The
following
letter of his is extant:
ANACHARSIS TO CROESUS.
ANACHARSIS TO CROESUS.
Diogenes Laertius
--Be not desponding when in difficulties.
--Learn to bear the changes of fortune with magnanimity.
V. And he died at a great age, having lived seventy years, and this inscription was put over him :
His country, Lindus, this fair sea-girt city
Bewails wise Cleobulus here entombed.
VI. One of his sayings was, "Moderation is the best thing. " He also wrote a letter to Solon in these terms:
CLEOBULUS TO SOLON.
You have many friends, and a home everywhere, but yet I think that Lindus will be the most agreeable habitation for Solon, since it enjoys a democratic government, and it is a maritime island, and whoever dwells in it has nothing to fear from Pisistratus, and you will have friends flock to you from all quarters.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF PERIANDER
I. PERIANDER was a Corinthian, the son of Cypselus, of the family of the Heraclidae. He married Lyside (whom he himself called Melissa), the daughter of Procles the tyrant of Epidaurus, and of Eristhenea the daughter of Aristocrates, and sister of Aristodemus, who governed nearly all Arcadia, as Heraclides Ponticus says in his Treatise on Dominion and had by her two sons Cypselus and Lycophron, the younger of whom was a clever boy, but the elder was deficient in intellect. At a subsequent period he in a rage either kicked or threw his wife down stairs when she was pregnant, and so killed her, being wrought upon by the false accusations of his concubines, whom he afterwards burnt alive. And the child, whose name was Lycophron, he sent away to Corcyra because he grieved for his mother.
II. But afterwards, when he was now extremely old, he sent for him back again, in order that he might succeed to the tyranny. But the Corcyreans, anticipating his intention, put him to death, at which he was greatly enraged, and sent their children to Corcyra to be made eunuchs of; and when the ship came near to Samos, the youths, having made supplications to Juno, were saved by the Samians. And he fell into despondency and died, being eighty years old. Sosicrates says that he died forty-one years before Croesus, in the last year of the forty-eighth Olympiad. Herodotus, in the first book of his History, says that he was connected by ties of hospitality with Thrasybulus the tyrant of Miletus. And Aristippus, in the first book of his Treatise on Ancient Luxury, tells the following story of him; that his mother Cratea fell in love with him, and introduced herself secretly into his bed; and he was delighted; but when the truth was discovered he became very oppressive to all his subjects, because he was grieved at the discovery. Ephorus relates that he made a vow that, if he gained the victory at Olympia in the chariot race, he would dedicate a golden statue to the God. Accordingly he gained the victory; but being in want of gold, and seeing the women at some national festival beautifully adorned, he took away their golden ornaments, and then sent the offering which he had vowed.
III. But some writers say that he was anxious that his tomb should not be known, and that with that object he adopted the following contrivance. He ordered two young men to go out by night, indicating a particular road by which they were to go, and to kill the first man they met, and bury him; after them he sent out four other men who were to kill and bury them. Again he sent out a still greater number against these four, with similar instructions. And in this manner he put himself in the way of the first pair, and was slain, and the Corinthians erected a cenotaph over him with the following inscription:
The sea-beat land of Corinth in her bosom,
Doth here embrace her ruler Periander,
Greatest of all men for his wealth and wisdom.
We ourselves have also written an epigram upon him:
Grieve not when disappointed of a wish,
But be content with what the Gods may give you --
For the great Periander died unhappy,
At failing in an object he desired.
IV. It was a saying of his that we ought not to do anything for the sake of money; for that we ought only to acquire such gains as are allowable. He composed apophthegms in verse to the number of two thousand lines; and said that those who wished to wield absolute power in safety, should be guarded by the good will of their countrymen, and not by arms. And once, being asked why he assumed tyrannical power, he replied, "Because, to abdicate it voluntarily, and to have it taken from one, are both dangerous. " The following sayings also belong to him:--Tranquillity is a good thing. --Rashness is dangerous. --Gain is disgraceful. --Democracy is better than tyranny. --Pleasures are transitory, but honour is immortal. --Be moderate when prosperous, but prudent when unfortunate. Be the same to your friends when they are prosperous, and when they are unfortunate. --Whatever you agree to do, observe--Do not divulge secrets. --Punish not only those who do wrong, but those who intend to do so.
V. This prince was the first who had body-guards, and who changed a legitimate power into a tyranny; and he would not allow any one who chose to live in his city, as Ephorus and Aristotle tell us.
VI. And he flourished about the thirty-eighth Olympiad, and enjoyed absolute power for forty years. But Sotion, and Heraclides, and Pamphila, in the fifth book of her Commentaries, says that there were two Perianders; the one a tyrant, and the other a wise man, and a native of Ambracia. And Neanthes of Cyzicus makes the same assertion, adding, that the two men were cousins to one another. And Aristotle says, that it was the Corinthian Periander who was the wise one; but Plato contradicts him. The saying--"Practice does everything," is his. He it was, also, who proposed to cut through the Isthmus.
VII. The following letter of his is quoted:
PERIANDER TO THE WISE MEN.
I give great thanks to Apollo of Delphi that my letters are able to determine you all to meet together at Corinth; and I will receive you all, as you may be well assured, in a manner that becomes free citizens. I hear also that last year you met at Sardis, at the court of the King of Lydia. So now do not hesitate to come to me, who am the tyrant of Corinth; for the Corinthians will all be delighted to see you come to the house of Periander.
VIII. There is this letter too:
PERIANDER TO PROCLES.
The injury of my wife was unintended by me; and you have done wrong in alienating from me the mind of my child. I desire you, therefore, either to restore me to my place in his affections, or I will revenge myself on you; for I have myself made atonement for the death of your daughter, by burning in her tomb the clothes of all the Corinthian women. 1
IX. Thrasybulus also wrote him a letter in the following terms:
I have given no answer to your messenger; but having taken him into a field, I struck with my walking-stick all the highest ears of corn, and cut off their tops, while he was walking with me: And he will report to you, if you ask him, everything which he heard or saw while with me; and do you act accordingly if you wish to preserve your power safely, taking off the most eminent of the citizens, whether he seems an enemy to you or not, as even his companions are deservedly objects of suspicion to a man possessed of supreme power.
1. Herodotus mentions the case of Periander's children, iii. 50, and the death of his wife, and his burning the clothes of all the Corinthian women, v. 92.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ANACHARSIS
I. ANACHARSIS the Scythian was the son of Gnurus, and the brother of Caduides the king of the Scythians; but his mother was a Grecian woman; owing to which circumstance he understood both languages.
II. He wrote about the laws existing among the Scythians, and also about those in force among the Greeks, urging men to adopt a temperate course of life; and he wrote also about war, his works being in verse, and amounting to eight hundred lines: he gave occasion for a proverb, because he used great freedom of speech, so that people called such freedom the Scythian conversation.
III. But Sosicrates says that he came to Athens in the forty-seventh Olympiad, in the archonship of Eucrates. And Hermippus asserts that he came to Solon's house, and ordered one of the servants to go and tell his master that Anacharsis was come to visit him, and was desirous to see him, and, if possible, to enter into relations of hospitality with him. But when the servant had given the message, he was ordered by Solon to reply to him that, "Men generally limited such alliances to their own countrymen. " In reply to this Anacharsis entered the house, and told the servant that now he was in Solon's country, and that it was quite consistent for them to become connected with one another in this way. On this, Solon admired the readiness of the man, and admitted him, and made him one of his greatest friends.
IV. But after some time, when he had returned to Scythia, and shown a purpose to abrogate the existing institutions of his country, being exceedingly earnest, in his fondness for Grecian customs, he was shot by his brother while he was out hunting, and so he died, saying, "That he was saved on account of the sense and eloquence which he had brought from Greece, but slain in consequence of envy in his own family. " Some, however, relate that he was slain while performing some Grecian sacrificatory rites. And we have written this epigram on him:
When Anacharsis to his land returned,
His mind was turn'd, so that he wished to make
His countrymen all live in Grecian fashion--
So, ere his words had well escaped his lips,
A winged arrow bore him to the Gods.
