagerly given her the regimen and the purification which the Scythians use for the sick. And now, I think, she is attending to the man and being kind to him, learning something and conversing with him."
By now, as we were near the men's hall, Alexidemus the Milesian met us — he was the bastard son of Thrasybulus the tyrant — and he was coming out disturbed, muttering something to himself in some anger, nothing clear to us. But when he saw Thales, he checked himself a little, stopped, and said, "What an outrage Periander has committed against us! He would not let me sail away when I was eager to go, but begged me to stay for the dinner; and then, when I came, he assigned me a place of no honor, preferring Aeolians and islanders and — who not? — to me, since he plainly wishes to insult and humiliate Thrasybulus in my person, whom he sent, as though he cared nothing for him." "So then," said Thales, "do you fear, like the Egyptians who say that the stars, as they rise and set in the places through which they pass, become better or worse than themselves, that in the same way some dimming or lowering will come upon you because of your place? You would then be inferior even to the Spartan who, placed in the last position in a chorus by the director, said, 'Well done — you have found a way to make even this position honored.' It is not the place after whom we recline that we should be searching for," he said, "but rather how we may be well suited to those who recline with us, seeking in them straightaway a beginning and a handle for friendship — or rather, having it already — by not being difficult, but by being glad that we have been placed beside such men as these; since the man who is displeased at the position of his couch is displeased more with his couch-companion than with his host, and makes himself hateful to both."
"That," said Alexidemus, "is fine talk, but in practice I see that you wise men too pursue being honored" — and with that he pushed past us and left. And Thales, to us, as we marveled at the strangeness of the man, said, "He is unbalanced and odd by nature, since even as a youth, when some fine perfume was brought to Thrasybulus, he poured it into a large mixing-bowl, added unmixed wine to it, and drank it down, thereby earning himself enmity instead of friendship from Thrasybulus."
At this point a servant came forward and said, "Periander bids you, taking Thales with you, to examine this thing just now brought to him, whether it occurred naturally or is some sign and portent; for he himself seems greatly disturbed, thinking it a pollution and a stain upon the sacrifice." And at the same time he led us off to a building near the garden. There a young man, who appeared to be a herdsman, not yet bearded, and otherwise not ignoble in appearance, unfolded a hide and showed us an infant, as he said, born of a mare — the upper parts, as far as the neck and the hands, of human form, the rest belonging to a horse, and crying out in a voice like that of a newborn child. Niloxenus, saying "Averter of evil!", turned his face away, but Thales gazed at the young man for a long time, then smiled — for he was always accustomed to jest with me about my profession — and said, "Surely, Diocles, you intend to set the purification rite in motion, and to give trouble to the priests who avert such things, as though something terrible and momentous had occurred?"
"What else should I do?" I said. "It is a sign of faction and discord, Thales, and I fear it may extend even to marriage and offspring, unless the anger of the goddess is first appeased, since she now reveals it a second time, as you see." To this Thales made no answer, but went off laughing. And when Periander met us at the doors and asked eagerly about what we had seen, Thales let go of me and, taking hold of Periander's hand, said, "Whatever Diocles bids you do, do it at your leisure; but I advise you not to employ such young men as herdsmen for your horses, or else to give them wives." Periander, on hearing this, seemed to me to be greatly pleased; indeed he burst out laughing, and embracing Thales, kissed him warmly. And Thales said, "I think, Diocles, that the sign has already reached its fulfillment; for you see what evil has befallen us, in Alexidemus's refusal to dine with us."
When we had gone in, Thales, raising his voice somewhat, said, "Where, then, is the man who was so displeased at his place at table?" And when his place had been pointed out, Thales went round and reclined there himself, taking us with him, saying, "Why, I would even pay to share a single table with Ardalus." Now Ardalus was a Troezenian, a singer to the flute and priest of the Ardalian Muses, whom the ancient Ardalus of Troezen had established. Aesop — for he happened to have been sent recently by Croesus both to Periander and to the god at Delphi — was present too, seated on a low stool beside Solon, who was reclining above him, and said, "A Lydian mule, on seeing his own reflection in a river and marveling at the beauty and size of his body, set off to run like a horse, tossing his mane; but then, remembering that he was the son of a donkey, he quickly stopped his running and let go of his snorting and his pride." And Chilon, speaking in his Laconic manner, said, "And you too are slow, and yet you outrun the mule."
After this Melissa came in and reclined beside Periander, and Eumetis took her seat for the meal. And Thales, addressing me as I reclined above Bias, said, "Diocles, why did you not tell Bias that the guest from Naucratis has come again to him with royal problems, so that he might receive the discussion soberly and attentively?" And Bias said, "Why, this man has long been threatening me with such warnings; but as for me, I know that Dionysus, besides being formidable in other respects, is also called Lysius — the Looser — from his wisdom, so that he does not...
"...for I fear that, once filled with the god, I may compete with too little restraint." Such were the jests they traded with one another as they dined. But as for me, seeing that the dinner was more modest than usual, it occurred to me to reflect that the hosting and inviting of wise and good men adds no expense at all, but rather cuts it down, removing the fussiness of fancy relishes, exotic perfumes, pastries, and lavish outpourings of costly wines—luxuries which, though Periander indulged in them fairly regularly, in his tyranny and wealth and power, he now, in the presence of these men, made a display instead of plainness and moderation of expense. For he had stripped away and hidden the customary adornment not only of everything else but of his wife as well, and presented her adorned with simplicity and restraint.
When the tables had been removed and Melissa had passed round garlands, we poured our libations, and the flute-girl, after playing a short accompaniment to the libations, withdrew from the company. Ardalus then addressed Anacharsis and asked him whether there were flute-girls among the Scythians. He answered offhand, "No, nor even vines." When Ardalus said again, "But the Scythians do have gods," he replied, "Very much so—gods who understand human speech, unlike the Greeks, who suppose that they converse better than the Scythians do, and yet think the gods take more pleasure in listening to bones and pieces of wood."
Aesop said, "If only you knew, stranger, how the flute-makers of today, having given up fawn-bone pipes and now using ass-bone ones, claim that they sound better. That is why Cleobulina made a riddling remark about the Phrygian pipe: a dead beast's shinbone struck the horned ear, so that the ass was amazed that, though otherwise the dullest and least musical of creatures, it should supply the finest and most musical of bones." Neiloxenus said, "To be sure, that is exactly what the people of Busiris reproach us Naucratites for as well—for we already use ass-bone for our flutes. Those people consider it unlawful even to hear a trumpet, since its sound resembles that of a braying ass; and you surely know that among the Egyptians the ass is held in contempt on account of Typhon."
When silence followed, Periander, seeing that Neiloxenus wished to begin but was hesitating to open his speech, said, "For my part, gentlemen, I commend both cities and rulers who give audience first to strangers and only afterward to their own citizens; and it seems to me right now that we should hold back our own conversation for a little while, as being homely and familiar to us, and give precedence, as in an assembly, to those Egyptian and royal matters which our excellent friend Neiloxenus has brought to Bias—and Bias wishes to consider them together with all of you." And Bias said, "Where, indeed, or in whose company, could one more eagerly risk an answer, if answer one must, to such questions—especially since the king himself has bidden that the matter begin with me and then pass round to all of you?" So Neiloxenus handed him the document,
and Bias bade him unseal it and read it aloud to everyone in the company. The purport of what was written was this: "Amasis, king of the Egyptians, addresses Bias, wisest of the Greeks. The king of the Ethiopians has entered into a contest of wisdom with me. Being worsted in all the rest, he has finally devised a strange and difficult task, commanding me to drink up the sea. If I solve it, I am to have many of his villages and cities; if I fail, I am to withdraw from the cities around Elephantine. Consider the matter, then, and send Neiloxenus back at once. Whatever service is owed to your friends or fellow citizens on our part shall not be hindered by me." When this had been read, Bias did not pause long, but after a moment's reflection with himself, and a brief word with Cleobulus, who was reclining near him, said, "What do you say,
man of Naucratis? Will Amasis, king of so many men and possessor of so vast and excellent a country, really be willing, for the sake of a few obscure and wretched villages, to drink up the sea?" Neiloxenus laughed and said, "As if he would be willing, Bias! Consider what is possible." "Let him, then," said Bias, "tell the Ethiopian to hold back the rivers that flow into the seas, until he himself drinks up the sea as it now is—for the command concerns this present sea, not the sea that will exist afterward."
When Bias had said this, Neiloxenus, in his delight, rushed to embrace and kiss him; and while the others were praising and approving, Chilon laughed and said, "Man of Naucratis, before the sea is destroyed by drinking, sail off and report to Amasis that he need not seek how to consume so vast a quantity of brine, but rather how he may provide his subjects with a kingship that is sweet and fit to drink. In such matters Bias is most formidable, and the best teacher of them; and once Amasis has learned this from him, he will no longer need the golden footbasin against the Egyptians, but all will serve and love him as a good king, even should he be shown ten thousand times more lowborn than he now appears." "Indeed," said Periander, "it is worth our all contributing such first-fruits to the king,
each man for himself," as Homer puts it; for that contribution would be worth more to him than his trading-goods, and to us it would be more useful than anything else." So when Chilon said that Solon had the right to open the discussion—not only because he outranked all in age and happened to be reclining first, but also because he holds the greatest and most perfect office, having established laws for the Athenians—Neiloxenus quietly said to me, "Many false things are believed, Diocles, and most people take pleasure in fabricating unsuitable stories about wise men, and in readily accepting them from others as well—just as was reported to us in Egypt about Chilon, that he broke off his friendship and guest-ties with Solon because Solon said that laws ought not
to be altered." And I said, "That is a ridiculous story; for on that reasoning one would first have to disown Lycurgus, who overturned the whole constitution of the Lacedaemonians by means of laws of his own." After a brief pause Solon said, "To my mind, a king or a tyrant would become most renowned if he were to convert a monarchy into a democracy for his citizens." Bias spoke second: "if
he governed by laws that were not foreign to the customs of his native land." To this Thales said that he reckoned a ruler happy if he should die of old age in the course of nature. Fourth, Anacharsis said, "if he alone were wise." Fifth, Cleobulus said, "if he trusted none of his associates." Sixth, Pittacus said, "if the ruler brought it about that his subjects feared not for him, but on his behalf." After him Chilon
said that a ruler ought to think nothing that belongs to mortals, but everything that belongs to the immortals. When these opinions had been spoken, we asked Periander himself to say something as well. He, not at all cheerful but composing his features, said, "For my part, then, I declare in addition that virtually all the opinions just stated tend to turn a man of sense away from ruling altogether." And Aesop, as if in refutation, said, "Then you ought to settle this matter among yourselves, and not, while professing to be counselors and friends, become accusers of your rulers." Solon then touched him on the head and, smiling, said, "Would it not seem to you that a ruler is made more moderate, and a tyrant more reasonable, by one who persuades him that it is better not to rule than to rule?" "And who," said Aesop, "would be persuaded of this by you rather than by
the god, who declared in his oracle to you that the city is happy which listens to a single herald?" Solon replied, "But even now the Athenians listen to a single herald and to a single ruler—the law—while having a democracy. You, though, are clever at understanding crows and jackdaws, but you do not hear the god's voice accurately; you think a city fares best in the god's eyes
when it listens to one man, yet you regard it as the virtue of a symposium that all should converse, and about everything." "But you," said Aesop, "have not yet written that it is likewise improper for servants to get drunk, as you wrote at Athens that servants should not make love or anoint themselves with oil." When Solon laughed at this, Cleodorus the physician said, "But talking while soaked in wine is like anointing with oil dry—for it is most pleasant."
Chilon took this up and said, "For that very reason one ought all the more to abstain from it." Again Aesop said, "And yet Thales was thought to have said that he would grow old very quickly." Periander laughed and said, "We have him, Aesop, and rightly served, before we have brought in all of Amasis's questions that we chose to take up, we have fallen into others. But see to the rest of the letter, Neiloxenus, and put it to use now that these gentlemen are present together." "Well then," said Neiloxenus, "the Ethiopian's command one could call nothing but a 'grieving message-staff,' in Archilochus's phrase; but your guest-friend Amasis has proved gentler in such problems, and more cultivated. For he bade him say what is oldest, what is most beautiful, what is greatest,
what is wisest, what is most common, and—yes, by Zeus—in addition, what is most useful, what is most harmful, what is strongest, and what is easiest. Did he, then, answer and resolve each of these?" "He did," said Neiloxenus, "and you shall judge for yourselves once you have heard. For the king cares a great deal that his answers not be caught out by fault-finders, and that if the one who answers goes wrong in any of them, this should not escape unrefuted. I will read out to you just as he answered. 'What is oldest?' 'Time.' 'What is greatest?' 'The universe.' 'What is wisest?' 'Truth.' 'What is most beautiful?' 'Light.' 'What is most common?' 'Death.' 'What is most useful?' 'God.' 'What is most harmful?' 'A daemon.' 'What is strongest?' 'Fortune.' 'What is easiest?' 'Pleasure.'" When this had been read out a second time, Nicarchus, and silence had fallen,
Thales asked Neiloxenus whether Amasis had accepted the solutions. When he replied that some he had welcomed and with others he was dissatisfied, Thales said, "And indeed nothing here is beyond reproach; all of it contains great errors and ignorance. Take time, for instance—how could it be oldest, when part of it is past, part present, and part
still to come? For the time that will exist after us will prove younger than the affairs and people of today. As for regarding truth as wisdom, that seems to me no different from declaring light to be the eye. And if he believed light to be beautiful, as indeed it is, how did he overlook the sun itself? As for the rest, the answer concerning gods and daemons carries rashness
and danger, while the one concerning fortune carries great irrationality; for fortune would not shift about so easily if it were the strongest and most powerful of existing things. Nor indeed is death most common, for it does not concern the living. But so that we may not seem to be merely correcting the judgments of others, let us set our own answers alongside his. I offer myself first, if
Neiloxenus wishes, to be questioned point by point." As the questions and answers went then, so I will now relate them to you. "What is oldest?" "God," said Thales, "for he is uncreated." "What is greatest?" "Space; for while the universe contains everything else, space contains the universe itself." "What is most beautiful?" "The universe; for everything that is in order is a part of it." "What is
wisest?" "Time; for it has already discovered some things, and will discover the rest." "What is most common?" "Hope; for even those who have nothing else still have this." "What is most useful?" "Virtue; for by its right use it makes everything else useful too." "What is most harmful?" "Vice; for its presence does harm to most things." "What is strongest?" "Necessity; for it alone is unconquerable." "What is easiest?"
