Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
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.