V. He said that a vine bore three bunches of grapes. The first, the bunch of pleasure; the second, that of drunkenness; the third that of disgust. He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest. Being once asked how a person might be made not fond of drinking, he said, "If he always keeps in view the indecorous actions of drunken men. " He used also to say, that he marvelled how the Greeks, who make laws against those who behave with insolence, honour Athletae because of their beating one another. When he had been informed that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, he said, "That those who sailed in one were removed by just that distance from death. " He used to say that oil was a provocative of madness, "because Athletae, when anointed in the oil, attacked one another with mad fury. "
"How is it," he used to say, "that those who forbid men to speak falsely, tell lies openly in their vintners' shops? " It was a saying of his, that he "marvelled why the Greeks, at the beginning of a banquet, drink out of small cups, but when they have drunk a good deal, then they turn to large goblets. " And this inscription is on his statues--"Restrain your tongues, your appetites, and your passions. " He was once asked if the flute was known among the Scythians; and he said, "No, nor the vine either. " At another time, the question was put to him, which was the safest kind of vessel? and he said, "That which is brought into dock. " He said, too, that the strangest things that he had seen among the Greeks was, that "They left the smoke1 in the mountains, and carried the wood down to their cities. " Once, when he was asked, which were the more numerous, the living or the dead? he said, "Under which head do you class those who are at sea. " Being reproached by an Athenian for being a Scythian, he said, "Well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your country. " When he was asked what there was among men which was both good and bad, he replied, "The tongue. " He used to say "That it was better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing. " Another saying of his was, that "The forum was an established place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously. " Being once insulted by a young man at a drinking party, he said, "O, young man, if now that you are young you cannot bear wine, when you are old you will have to bear water. "
VI. Of things which are of use in life, he is said to have been the inventor of the anchor, and of the potter's wheel.
VII. The following letter of his is extant:
ANACHARSIS TO CROESUS.
O king of the Lydians, I am come to the country of the Greeks, in order to become acquainted with their customs and institutions; but I have no need of gold, and shall be quite contented if I return to Scythia a better man than I left it. However I will come to Sardis, as I think it very desirable to become a friend of yours.
1. Some propose to read karpon, fruit, instead of kapnon, smoke, here; others explain this saying as meaning that the Greeks avoided houses on the hills in order not to be annoyed with the smoke from the low cottages, and yet did not use coal, but wood, which made more smoke.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ANACHARSIS
I. ANACHARSIS the Scythian was the son of Gnurus, and the brother of Caduides the king of the Scythians; but his mother was a Grecian woman; owing to which circumstance he understood both languages.
II. He wrote about the laws existing among the Scythians, and also about those in force among the Greeks, urging men to adopt a temperate course of life; and he wrote also about war, his works being in verse, and amounting to eight hundred lines: he gave occasion for a proverb, because he used great freedom of speech, so that people called such freedom the Scythian conversation.
III. But Sosicrates says that he came to Athens in the forty-seventh Olympiad, in the archonship of Eucrates. And Hermippus asserts that he came to Solon's house, and ordered one of the servants to go and tell his master that Anacharsis was come to visit him, and was desirous to see him, and, if possible, to enter into relations of hospitality with him. But when the servant had given the message, he was ordered by Solon to reply to him that, "Men generally limited such alliances to their own countrymen. " In reply to this Anacharsis entered the house, and told the servant that now he was in Solon's country, and that it was quite consistent for them to become connected with one another in this way. On this, Solon admired the readiness of the man, and admitted him, and made him one of his greatest friends.
IV. But after some time, when he had returned to Scythia, and shown a purpose to abrogate the existing institutions of his country, being exceedingly earnest, in his fondness for Grecian customs, he was shot by his brother while he was out hunting, and so he died, saying, "That he was saved on account of the sense and eloquence which he had brought from Greece, but slain in consequence of envy in his own family. " Some, however, relate that he was slain while performing some Grecian sacrificatory rites. And we have written this epigram on him:
When Anacharsis to his land returned,
His mind was turn'd, so that he wished to make
His countrymen all live in Grecian fashion--
So, ere his words had well escaped his lips,
A winged arrow bore him to the Gods.
V. He said that a vine bore three bunches of grapes. The first, the bunch of pleasure; the second, that of drunkenness; the third that of disgust. He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest. Being once asked how a person might be made not fond of drinking, he said, "If he always keeps in view the indecorous actions of drunken men. " He used also to say, that he marvelled how the Greeks, who make laws against those who behave with insolence, honour Athletae because of their beating one another. When he had been informed that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, he said, "That those who sailed in one were removed by just that distance from death. " He used to say that oil was a provocative of madness, "because Athletae, when anointed in the oil, attacked one another with mad fury. "
"How is it," he used to say, "that those who forbid men to speak falsely, tell lies openly in their vintners' shops? " It was a saying of his, that he "marvelled why the Greeks, at the beginning of a banquet, drink out of small cups, but when they have drunk a good deal, then they turn to large goblets. " And this inscription is on his statues--"Restrain your tongues, your appetites, and your passions. " He was once asked if the flute was known among the Scythians; and he said, "No, nor the vine either. " At another time, the question was put to him, which was the safest kind of vessel? and he said, "That which is brought into dock. " He said, too, that the strangest things that he had seen among the Greeks was, that "They left the smoke1 in the mountains, and carried the wood down to their cities. " Once, when he was asked, which were the more numerous, the living or the dead? he said, "Under which head do you class those who are at sea. " Being reproached by an Athenian for being a Scythian, he said, "Well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your country. " When he was asked what there was among men which was both good and bad, he replied, "The tongue. " He used to say "That it was better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing. " Another saying of his was, that "The forum was an established place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously. " Being once insulted by a young man at a drinking party, he said, "O, young man, if now that you are young you cannot bear wine, when you are old you will have to bear water. "
VI. Of things which are of use in life, he is said to have been the inventor of the anchor, and of the potter's wheel.
VII. The following letter of his is extant:
ANACHARSIS TO CROESUS.
O king of the Lydians, I am come to the country of the Greeks, in order to become acquainted with their customs and institutions; but I have no need of gold, and shall be quite contented if I return to Scythia a better man than I left it. However I will come to Sardis, as I think it very desirable to become a friend of yours.
1. Some propose to read karpon, fruit, instead of kapnon, smoke, here; others explain this saying as meaning that the Greeks avoided houses on the hills in order not to be annoyed with the smoke from the low cottages, and yet did not use coal, but wood, which made more smoke.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ANACHARSIS
I. ANACHARSIS the Scythian was the son of Gnurus, and the brother of Caduides the king of the Scythians; but his mother was a Grecian woman; owing to which circumstance he understood both languages.
II. He wrote about the laws existing among the Scythians, and also about those in force among the Greeks, urging men to adopt a temperate course of life; and he wrote also about war, his works being in verse, and amounting to eight hundred lines: he gave occasion for a proverb, because he used great freedom of speech, so that people called such freedom the Scythian conversation.
III. But Sosicrates says that he came to Athens in the forty-seventh Olympiad, in the archonship of Eucrates. And Hermippus asserts that he came to Solon's house, and ordered one of the servants to go and tell his master that Anacharsis was come to visit him, and was desirous to see him, and, if possible, to enter into relations of hospitality with him. But when the servant had given the message, he was ordered by Solon to reply to him that, "Men generally limited such alliances to their own countrymen. " In reply to this Anacharsis entered the house, and told the servant that now he was in Solon's country, and that it was quite consistent for them to become connected with one another in this way. On this, Solon admired the readiness of the man, and admitted him, and made him one of his greatest friends.
IV. But after some time, when he had returned to Scythia, and shown a purpose to abrogate the existing institutions of his country, being exceedingly earnest, in his fondness for Grecian customs, he was shot by his brother while he was out hunting, and so he died, saying, "That he was saved on account of the sense and eloquence which he had brought from Greece, but slain in consequence of envy in his own family. " Some, however, relate that he was slain while performing some Grecian sacrificatory rites. And we have written this epigram on him:
When Anacharsis to his land returned,
His mind was turn'd, so that he wished to make
His countrymen all live in Grecian fashion--
So, ere his words had well escaped his lips,
A winged arrow bore him to the Gods.
V. He said that a vine bore three bunches of grapes. The first, the bunch of pleasure; the second, that of drunkenness; the third that of disgust. He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest. Being once asked how a person might be made not fond of drinking, he said, "If he always keeps in view the indecorous actions of drunken men. " He used also to say, that he marvelled how the Greeks, who make laws against those who behave with insolence, honour Athletae because of their beating one another. When he had been informed that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, he said, "That those who sailed in one were removed by just that distance from death. " He used to say that oil was a provocative of madness, "because Athletae, when anointed in the oil, attacked one another with mad fury. "
"How is it," he used to say, "that those who forbid men to speak falsely, tell lies openly in their vintners' shops? " It was a saying of his, that he "marvelled why the Greeks, at the beginning of a banquet, drink out of small cups, but when they have drunk a good deal, then they turn to large goblets. " And this inscription is on his statues--"Restrain your tongues, your appetites, and your passions. " He was once asked if the flute was known among the Scythians; and he said, "No, nor the vine either. " At another time, the question was put to him, which was the safest kind of vessel? and he said, "That which is brought into dock. " He said, too, that the strangest things that he had seen among the Greeks was, that "They left the smoke1 in the mountains, and carried the wood down to their cities. " Once, when he was asked, which were the more numerous, the living or the dead? he said, "Under which head do you class those who are at sea. " Being reproached by an Athenian for being a Scythian, he said, "Well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your country. " When he was asked what there was among men which was both good and bad, he replied, "The tongue. " He used to say "That it was better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing. " Another saying of his was, that "The forum was an established place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously. " Being once insulted by a young man at a drinking party, he said, "O, young man, if now that you are young you cannot bear wine, when you are old you will have to bear water. "
VI. Of things which are of use in life, he is said to have been the inventor of the anchor, and of the potter's wheel.
VII.