"That which is according to nature, since as for pleasures, many people often renounce them." When all had approved of Thales, Cleodorus said, "Such questions and answers, Neiloxenus, are fitting for kings to exchange; but the barbarian who pledged Amasis to drink the sea needed the brevity of Pittacus, which he employed toward Alyattes when the latter was issuing some arrogant order and writing to the Lesbians—Pittacus answered nothing at all, but simply
bade him eat onions and hot bread." Periander then took this up and said, "But indeed, Cleodorus, it was the custom among the ancient Greeks to pose such riddles to one another. For we hear that even at the funeral games of Amphidamas in Chalcis, the most eminent poets of that time gathered together. Amphidamas was a warlike man, and after causing much trouble to the Eretrians, he fell in
the battles over the Lelantine plain. Since the verses the poets had prepared made the judging difficult and contentious because of the closeness of the contest, and the reputations of the rivals, Homer and Hesiod, gave those judging great embarrassment and hesitation, they turned instead to such riddling questions. And, as Lesches tells it, the one proposed: 'Muse, tell me of those things which neither happened before nor
will be hereafter,' and Hesiod answered off the cuff: 'but when around the tomb of Zeus the clattering-hoofed horses shatter their chariots, straining for victory'—and it is said that it was chiefly for this that he won admiration and was awarded the tripod." "How," said Cleodorus, "does that differ from Eumetis's riddles? For her it is perhaps not unseemly, while she plays and weaves them together like
other women do their girdles and hairnets, to propose such things; but for men of sense to occupy themselves with any such matter is ridiculous." Eumetis, who evidently would have liked to say something in reply, restrained herself out of modesty, and her face filled with a blush. Aesop, as if defending her, said, "Is it not more ridiculous, then, to be unable to solve riddles such as
the one which he himself proposed to us a little before dinner: 'I saw a man who had welded bronze upon a man with fire—can you say what this is?'" "But I have no wish even to learn it," said Cleodorus. "And yet," he said, "no one knows this better than you, nor practices it better; and if you deny it, I have witnesses from Sicyon." Cleodorus laughed at this; for indeed he made the greatest use of
the Sicyonian cupping-instruments of all the physicians of his time, and this remedy owes not the least of its reputation to him. Mnesiphilus the Athenian, a companion and admirer of Solon, said, "For my part, Periander, I think our conversation, like the wine, ought to be shared out not by wealth nor by rank, but equally among all, as in a democracy, and held in common; but as for the matter just now concerning rule,
"...and of kingship that have just been spoken of, we ordinary citizens have no share. So I think each of you ought once more to contribute some opinion about a constitution based on equality, beginning again from Solon." It was agreed that they should do this. And Solon spoke first: "You have already heard, together with all the Athenians, what opinion I hold about government; but if you wish to hear it again now, it seems to me that a city fares best and best preserves its democracy in which those who have not been wronged prosecute and punish the wrongdoer no less than the one who has been wronged." Bias spoke second, and said that the best democracy was one in which all men fear the law as they would a tyrant. After him Thales named the city that has citizens neither too rich nor too poor. Next Anacharsis said that among all other things reckoned equal, it is by virtue that the better is distinguished, and by vice the worse.
Fifth, Cleobulus said that a people is most sound of mind where the citizens who take part in public affairs fear blame more than the law. Sixth, Pittacus said it is the constitution where it is not possible for the wicked to rule and not possible for the good not to rule. Turning next, Chilon declared that the constitution which listens most to the laws and least to orators is the best. Last of all, Periander, summing up, said that it seemed to him that everyone was praising the democracy that most resembles an aristocracy. When this discussion too had reached its end, I for my part thought it right that the men should also tell us how a household ought to be managed: "for kingdoms and cities are governed by few, but hearth and household belong to all of us alike." Then Aesop laughed and said,
"Not to all, at least not to everyone" -- "do you count Anacharsis among them too? He has no household at all, but even prides himself on being houseless, and uses a wagon instead, just as they say the sun travels about in a chariot, occupying now one region of the sky, now another." And Anacharsis said, "That is precisely why he is alone, or more than any other of the gods, free and self-governing, and rules over all things while being ruled by none, but reigns as king and holds the reins. Only you have failed to notice how surpassingly beautiful and wondrous in size his chariot is; for you would not, in jest and mockery, have compared it to ours. As for a household, Aesop, you seem to think it consists of these coverings of clay and wood and baked tile, just as if one supposed the shell to be the snail rather than the living creature.
It is no wonder, then, that Solon made you laugh when, having seen the house of Croesus lavishly adorned, he did not immediately declare its owner to be living happily and blessedly, since he wished to be a spectator rather of the good things within the man than of those about him. But you seem not even to remember your own fox. For she, entering a contest of beauty of coat with the leopard, asked the judge to examine what was within her, since from there she would appear more variegated. But you go about admiring the works of carpenters and stonemasons, thinking a household to consist not in what is within and proper to each person -- children, marriage, friends, and servants, with whom, even in an anthill or a bird's nest, those who have sense and act moderately share what they possess -- that is a good and blessed household.
For my part, then," he said, "I give this answer both to Aesop and I agree with Diocles; but each of the others is entitled to declare his own opinion." Solon then said that he himself thought the best household to be one where the possessions are attended neither by injustice in their acquiring, nor by distrust in their keeping, nor by regret in their spending. Bias said it is one in which the master is such by his own character as he would be outside the house because of the law. Thales said it is one in which the master is able to enjoy the greatest leisure. Cleobulus said it is one where the master has more who love him than who fear him. Pittacus said that the best household is one that needs none of the superfluous things and lacks none of the necessary ones. Chilon
said that the household ought above all to resemble a well-governed kingdom. Then he added that Lycurgus too, when someone urged him to establish democracy in the city, said, "First establish democracy in your own house." When this discussion also had come to an end, Eumetis went out together with Melissa, and as Periander was pledging Chilon in a large cup, and Chilon in turn pledging Bias, Ardalus rose and, addressing Aesop, said, "Will you not pass the cup this way to us, seeing these men passing it to one another like the cup of Bathycles, without sharing it with anyone else?" And Aesop said, "But this cup need not be for everyone; it has long been reserved for Solon alone." Then Pittacus, addressing
Mnesiphilus, asked why Solon does not drink but instead contradicts his own poems, in which he has written, "Now the works of the Cyprus-born goddess are dear to me, and of Dionysus, and of the Muses, which they set before men for their delight." But Anacharsis spoke first: "He fears you, Pittacus, and that harsh law of yours in which you have written that if a man commits any offense while drunk, the penalty shall be double what it is for a sober man." And Pittacus said, "But you yourself so flouted the law that last year, at your brother-in-law's, having got drunk, you demanded a prize and a garland." "And why should I not," said Anacharsis, "when prizes were offered to the one who drank the most, and I, being the first to get drunk, claimed the victor's prize? Or explain to me, you sages, what is the goal of drinking much unmixed wine, if not getting drunk?"
When Pittacus laughed at this, Aesop told a story of this sort: "A wolf, seeing shepherds eating a sheep in their hut, came near and said, 'What an uproar there would be from you, if I were doing this!'" And Chilon said, "Aesop defended himself rightly, having been silenced by us a little earlier, and now seeing others snatching away Mnesiphilus's argument; for it was Mnesiphilus who was to give the answer on Solon's behalf." "And I do say," said Mnesiphilus, "knowing that Solon holds that in every art and every human and divine power, the product is the true work rather than that by which it is produced, and the end rather than the means to the end. For a weaver, I think, would consider a cloak or a garment his work rather more than
the arrangement of the loom's rods and the raising of the heddles; and a smith would consider the welding of iron and the tempering of an axe his work more than the necessary preliminaries to it, such as kindling coals or preparing ore. Still more would an architect reproach us if we called his work not a ship or a house, but the boring of timbers and the kneading of clay; and the Muses altogether so, if we should think their work to be the lyre and the pipes, rather than the shaping of character and the soothing of the passions in those who make use of melodies and harmonies. So too the work of Aphrodite is not intercourse and union, nor is the work of Dionysus drunkenness and wine, but rather the friendliness, longing, and companionship and intimacy toward one another which they produce through these things; for these are the divine works Solon speaks of,
and these, he says, he loves and pursues most now that he has grown old. Now the craftsman of harmony and friendship between men and women is Aphrodite, who through bodily pleasure mingles and melts their souls together; but for the many, who are not especially intimate or well acquainted, it is Dionysus who, softening their characters as if by fire in the wine, and moistening them, provides some beginning of blending and friendship toward one another. And whenever such men come together as those Periander has invited here, there is, I think, no need at all of cup or wine-jug; rather the Muses, setting in the midst, as it were, a sober mixing-bowl of discourse -- one that contains the most pleasure together with both play and seriousness -- with this they stir up, water, and pour out good will among them, leaving the wine-jug
for the most part to rest quietly "above the mixing bowl," which is what Hesiod forbade in the case of those more capable of drinking than of conversing. Since indeed I understand that the ancients speak of the toasts themselves as needing "a fair portion," as Homer said, and a measured amount for each drinker, and only then, like Ajax, sharing a portion with his neighbor." When Mnesiphilus had said this, Chersias the poet -- for he had by now been released from blame and had been recently reconciled with Periander, at Chilon's request -- said, "Does Zeus, then, dispense to the gods also, as Agamemnon did to his champions, a measured drink, when they were pledging one another as they feasted at his table?" And Cleodorus said, "But you, Chersias,
if certain doves bring ambrosia to Zeus, as you people say, flying over the Wandering Rocks with difficulty and hardship, do you not think that nectar too is hard for him to procure and scarce, so that he must be sparing and provide it to each in a measured share?" "Perhaps," said Chersias, "but since the discussion has again turned to household management, which of you would tell us what remains? What remains, I think, is to determine some measure of property that will be sufficient and adequate." And Cleobulus said, "For the wise, the law has given a measure; but to the foolish I will tell a story of my own daughter, which she told to her brother. She said that the Moon asked her mother to weave her a little garment that fit properly; and her mother said, 'And how can I weave one that fits? For now I see you full,
and again crescent-shaped, and at other times gibbous.' So too, my dear Chersias, for a foolish and worthless man there is no measure of property; for he is different at different times in his needs, because of his desires and fortunes, just like Aesop's dog, which this man here says, curling and coiling itself up in winter because of the cold, intends to build itself a house, but in summer again, stretched out and sleeping, appears large to itself and thinks it neither necessary nor a small task to build itself so vast a house. Do you not see, Chersias," he said, "that the small men now contract themselves into small compass, as though they meant to live simply and in Spartan style, and then again, if they do not have everything that both private citizens and kings possess, think they will perish from want?" When Chersias fell silent at this, Cleodorus took up the point and said,
"But we see the wise as well holding their possessions divided among themselves by unequal measures." And Cleobulus said, "Yes, my good man, for the law, like a weaver, gives to each of us what is fitting, moderate, and suitable. And you yourself, just as if by law, in nourishing and regulating and medicating the sick by your art, do not give the same amount to each, but apportion to all what is appropriate." Then Ardalus took up the point and said, "Does then some law also require your companion, Solon's guest-friend Epimenides, to abstain from other foods, and to pass the whole day, taking only a little of the hunger-quelling preparation he himself compounds into his mouth, without breakfast and without dinner?" When this question had brought the symposium to a pause,
Thales, mocking a little, said that Epimenides was wise not to want the trouble of grinding and baking his own food for himself, as Pittacus does. "For I myself," he said, "once heard a foreign woman singing at the mill, when I was in Eresus: 'Grind, mill, grind; for even Pittacus grinds, king though he is of great Mytilene.'" And Solon said he was surprised at Ardalus, if he had not read the law of the man's diet written in the verses of Hesiod; for Hesiod is the one who first supplied Epimenides with the seeds of this kind of nourishment, and taught men to inquire how great a boon there is in mallow and asphodel. "Do you suppose," said Periander, "that Hesiod had any such thing in mind,
he who is always a praiser of frugality and who urges us toward the plainest of foods as being the most pleasant? For the mallow is good to eat, and the asphodel-stalk is sweet; but those hunger-quelling and thirst-quelling drugs I hear of are more like medicines than food -- honey, and some barbarian cheese, and a great many seeds not easily procured. How then could Hesiod, whose rudder hangs above the smoke, and for whom the labors of oxen and hard-toiling mules would perish, ever require such elaborate provision, if so great a preparation were needed? I am surprised too at your guest-friend, Solon, that when he recently performed the great purification for the Delians, he did not learn from them of what is carried into the temple as memorials and samples of the earliest food, along with other cheap and self-grown things -- mallow and asphodel -- from which it is likely that Hesiod too recommends to us
frugality and simplicity." "Not only that," said Anacharsis, "but each of these is also praised, among vegetables, as especially conducive to health." And Cleodorus said, "You are right to say so. For Hesiod, being clearly a man skilled in medicine, discusses, not carelessly or ignorantly, matters of diet and the mixing of wine and the quality of water and of bathing, and the proper season for intercourse with women, and the seating of infants. But it seems to me more just that Aesop should declare himself a disciple of Hesiod than of Epimenides; for it was the fable of the hawk and the nightingale that gave him the beginning of this fine, varied, and many-tongued wisdom of his. But I for my part would gladly hear from Solon -- for it is likely that he learned, having spent much time with Epimenides at Athens -- what experience or reasoning led him
to adopt such a diet." And Solon said, "But why should one need to ask him that? For it was plain that, next to the greatest and most excellent good, the second is to need the least possible amount of nourishment. Or do you not think the greatest good is to need no nourishment at all?" "By no means," said Cleodorus, "not for my part, at least, if I must say what appears true, especially with a table set before us, which those who remove it, when the food is taken away, treat as an altar of the gods of friendship and hospitality. And just as Thales says that if the earth were taken away the whole universe would fall into confusion, so too the dissolution of a household is the removal of nourishment; for together with it are removed the hearth-fire, the hearth itself, the mixing bowls, the receiving of guests and hospitality -- the most humane and primary of our associations with one another -- and indeed the whole of life, if indeed there is any occupation of man
...activities that provide an occupation, most of which the need and provision of food calls forth. It would also be a terrible thing, my friend, to lose farming along with it; for once destroyed, it again leaves us an earth shapeless and unclean, full of unfruitful growth and of streams running in disorder through neglect. And along with it it destroys every art and occupation as well, of which it is the leader and to all of which it provides the foundation and their material — and without it they are nothing, once it is out of the way.