The following letter of his is extant:
ANACHARSIS TO CROESUS.
O king of the Lydians, I am come to the country of the Greeks, in order to become acquainted with their customs and institutions; but I have no need of gold, and shall be quite contented if I return to Scythia a better man than I left it. However I will come to Sardis, as I think it very desirable to become a friend of yours.
1. Some propose to read karpon, fruit, instead of kapnon, smoke, here; others explain this saying as meaning that the Greeks avoided houses on the hills in order not to be annoyed with the smoke from the low cottages, and yet did not use coal, but wood, which made more smoke.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF MYSON
I. MYSON, the son of Strymon, as Sosicrates states, quoting Hermippus as his authority, a Chenean by birth, of some Aetaean or Laconian village, is reckoned one of the seven wise men, and they say that his father was tyrant of his country. It is said by some writers that when Anacharsis inquired if any one was wiser than he, the priestess at Delphi gave the answer which has been already quoted in the life of Thales in reference to Chilon:
I say that Myson the Aetaean sage,
The citizen of Chen, is wiser far
In his deep mind than you.
And that he, having taken a great deal of trouble, came to the village, and found him in the summer season fitting a handle to a plough, and he addressed him, "O Myson, this is not now the season for the plough. " "Indeed," said he, "it is a capital season for preparing one;" but others say, that the words of the oracle are the Etean sage, and they raise the question, what the word Etean means. So Parmenides says, that it is a borough of Laconia, of which Myson was a native; but Sosicrates, in his Successions says, that he was an Etean on his father's side, and a Chenean by his mother's. But Euthyphro, the son of Heraclides Ponticus, says that he was a Cretan, for that Etea was a city of Crete.
II. And Anaxilaus says that he was an Arcadian. Hipponax also mentions him, saying, "And Myson, whom Apollo stated to be the most prudent of all men. " But Aristoxenus, in his Miscellanies, says that his habits were not very different from those of Timon and Apemantus, for that he was a misanthrope. And that accordingly he was one day found in Lacedaemon laughing by himself in a solitary place, and when some one came up to him on a sudden and asked him why he laughed when he was by himself, he said, "For that very reason. " Aristoxenus also says that he was not thought much of, because he was not a native of any city, but only of a village, and that too one of no great note; and according to him, it is on account of this obscurity of his that some people attribute his sayings and doings to Pisistratus the tyrant, but he excepts Plato the philosopher, for he mentions Myson in his Protagoras, placing him among the wise men instead of Periander.
III. It used to be a common saying of his that men ought not to seek for things in words, but for words in things; for that things are not made on account of words, but that words are put together for the sake of things.
IV. He died when he had lived ninety-seven years.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF EPIMENIDES
I. EPIMENIDES, as Theopompus and many other writers tell us, was the son of a man named Phaedrus*, but some call him the son of Dosiadas; and others of Agesarchus. He was a Cretan by birth, of the city of Cnossus; but because he let his hair grow long, he did not look like a Cretan.
II. He once, when he was sent by his father into the fields to look for a sheep, turned out of the road at mid-day and lay down in a certain cave and fell asleep and slept there fifty-seven years; and after that, when he awoke, he went on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been taking a short nap; but as he could not find it he went on to the field and there he found everything changed, and the estate in another person's possession, and so he came back again to the city in great perplexity, and as he was going into his own house he met some people who asked him who he was, until at last he found his younger brother who had now become an old man, and from him he learnt all the truth.
III. And when he was recognized he was considered by the Greeks as a person especially beloved by the Gods, on which account when the Athenians were afflicted by a plague, and the priestess at Delphi enjoined them to purify their city; they sent a ship and Nicias the son of Niceratus to Crete, to invite Epimenides to Athens; and he, coming there in the forty-sixth Olympiad, purified the city and eradicated the plague for that time; he took some black sheep and some white ones and led them up to the Areopagus, and from thence he let them go wherever they chose, having ordered the attendants to follow them, and wherever any one of them lay down they were to sacrifice him to the God who was the patron of the spot, and so the evil was stayed; and owing to this one may even now find in the different boroughs of the Athenians altars without names, which are a sort of memorial of the propitiation of the Gods that then took place. Some said that the cause of the plague was the pollution contracted by the city in the matter of Cylon, and that Epimenides pointed out to the Athenians how to get rid of it, and that in consequence they put to death two young men, Cratinus and Ctesilius*, and that thus the pestilence was put an end to.
And the Athenians passed a vote to give him a talent and a ship to convey him back to Crete, but he would not accept the money, but made a treaty of friendship and alliance between the Cnossians and Athenians.
IV. And not long after he had returned home he died, as Phlegon relates in his book on long-lived people, after he had lived a hundred and fifty-seven years; but as the Cretans report he had lived two hundred and ninety-nine; but as Xenophanes the Colophonian, states that he had heard it reported, he was a hundred and fifty-four years old when he died.
V. He wrote a poem of five thousand verses on the Generation and Theogony of the Curetes and Corybantes, and another poem of six thousand five hundred verses on the building of the Argo and the expedition of Jason to Colchis.
VI. He also wrote a treatise in prose on the Sacrifices in Crete, and the Cretan Constitution, and on Minos and Rhadamanthus, occupying four thousand lines.
Likewise he built at Athens the temple which is there dedicated to the venerable goddesses, as Lobon the Augur says in his book on Poets; and he is said to have been the first person who purified houses and lands, and who built temples.
VII. There are some people who assert that he did not sleep for the length of time that has been mentioned above, but that he was absent from his country for a considerable period, occupying himself with the anatomisation and examination of roots.
VIII. A letter of his is quoted, addressed to Solon the lawgiver, in which he discusses the constitution which Minos gave the Cretans. But Demetrius the Magnesian, in his treatise on Poets and Prose writers of the same name as one another, attempts to prove that the letter is a modern one, and is not written in the Cretan but in the Attic dialect, and the new Attic too.
IX. But I have also discovered another letter of his which runs thus:
EPIMENIDES TO SOLON.
Be of good cheer, my friend; for if Pisistratus had imposed his laws on the Athenians, they being habituated to slavery and not accustomed to good laws previously, he would have maintained his dominion for ever, succeeding easily in enslaving his fellow countrymen; but as it is, he is lording it over men who are no cowards, but who remember the precepts of Solon and are indignant at their bonds, and who will not endure the supremacy of a tyrant. But if Pisistratus does possess the city to-day, still I have no expectation that the supreme power will ever descend to his children. For it is impossible that men who have lived in freedom and in the enjoyment of most excellent laws should be slaves permanently; but as for yourself, do not you go wandering about at random, but come and visit me, for here there is no supreme ruler to be formidable to you; but if while you are wandering about any of the friends of Pisistratus should fall in with you, I fear you might suffer some misfortune.
He wrote thus.
X. But Demetrius says that some writers report that he used to receive food from the nymphs and keep it in a bullock's hoof; and that eating it in small quantities he never required any evacuations, and was never seen eating. And Timaeus mentions him in his second book.
XI. Some authors say also that the Cretans sacrifice to him as a god, for they say that he was the wisest of men; and accordingly, that when he saw the port of Munychia,1 at Athens, he said that the Athenians did not know how many evils that place would bring upon them: since, if they did, they would tear it to pieces with their teeth; and he said this a long time before the event to which he alluded. It is said also, that he at first called himself Aeacus; and that he foretold to the Lacedaemonians the defeat which they should suffer from the Arcadians; and that he pretended that he had lived several times. But Theopompus, in his Strange Stories, says that when he was building the temple of the Nymphs, a voice burst forth from heaven;--"Oh! Epimenides, build this temple, not for the Nymphs but for Jupiter. " He also foretold to the Cretans the defeat of the Lacedaemonians by the Arcadians as has been said before. And, indeed, they were beaten at Orchomenos.
XII. He pretended also, that he grew old rapidly, in the same number of days as he had been years asleep; at least, so Theopompus says. But Mysonianus*, in his Coincidences, says, that the Cretans call him one of the Curetes. And the Lacedaemonians preserve his body among them, in obedience to some oracle, as Sosilius the Lacedaemonian says.
XIII. There were also two other Epimenides, one the genealogist; the other, the man who wrote a history of Rhodes in the Doric dialect.
1. This refers to the result of the war which Antipater, who became regent of Macedonia on the death of Alexander the Great, carried on against the confederacy of Greek states, of which Athens was the head; and in which, after having defeated them at Cranon, he compelled the Athenians to abolish the democracy, and to admit a garrison into Munychia.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF PHERECYDES
I. PHERECYDES was a Syrian, the son of Babys, and, as Alexander says, in his Successions, he had been a pupil of Pittacus.
II. Theopompus says that he was the first person who ever wrote among the Greeks on the subject of Natural Philosophy and the Gods. And there are many marvellous stories told of him. For it is said that he was walking along the sea-shore at Samos, and that seeing a ship sailing by with a fair wind, he said that it would soon sink; and presently it sank before their eyes. At another time he was drinking some water which had been drawn up out of a well, and he foretold that within three days there would be an earthquake; and there was one. And as he was going up to Olympia, and had arrived at Messene, he advised his entertainer, Perilaus, to migrate from the city with all his family, but that Perilaus would not be guided by him; and afterwards Messene was taken.
III. And he is said to have told the Lacedaemonians to honour neither gold nor silver, as Theopompus says in his Marvels; and it is reported that Hercules laid this injunction on him in a dream, and that the same night he appeared also to the kings of Sparta, and enjoined them to be guided by Pherecydes; but some attribute these stories to Pythagoras.
IV. And Hermippus relates that when there was a war between the Ephesians and Magnesians, he, wishing the Ephesians to conquer, asked some one, who was passing by, from whence he came? and when he said, "From Ephesus," "Drag me now," said he, "by the legs, and place me in the territory of the Magnesians, and tell your fellow countrymen to bury me there after they have got the victory; and that he went and reported that Pherecydes had given him this order. And so they went forth the next day and defeated the Magnesians; and as Pherecydes was dead, they buried him there, and paid him very splendid honours.
V. But some writers say that he went to Delphi, and threw himself down from the Corycian hill; Aristoxenus, in his History of Pythagoras and his Friends, says that Pherecydes fell sick and died, and was buried by Pythagoras in Delos. But others say that he died of the lousy disease; and when Pythagoras came to see him, and asked him how he was, he put his finger through the door, and said, "You may see by my skin. " And from this circumstance that expression passed into a proverb among the philosophers, when affairs are going on badly; and those who apply it to affairs that are going on well, make a blunder. He used to say, also, that the Gods call their table thuoros.
VI. But Andron, the Ephesian, says that there were two men of the name of Pherecydes, both Syrians: one an astronomer, and the other a writer on God and the Divine Nature; and that this last was the son of Babys, who was also the master of Pythagoras. But Eratosthenes asserts that there was but one, who was a Syrian; and that the other Pherecydes was an Athenian, a genealogist; and the work of the Syrian Pherecydes is preserved and it begins thus:--"Jupiter, and Time, and Chthon existed externally. " And the name of Cthonia became Tellus, after Jupiter gave it to her as a reward. A sun-dial is also preserved, in the island of Syra, of his making.
VII. But Duris, in the second book of his Boundaries, says that this epigram was written upon him:
The limit of all wisdom is in me;
And would be, were it larger. But report
To my Pythagoras that he's the first
Of all the men that tread the Grecian soil;
I shall not speak falsehood, saying this.
And Ion, the Chian, says of him:
Adorned with valour while alive, and modesty,
Now that he's dead he still exists in peace;
For, like the wise Pythagoras, he studied
The manners and the minds of many nations.
And I myself have composed an epigram on him in the Pherecratean metre :
The story is reported,
That noble Pherecydes
Whom Syros calls her own,
Was eaten up by lice;
And so he bade his friends,
Convey his corpse away
To the Magnesian land,
That he might victory give
To holy Ephesus.
For well the God had said,
(Though he alone did know
Th' oracular prediction),
That this was fate's decree.
So in that land he lies.
This then is surely true,
That those who're really wise
Are useful while alive,
And e'en when breath has left them.
VIII. And he flourished about the fifty-ninth Olympiad. There is a letter of his extant in the following terms:
PHERECYDES TO THALES.
May you die happily when fate overtakes you. Disease has seized upon me at the same time that I received your letter. I am all over lice, and suffering likewise under a low fever. Accordingly, I have charged my servants to convey this book of mine to you, after they have buried me. And do you, if you think fit, after consulting with the other wise men, publish it; but if you do not approve of doing so, then keep it unpublished, for I am not entirely pleased with it myself. The subject is not one about which there is any certain knowledge, nor do I undertake to say that I have arrived at the truth; but I have advanced arguments, from which any one who occupies himself with speculations on the divine nature, may make a selection; and as to other points, he must exercise his intellect, for I speak obscurely throughout. I, myself, as I am afflicted more severely by this disease every day, no longer admit any physicians, or any of my friends. But when they stand at the door, and ask me how I am, I put out my finger to them through the opening of the door, and show them how I am eaten up with the evil; and I desired them to come to-morrow to the funeral of Pherecydes.
These, then, are they who were called wise men; to which list some writers add the name of Pisistratus. But we must also speak of the philosophers. And we will begin first with the Ionic philosophy, the founder of which school was Thales, who was the master of Anaximander.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ANAXIMANDER
I. ANAXIMANDER, the son of Praxiadas, was a citizen of Miletus.
II. He used to assert that the principle and primary element of all things was the Infinity, giving no exact definition as to whether he meant air or water, or anything else. And he said that the parts were susceptible of change, but that the whole was unchangeable; and that the earth lay in the middle, being placed there as a sort of centre, of a spherical shape. The moon, he said, had a borrowed light, and borrowed it from the sun; and the sun he affirmed to be not less than the earth, and the purest possible fire.
III. He also was the first discoverer of the gnomon; and he placed some in Lacedaemon on the sun-dials there, as Favorinus says in his Universal History, and they showed the solstices and the equinoxes; he also made clocks. He was the first person, too, who drew a map of the earth and sea, and he also made a globe; and he published a concise statement of whatever opinions he embraced or entertained; and this treatise was met with by Apollodorus the Athenian.
IV. And Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, states, that in the second year of the fifty-eighth Olympiad, he was sixty-four years old. And soon after he died, having flourished much about the same time as Polycrates, the tyrant, of Samos. They say that when he sang, the children laughed; and that he, hearing of this, said, "We must then sing better for the sake of the children. "
V. There was also another Anaximander, a historian; and he too was a Milesian, and wrote in the Ionic dialect.
Maroon and midnight blue banner for Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers
BOOK I.
INTRODUCTION.
I. SOME say that the study of philosophy originated with the barbarians. In that among the Persians there existed the Magi,1 and among the Babylonians or Assyrians the Chaldaei,2 among the Indians the Gymnosophistae,3 and among the Celts and Gauls men who were called Druids4 and Semnothei, as Aristotle relates in his book on Magic, and Sotion in the twenty-third book of his Succession of Philosophers. Besides those men there were the Phoenician Ochus, the Thracian Zamolxis,5 and the Libyan Atlas. For the Egyptians say that Vulcan was the son of Nilus*, and that he was the author of philosophy, in which those who were especially eminent were called his priests and prophets.
II. From his age to that of Alexander, king of the Macedonians, were forty-eight thousand eight hundred and sixty-three years, and during this time there were three hundred and seventy-three eclipses of the sun, and eight hundred and thirty-two eclipses of the moon.
Again, from the time of the Magi, the first of whom was Zoroaster the Persian, to that of the fall of Troy, Hermodorus the Platonic philosopher, in his treatise on Mathematics, calculates that fifteen thousand years elapsed. But Xanthus the Lydian says that the passage of the Hellespont by Xerxes took place six thousand years after the time of Zoroaster,6 and that after him there was a regular succession of Magi under the names of Ostanes and Astrampsychos and Gobryas and Pazatas, until the destruction of the Persian empire by Alexander.
III. But those who say this, ignorantly impute to the barbarians the merits of the Greeks, from whom not only all philosophy, but even the whole human race in reality originated. For Musaeus was born among the Athenians, and Linus among the Thebans; and they say that the former, who was the son of Eumolpus, was the first person who taught the system of the genealogy of the gods, and who invented the spheres; and that he taught that all things originated in one thing, and when dissolved returned to that same thing; and that he died at Phalerum, and that this epitaph was inscribed on his tomb:
Phalerum's soil beneath this tomb contains
Musaeus dead, Eumolpus' darling son.
And it is from the father of Musaeus that the family called Eumolpidae among the Athenians derive their name. They say too that Linus was the son of Mercury and the Muse Urania; and that he invented a system of Cosmogony, and of the motions of the sun and moon, and of the generation of animals and fruits; and the following is the beginning of his poem,
There was a time when all the present world
Uprose at once.
From which Anaxagoras derived his theory, when he said that all things had been produced at the same time, and that then intellect had come and arranged them all in order.
They say, moreover, that Linus died in Euboea, having been shot with an arrow by Apollo, and that this epitaph was set over him:
The Theban Linus sleeps beneath this ground,
Urania's son with fairest garlands crown'd.
IV. And thus did philosophy arise among the Greeks, and indeed its very name shows that it has no connection with the barbarians. But those who attribute its origin to them, introduce Orpheus the Thracian, and say that he was a philosopher, and the most ancient one of all. But if one ought to call a man who has said such things about the gods as he has said, a philosopher, I do not know what name one ought to give to him who has not scrupled to attribute all sorts of human feelings to the gods, and even such discreditable actions as are but rarely spoken of among men; and tradition relates that he was murdered by women;7 but there is an inscription at Dium in Macedonia, saying that he was killed by lightning, and it runs thus:
Here the bard buried by the Muses lies,
The Thracian Orpheus of the golden lyre;
Whom mighty Jove, the Sovereign of the skies,
Removed from earth by his dread lightning's fire.