The honors of the gods, too, are abolished: men would owe the Sun only a small debt of gratitude, and the Moon a still smaller one, for light and warmth alone. But for Zeus the Rain-giver, Demeter of the First-Furrow, and Poseidon the Nurturer of Plants, where will there be an altar, where a sacrifice? And how will Dionysus be ‘giver of joy,’ if we shall need nothing that he gives? What shall we sacrifice or pour as a libation? And of what shall we offer the firstfruits? All these things involve the overturning and confusion of the greatest matters.
Now to cling to every pleasure without exception is altogether unreasonable, but to flee every pleasure without exception is altogether without feeling. Let the soul, then, make use of certain other, better pleasures; but for the body there is no pleasure more legitimate than that which comes from being nourished — a fact which no one has failed to notice; for it is this pleasure that people set in their midst and share with one another at dinners and at table, whereas for the pleasures of sex they put forward night and a great deal of darkness, believing that to share in these openly would be shameless and bestial, as it would not be to fail to share in that other pleasure.”
When Cleodorus paused, I took up the discussion and said, “But you leave out the fact that along with food we would also banish sleep? For if there is no sleep, there is not even a dream, but our oldest oracle is gone. Life will become uniform, and in a sense the body will encircle the soul in vain; for most of its parts, and the most important ones, have been fashioned as instruments for the sake of food — the tongue, the teeth, the stomach, the liver. For none of them is idle or arranged for any other use; so that whoever has no need of food has no need of the body either. And this would mean he has no need of himself; for each of us exists together with a body.”
“So then,” I said, “these are the contributions we bring in on the stomach’s behalf; but if Solon or anyone else has some charge to bring, we shall listen.” “By all means,” said Solon, “lest we show ourselves more indiscriminate even than the Egyptians, who, when they cut open a corpse, display it to the sun, then cast the entrails into the river, and thereafter take care of the rest of the body as already made clean. For this, in truth, is the pollution of our flesh, and it is Tartarus in Hades — a place choked full of terrible currents and of wind and fire mingled together, and of corpses. For no living thing feeds on anything else that is alive, but rather we do wrong by killing living creatures, and by destroying plants too, which, in being nourished and growing, share in life.
For whatever changes into something else perishes out of what it naturally was, and undergoes every kind of destruction, so that it may become food for another. Abstaining from eating flesh, then, as they relate of Orpheus in ancient times, is a piece of sophistry rather than an escape from the wrongdoings connected with food. The only true escape and the one true purification for perfect justice is to become self-sufficient and to need nothing else. But for the being to whom God has made it impossible to secure its own preservation without harming another, nature has thereby attached the origin of injustice as well.
Is it not worth considering, then, my friend, cutting away, together with injustice, the belly and the stomach and the liver, which give us no perception or desire for anything noble, but rather resemble kitchen implements — such as choppers and cauldrons — while others resemble mills and ovens and well-diggers’ tools and kneading-troughs? One could quite literally see, in the case of most people, the soul shut up as if in a mill within the body, forever going round and round in service to the need of food — just as, indeed, only a little while ago we ourselves neither saw nor heard one another, but each of us, bent over, was enslaved to the business of food.
But now, with the tables removed, we have become free, as you see, and crowned with garlands we spend our time in conversation, keep company with one another, and have leisure — because we have reached the point of no longer needing food. Well then, if the condition we are now in should remain unceasing throughout our whole life, shall we not always have leisure to be together with one another, fearing no poverty and knowing no wealth? For the desire for superfluous things immediately follows and takes up residence together with the need for necessities.
But Cleodorus thinks food must exist so that there may be tables and mixing-bowls, and so that we may sacrifice to Demeter and Kore. Let someone else, in the same way, demand that there be battles and war, so that we may have walls and dockyards and armories, and so that we may offer the hecatomphonia, as they say is the custom among the Messenians. And let another be indignant on behalf of health, I suppose — for it would be a terrible thing if, no one being sick, there were no longer any use for a soft bed or a couch, if we should not sacrifice to Asclepius or to the gods who avert evil, and if medicine, with all its instruments and drugs, should be laid aside, unhonored and unwanted.
But how does this differ from the case in question? Food too is applied as a remedy for hunger, and everyone who is nourished and follows a regimen is said to be treating himself — not because it is something pleasant and welcome, but because they are doing what is necessary for nature. Indeed, one could enumerate more pains than pleasures arising from food; or rather, the pleasure occupies only a brief place in the body and lasts no great time, while the trouble and difficulty involved in managing it — why need I say how many shameful and painful things it fills us with?
I think that Homer, having his eye on these very things, used the fact of not eating as a proof, in speaking of the gods, that they do not die: ‘for they eat no bread, nor drink flashing wine; therefore they are bloodless, and are called immortal’ — as though food were the provision not only for living but also for dying. For the diseases that grow up together with our bodies from food bring an evil no less than deficiency does; and often it is a greater task to consume and disperse again through the body the food that has arrived than it was to procure and gather it in the first place.
But just as if the Danaids were to puzzle over what kind of life they would live and what they would do once freed from their toil and filling of the jar, so we puzzle over what we would do if we could ever stop carrying, into our flesh, that untiring quantity of goods from land and sea alike — what shall we do, out of sheer inexperience of what is truly good, content with a life fixed upon mere necessities? Just as those who have been slaves, once freed, do for themselves and on their own account the very things they once did in service to their masters, so too the soul, which now nourishes the body with many labors and preoccupations, would, if released from that servitude, nourish and sustain itself, once made free, and would live looking to itself and to the truth, with nothing to distract or draw it away.”
‘Such, then, Nicarchus, were the things said about food.’ While Solon was still speaking, Gorgus, the brother of Periander, came in; for he had happened to be sent to Taenarum in consequence of certain oracles, conducting a sacrifice and a sacred embassy to Poseidon. When we had greeted him, and Periander had drawn him near and kissed him, Gorgus sat down beside him on the couch and reported certain things meant for him alone, while Periander listened, appearing to undergo many different reactions to what was said. At times he seemed distressed, at times indignant, often disbelieving, then amazed, and at last, laughing, he turned to us and said, ‘For the present I should like to tell you what has been reported; but I hesitate, remembering that Thales once said that one should speak of what is plausible and keep silent about what is beyond belief.’
Bias then took up the point and said, ‘But this too is a piece of wisdom from Thales — that one ought to distrust one’s enemies even about credible matters, but trust one’s friends even about incredible ones; and by enemies I, for my part, mean the wicked and foolish, and by friends the good and sensible, as he himself defined them. Therefore,’ he said, ‘it must be told to us all, Gorgus — indeed you ought to declaim it before these young men here, proclaiming aloud the tale you have come bringing us.’
Gorgus then said that, the sacrifice having been carried out by him over three days, and on the last night there being an all-night festival with dancing and merrymaking along the shore, the moon was shining down onto the sea, and there being no wind but a stillness and calm, a rippling could be seen far off coming down along the headland, bringing with it a certain foam and a great noise of surf around it, so that everyone ran down in wonder to the spot where it was about to strike the shore. And before they could guess, from its speed, what was approaching, dolphins were seen — some crowding together around it in a ring, others leading the way toward the smoothest part of the shore, and still others behind, as if escorting it.
In the middle there rose above the sea an indistinct, shapeless mass — a body being carried along — until, gathering together and running up onto the shore as one, the dolphins set down on the land a man, breathing and moving; and they themselves, turning back toward the headland, leapt out of the water even more than before, sporting, as it seemed, out of some pleasure, and frolicking.
‘Many of us,’ Gorgus said, ‘were thrown into confusion and fled from the sea, but a few of us, taking courage with me, approached and recognized Arion the singer to the lyre — he himself was calling out his own name, and he was made recognizable by his dress, for he happened to be wearing the competition costume he used when performing as a citharode. So we carried him to the tent, and since he had suffered no harm except that, from the speed and rush of the journey, he appeared exhausted and worn out, we heard a story that would be incredible to everyone except us who had witnessed its outcome.
For Arion said that he had long since resolved to set sail from Italy, and that, when Periander wrote to him, he became more eager still; and when a Corinthian merchant ship appeared, he boarded it at once and put out to sea; and after three days of sailing with a moderate wind, he perceived that the sailors were plotting to kill him; and then he learned also from the helmsman, who told him secretly, that they had resolved to do this in the night.
Being then without any help and at a loss, he was seized by some divine impulse: to adorn his body and take up, while still alive, his competition dress as his own burial garment, and to sing his life out to its end, and in this respect not to prove himself more ignoble than swans. So having dressed himself and having announced beforehand that a certain eagerness had come over him to perform the Pythian nome, for the safety of himself, the ship, and those sailing in her, he took his stand by the rail at the stern, and, striking up beforehand an invocation of the gods of the sea, sang the nome. And just as he was scarcely at its midpoint, the sun was sinking into the sea, and the Peloponnese was coming into view.
The sailors, then, no longer waiting for night but moving to the killing at once — he saw drawn swords and the helmsman already covering his face — he ran up and threw himself as far as possible from the ship. And before his whole body had sunk, dolphins swam beneath him and bore him up; at first he was full of confusion, anguish, and distress, but once the ride became easy, and he saw many dolphins gathering benevolently around him and taking turns, as if it were a duty owed in turn and fitting for them all to share, and the ship, left far behind by their speed, made this plain to sense — he said that he felt not so much fear of death, nor desire to live, as an ambition arose in him for his own preservation, so that he might be shown to be a man beloved of the gods and might gain a firm conviction concerning them.
At the same time, looking up and seeing the sky full of stars, and the moon rising bright and clear, and the sea everywhere standing motionless and waveless, as though a path were being cut open by his passage, he thought to himself that the eye of Justice is not a single one, but that God, through all these things around him, watches over on every side what is done on both land and sea. By these very reflections, he said, the weariness and heaviness that had come over his body were lifted; and at last, when a steep and high headland lay ahead, the dolphins, guarding him carefully and rounding it closely, swam alongside the land, bringing him in safely as though guiding a boat into harbor, so that he perceived plainly that his conveyance had come about by the piloting of a god.’
‘When Arion had told this,’ Gorgus said, ‘I asked him where he supposed the ship would put in.’ ‘He said it would certainly be Corinth, but that it would arrive much later than his own crossing; for he reckoned that he himself, having been cast overboard in the evening, had been carried a distance of no less than five hundred stades, and that a calm had settled in immediately afterward.’
Nevertheless, Gorgus said, he himself, having learned the name of the shipowner and of the helmsman, and the ship’s distinguishing mark, sent out boats, and soldiers to watch the landing places, and had Arion carried along with him in hiding, so that the crew, learning beforehand of his survival, might not escape. And indeed the whole affair truly seemed to resemble a piece of divine fortune: for they themselves had arrived here at the very same time, and learned that the ship had been seized by the soldiers and that the merchants and sailors had been taken.
Periander accordingly ordered Gorgus to rise at once and put the men in custody, where no one would approach them or tell them that Arion had been saved. Aesop said, ‘So you people mock my jackdaws and crows for conversing, when dolphins perform such youthful exploits as this!’ And I said to him, ‘Let us say something else, Aesop: this story has been believed and written down among us for more than a thousand years, dating from the times of Ino and Athamas.’
Solon, then, taking up the point, said, ‘But let these matters, Diocles, be left near the gods and above us; more human, and closer to our own level, is what happened to Hesiod — for perhaps you have heard the story.’ ‘I have not,’ I said. ‘But it is certainly worth hearing. There was, it seems, a man of Miletus, with whom Hesiod shared hospitality and lodging in Locris; and this man had secretly had intercourse with the daughter of his host,
and, when the man was discovered, Hesiod fell under suspicion of having known of it from the start and of having helped conceal the wrong, though he was guilty of nothing, but had fallen unjustly into the way of anger seizing its occasion and of slander. For the girl’s brothers killed him, lying in ambush near the Locrian sanctuary of Nemean Zeus, and with him his companion, whose name was Troilus. Their bodies were thrown into the sea; and that of Troilus, into...