V. But they who say that philosophy had its rise among the barbarians, give also an account of the different systems prevailing among the various tribes. And they say that the Gymnosophists and the Druids philosophize, delivering their apophthegmns in enigmatical language, bidding men worship the gods and do no evil, and practise manly virtue.
VI. Accordingly Clitarchus, in his twelfth book, says that the Gymnosophists despise death, and that the Chaldaeans study astronomy and the science of soothsaying--that the Magi occupy themselves about the service to be paid to the gods, and about sacrifices and prayers, as if they were the only people to whom the deities listen: and that they deliver accounts of the existence and generation of the gods, saying that they are fire, and earth, and water; and they condemn the use of images, and above all things do they condemn those who say that the gods are male and female; they speak much of justice, and think it impious to destroy the bodies of the dead by fire; they allow men to marry their mothers or their daughters, as Sotion tells us in his twenty-third book; they study the arts of soothsaying and divination, and assert that the gods reveal their will to them by those sciences. They teach also that the air is full of phantoms, which, by emanation and a sort of evaporation, glide into the sight of those who have a clear perception; they forbid any extravagance of ornament, and the use of gold; their garments are white, their beds are made of leaves, and vegetables are their food, with cheese and coarse bread; they use a rush for a staff, the top of which they run into the cheese, and so taking up a piece of it they eat it. Of all kinds of magical divination they are ignorant, as Aristotle asserts in his book on Magic, and Dinon in the fifth book of his Histories. And this writer says, that the name of Zoroaster being interpreted means, a sacrifice to the stars; and Hermodorus makes the same statement. But Aristotle, in the first book of his Treatise on Philosophy, says, that the Magi are more ancient than the Egyptians; and that according to them there are two principles, a good demon and an evil demon, and that the name of the one is Jupiter or Oromasdes, and that of the other Pluto or Arimanius. And Hermippus gives the same account in the first book of his History of the Magi; and so does Eudoxus in his Period; and so does Theopompus in the eighth book of his History of the Affairs of Philip; and this last writer tells us also, that according to the Magi men will have a resurrection and be immortal, and that what exists now will exist hereafter under its own present name; and Eudemus of Rhodes coincides in this statement. But Hecataeus says, that according to their doctrines the gods also are beings who have been born. But Clearchus the Solensian, in his Treatise on Education says, that the Gymnosophists are descendants of the Magi; and some say that the Jews also are derived from them. Moreover, those who have written on the subject of the Magi condemn Herodotus; for they say that Xerxes would never have shot arrows against the sun, or have put fetters on the sea, as both sun and sea have been handed down by the Magi as gods, but that it was quite consistent for Xerxes to destroy the images of the gods.
VII. The following is the account that authors give of the philosophy of the Egyptians, as bearing on the gods and on justice. They say that the first principle is matter; then that the four elements were formed out of matter and divided, and that some animals were created, and that the sun and moon are gods, of whom the former is called Osiris and the latter Isis, and they are symbolised under the names of beetles and dragons, and hawks, and other animals, as Manetho tells us in his abridged account of Natural Philosophy, and Hecataeus confirms the statement in the first book of his History of the Philosophy of the Egyptians. They also make images of the gods, and assign them temples because they do not know the form of God. They consider that the world had a beginning and will have an end, and that it is a sphere; they think that the stars are fire, and that it is by a combination of them that the things on earth are generated; that the moon is eclipsed when it falls into the shadow of the earth; that the soul is eternal and migratory; that rain is caused by the changes of the atmosphere; and they enter into other speculations on points of natural history, as Hecataeus and Aristagoras inform us.
They also have made laws about justice, which they attribute to Mercury, and they consider those animals which are useful to be gods. They claim to themselves the merit of having been the inventors of geometry, and astrology, and arithmetic. So much then for the subject of invention.
VIII. But Pythagoras was the first person who invented the term Philosophy, and who called himself a philosopher; when he was conversing at Sicyon with Leon, who was tyrant of the Sicyonians or of the Phliasians (as Heraclides Ponticus relates in the book which he wrote about a dead woman); for he said that no man ought to be called wise, but only God. For formerly what is now called philosophy (philosophia) was called wisdom (sophia), and they who professed it were called wise men (sophoi), as being endowed with great acuteness and accuracy of mind; but now he who embraces wisdom is called a philosopher (philosophos).
But the wise men were also called Sophists. And not only they, but poets also were called Sophists: as Cratinus in his Archilochi calls Homer and Hesiod, while praising them highly.
IX. Now these were they who were accounted wise men. Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilo, Bias, Pittacus. To these men add Anacharsis the Scythian, Myson the Chenean, Pherecydes the Syrian, and Epimenides the Cretan; and some add, Pisistratus, the tyrant: These then are they who were called the wise men.
X. But of Philosophy there arose two schools. One derived from Anaximander, the other from Pythagoras. Now, Thales had been the preceptor of Anaximander, and Pherecydes of Pythagoras. And the one school was called the Ionian, because Thales, being an Ionian (for he was a native of Miletus), had been the tutor of Anaximander; --but the other was called the Italian from Pythagoras, because he spent the chief part of his life in Italy. And the Ionic school ends with Clitomachus, and Chrysippus, and Theophrastus; and the Italian one with Epicurus; for Anaximander succeeded Thales, and he was succeeded again by Anaximenes, and he by Anaxagoras, and he by Archelaus, who was the master of Socrates, who was the originator of moral philosophy. And he was the master of the sect of the Socratic philosophers, and of Plato, who was the founder of the old Academy; and Plato's pupils were Speusippus and Xenocrates; and Polemo was the pupil of Xenocrates, and Crantor and Crates of Polemo. Crates again was the master of Arcesilaus, the founder of the Middle Academy, and his pupil was Lacydes, who gave the new Academy its distinctive principles. His pupil was Carneades, and he in his turn was the master of Clitomachus. And this school ends in this way with Clitomachus and Chrysippus.
Antisthenes was the pupil of Socrates, and the master of Diogenes the Cynic; and the pupil of Diogenes was Crates the Theban; Zeno the Cittiaean was his; Cleanthes was his; Chrysippus was his. Again it ends with Theophrastus in the following manner:
Aristotle was the pupil of Plato, Theophrastus the pupil of Aristotle; and in this way the Ionian school comes to an end.
Now the Italian school was carried on in this way.
V. And he died at a great age, having lived seventy years, and this inscription was put over him :
His country, Lindus, this fair sea-girt city
Bewails wise Cleobulus here entombed.
VI. One of his sayings was, "Moderation is the best thing. " He also wrote a letter to Solon in these terms:
CLEOBULUS TO SOLON.
You have many friends, and a home everywhere, but yet I think that Lindus will be the most agreeable habitation for Solon, since it enjoys a democratic government, and it is a maritime island, and whoever dwells in it has nothing to fear from Pisistratus, and you will have friends flock to you from all quarters.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF PERIANDER
I. PERIANDER was a Corinthian, the son of Cypselus, of the family of the Heraclidae. He married Lyside (whom he himself called Melissa), the daughter of Procles the tyrant of Epidaurus, and of Eristhenea the daughter of Aristocrates, and sister of Aristodemus, who governed nearly all Arcadia, as Heraclides Ponticus says in his Treatise on Dominion and had by her two sons Cypselus and Lycophron, the younger of whom was a clever boy, but the elder was deficient in intellect. At a subsequent period he in a rage either kicked or threw his wife down stairs when she was pregnant, and so killed her, being wrought upon by the false accusations of his concubines, whom he afterwards burnt alive. And the child, whose name was Lycophron, he sent away to Corcyra because he grieved for his mother.
II. But afterwards, when he was now extremely old, he sent for him back again, in order that he might succeed to the tyranny. But the Corcyreans, anticipating his intention, put him to death, at which he was greatly enraged, and sent their children to Corcyra to be made eunuchs of; and when the ship came near to Samos, the youths, having made supplications to Juno, were saved by the Samians. And he fell into despondency and died, being eighty years old. Sosicrates says that he died forty-one years before Croesus, in the last year of the forty-eighth Olympiad. Herodotus, in the first book of his History, says that he was connected by ties of hospitality with Thrasybulus the tyrant of Miletus. And Aristippus, in the first book of his Treatise on Ancient Luxury, tells the following story of him; that his mother Cratea fell in love with him, and introduced herself secretly into his bed; and he was delighted; but when the truth was discovered he became very oppressive to all his subjects, because he was grieved at the discovery. Ephorus relates that he made a vow that, if he gained the victory at Olympia in the chariot race, he would dedicate a golden statue to the God. Accordingly he gained the victory; but being in want of gold, and seeing the women at some national festival beautifully adorned, he took away their golden ornaments, and then sent the offering which he had vowed.
III. But some writers say that he was anxious that his tomb should not be known, and that with that object he adopted the following contrivance. He ordered two young men to go out by night, indicating a particular road by which they were to go, and to kill the first man they met, and bury him; after them he sent out four other men who were to kill and bury them. Again he sent out a still greater number against these four, with similar instructions. And in this manner he put himself in the way of the first pair, and was slain, and the Corinthians erected a cenotaph over him with the following inscription:
The sea-beat land of Corinth in her bosom,
Doth here embrace her ruler Periander,
Greatest of all men for his wealth and wisdom.
We ourselves have also written an epigram upon him:
Grieve not when disappointed of a wish,
But be content with what the Gods may give you --
For the great Periander died unhappy,
At failing in an object he desired.
IV. It was a saying of his that we ought not to do anything for the sake of money; for that we ought only to acquire such gains as are allowable. He composed apophthegms in verse to the number of two thousand lines; and said that those who wished to wield absolute power in safety, should be guarded by the good will of their countrymen, and not by arms. And once, being asked why he assumed tyrannical power, he replied, "Because, to abdicate it voluntarily, and to have it taken from one, are both dangerous. " The following sayings also belong to him:--Tranquillity is a good thing. --Rashness is dangerous. --Gain is disgraceful. --Democracy is better than tyranny. --Pleasures are transitory, but honour is immortal. --Be moderate when prosperous, but prudent when unfortunate. Be the same to your friends when they are prosperous, and when they are unfortunate. --Whatever you agree to do, observe--Do not divulge secrets. --Punish not only those who do wrong, but those who intend to do so.
V. This prince was the first who had body-guards, and who changed a legitimate power into a tyranny; and he would not allow any one who chose to live in his city, as Ephorus and Aristotle tell us.
VI. And he flourished about the thirty-eighth Olympiad, and enjoyed absolute power for forty years. But Sotion, and Heraclides, and Pamphila, in the fifth book of her Commentaries, says that there were two Perianders; the one a tyrant, and the other a wise man, and a native of Ambracia. And Neanthes of Cyzicus makes the same assertion, adding, that the two men were cousins to one another. And Aristotle says, that it was the Corinthian Periander who was the wise one; but Plato contradicts him. The saying--"Practice does everything," is his. He it was, also, who proposed to cut through the Isthmus.
VII. The following letter of his is quoted:
PERIANDER TO THE WISE MEN.
I give great thanks to Apollo of Delphi that my letters are able to determine you all to meet together at Corinth; and I will receive you all, as you may be well assured, in a manner that becomes free citizens. I hear also that last year you met at Sardis, at the court of the King of Lydia. So now do not hesitate to come to me, who am the tyrant of Corinth; for the Corinthians will all be delighted to see you come to the house of Periander.
VIII. There is this letter too:
PERIANDER TO PROCLES.
The injury of my wife was unintended by me; and you have done wrong in alienating from me the mind of my child. I desire you, therefore, either to restore me to my place in his affections, or I will revenge myself on you; for I have myself made atonement for the death of your daughter, by burning in her tomb the clothes of all the Corinthian women. 1
IX. Thrasybulus also wrote him a letter in the following terms:
I have given no answer to your messenger; but having taken him into a field, I struck with my walking-stick all the highest ears of corn, and cut off their tops, while he was walking with me: And he will report to you, if you ask him, everything which he heard or saw while with me; and do you act accordingly if you wish to preserve your power safely, taking off the most eminent of the citizens, whether he seems an enemy to you or not, as even his companions are deservedly objects of suspicion to a man possessed of supreme power.
1. Herodotus mentions the case of Periander's children, iii. 50, and the death of his wife, and his burning the clothes of all the Corinthian women, v. 92.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ANACHARSIS
I. ANACHARSIS the Scythian was the son of Gnurus, and the brother of Caduides the king of the Scythians; but his mother was a Grecian woman; owing to which circumstance he understood both languages.
II. He wrote about the laws existing among the Scythians, and also about those in force among the Greeks, urging men to adopt a temperate course of life; and he wrote also about war, his works being in verse, and amounting to eight hundred lines: he gave occasion for a proverb, because he used great freedom of speech, so that people called such freedom the Scythian conversation.
III. But Sosicrates says that he came to Athens in the forty-seventh Olympiad, in the archonship of Eucrates. And Hermippus asserts that he came to Solon's house, and ordered one of the servants to go and tell his master that Anacharsis was come to visit him, and was desirous to see him, and, if possible, to enter into relations of hospitality with him. But when the servant had given the message, he was ordered by Solon to reply to him that, "Men generally limited such alliances to their own countrymen. " In reply to this Anacharsis entered the house, and told the servant that now he was in Solon's country, and that it was quite consistent for them to become connected with one another in this way. On this, Solon admired the readiness of the man, and admitted him, and made him one of his greatest friends.
IV. But after some time, when he had returned to Scythia, and shown a purpose to abrogate the existing institutions of his country, being exceedingly earnest, in his fondness for Grecian customs, he was shot by his brother while he was out hunting, and so he died, saying, "That he was saved on account of the sense and eloquence which he had brought from Greece, but slain in consequence of envy in his own family. " Some, however, relate that he was slain while performing some Grecian sacrificatory rites. And we have written this epigram on him:
When Anacharsis to his land returned,
His mind was turn'd, so that he wished to make
His countrymen all live in Grecian fashion--
So, ere his words had well escaped his lips,
A winged arrow bore him to the Gods.
V. He said that a vine bore three bunches of grapes. The first, the bunch of pleasure; the second, that of drunkenness; the third that of disgust. He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest. Being once asked how a person might be made not fond of drinking, he said, "If he always keeps in view the indecorous actions of drunken men. " He used also to say, that he marvelled how the Greeks, who make laws against those who behave with insolence, honour Athletae because of their beating one another. When he had been informed that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, he said, "That those who sailed in one were removed by just that distance from death. " He used to say that oil was a provocative of madness, "because Athletae, when anointed in the oil, attacked one another with mad fury. "
"How is it," he used to say, "that those who forbid men to speak falsely, tell lies openly in their vintners' shops? " It was a saying of his, that he "marvelled why the Greeks, at the beginning of a banquet, drink out of small cups, but when they have drunk a good deal, then they turn to large goblets. " And this inscription is on his statues--"Restrain your tongues, your appetites, and your passions. " He was once asked if the flute was known among the Scythians; and he said, "No, nor the vine either. " At another time, the question was put to him, which was the safest kind of vessel? and he said, "That which is brought into dock. " He said, too, that the strangest things that he had seen among the Greeks was, that "They left the smoke1 in the mountains, and carried the wood down to their cities. " Once, when he was asked, which were the more numerous, the living or the dead? he said, "Under which head do you class those who are at sea. " Being reproached by an Athenian for being a Scythian, he said, "Well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your country. " When he was asked what there was among men which was both good and bad, he replied, "The tongue. " He used to say "That it was better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing. " Another saying of his was, that "The forum was an established place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously. " Being once insulted by a young man at a drinking party, he said, "O, young man, if now that you are young you cannot bear wine, when you are old you will have to bear water. "
VI. Of things which are of use in life, he is said to have been the inventor of the anchor, and of the potter's wheel.
VII. The following letter of his is extant:
ANACHARSIS TO CROESUS.
O king of the Lydians, I am come to the country of the Greeks, in order to become acquainted with their customs and institutions; but I have no need of gold, and shall be quite contented if I return to Scythia a better man than I left it. However I will come to Sardis, as I think it very desirable to become a friend of yours.
1. Some propose to read karpon, fruit, instead of kapnon, smoke, here; others explain this saying as meaning that the Greeks avoided houses on the hills in order not to be annoyed with the smoke from the low cottages, and yet did not use coal, but wood, which made more smoke.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ANACHARSIS
I. ANACHARSIS the Scythian was the son of Gnurus, and the brother of Caduides the king of the Scythians; but his mother was a Grecian woman; owing to which circumstance he understood both languages.
II. He wrote about the laws existing among the Scythians, and also about those in force among the Greeks, urging men to adopt a temperate course of life; and he wrote also about war, his works being in verse, and amounting to eight hundred lines: he gave occasion for a proverb, because he used great freedom of speech, so that people called such freedom the Scythian conversation.
III. But Sosicrates says that he came to Athens in the forty-seventh Olympiad, in the archonship of Eucrates. And Hermippus asserts that he came to Solon's house, and ordered one of the servants to go and tell his master that Anacharsis was come to visit him, and was desirous to see him, and, if possible, to enter into relations of hospitality with him. But when the servant had given the message, he was ordered by Solon to reply to him that, "Men generally limited such alliances to their own countrymen. " In reply to this Anacharsis entered the house, and told the servant that now he was in Solon's country, and that it was quite consistent for them to become connected with one another in this way. On this, Solon admired the readiness of the man, and admitted him, and made him one of his greatest friends.