"—was carried out to the river Daphnus, but was caught by a wave-washed reef that rose a little above the sea; and to this day the reef is called Troilus. But Hesiod's body a school of dolphins immediately took up from the shore and carried toward Rhium, near Molycreia. It happened that the Locrians were holding the festival and sacred assembly of the Rhia, which they still celebrate with great show around that place; and when the body was seen being borne toward them, the people, marveling as one would expect, ran down to the shore, and recognizing the corpse, still fresh, they made everything else secondary to seeking out the murder, on account of Hesiod's fame. And this they accomplished quickly, finding the murderers: for they drowned them alive in the sea and razed their house to the ground.
"Hesiod was buried near the Nemean sanctuary; but most strangers do not know his tomb, for it is kept hidden, being sought after by the Orchomenians, who, as they say, wish in accordance with an oracle to take up his remains and bury them among themselves. If, then, they behave so kindly and humanely toward the dead, it is all the more likely that they help the living, especially when charmed by pipes or by certain melodies. For we all already know this, that these creatures delight in music and pursue it, and swim alongside those who are rowed to the accompaniment of song and pipe, taking pleasure in the dances when the sea is calm. They delight also in the swimming of boys and compete with divers. For this reason there is an unwritten law of immunity for them: no one hunts them or does them harm, except when, caught in nets, they do mischief about the catch, in which case they are punished with blows, like children who have done wrong.
"I recall also having heard from men of Lesbos that a certain girl's rescue from the sea was brought about by a dolphin; but I myself am not exact about the other details, and since Pittacus knows the story, it is right for him to relate it." Pittacus then said that the story was famous and remembered by many. For when an oracle was given to those who were colonizing Lesbos, that whenever, sailing, they should come upon a reef called Mesogeion, they should there let down to Poseidon a bull, and to Amphitrite and the Nereids a living maiden — there being seven founders and kings, and an eighth, Echelaus, the leader of the colony appointed by the oracle, who was still unmarried — when the seven cast lots, among those who had unmarried daughters, the lot fell upon the daughter of Smintheus. Her they adorned with clothing and gold, and when
they arrived at the place, they were about to offer prayers and let her down. But it happened that one of those sailing with them was in love with her — a young man of no mean birth, it seems, whose name is still remembered, Enalus. He, seized by an overwhelming eagerness to help the maiden in that moment of distress, rushed forward at the critical instant and, throwing his arms around her, threw himself along with her into the sea. Immediately a rumor arose, without any certainty, but persuading many nonetheless, and it spread through the camp concerning their safety and rescue. But at a later time they say that Enalus appeared in Lesbos and told how they had been carried unharmed by dolphins through the sea and cast up on the mainland, and he related still other things more marvelous than these, astonishing and enchanting most people, and he furnished proof of all this by a deed.
For when a towering wave rose up around the island and the people were afraid to go meet it, he alone went down to the sea and followed it, and octopuses accompanied him to the sanctuary of Poseidon. Of these, the largest was carrying a stone; Enalus took it and dedicated it, and we still call this the stone of Enalus. "In general," he said, "if anyone knew the difference between the impossible and the unusual, and between the irrational and the paradoxical, he would above all, Chilon, both refrain from believing too readily and from disbelieving, keeping to 'nothing in excess,' as you have prescribed."
After him Anacharsis said that, since Thales rightly supposed that soul is present in all the most sovereign and greatest parts of the universe, it is not right to marvel that the finest things are accomplished by the design of god. "For the body is the instrument of the soul," he said, "and the soul is the instrument of god; and just as the body has many movements of its own, but the most and finest by means of the soul, so in turn the soul performs some things by its own motion, but yields others to god, who uses it, to guide and turn it wherever he wishes, it being the most tractable of all instruments. For it would be strange," he said, "if fire is an instrument of god, and breath, and water, and clouds, and rain, by which he saves and nourishes many things, and destroys and takes away many others, and yet he makes use of animals for nothing at all among the things done by him.
"But it is more likely that they, being wholly dependent on the power of god, serve him and are in sympathy with the movements of god, just as bows are in sympathy with the Scythians, and lyres and pipes with the Greeks." To this the poet Chersias added, recalling others who had been saved unexpectedly, and in particular Cypselus, the father of Periander, whom the men sent to kill him, when he was newborn, turned away from after he smiled at them; and when they repented and sought him again, they did not find him, for he had been put away by his mother in a beehive-chest (kypsele). For this reason Cypselus built the treasury at Delphi, as though the god at that time had checked the infant's crying, so that he might escape the notice of those seeking him.
And Pittacus, addressing Periander, said, "Well said, Periander — Chersias composed that with the treasury in mind; for I have often wished to ask you the reason for those frogs, what they mean by being carved in such numbers about the base of the palm tree, and what connection they have with the god or with the one who dedicated it." And when Periander bade Chersias answer — for he knew, and had been present when Cypselus dedicated the treasury — Chersias smiled and said, "But I would not tell before learning from you gentlemen what 'nothing in excess' means for you, and 'know thyself,' and that saying which has made many men unmarried, many distrustful, and some even speechless: 'Give a pledge, and ruin is at hand.'"
"What need is there," said Pittacus, "for us to explain these things to you? For you have long praised the account which Aesop, it seems, has composed for each of them." And Aesop said, "When Chersias jokes with me, that is one thing; but when he is serious, he shows that Homer is the inventor of these sayings, and says that Hector knew himself, for in attacking the others he avoided battle with Ajax, son of Telamon; and that Odysseus, the champion of 'nothing in excess,' urges Diomedes, son of Tydeus: 'Neither praise me overmuch, nor find fault with me'; and as for pledging, most others take it that he speaks of it as a wretched and foolish thing, when he says, 'Wretched indeed are the pledges of the wretched'; but this Chersias here says that Ate was cast down by Zeus in company with the pledge which Zeus, having pledged himself, was deceived about concerning the birth of Heracles."
Solon then took up the argument and said, "Then must we not trust the wisest Homer also when he says, 'Night now is falling; it is good to yield to night'? Let us, then, pour libations to the Muses and to Poseidon and Amphitrite, and, if it seems good, break up the symposium." This, Nicarchus, was the end of that gathering.

======== Moralia: Vitae Decem Oratorum ========

Antiphon was the son of a father named Sophilus, and belonged to the deme of Rhamnus. He had studied under his father, who was a sophist, and to whom, they say, Alcibiades used to go while still a boy. Having acquired power of speech, as some think, from his own natural gift, he set out to engage in politics; he also established a school, and disagreed with Socrates the philosopher over their differing views about arguments, not out of contentiousness but in a spirit of testing and refutation, as Xenophon has recorded in the Memorabilia.
He also composed speeches for such citizens as needed them, for use in the contests of the lawcourts, being the first to turn to this practice, as some say; at any rate, no forensic speech is preserved from anyone before him, nor even from his own contemporaries, because it was not yet customary to write such things down — not for Themistocles, not for Aristides, not for Pericles, and yet the occasions and necessities that the times afforded them were many. And indeed it was not through any lack of ability that they refrained from writing, as is clear from what is said by the historians about each of the men named above. But as many as we can find, tracing back to the earliest instance, who took up and practiced this kind of speech, one would find these attached themselves to Antiphon, who was already an old man — men such as Alcibiades, Critias, Lysias, and Archinus.
He was also the first to produce manuals of rhetorical technique, having a shrewd and penetrating mind; for this reason he was even called "Nestor." Caecilius, in his treatise about him, conjectures from the praise Antiphon receives in Thucydides that Antiphon had been the teacher of the historian Thucydides. In his speeches he is precise and persuasive, and formidable in invention, and even in matters lacking clear resource he is technically skillful, undertaking to argue from what is obscure, and turning his arguments both toward the laws and toward the emotions, aiming above all at what is fitting. He lived in the time of the Persian Wars and of Gorgias the sophist, being somewhat younger than Gorgias, and he continued in public life down to the overthrow of the democracy by the Four Hundred — a revolution which he himself appears to have helped bring about — serving at one time as trierarch of two triremes, at another as general, and winning many battles, and bringing over great alliances to their side, and arming men in their prime, and manning sixty triremes, and repeatedly going as envoy on their behalf to Lacedaemon, at the time when Eetioneia had been fortified.
But after the overthrow of the Four Hundred, having been impeached together with Archeptolemus, one of the Four Hundred, he was convicted, and, being subjected to the penalties prescribed for traitors, was cast out unburied, and he and his descendants were recorded as disenfranchised. Some, however, relate that he was put to death by the Thirty, as Lysias does in his speech On Behalf of the Daughter of Antiphon — for a small daughter had been born to him, whom Callaeschrus claimed at law. That he died at the hands of the Thirty is also related by Theopompus in the fifteenth book of his Philippica; but this would be a different Antiphon, son of Lysidonides, whom Cratinus too mentions in the Bottle as a worthless fellow.
For how could the man who had already died, put to death under the Four Hundred, be alive again under the Thirty? There is also another account of his death. It is said that, while serving as an envoy, he sailed to Syracuse at the height of the tyranny of the elder Dionysius; and when a dispute arose over drinks as to what bronze was best, and most of those present disagreed, he himself said that the best was the bronze out of which the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton had been made. When Dionysius heard this and suspected that what had been said was an incitement to assassination, he ordered him put to death — though others say it was because Antiphon had ridiculed Dionysius's tragedies that he grew angry.
Sixty speeches of the orator are in circulation, of which Caecilius says twenty-five are spurious. He has been mocked for love of money by Plato in the Pisander. He is also said to have composed tragedies, both on his own and jointly with Dionysius the tyrant. Furthermore, besides his poetry, he devised an art of freedom from distress, comparable to the treatment the sick receive from physicians; and having set up an establishment in Corinth near the marketplace, he posted a notice that he was able to treat those in distress by means of words, and by inquiring into the causes he would console those who were suffering. But considering the art beneath his own dignity, he turned instead to rhetoric.
There are some who attribute to Antiphon the book On Poets by Glaucus of Rhegium. His most praised works are the speech On Behalf of Herodes, the one Against Erasistratus concerning the peacocks, the one On the Impeachment, which he wrote in his own defense, and the one Against Demosthenes the general, for illegal proposal. He also wrote a speech Against Hippocrates the general and won his case, the defendant not appearing. There is also a decree from the archonship of Theopompus, under whom the Four Hundred were overthrown, by which it was resolved that Antiphon be brought to trial, which Caecilius has cited: "It was resolved by the Council, in the twenty-first day of the prytany — Demonicus of Alopece was proedros, Philostratus of Pallene presiding — Andron proposed, concerning the men whom the generals denounce as having gone as envoys to Lacedaemon to the detriment
of the city of the Athenians, and as having sailed from the camp on a ship of the enemy, and as having gone by land through Decelea — that Archeptolemus and Onomacles and Antiphon be arrested and handed over to the court, so that they may be punished; and let the generals produce them, together with whomever of the Council the generals think fit to add, up to ten, so that judgment may be passed on them in their presence. Let the thesmothetae summon them
for the following day, and let them be brought in as soon as the summonses have run their course, before the court, on the charge of treason, and let those chosen as advocates accuse them, as well as the generals and anyone else who wishes; and against whomever the court votes for conviction, let action be taken concerning him according to the law that stands regarding traitors." Appended to this decree is the sentence of conviction:
"Convicted of treason: Archeptolemus, son of Hippodamus, of Agryle, present; Antiphon, son of Sophilus, of Rhamnus, present — both of these. It was determined that they be handed over to the Eleven, and that their property be public, with a tenth part consecrated to the goddess, and that their two houses be razed, and boundary stones set upon the two building-sites, inscribed as belonging to Archeptolemus and Antiphon, the two traitors. And let the two demarchs make a return of their property, and let it not be lawful to bury Archeptolemus
or Antiphon at Athens, nor in any territory the Athenians control; and let Archeptolemus and Antiphon be disenfranchised, and their line, both bastard and legitimate, and if anyone should adopt any descendant of Archeptolemus or Antiphon, let the adopter be disenfranchised. Let this be inscribed on a bronze stele, in the very place where the decrees concerning Phrynichus are set up, and let this too be placed there."