IV. But after some time, when he had returned to Scythia, and shown a purpose to abrogate the existing institutions of his country, being exceedingly earnest, in his fondness for Grecian customs, he was shot by his brother while he was out hunting, and so he died, saying, "That he was saved on account of the sense and eloquence which he had brought from Greece, but slain in consequence of envy in his own family. " Some, however, relate that he was slain while performing some Grecian sacrificatory rites. And we have written this epigram on him:
When Anacharsis to his land returned,
His mind was turn'd, so that he wished to make
His countrymen all live in Grecian fashion--
So, ere his words had well escaped his lips,
A winged arrow bore him to the Gods.
V. He said that a vine bore three bunches of grapes. The first, the bunch of pleasure; the second, that of drunkenness; the third that of disgust. He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest. Being once asked how a person might be made not fond of drinking, he said, "If he always keeps in view the indecorous actions of drunken men. " He used also to say, that he marvelled how the Greeks, who make laws against those who behave with insolence, honour Athletae because of their beating one another. When he had been informed that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, he said, "That those who sailed in one were removed by just that distance from death. " He used to say that oil was a provocative of madness, "because Athletae, when anointed in the oil, attacked one another with mad fury. "
"How is it," he used to say, "that those who forbid men to speak falsely, tell lies openly in their vintners' shops? " It was a saying of his, that he "marvelled why the Greeks, at the beginning of a banquet, drink out of small cups, but when they have drunk a good deal, then they turn to large goblets. " And this inscription is on his statues--"Restrain your tongues, your appetites, and your passions. " He was once asked if the flute was known among the Scythians; and he said, "No, nor the vine either. " At another time, the question was put to him, which was the safest kind of vessel? and he said, "That which is brought into dock. " He said, too, that the strangest things that he had seen among the Greeks was, that "They left the smoke1 in the mountains, and carried the wood down to their cities. " Once, when he was asked, which were the more numerous, the living or the dead? he said, "Under which head do you class those who are at sea. " Being reproached by an Athenian for being a Scythian, he said, "Well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your country. " When he was asked what there was among men which was both good and bad, he replied, "The tongue. " He used to say "That it was better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing. " Another saying of his was, that "The forum was an established place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously. " Being once insulted by a young man at a drinking party, he said, "O, young man, if now that you are young you cannot bear wine, when you are old you will have to bear water. "
VI. Of things which are of use in life, he is said to have been the inventor of the anchor, and of the potter's wheel.
VII. The following letter of his is extant:
ANACHARSIS TO CROESUS.
O king of the Lydians, I am come to the country of the Greeks, in order to become acquainted with their customs and institutions; but I have no need of gold, and shall be quite contented if I return to Scythia a better man than I left it. However I will come to Sardis, as I think it very desirable to become a friend of yours.
1. Some propose to read karpon, fruit, instead of kapnon, smoke, here; others explain this saying as meaning that the Greeks avoided houses on the hills in order not to be annoyed with the smoke from the low cottages, and yet did not use coal, but wood, which made more smoke.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ANACHARSIS
I. ANACHARSIS the Scythian was the son of Gnurus, and the brother of Caduides the king of the Scythians; but his mother was a Grecian woman; owing to which circumstance he understood both languages.
II. He wrote about the laws existing among the Scythians, and also about those in force among the Greeks, urging men to adopt a temperate course of life; and he wrote also about war, his works being in verse, and amounting to eight hundred lines: he gave occasion for a proverb, because he used great freedom of speech, so that people called such freedom the Scythian conversation.
III. But Sosicrates says that he came to Athens in the forty-seventh Olympiad, in the archonship of Eucrates. And Hermippus asserts that he came to Solon's house, and ordered one of the servants to go and tell his master that Anacharsis was come to visit him, and was desirous to see him, and, if possible, to enter into relations of hospitality with him. But when the servant had given the message, he was ordered by Solon to reply to him that, "Men generally limited such alliances to their own countrymen. " In reply to this Anacharsis entered the house, and told the servant that now he was in Solon's country, and that it was quite consistent for them to become connected with one another in this way. On this, Solon admired the readiness of the man, and admitted him, and made him one of his greatest friends.
IV. But after some time, when he had returned to Scythia, and shown a purpose to abrogate the existing institutions of his country, being exceedingly earnest, in his fondness for Grecian customs, he was shot by his brother while he was out hunting, and so he died, saying, "That he was saved on account of the sense and eloquence which he had brought from Greece, but slain in consequence of envy in his own family. " Some, however, relate that he was slain while performing some Grecian sacrificatory rites. And we have written this epigram on him:
When Anacharsis to his land returned,
His mind was turn'd, so that he wished to make
His countrymen all live in Grecian fashion--
So, ere his words had well escaped his lips,
A winged arrow bore him to the Gods.
V. He said that a vine bore three bunches of grapes. The first, the bunch of pleasure; the second, that of drunkenness; the third that of disgust. He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest. Being once asked how a person might be made not fond of drinking, he said, "If he always keeps in view the indecorous actions of drunken men. " He used also to say, that he marvelled how the Greeks, who make laws against those who behave with insolence, honour Athletae because of their beating one another. When he had been informed that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, he said, "That those who sailed in one were removed by just that distance from death. " He used to say that oil was a provocative of madness, "because Athletae, when anointed in the oil, attacked one another with mad fury. "
"How is it," he used to say, "that those who forbid men to speak falsely, tell lies openly in their vintners' shops? " It was a saying of his, that he "marvelled why the Greeks, at the beginning of a banquet, drink out of small cups, but when they have drunk a good deal, then they turn to large goblets. " And this inscription is on his statues--"Restrain your tongues, your appetites, and your passions. " He was once asked if the flute was known among the Scythians; and he said, "No, nor the vine either. " At another time, the question was put to him, which was the safest kind of vessel? and he said, "That which is brought into dock. " He said, too, that the strangest things that he had seen among the Greeks was, that "They left the smoke1 in the mountains, and carried the wood down to their cities. " Once, when he was asked, which were the more numerous, the living or the dead? he said, "Under which head do you class those who are at sea. " Being reproached by an Athenian for being a Scythian, he said, "Well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your country. " When he was asked what there was among men which was both good and bad, he replied, "The tongue. " He used to say "That it was better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing. " Another saying of his was, that "The forum was an established place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously. " Being once insulted by a young man at a drinking party, he said, "O, young man, if now that you are young you cannot bear wine, when you are old you will have to bear water. "
VI. Of things which are of use in life, he is said to have been the inventor of the anchor, and of the potter's wheel.
VII.
The following letter of his is extant:
ANACHARSIS TO CROESUS.
O king of the Lydians, I am come to the country of the Greeks, in order to become acquainted with their customs and institutions; but I have no need of gold, and shall be quite contented if I return to Scythia a better man than I left it. However I will come to Sardis, as I think it very desirable to become a friend of yours.
1. Some propose to read karpon, fruit, instead of kapnon, smoke, here; others explain this saying as meaning that the Greeks avoided houses on the hills in order not to be annoyed with the smoke from the low cottages, and yet did not use coal, but wood, which made more smoke.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF MYSON
I. MYSON, the son of Strymon, as Sosicrates states, quoting Hermippus as his authority, a Chenean by birth, of some Aetaean or Laconian village, is reckoned one of the seven wise men, and they say that his father was tyrant of his country. It is said by some writers that when Anacharsis inquired if any one was wiser than he, the priestess at Delphi gave the answer which has been already quoted in the life of Thales in reference to Chilon:
I say that Myson the Aetaean sage,
The citizen of Chen, is wiser far
In his deep mind than you.
And that he, having taken a great deal of trouble, came to the village, and found him in the summer season fitting a handle to a plough, and he addressed him, "O Myson, this is not now the season for the plough. " "Indeed," said he, "it is a capital season for preparing one;" but others say, that the words of the oracle are the Etean sage, and they raise the question, what the word Etean means. So Parmenides says, that it is a borough of Laconia, of which Myson was a native; but Sosicrates, in his Successions says, that he was an Etean on his father's side, and a Chenean by his mother's. But Euthyphro, the son of Heraclides Ponticus, says that he was a Cretan, for that Etea was a city of Crete.
II. And Anaxilaus says that he was an Arcadian. Hipponax also mentions him, saying, "And Myson, whom Apollo stated to be the most prudent of all men. " But Aristoxenus, in his Miscellanies, says that his habits were not very different from those of Timon and Apemantus, for that he was a misanthrope. And that accordingly he was one day found in Lacedaemon laughing by himself in a solitary place, and when some one came up to him on a sudden and asked him why he laughed when he was by himself, he said, "For that very reason. " Aristoxenus also says that he was not thought much of, because he was not a native of any city, but only of a village, and that too one of no great note; and according to him, it is on account of this obscurity of his that some people attribute his sayings and doings to Pisistratus the tyrant, but he excepts Plato the philosopher, for he mentions Myson in his Protagoras, placing him among the wise men instead of Periander.