Andocides was the son of Leogoras, whose father was Andocides, who once made peace for the Athenians with the Lacedaemonians; he belonged to the deme of Cydathenaeum, or Thorae, and was of a family of the Eupatridae — or, as Hellanicus says, descended even from Hermes, since the lineage of the Heralds goes back to him. For this reason he was once chosen, together with Glaucon, to go with twenty ships to aid the Corcyraeans, who were at odds with the Corinthians. After this, having been accused of impiety, on the charge that
he too had mutilated the Herms and had offended against the mysteries of Demeter — being tried on these charges he was acquitted, on condition that he would inform against the wrongdoers; and applying every effort, he discovered those who had offended against the sacred rites, among whom he even informed against his own father. And though he brought to ruin all the others by his testimony, he saved his father, even though the man had already been imprisoned, by promising that he would be of great
service to the city — and he did not lie; for Leogoras exposed many who were embezzling public money and committing other wrongs. And for this reason he was released from the charge; but Andocides, not being in good standing with those in political power, gave himself over to shipowning, and became a guest-friend of the kings of Cyprus and many other notable men. It was then that, having secretly taken one of the citizen-women, the daughter of Aristides, who was his own cousin,
away from her family without their knowledge, he sent her as a gift to the king of Cyprus. But when he was about to be brought to court on this charge, he stole her away again from Cyprus, and being caught by the king he was put in chains; having escaped, he came to the city, at the time when the Four Hundred were managing affairs. Bound by them as well, and having escaped again, once more, when the oligarchy was overthrown, he was banished from the
city, when the Thirty took over the government. Having spent the time of his exile living in Elis, when the party of Thrasybulus returned, he too came back to the city. But having been sent to Lacedaemon concerning the peace and being thought to have done wrong, he went into exile. He makes all this clear in the speeches he has composed: some are in defense of himself concerning the mysteries, others concern his
petition for his return. There also survives his speech On the Denunciation, and his Defense Addressed to Phaeax, and On the Peace. He flourished at this time together with Socrates the philosopher; the beginning of his life falls in the seventy-eighth Olympiad, when Theogenides was archon at Athens, so that he was older than Lysias by about a hundred years. After him is also named
the Hermes called "of Andocides," a dedication belonging to the tribe Aegeis, but nicknamed after Andocides because Andocides lived near it. He himself also financed a cyclic chorus for his own tribe when it competed in the dithyramb, and having won, he dedicated a tripod opposite the tufa-stone Silenus. He is plain and unadorned in his speeches, simple and without artifice. Lysias was the son of Cephalus,
son of Lysanias, son of Cephalus, a Syracusan by birth, who moved to Athens out of desire for the city, and because Pericles the son of Xanthippus, who was his friend and guest-friend, persuaded him — a man outstanding in wealth; though some say he had been driven out of Syracuse, when it was under the tyranny of Gelon. Having come to Athens in the archonship of Philocles, the successor of Phrasicles, in the second year of the eightieth Olympiad, at first
he was educated together with the most distinguished Athenians; but when the city sent out the colony to Sybaris — later renamed Thurii — he went along with his eldest brother Polemarchus (for he had two other brothers as well, Euthydemus and Brachyllus), their father having already died, so as to share in the allotment, being fifteen years old, in the archonship of Praxiteles; and there he remained, being educated under Tisias and Nicias
the Syracusans, and having acquired a house and obtained a land allotment, he took part in public life there for sixty-three years, until the archonship of Clearchus at Athens. In the following year, when Callias was archon, in the ninety-second Olympiad, when the events in Sicily affecting the Athenians occurred and a disturbance arose among the other allies, especially those inhabiting Italy, he was accused of favoring Athens and was banished along with three hundred others. Coming to Athens in the archonship of Callias, the successor of
Cleocritus, at a time when the Four Hundred already held the city, he spent his time there. When the naval battle at Aegospotami took place and the Thirty took over the city, he was banished, after having stayed seven years, stripped of his property and of his brother Polemarchus as well; but he himself escaped from the house, which had two doors, in which he was being guarded to be put to death, and lived on in Megara. When those from Phyle made their attack
for the restoration, since he showed himself the most useful of all — providing two thousand drachmas and two hundred shields, and being sent along with Hermon he hired three hundred mercenaries, and persuaded Thrasydaeus the Elean, who had become his guest-friend, to give two talents. In return for this, when Thrasybulus proposed a grant of citizenship for him after the restoration, in the time before Euclides when there was no fixed constitution, the people ratified the gift; but Archinus, having brought
a charge of illegality on the ground that it had been introduced without preliminary approval of the Council, won his case, and the decree was overturned. And thus, being excluded from citizenship, he lived out the rest of his life as a resident alien with equal tax status, and died there at the age of eighty-three, or, as some say, seventy-six, or, as others say, more than eighty, having lived to see Demosthenes as a young boy. They say he was born in the archonship of Philocles. Four hundred and twenty-five speeches of his are in circulation,
of which those around Dionysius and Caecilius say two hundred and thirty-three are genuine, and among these he is said to have lost only twice. There is also his speech on behalf of the decree that Archinus had proposed, which stripped him of his citizenship, and another one against the Thirty. He was most persuasive and most concise, having given up the greater part of his speeches to private individuals. There are also attributed to him
handbooks of rhetoric that have been composed, as well as public addresses, letters and encomia, funeral orations and erotic speeches, and a Defense of Socrates aimed at the jurors. In diction he seems easy, though in fact he is difficult to imitate. Demosthenes, in his speech Against Neaera, says that he had been a lover of Metaneira, a fellow slave of Neaera; later he married the daughter of his brother Brachyllus. Plato too mentions him, in
the Phaedrus, as a most formidable speaker, and as older than Isocrates. Philiscus, a pupil of Isocrates and companion of Lysias, also composed an epigram on him, through which it is clear that he was earlier in years — a fact also proved from what is said by Plato. It runs as follows: "Now, O daughter of Calliope, much-speaking Phrontis, you will show whether you have any wisdom and possess some surpassing power, for the man
who has been transformed into another shape and, taking on another body amid the other adornments of life, must bear a herald of virtue, one Lysis, to sing, having gone down among the dead and the darkness — immortal — who will show to all my soul's love of friendship, and the virtue of the departed to all mortals." He also composed speeches jointly with Iphicrates, one against Harmodius, the other for Iphicrates when he was prosecuting
Timotheus for treason, and he won in both. When Iphicrates took upon himself responsibility for Timotheus's actions, and at his audit took over the charge of treason, he defended himself by means of the speech of Lysias; and he himself was acquitted, but Timotheus was fined a very great sum of money. He also delivered a very great speech at the Olympic festival, urging the Greeks, once reconciled, to overthrow Dionysius. Isocrates was the son of Theodorus, of the deme Erchia,
one of the citizens of modest means, who owned slaves who were flute-makers and grew prosperous from this business, so much so that he was able to finance choruses and educate his sons; for he had other sons as well, Telesippus and Diomnestus, and also a small daughter — for which reason he has been mocked for the flutes by Aristophanes and Strattis. He was born in the eighty-sixth Olympiad, when Lysimachus of Myrrhinus was archon, twenty-two years younger than Lysias,
but seven years older than Plato. As a boy he was educated as well as any Athenian, hearing Prodicus of Ceos, Gorgias of Leontini, Tisias of Syracuse, and Theramenes the orator — of whom, when he was being seized by the Thirty and had fled to the altar of Hestia in the council chamber, while all the rest were terrified into silence, he alone rose to help him, and for a long time kept silent at first, but then was begged off by Theramenes himself,
...having said that it would be more painful for him if any of his friends were to benefit from the misfortune. They say that certain compositions were written on his behalf under the name of Boton, when he was being harassed by malicious prosecutions in the courts. But when he reached manhood, he kept away from political affairs, since he was weak of voice and cautious by temperament, and had lost his patrimony in the war against the Spartans; he practiced declamation for others, it seems, but delivered only one speech of his own, the one On the Exchange. Having established a school, he turned to philosophizing and to writing down what he had in mind, including the Panegyricus and some other deliberative speeches, some of which he wrote and read aloud himself, others he prepared for other men to deliver, in the belief that in this way he would spur the Greeks to think as they ought. But failing in this aim, he gave it up, and instead ran a school -- first, as some say, on Chios, with nine pupils. There, seeing his fee being counted out, he said, weeping, "Now I recognize that I have been sold to these men." He conversed with anyone who wished it, being the first to separate contentious argumentation from political oratory, the branch to which he devoted himself seriously. He also helped establish magistracies on Chios modeled on the constitution of his own city.
He amassed more money than any sophist ever had, enough even to serve as a trierarch. His pupils numbered up to a hundred, including, among many others, Timotheus son of Conon, with whom he also traveled to many cities, drafting the letters that Timotheus sent to the Athenians; in return Timotheus gave him a talent from the spoils won at Samos. Theopompus of Chios was also his student, as were Ephorus of Cyme, Asclepiades, who compiled the subjects of tragedy, and Theodectes of Phaselis, who later wrote tragedies himself -- whose tomb stands, now fallen into ruin, along the sacred road to Eleusis for those traveling toward Cyamitis. There Theodectes had set up statues of the famous poets alongside his own, of which only the statue of Homer survives; also of Leodamas the Athenian and Lacritus, the lawgiver of the Athenians, and, as some say, of Hyperides and Isaeus as well.
They say that even Demosthenes, while still practicing oratory, came to him eagerly, and said that he could not pay the full thousand drachmas being charged but would give two hundred, on condition of learning only a fifth part of the art; to which Isocrates replied, "We do not sell our craft in pieces, Demosthenes -- just as fine fish are sold whole, so I too, if you wish to be my pupil, will hand over the whole craft to you."
He died in the archonship of Chaerondas, on learning, while in the wrestling school of Hippocrates, the news reported from Chaeronea; he brought his own life to an end over four days by refusing food, having first recited the opening lines of three plays of Euripides: "Danaus, father of fifty daughters," "Pelops, son of Tantalus, coming to Pisa," and "Cadmus, once leaving the city of Sidon" -- departing life at the age of ninety-eight, or as some say a hundred, unable to bear seeing Greece enslaved for a fourth time. A year before his death, or as some say four years before, he composed the Panathenaicus. He spent ten years composing the Panegyricus -- some say fifteen -- which he is said to have drawn from the works of Gorgias of Leontini and of Lysias; and he wrote the speech On the Exchange at the age of eighty-two, and the speeches against Philip a little before his death.
He had a son, Aphareus, adopted late in life, born to Plathane, wife of Hippias the orator, the youngest of her three children. He gained ample wealth, not only by charging his students fees but also from Nicocles, king of Cyprus and son of Evagoras, receiving twenty talents for the speech written in his honor. This provoked envy, and he was three times put forward to serve as trierarch; twice he pleaded illness and was excused through his son, but the third time he undertook the duty himself and spent no small amount. To a father who complained that he had sent his son off no better than a slave, Isocrates replied, "Very well then, go -- for you will have two slaves instead of one." He also competed for the prize that Artemisia established in honor of Mausolus, though the encomium he wrote for it does not survive. He also composed an encomium of Helen and the Areopagiticus.
As for his death, some say he abstained from food for nine days, others for four, dying at the very time of the burial of those who had fallen at Chaeronea. His son Aphareus also composed speeches concerning him. He was buried with his family near the Cynosarges, on the hill, on the left side: he himself, his father Theodorus, and his mother; also her sister, the orator's aunt Anaco, and his adopted son, the poet Aphareus, and his cousin Socrates, son of Anaco (Isocrates' mother's sister), and his brother, likewise named Theodorus after their father, and the grandsons of his adopted son Aphareus -- another Aphareus, and this one's father Theodorus, and his wife Plathane, mother of the poet Aphareus. Over these there stood six funerary monuments, which do not survive today. Over Isocrates' own tomb stood a column thirty cubits high, on which, as a symbol, stood a Siren seven cubits tall, which likewise does not survive now. Nearby stood a tablet of his own, showing the poets and his teachers, among them Gorgias gazing at a celestial globe, with Isocrates himself standing beside him.
A bronze statue of him is also dedicated at Eleusis, in front of the portico, set up by Timotheus son of Conon, with the inscription: "Timotheus, honoring both friendship and the wisdom of Isocrates, dedicated this image to the goddesses" -- the work of Leochares. Sixty of his speeches are extant, of which twenty-five are genuine according to Dionysius, and twenty-eight according to Caecilius, the rest being spurious.
He disliked ostentatious display: once, when three people came to hear him recite, he kept back two and dismissed the third, saying he would come the next day, since for now his audience filled his lecture-room. He used to tell his students that while he himself taught for ten minas, he would give ten thousand drachmas to whoever could teach him boldness and a strong voice. And when someone asked why, if he himself was not capable of public speaking, he trained others to be, he answered that whetstones cannot cut anything themselves, yet they make iron sharp enough to cut. Some say that he also wrote technical treatises on rhetoric; others say that he relied not on a formal method but on practice. He never charged a fellow citizen a fee. He instructed his students, whenever they attended the assemblies, to report back to him what had been said there. He was deeply grieved by the death of Socrates, and appeared the next day dressed in mourning black. When someone once again asked him what rhetoric was, he said, "To make small things great, and great things small."
Once, dining at the court of Nicocreon, the tyrant of Cyprus, when those present urged him to speak, he said, "The present occasion does not call for what I am skilled in, and what I am skilled in does not suit the present occasion." Seeing Sophocles the tragedian following a boy with desire in his eyes, he said, "Sophocles, one must control not only one's hands, but one's eyes as well." As for Ephorus of Cyme, when he left his school having accomplished nothing and was sent back again by his father Demophilus with a second fee, Isocrates jokingly called him "Diphorus" ["Double-Fee"]; nevertheless he took great pains with the man, and himself suggested the subject matter for his historical work. Isocrates was also inclined to sensual indulgence, going so far as to use a couch strewn with cushions in bed and keeping his pillow soaked in saffron scent.
While young he did not marry; in old age he lived with a courtesan named Lagiske, by whom he had a small daughter, who died at the age of twelve, before she could be married. He then took as his companion Plathane, wife of Hippias the orator, who had three children, of whom, as already noted, he adopted Aphareus. Aphareus dedicated a bronze statue of his father near the Olympieum, on a column, with the inscription: "Aphareus dedicated this image of his father Isocrates to Zeus, honoring both the gods and the virtue of his parents."
It is also said that he rode on horseback while still a boy, for a bronze statue stands on the Acropolis, in the ball court of the Arrephoroi, showing him as a boy riding a horse, as some have reported. Throughout his whole life he was involved in only two legal contests. The first arose when Megacleides challenged him to an exchange of property; Isocrates did not answer the challenge in person because of illness, but sent his son Aphareus, who won the case. The second arose when Lysimachus challenged him to an exchange over the trierarchy; having lost, Isocrates undertook the trierarchy. A painted portrait of him also stood in the Pompeium.
His son Aphareus wrote speeches, though not many, both forensic and deliberative; he also composed about thirty-seven tragedies, of which two are disputed. Beginning in the archonship of Lysistratus and continuing to that of Sosigenes, a span of twenty-eight years, he entered six productions at the City Dionysia and won twice, through the actor Dionysius, and he also entered two further productions, through other actors, at the Lenaea. Statues of the mother of Isocrates and Theodorus, and of her sister Anaco, stood on the Acropolis; of these, the mother's statue now stands beside that of Hygieia, its inscription altered, while that of Anaco does not survive. Isocrates had two sons: Alexander, by Koinos, and Sosicles, by Lysis.
Isaeus was Chalcidian by birth. Coming to Athens and studying under Lysias, he came to resemble him so closely, both in the harmony of his diction and in his forcefulness in handling his material, that unless one were very well versed in the distinctive character of the two men, one could not easily tell to which of the two orators many of the speeches belonged. He flourished after the Peloponnesian War, as can be inferred from his speeches, and continued active down to the reign of Philip. He gave instruction to Demosthenes, having left his school to do so, for ten thousand drachmas -- and it was chiefly for this that he became famous. He himself, some say, also helped compose the speeches against the guardians for Demosthenes. He has left sixty-four speeches, of which fifty are genuine, along with a treatise of his own on rhetoric. He was the first to begin using rhetorical figures and to turn his thought toward political subjects, a practice which Demosthenes above all imitated. He is mentioned by Theopompus the comic poet in his Theseus.
Aeschines was the son of Atrometus, who had gone into exile under the Thirty and helped bring back the democracy, and of Glaucothea; he was of the deme Kothokidai, belonging neither to a family of distinguished birth nor to one of great wealth. While young and physically strong, he trained diligently in the gymnasia; and being clear-voiced, he later practiced tragic acting -- indeed, as Demosthenes says, he spent his time as an under-clerk and as a third-place actor for Aristodemus at the festivals of Dionysus, reviving old tragedies in his spare time. While still a boy he taught letters alongside his father, and as a young man he served in the army among the frontier patrols.
He became a student -- as some say, of Isocrates and Plato; according to Caecilius, of Leodamas -- and, as a conspicuous politician on the side opposed to Demosthenes and his party, he served on many embassies, including one to Philip concerning the peace. For this he was accused by Demosthenes both of having brought about the destruction of the Phocian nation and of having kindled the war, when he was chosen as delegate to the Amphictyonic Council against the Amphisseans, who were cultivating the sacred harbor land. As a result the Amphictyons appealed to Philip, and Philip, aided by Aeschines, seized the opportunity and took Phocis. But with Eubulus, son of Spintharus, of Probalinthus, a popular leader, speaking in his defense, he was acquitted by thirty votes. Some say that the orators had written up their speeches for the trial, but that, since the events at Chaeronea intervened, the case never actually came to trial.
Some time later, after Philip's death, while Alexander was crossing into Asia, Aeschines indicted Ctesiphon for proposing an illegal measure regarding the honors voted to Demosthenes; but failing to win a fifth of the votes, he went into exile at Rhodes, unwilling to pay the thousand drachmas owed for his defeat. Others say that a further penalty of disenfranchisement was imposed on him because he refused to leave the city, and that he went instead to Ephesus, to Alexander. When Alexander died and turmoil followed, Aeschines set out for Rhodes and, settling there, established a school and taught. He read to the Rhodians, by way of demonstration, his speech Against Ctesiphon; and when they all marveled that, having spoken so well, he had nevertheless lost the case, he said, "You would not marvel, Rhodians, if you had heard Demosthenes speaking in reply." He also left a school there, which came to be called the Rhodian school. Afterward he sailed to Samos, and while staying on that island, he died not long after.
He had a fine voice, as is clear both from what Demosthenes says and from the speech of Demochares. Four speeches of his are in circulation: Against Timarchus, On the False Embassy, and Against Ctesiphon -- and these alone are genuine, for the speech entitled Delian is not by Aeschines: he was indeed appointed as advocate for the case concerning the temple on Delos, but he did not in the end deliver the speech, since Hyperides was elected in his place, as Demosthenes says. He also had brothers, as he himself says, Aphobetus and Philochares. He was the first to bring the Athenians news of the victory at Tamynae, for which he was crowned a second time. Some have said that Aeschines was not actually a pupil of anyone, but rose up out of his position as an under-clerk while spending his time in the law courts; that he first spoke before the Assembly against Philip, and, having won a good reputation, was elected as ambassador to the Arcadians, where he went and rallied the Ten Thousand against Philip. He also brought an indictment against Timarchus for prostitution; Timarchus, abandoning his defense, hanged himself, as Demosthenes says somewhere. Aeschines was elected ambassador to Philip, together with Ctesiphon and Demosthenes, to negotiate the peace, in the course of which he conducted himself better than Demosthenes did; and a second time, as one of ten ambassadors who ratified the peace under oath, he was put on trial and acquitted, as has already been said.
Lycurgus' father was Lycophron, son of Lycurgus, whom the Thirty Tyrants put to death, the man responsible for his execution being Aristodemus of the deme Bate, who, after serving as a Hellenic treasurer, went into exile when the democracy was restored; Lycurgus was of the deme Boutadai, of the family of the Eteoboutadai. Having become a student of Plato the philosopher, he first devoted himself to philosophy; then, becoming an associate of Isocrates the orator, he engaged prominently in public affairs, both as a speaker and as a man of action, and was in fact entrusted with the administration of the public finances: he served as treasurer for three periods of five years, over fourteen thousand talents -- or, as some say, eighteen thousand six hundred fifty -- and Stratocles, who proposed the honors voted to him,
the orator — being himself elected the first time, and then, having one of his friends nominated in his place, he himself continued to conduct the administration, because he had proposed in advance a law that no one elected to the public funds should hold office for more than five years. He remained continually in charge of the works, both summer and winter. And having been elected to oversee preparation for war, he set right many things in the city, and provided the people with four hundred triremes, built the gymnasium in the Lyceum and planted it with trees, constructed the wrestling-school, and, as overseer, completed the theater of Dionysus.
Entrusted by private citizens with two hundred fifty talents on deposit, he kept them safe, and had gold and silver processional vessels made for the city, along with gold statues of Victory. He also took over many unfinished works and completed them, including the shipsheds and the arsenal; and he put a stone foundation around the Panathenaic stadium, finishing this work and leveling the ravine, after a certain Deinias, who owned this land, had ceded it to the city, Lycurgus having earlier persuaded him to grant it as a favor. He also held charge of guarding the city and arresting criminals, all of whom he drove out, so that some of the sophists said that Lycurgus wrote his laws not with ink but with death, dipping his pen against wrongdoers. For this reason, when King Alexander demanded that he be handed over, the people did not surrender him.
During the time when Philip was waging his second war against the Athenians, Lycurgus served as ambassador, together with Polyeuctus and Demosthenes, to the Peloponnese and certain other cities. He continued throughout his whole life to be held in high regard by the Athenians and to be considered a just man, so that even in the lawcourts, for Lycurgus to say he vouched for someone was thought to help the party being defended.
He also introduced laws: one concerning comic poets, that a competitive contest be held at the Chytroi in the theater, and that the winner be enrolled among the city's poets — which had not previously been permitted — thereby reviving a contest that had lapsed; another, that bronze statues be set up of the poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, that their tragedies be written down and kept in an official copy, and that the city clerk read along with the text for the actors performing them, since it was not permitted to depart from it in performance. A third law provided that no Athenian, nor anyone residing at Athens, be permitted to buy a free person into slavery from among those captured, without the consent of their former master. And further, that a contest for Poseidon be held at the Piraeus, with no fewer than three cyclic choruses, the winners to be given no less than ten minas, the second-place chorus eight, and those judged third, six.
He also proposed that no woman travel to Eleusis by carriage, so that women of the common people should not be put at a disadvantage compared to the wealthy; anyone caught doing so was to pay a fine of six thousand drachmas. When his own wife did not comply, and informers caught her, he paid a talent to them. When he was later accused before the Assembly over this, he said, "Well, at least I have been seen giving, not taking." Once, when a tax-collector laid hands on the philosopher Xenocrates and was dragging him off for failure to pay the metics' tax, Lycurgus, coming upon them, struck the tax-collector on the head with his staff, released Xenocrates, and, since the man had behaved improperly, had him shut up in prison.
When Lycurgus was being praised for this act, Xenocrates, meeting his sons some days later, said, "How quickly, children, I have repaid your father's favor — for he is praised by many for having helped me." Lycurgus also proposed decrees, employing a certain Euclides of Olynthus, who was most capable in such matters. Although he was well-off, he wore one and the same cloak in winter and summer, and put on shoes only on necessary days. He practiced his oratory night and day, not being naturally gifted for extemporaneous speaking; he kept beneath him a small couch on which there was only a fleece and a pillow, so that he might rise easily and go on practicing. When someone reproached him for paying fees to sophists while spending his time on rhetoric, he said that if anyone were to promise to make his sons better men, he would give not a thousand drachmas but half his estate.
He was also outspoken because of his noble birth: once, when the Athenians would not tolerate him while he was addressing the Assembly, he cried out as he was being shouted down, "O Corcyrean scourge, how many talents you are worth!" And again, when they proclaimed Alexander a god, he said, "And what sort of god would he be, whose shrine one will need to be sprinkled with purifying water after leaving?"
After his death, his sons were handed over to the Eleven, Menesaechmus having brought the accusation and Thrasycles the indictment; but when Demosthenes, during the time of his exile, wrote to the Athenians that they were getting a bad reputation over Lycurgus' children, they changed their minds and released them, Democles, a pupil of Theophrastus, having spoken in their defense. Lycurgus himself, and some of his descendants, were buried at public expense; their monuments stand opposite the sanctuary of Athena Paionia, in the garden of the philosopher Melanthius — table-tombs inscribed with the names of Lycurgus himself and his sons, still preserved down to our own day. Most remarkable of all, he raised the city's revenue to twelve hundred talents, when previously only sixty had come in.
When he was about to die, he asked to be carried into the Metroön and the Council-chamber, wishing to render an account of his public conduct; but since no one dared to accuse him except Menesaechmus, he cleared himself of the charges, was carried back to his house, and died there — regarded as a fair man throughout his whole life and praised for his eloquence, and never having lost a single lawsuit, though many had brought accusations against him. He had three children by Callisto, daughter of Habron and sister of Callias son of Habron of Bate, who had served as treasurer of military funds under the archonship of Chaerondas. Dinarchus speaks of this marriage in his speech Against Pistias.
He left three sons, Habron, Lycurgus, and Lycophron; of these, Habron and Lycurgus died childless, but Habron died after a distinguished public career, while Lycophron married Callistomache, daughter of Philip of Aexone, and fathered Callisto. This Callisto was married by Cleombrotus, son of Deinocrates, of Acharnae, who fathered Lycophron; this Lycophron was adopted by his grandfather Lycophron, and he too died without children. After his death Socrates married Callisto and had a son, Symmachus; from him came Aristonymus, from him Charmides, from him Philippe. From her and Lysander came Medeius, who also became an interpreter of sacred law drawn from the Eumolpidae family. From this Medeius and Timothea, daughter of Glaucus, came the children Laodameia and
Medeius, who held the priesthood of Poseidon Erechtheus, and Philippe, who later served as priestess of Athena. Earlier, Diocles of Melite had married her and fathered Diocles, who served as general in command of the hoplites; this Diocles married Hedista, daughter of Habron, and fathered Philippides and Nicostrate; and Themistocles, son of Theophrastus the torch-bearer, married Nicostrate and fathered Theophrastus and Diocles. Medeius also arranged the priesthood of Poseidon Erechtheus.
Fifteen speeches of the orator Lycurgus survive. He was crowned by the people many times and honored with statues; a bronze statue of him stands in the Ceramicus by decree, passed in the archonship of Anaxicrates, under which both Lycurgus himself and the eldest of his descendants received meals in the Prytaneum. When Lycurgus died, Lycophron, the eldest of his sons, disputed the right to this gift.
Lycurgus also spoke often on matters concerning sacred property, indicting Autolycus the Areopagite, Lysicles the general, Demades son of Demeas, Menesaechmus, and many others, and convicted them all. He also brought Diphilus to trial for stealing, from the silver mines, the pillars that supported the weight above, and for having grown rich from them contrary to the laws; though the penalty was death, he secured his conviction, and distributed fifty drachmas to each citizen from the proceeds, the total collected amounting to a hundred sixty talents — or, as some say, a mina apiece. He also brought Aristogeiton, Leocrates, and Autolycus to trial for cowardice.
Lycurgus was nicknamed "the Ibis" — "Ibis to Lycurgus, Bat to Chaerephon" — and they traced their lineage from Erechtheus, son of Earth and Hephaestus, and more immediately from Lycomedes and Lycurgus, whom the people honored with public burial. This is the complete genealogy of the family of those who held the priesthood of Poseidon, set out on a tablet standing in the Erechtheum, painted by Ismenias of Chalcis; there are also wooden statues of Lycurgus and his sons, Habron, Lycurgus, and Lycophron, made by Timarchus and Cephisodotus, the sons of Praxiteles. The tablet was dedicated by Habron, his son, who had been allotted the priesthood from the family and ceded it to his brother Lycophron; for this reason Habron is depicted handing him the trident.
Lycurgus also drew up a record of everything he had administered and set it up on a stele in front of the wrestling-school he had built, so that anyone who wished could examine it; and no one was ever able to convict him of embezzlement. He also proposed that Neoptolemus, son of Anticles, be crowned and honored with a statue, because he had promised to gild the altar of Apollo in the marketplace, in accordance with the god's oracle. He also proposed honors for Diotimus, son of Diopeithes, of Euonymon, in the archonship of Ctesicles.
Demosthenes, son of Demosthenes and of Cleobule, daughter of Gylon, of the deme Paeania, was left by his father at the age of seven, together with a five-year-old sister. During the time of his orphanhood he lived with his mother, studying, as some have said, under Isocrates, but as most say, under Isaeus of Chalcis, a pupil of Isocrates then residing at Athens — Demosthenes emulating Thucydides and the philosopher Plato, under whom some say he actually studied first. But as Hegesias of Magnesia tells it, he begged his tutor to let him hear Callistratus,
son of Empedus, of Aphidna — a reputable orator who had served as cavalry commander and had dedicated the altar to Hermes of the Marketplace — when he was about to speak before the Assembly; and having heard him, Demosthenes became a passionate admirer of his speeches. He heard him for only a short time, while Callistratus was still in the city. But when Callistratus went into exile in Thrace, and Demosthenes had by then come of age from the ephebate, he turned to attend Isocrates and Plato; and afterward, taking on Isaeus as well,
into his own household, he trained himself under him for four years, imitating his style of speaking. As Ctesibius says in his work On Philosophy, Demosthenes obtained, through Callias of Syracuse, the speeches of Zethus of Amphipolis, and, through Charicles of Carystus, those of Alcidamas, and studied them thoroughly. When he came of age, having received less from his guardians than he should have, he brought suit against them for their mismanagement in the archonship of Timocrates — there were three of them, Aphobus, Therippides,
and Demophon, or Demeas — and he prosecuted this last most vigorously, since he was his mother's brother — assessing the penalty at ten talents for each suit; and he won against them all, yet collected nothing of the judgment, releasing some for a sum of money and others simply as a favor. When Aristophon had already relinquished his position of leadership because of old age, Demosthenes became a choregos. And when Meidias of Anagyrus struck him in the theater while he was serving as choregos,
he brought him to trial, but, having received three thousand drachmas, dropped the suit. They say that while still young he would withdraw to a cave and study there, having shaved half his head so that he would not go out in public; that he slept on a narrow bed so as to rise quickly; that he worked hard to overcome his inability to pronounce the letter rho; and that he cured himself of moving his shoulder unbecomingly while declaiming by hanging a small spit,
or, as some say, a small dagger, from the ceiling, so that fear of it would keep him still. As his powers of speech advanced, they say he had a life-size mirror made and practiced declaiming while looking into it, so as to correct his shortcomings; and that he would go down to the shore at Phalerum and rehearse his speeches against the crash of the waves, so that, if ever the Assembly grew tumultuous, he would not lose his composure. And when his breath
failed him, they say he paid Neoptolemus the actor ten thousand drachmas, so that he might learn to deliver whole periods without pausing for breath. When he entered public life, at a time when the city was divided into two factions — some siding with Philip, others speaking in the Assembly on behalf of freedom — he chose the side of those opposed to Philip, and throughout that entire time continued to urge helping those in danger of falling under Philip's power, working in politics together with Hyperides,
Nausicles, Polyeuctus, and Diotimus. For this reason he also made allies of the Athenians out of the Thebans, Euboeans, Corcyraeans, Corinthians, and Boeotians, and many others besides. Once, when he had failed badly before the Assembly and was walking home in despair, Eunomus of Thria, already an old man, met him and encouraged him; but it was especially Andronicus the actor who, meeting him, said that his speeches were fine but that he was lacking
in delivery, and, to prove it, recited from memory what Demosthenes had said before the Assembly. So Demosthenes, believing him, entrusted himself to Andronicus for training. This is why, when someone asked him what was the first thing in rhetoric, he said, "Delivery," and what was second, "Delivery," and what was third, "Delivery." When he came forward again before the Assembly, however, he was ridiculed for speaking in an overly novel manner, so that he was mocked in comedy by Antiphanes
and Timocles: "By earth, by springs, by rivers, by streams!" By swearing in this manner before the Assembly, he stirred up an uproar. He also used to swear by Asclepius, accenting the name with the stress moved forward, and tried to show that he was pronouncing it correctly, since the god was "gentle" (ēpios); and on this account too he was often shouted down. But after studying with Eubulides the dialectician of Miletus, he corrected all these faults. And on one occasion, being present at
the Olympic festival, and hearing Lamachus of Tereina reading a eulogy of Philip and Alexander while denouncing the Thebans and Olynthians, Demosthenes rose up and brought forward the testimony of the ancient poets concerning the noble deeds of the Thebans and Olynthians, so that Lamachus was forced thereafter to stop and flee the festival. Philip, when people reported to him the speeches Demosthenes had delivered against him, said, "Why, even
I myself, if I heard Demosthenes speaking, would vote for war against myself." He used to call his own speeches like soldiers, because of their warlike power, but those of Isocrates like athletes, since they provided a theatrical kind of pleasure. He was thirty-seven years old, reckoning from the archonship of Dexitheus to that of Callimachus, when an embassy came from the Olynthians concerning
aid, since they were being hard pressed by Philip in the war, and he persuaded the Athenians to send it; but in the following year, in which Plato died, Philip subdued the Olynthians. Xenophon the Socratic also knew him, either at the beginning of his career or at its height; for Xenophon's Hellenica ends with the events of the battle at Mantinea, in the archonship of Charicleides, and Demosthenes had earlier, in the archonship of Timocrates, won his case against his guardians.
When Aeschines went into exile after his conviction, Demosthenes rode after him on horseback. Thinking that Demosthenes meant to seize him, Aeschines fell down and covered his face, but Demosthenes raised him up, comforted him, and gave him a talent of silver. Demosthenes also advised the people to maintain a mercenary force on Thasos, and for this purpose he sailed out as trierarch. When he served as grain-commissioner and was accused of theft, he was acquitted. When Philip seized Elatea, Demosthenes himself marched out with those who fought at Chaeronea, where he is also said to have left his post; and as he fled, a bramble caught hold of his cloak, and turning around he cried, "Take me alive!" He also had the motto "Good Fortune" inscribed on his shield. He did, however, deliver the funeral oration for the fallen. After this, he took on the responsibility for repairing the city's fortifications and, having been elected supervisor of the walls, he contributed from his own resources the money spent, a hundred minas. He also gave ten thousand drachmas to the sacred embassies, and, boarding a trireme, he sailed round collecting funds from the allies. For these services he was crowned many times, first with a gold crown by Demomeles, Aristonicus, and Hyperides, and finally by Ctesiphon; and when the decree was indicted as unconstitutional by Diodotus and Aeschines, he won his defense, so that the prosecutor did not even receive a fifth of the votes.
Later, when Alexander was campaigning in Asia and Harpalus fled to Athens with money, Demosthenes at first prevented him from being received; but when Harpalus sailed in anyway, Demosthenes took a thousand darics and changed his position. When the Athenians wished to hand the man over to Antipater, Demosthenes spoke against it, and he proposed that the money be deposited on the Acropolis without even telling the people the amount. When Harpalus claimed to have brought seven hundred talents up to the Acropolis, only three hundred and fifty, or a little more, were found there, as Philochorus says. Afterward, when Harpalus escaped from the prison where he was being held until someone should arrive from Alexander, and made his way to Crete, or as some say to Taenarum in Laconia, Demosthenes was charged with bribery, on the ground that this was why he had neither reported the amount of money brought back nor the negligence of the guards.
He was brought to trial by Hyperides, Pytheas, Menesaechmus, Himeraeus, and Patrocles, who induced the Council of the Areopagus to condemn him; and being convicted, he went into exile, since he was unable to pay the fivefold penalty (he was charged with having taken thirty talents), or, as some say, because he did not wait for the verdict. After this time, when the Athenians sent Polyeuctus as an envoy to the league of the Arcadians to persuade them to abandon their alliance with the Macedonians, and Polyeuctus was unable to persuade them, Demosthenes appeared and, speaking in support, persuaded them. Admired for this, he obtained his recall after some time, a decree having been passed and a trireme sent for him. When the Athenians voted that he should adorn the altar of Zeus the Savior in Piraeus with the thirty talents he owed, and that he should be released — this decree having been proposed by Demon of Paeania, who was his cousin — he was once again active in politics on these terms.
When Antipater was shut up in Lamia by the Greeks and the Athenians were offering sacrifices of good tidings, Demosthenes said to one of his companions, Agesistratus, that he did not share the same view as the others about the situation: "for I know," he said, "that the Greeks are capable of running the short sprint and know how to do it, but not the long-distance race." When Antipater took Pharsalus and threatened to besiege the Athenians unless they surrendered the orators, Demosthenes left the city and fled first to Aegina, intending to take refuge at the shrine of Aeacus, and then, growing afraid, moved to Calauria. When the Athenians voted to surrender the orators, including him, he sat as a suppliant in the temple of Poseidon there. When Archias, nicknamed the "Exile-hunter," who had once been an actor alongside Anaximenes the orator, came after him and tried to persuade him to get up, on the ground that he would thereby become a friend of Antipater, Demosthenes said, "Neither when you were acting tragedy did you persuade me, nor will you persuade me now with your advice." When Archias attempted to use force, the people of the town prevented him; and Demosthenes said, "I did not take refuge in Calauria seeking safety, but so that I might convict the Macedonians of doing violence even to the gods."
He then asked for a writing tablet and wrote — according to Demetrius of Magnesia — the elegiac couplet later inscribed by the Athenians beneath his statue: "If your strength had matched your judgment, Demosthenes, the Macedonian Ares would never have ruled the Greeks." His statue stands near the enclosure and the altar of the Twelve Gods, made by Polyeuctus. But as others say, what was found written was this: "Demosthenes to Antipater, greetings." As for his death, Philochorus says he died by drinking poison; Satyrus the historian says that the reed pen with which he began to write the letter had been poisoned, and that he died from tasting it; Eratosthenes says that, having long feared the Macedonians, he wore around his arm a ring smeared with poison. There are also those who say that he died by holding his breath; and others who say that he tasted the poison concealed in his seal-ring.
He lived, according to those who give the higher figure, seventy years; according to those who give the lower figure, sixty-seven. He was active in politics for twenty-two years. When Philip died, he came forward wearing bright clothing, even though his own daughter had recently died, rejoicing at the death of the Macedonian. He also gave his support to the Thebans when they went to war against Alexander, and he continually encouraged the rest of the Greeks; for this reason, after razing Thebes, Alexander demanded that the Athenians hand him over, threatening them if they did not comply. When Alexander was campaigning against the Persians and asked the Athenians for a naval force, Demosthenes spoke against it, saying it was unclear whether he might not use it against those who provided it. He left behind two sons by one wife of good repute, the daughter of a certain Heliodorus; he had one daughter, who died before marriage while still a child. He also had a sister, from whom, together with Lachus of Leuconoe, his nephew Demochares was born, a man distinguished both in war and in political oratory, second to none. There is a statue of him in the Prytaneum, on the right as one enters toward the hearth, the first one, girded with his cloak and also wearing a sword; for it is said that this is how he delivered his speech to the people when Antipater demanded the surrender of the orators.
Some time later the Athenians granted maintenance in the Prytaneum to the relatives of Demosthenes, and after his death they set up his statue in the Agora in the archonship of Gorgias, at the request of his nephew Demochares, who obtained these honors for him; and his own son Laches, son of Demochares of Leuconoe, in turn requested honors in the archonship of Pytharatus, ten years later, for the erection of the statue in the Agora and for maintenance in the Prytaneum for himself and always for the eldest of his descendants, and for a front seat at all the public games. The decrees concerning both men are recorded, and the statue of Demochares was moved to the Prytaneum, as has already been mentioned. Sixty-five genuine speeches of Demosthenes are extant. Some also say that he lived a dissolute life, wearing women's clothing and reveling constantly, and that this is how he came to be nicknamed Batalus; others say he was mocked with this name, diminutively, after the name of his nurse. Diogenes the Cynic, seeing him once shrinking back in embarrassment in a tavern, said, "The more you shrink back, the more you will be in the tavern." Others, mocking him, said that in his speeches he was a Scythian, but in battle a city-dweller.
He also took gold from Ephialtes, one of the popular leaders, who, having gone as an envoy to the King, came back secretly bringing money, so that by distributing it among the popular leaders he might kindle the war against Philip; and they say that he personally took a bribe of three thousand darics from the King. He also arrested and tortured a certain Anaxilas of Oreus, who had been his guest-friend, on the charge of being a spy, and when the man revealed nothing, he moved that he be handed over to the Eleven. Once, when he was prevented by the Athenians from speaking in the Assembly, he said he wished to say only a short thing to them; and when they fell silent, he said: "A young man, in summer, hired a donkey from the city to go to Megara. At midday, when the sun was blazing fiercely, both he and the donkey's owner wanted to take shelter under its shadow, and they hindered each other, the one saying that he had hired the donkey, not its shadow, the other that the one who had hired it had full control over it."
And having said this, he began to leave. When the Athenians held him back and asked him to bring the story to its conclusion, he said, "So then, you wish to hear about the shadow of a donkey, but when I speak about serious matters, you do not wish to listen?" Once, when Polus the actor told him that for two days' acting he had received a talent as pay, Demosthenes said, "I received five talents for staying silent for one day." When his voice failed him and he was shouted down in the Assembly, he said that actors should be judged by their voice, but orators by their judgment. When Epicles reproached him for always deliberating carefully, he said, "I would be ashamed if, advising so great a people, I spoke off the cuff." It is recorded that he did not let his lamp go out until he was fifty years old, working meticulously over his speeches. He himself says that he drank only water.
Lysias the orator also knew him, and Isocrates saw him active in politics up until the battle of Chaeronea, as did some of the Socratic philosophers. He delivered most of his speeches extemporaneously, being well suited by nature for this. Aristonicus son of Nicophanes of Anagyrus was the first to propose that he be crowned with a gold crown; Diondas opposed the motion under oath.
Hyperides was the son of Glaucippus, who was in turn the son of Dionysius, and he belonged to the deme of Collytus. He had a son of the same name as his father, Glaucippus, an orator who also composed speeches; and his son in turn was Alphinous. Having been a pupil of the philosopher Plato, together with Lycurgus, and also of Isocrates the orator, he was active in politics at Athens at the time when Alexander was taking control of Greek affairs; and he spoke against the generals
whom Alexander demanded from the Athenians, and against the surrender of the triremes. He also advised that the mercenary force at Taenarum, led by Chares, not be disbanded, being well disposed toward the general. At first he pleaded cases for pay. Though he was suspected of having shared in the Persian money with Ephialtes, when he was chosen trierarch, at the time Philip was besieging Byzantium and he was sent out to help the Byzantines, he undertook to finance a chorus that year, while everyone else was exempted from every public service. He also proposed honors for Demosthenes, and when the decree was indicted as unconstitutional by Diondas, he was acquitted. Though he was a friend of Demosthenes, Lysicles, and Lycurgus, he did not remain loyal to the end; rather, when Lysicles and Lycurgus were dead and Demosthenes was being tried for having taken a bribe from Harpalus, Hyperides, chosen out of everyone — since he alone had remained free of bribery — brought the accusation
against him. When he was tried by Aristogeiton for unconstitutional conduct for having proposed, after Chaeronea, that resident foreigners be made citizens, that slaves be freed, and that sacred objects, children, and women be deposited in Piraeus, he was acquitted. When some accused him of having overlooked many laws in his decree, he said, "The weapons of the Macedonians darkened my judgment," and, "It was not I who wrote the decree, but the battle of Chaeronea." After this, however, Philip, out of fear, granted the recovery of the dead, though he had earlier refused it to the heralds who came from Lebadea. Later, after the events at Crannon, when he was demanded by Antipater and was about to be handed over by the people, he fled the city to Aegina along with those who had been condemned; and having met with Demosthenes and defended himself concerning their earlier quarrel,
once he had left there, he was seized by force, at the hands of Archias, nicknamed the Exile-hunter — a man of Thurian origin, at that time a leading actor, and now assisting Antipater — while he was clinging to the statue in the temple of Poseidon, and was brought before Antipater at Corinth. There, under torture, he bit through his own tongue, so that he would be unable to reveal any of the city's secrets, and so he died, on the ninth of Pyanepsion
in its first phase. Hermippus, however, says that his tongue was cut out after he had been brought to Macedonia, and that he was thrown out unburied, and that Alphinous, who was his cousin — or, as some say, the son of his son Glaucippus — through a certain physician named Philopeithes, obtained permission to take charge of the body, to cremate it, and to bring the bones to Athens to his relatives, contrary to the decrees of both the Athenians and the Macedonians; for they had ordered not only that his relatives go into exile, but also that he not be buried in his own country. Others say that he died at Cleonae, having been led away with the others, where his tongue was cut out and he was destroyed in the manner already described; and that his relatives took the bones and buried them together with his parents before the Hippades Gate, as Heliodorus says in the third book of his work On Monuments. Today, however, the tomb has fallen into ruin and
its location is unknown. He is said to have surpassed everyone in public speaking, and by some he is even ranked above Demosthenes. Seventy-seven speeches are attributed to him, of which fifty-two are genuine. He was also given to sensual indulgence, so much so that he drove out his own son and brought in Myrrhine, the most expensive courtesan, kept Aristagora in Piraeus, and in Eleusis, on his own property, kept
Phila the Theban, having ransomed her for twenty minas. He used to take his daily walk in the fish market. As might be expected, he also became involved in the trial of Phryne the courtesan, when she was tried for impiety; he himself makes this clear at the beginning of his speech. When she was on the verge of being convicted, he brought her forward, tore open her clothing, and displayed the woman's breasts; and when the jurors gazed upon her beauty, she was acquitted. He was also quietly assembling charges against Demosthenes, so much so that he was caught in the act: for when Hyperides was ill, Demosthenes came to his house to visit him and found him holding a document directed against himself; and when Demosthenes grew angry, Hyperides said, "As a friend, it will do you no harm; but should you become my enemy, it may prevent you from doing something against me." He also proposed honors for Iolas, who was believed
to have given Alexander the poison. He also joined with Leosthenes in the Lamian War, and delivered the funeral oration for the fallen with remarkable skill. When Philip was preparing to sail against Euboea and the Athenians were hesitant, he raised forty triremes by voluntary contributions, and was himself the first to contribute two triremes, for himself and for his son. When a dispute arose with the Delians over which people should have charge of the sanctuary, and Aeschines was chosen to speak on the other side, the Council of the Areopagus elected Hyperides to speak, and the speech is entitled the Delian Speech; he also served as envoy to the Rhodians. When envoys also came from Antipater, praising Antipater as a decent man, Hyperides met them and said, "We know that he is decent, but we for our part have no need of a decent master." He is also said to have addressed the assembly without theatrical delivery, and simply to have narrated
the things done, and did not trouble the jurors with these matters. He was also sent to the Eleans to speak in defense of Callippus the athlete, who was accused of corrupting the contest, and he won. When he also indicted the honor voted to Phocion — the indictment which Meidias son of Meidias of Anagyrus brought, in the archonship of Xenias, on the seventh from the end of Gamelion — he lost.
Deinarchus, son of Socrates or Sostratus — a native, as some say, though others hold him to be a Corinthian — came to Athens still a young man, at the time when Alexander was marching through Asia, and settling there became a pupil of Theophrastus, who had succeeded to Aristotle's school, and he also associated with Demetrius of Phalerum. He turned most eagerly to political life after the death of Antipater, when some of the orators had been put to death and others had gone into exile. Having become a friend of Cassander, he prospered greatly, amassing money
by exacting fees for the speeches which he wrote for those in need; and he set himself against the most prominent of the orators, not by coming forward before the assembly himself — for he was not able to do that — but by writing speeches for his opponents. And when Harpalus fled, he wrote a great many speeches against those who were charged with taking bribes, and handed these over to the accusers. Later, when he was charged with having had dealings with Antipater and Cassander
concerning the seizure of Munychia, at the time when it was garrisoned by Antigonus and Demetrius in the archonship of Anaxicrates, he converted most of his property into cash and fled to Chalcis. Having spent about fifteen years in exile, and having acquired a great fortune, he returned home, Theophrastus and his circle having arranged his return along with the other exiles. He lodged with his friend Proxenus, and having lost his gold there,
now being an old man and weak in his eyesight, and since Proxenus was unwilling to help search for it, he brought a suit against him, and then for the first time spoke in a court of law himself. His speech in this case is also preserved. Sixty-four genuine speeches of his are in circulation; some of these are attributed to Aristogeiton instead. He was an imitator of Hyperides, or, as some say, because of his emotional intensity and vehemence he was an imitator
of Demosthenes’ figures of speech. — Demochares son of Laches, of Leuconoe, moves that a bronze statue in the agora, and meals in the prytaneum, and a front seat, be granted as an honor to Demosthenes son of Demosthenes of Paeania, and to the eldest of his descendants forever, as one who has been a benefactor and counselor of many fine things to the people of Athens, and who devoted his own property to the common good and contributed
eight talents and a trireme when the people liberated Euboea, and another when Cephisodorus sailed out to the Hellespont; and another when the generals Chares and Phocion were sent out by the people to Byzantium; and who ransomed many of those captured by Philip at Pydna, Methone, and Olynthus; and who furnished a chorus of men when the tribe Pandionis defaulted on providing one, and armed
those citizens who lacked arms, and spent money on the building of the walls when elected by the people to that office, himself contributing three talents, and besides these contributed two more, having dug two trenches around the Piraeus; and after the battle at Chaeronea he contributed a talent, and toward the grain-supply in the time of famine he contributed a talent; and because he brought the people into alliance,
having persuaded and having become their benefactor and counselor, by which means he persuaded the Thebans, Euboeans, Corinthians, Megarians, Achaeans, Locrians, Byzantines, and Messenians, and the forces which he organized for the people and their allies — ten thousand infantry and a thousand cavalry — and the levy of money which he persuaded the allies, through his embassies, to contribute to the war, more than five hundred talents; and how he prevented the Peloponnesians from going to help Alexander against Thebes, giving money and himself serving as envoy;
and having been counselor to the people in many other fine matters, and having conducted the politics of his time toward freedom and democracy in the best way, and having gone into exile on account of the oligarchy when the democracy was overthrown, and having died at Calauria out of his goodwill toward the people, when soldiers were sent against him by Antipater, having remained faithful to his goodwill and attachment to the people, and having neither
fallen into the hands of his enemies nor done anything unworthy of the people in his peril. In the archonship of Pytharatus, Laches son of Demochares of Leuconoe moves that the Council and the People of Athens grant to Demochares son of Laches of Leuconoe a bronze statue in the agora, and meals in the prytaneum for himself and for the eldest of his descendants forever, and a front seat at all the contests, as one who has been a good benefactor and counselor
to the people of Athens and has done the following benefits for the people: in his embassies, his proposals, and his political conduct — the building of the walls, the provision of arms, missiles, and engines, and the fortification of the city during the four-year war, and the making of peace, truce, and alliance with the Boeotians; on account of which he was driven into exile by those who overthrew the democracy; and how he returned in the archonship of Diocles,
restored by the people, being the first to reduce public expenditure and to spare the existing resources, and having gone as envoy to Lysimachus and obtained for the people thirty talents of silver, and again another hundred; and having proposed an embassy to Ptolemy in Egypt, in consequence of which those who sailed brought back fifty talents of silver for the people; and having gone as envoy to Antipater and obtained twenty talents of silver, and having recovered Eleusis for the
people, and having persuaded the people to choose this course and having carried it through, and having gone into exile on behalf of democracy, and having taken part in no oligarchy nor held any office at all once the democracy had been overthrown; and being the only Athenian among those of his own generation active in politics who never attempted to alter his fatherland's constitution to anything other than democracy; and having made the judgments, the laws, the courts, and the properties
of all the Athenians secure through his own conduct of public affairs, and having done nothing contrary to democracy either in word or in deed. — Lycophron son of Lycurgus, of the deme Butadae, registered a claim that he be entitled to meals in the prytaneum in accordance with the honor granted by the people to Lycurgus of Butadae. In the archonship of Anaxicrates, in the sixth prytany, that of the tribe Antiochis, Stratocles son of Euthydemus of Diomeia proposed: Whereas Lycurgus son of Lycophron, of Butadae, inheriting from
his own ancestors a goodwill toward the people that had long been proper to his family — and Lycurgus's ancestors, Lycomedes and Lycurgus, were honored by the people while living, and when they died the people gave them, on account of their valor, public burial in the Ceramicus — and Lycurgus himself, in his own political career, established many fine laws for his country, and having become treasurer of the public revenue
for the city for three periods of five years, and having distributed from the public revenue eighteen thousand nine hundred talents; and having received much from private citizens on trust and advanced it, both for the needs of the city and of the people, six hundred and fifty talents in all; and having been judged to have managed all these matters justly, he was crowned many times by the city; moreover
having been chosen by the people, he gathered together great sums of money for the Acropolis, and having prepared adornment for the goddess — solid gold images of Victory, gold and silver processional vessels, and gold ornament for a hundred basket-bearers — and having been elected to oversee the preparation for war, he brought up to the Acropolis great quantities of arms and fifty thousand missiles, and he built four hundred seaworthy triremes, some
by repairing them, others by building them new from the keel up; and besides these, taking over half-finished the ship-sheds and the arsenal, he completed them, and finished the theater of Dionysus, and built the Panathenaic stadium and the gymnasium at the Lyceum, and adorned the city with many other constructions; and when King Alexander, having subdued the whole of Asia, was claiming the right to give orders in common to all the Greeks,
and demanded the surrender of Lycurgus as one acting against him, the people did not hand him over, out of fear of Alexander; and though he often rendered account of his conduct of public affairs in a city that remained free and democratic, he continued throughout his whole life uncondemned and unbribed, so that all might know that those who choose to conduct their politics justly on behalf of democracy and freedom are held by the people
in the highest esteem while they live, and are repaid with everlasting gratitude when they die. Be it resolved, with good fortune, by the people: to praise Lycurgus son of Lycophron, of Butadae, for his virtue and justice, and to set up a bronze statue of him in the agora, unless the law forbids the erection of one somewhere; to grant meals in the prytaneum to the eldest of Lycurgus's descendants forever, for all time,
and that all his decrees remain valid; and that the secretary of the people have them inscribed on stone stelae and set up on the Acropolis near the dedications; and that for the inscribing of the stelae the treasurer of the people give fifty drachmas from the funds allotted for decrees of the people.