III. It used to be a common saying of his that men ought not to seek for things in words, but for words in things; for that things are not made on account of words, but that words are put together for the sake of things.
IV. He died when he had lived ninety-seven years.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF EPIMENIDES
I. EPIMENIDES, as Theopompus and many other writers tell us, was the son of a man named Phaedrus*, but some call him the son of Dosiadas; and others of Agesarchus. He was a Cretan by birth, of the city of Cnossus; but because he let his hair grow long, he did not look like a Cretan.
II. He once, when he was sent by his father into the fields to look for a sheep, turned out of the road at mid-day and lay down in a certain cave and fell asleep and slept there fifty-seven years; and after that, when he awoke, he went on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been taking a short nap; but as he could not find it he went on to the field and there he found everything changed, and the estate in another person's possession, and so he came back again to the city in great perplexity, and as he was going into his own house he met some people who asked him who he was, until at last he found his younger brother who had now become an old man, and from him he learnt all the truth.
III. And when he was recognized he was considered by the Greeks as a person especially beloved by the Gods, on which account when the Athenians were afflicted by a plague, and the priestess at Delphi enjoined them to purify their city; they sent a ship and Nicias the son of Niceratus to Crete, to invite Epimenides to Athens; and he, coming there in the forty-sixth Olympiad, purified the city and eradicated the plague for that time; he took some black sheep and some white ones and led them up to the Areopagus, and from thence he let them go wherever they chose, having ordered the attendants to follow them, and wherever any one of them lay down they were to sacrifice him to the God who was the patron of the spot, and so the evil was stayed; and owing to this one may even now find in the different boroughs of the Athenians altars without names, which are a sort of memorial of the propitiation of the Gods that then took place. Some said that the cause of the plague was the pollution contracted by the city in the matter of Cylon, and that Epimenides pointed out to the Athenians how to get rid of it, and that in consequence they put to death two young men, Cratinus and Ctesilius*, and that thus the pestilence was put an end to.
And the Athenians passed a vote to give him a talent and a ship to convey him back to Crete, but he would not accept the money, but made a treaty of friendship and alliance between the Cnossians and Athenians.
IV. And not long after he had returned home he died, as Phlegon relates in his book on long-lived people, after he had lived a hundred and fifty-seven years; but as the Cretans report he had lived two hundred and ninety-nine; but as Xenophanes the Colophonian, states that he had heard it reported, he was a hundred and fifty-four years old when he died.
V. He wrote a poem of five thousand verses on the Generation and Theogony of the Curetes and Corybantes, and another poem of six thousand five hundred verses on the building of the Argo and the expedition of Jason to Colchis.
VI. He also wrote a treatise in prose on the Sacrifices in Crete, and the Cretan Constitution, and on Minos and Rhadamanthus, occupying four thousand lines.
Likewise he built at Athens the temple which is there dedicated to the venerable goddesses, as Lobon the Augur says in his book on Poets; and he is said to have been the first person who purified houses and lands, and who built temples.
VII. There are some people who assert that he did not sleep for the length of time that has been mentioned above, but that he was absent from his country for a considerable period, occupying himself with the anatomisation and examination of roots.
VIII. A letter of his is quoted, addressed to Solon the lawgiver, in which he discusses the constitution which Minos gave the Cretans. But Demetrius the Magnesian, in his treatise on Poets and Prose writers of the same name as one another, attempts to prove that the letter is a modern one, and is not written in the Cretan but in the Attic dialect, and the new Attic too.
IX. But I have also discovered another letter of his which runs thus:
EPIMENIDES TO SOLON.
Be of good cheer, my friend; for if Pisistratus had imposed his laws on the Athenians, they being habituated to slavery and not accustomed to good laws previously, he would have maintained his dominion for ever, succeeding easily in enslaving his fellow countrymen; but as it is, he is lording it over men who are no cowards, but who remember the precepts of Solon and are indignant at their bonds, and who will not endure the supremacy of a tyrant. But if Pisistratus does possess the city to-day, still I have no expectation that the supreme power will ever descend to his children. For it is impossible that men who have lived in freedom and in the enjoyment of most excellent laws should be slaves permanently; but as for yourself, do not you go wandering about at random, but come and visit me, for here there is no supreme ruler to be formidable to you; but if while you are wandering about any of the friends of Pisistratus should fall in with you, I fear you might suffer some misfortune.
He wrote thus.
X. But Demetrius says that some writers report that he used to receive food from the nymphs and keep it in a bullock's hoof; and that eating it in small quantities he never required any evacuations, and was never seen eating. And Timaeus mentions him in his second book.
XI. Some authors say also that the Cretans sacrifice to him as a god, for they say that he was the wisest of men; and accordingly, that when he saw the port of Munychia,1 at Athens, he said that the Athenians did not know how many evils that place would bring upon them: since, if they did, they would tear it to pieces with their teeth; and he said this a long time before the event to which he alluded. It is said also, that he at first called himself Aeacus; and that he foretold to the Lacedaemonians the defeat which they should suffer from the Arcadians; and that he pretended that he had lived several times. But Theopompus, in his Strange Stories, says that when he was building the temple of the Nymphs, a voice burst forth from heaven;--"Oh! Epimenides, build this temple, not for the Nymphs but for Jupiter. " He also foretold to the Cretans the defeat of the Lacedaemonians by the Arcadians as has been said before. And, indeed, they were beaten at Orchomenos.
XII. He pretended also, that he grew old rapidly, in the same number of days as he had been years asleep; at least, so Theopompus says. But Mysonianus*, in his Coincidences, says, that the Cretans call him one of the Curetes. And the Lacedaemonians preserve his body among them, in obedience to some oracle, as Sosilius the Lacedaemonian says.
XIII. There were also two other Epimenides, one the genealogist; the other, the man who wrote a history of Rhodes in the Doric dialect.
1. This refers to the result of the war which Antipater, who became regent of Macedonia on the death of Alexander the Great, carried on against the confederacy of Greek states, of which Athens was the head; and in which, after having defeated them at Cranon, he compelled the Athenians to abolish the democracy, and to admit a garrison into Munychia.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF PHERECYDES
I. PHERECYDES was a Syrian, the son of Babys, and, as Alexander says, in his Successions, he had been a pupil of Pittacus.
II. Theopompus says that he was the first person who ever wrote among the Greeks on the subject of Natural Philosophy and the Gods. And there are many marvellous stories told of him. For it is said that he was walking along the sea-shore at Samos, and that seeing a ship sailing by with a fair wind, he said that it would soon sink; and presently it sank before their eyes. At another time he was drinking some water which had been drawn up out of a well, and he foretold that within three days there would be an earthquake; and there was one. And as he was going up to Olympia, and had arrived at Messene, he advised his entertainer, Perilaus, to migrate from the city with all his family, but that Perilaus would not be guided by him; and afterwards Messene was taken.
III. And he is said to have told the Lacedaemonians to honour neither gold nor silver, as Theopompus says in his Marvels; and it is reported that Hercules laid this injunction on him in a dream, and that the same night he appeared also to the kings of Sparta, and enjoined them to be guided by Pherecydes; but some attribute these stories to Pythagoras.
IV. And Hermippus relates that when there was a war between the Ephesians and Magnesians, he, wishing the Ephesians to conquer, asked some one, who was passing by, from whence he came? and when he said, "From Ephesus," "Drag me now," said he, "by the legs, and place me in the territory of the Magnesians, and tell your fellow countrymen to bury me there after they have got the victory; and that he went and reported that Pherecydes had given him this order. And so they went forth the next day and defeated the Magnesians; and as Pherecydes was dead, they buried him there, and paid him very splendid honours.
V. But some writers say that he went to Delphi, and threw himself down from the Corycian hill; Aristoxenus, in his History of Pythagoras and his Friends, says that Pherecydes fell sick and died, and was buried by Pythagoras in Delos. But others say that he died of the lousy disease; and when Pythagoras came to see him, and asked him how he was, he put his finger through the door, and said, "You may see by my skin. " And from this circumstance that expression passed into a proverb among the philosophers, when affairs are going on badly; and those who apply it to affairs that are going on well, make a blunder. He used to say, also, that the Gods call their table thuoros.
VI. But Andron, the Ephesian, says that there were two men of the name of Pherecydes, both Syrians: one an astronomer, and the other a writer on God and the Divine Nature; and that this last was the son of Babys, who was also the master of Pythagoras. But Eratosthenes asserts that there was but one, who was a Syrian; and that the other Pherecydes was an Athenian, a genealogist; and the work of the Syrian Pherecydes is preserved and it begins thus:--"Jupiter, and Time, and Chthon existed externally. " And the name of Cthonia became Tellus, after Jupiter gave it to her as a reward. A sun-dial is also preserved, in the island of Syra, of his making.
VII. But Duris, in the second book of his Boundaries, says that this epigram was written upon him:
The limit of all wisdom is in me;
And would be, were it larger. But report
To my Pythagoras that he's the first
Of all the men that tread the Grecian soil;
I shall not speak falsehood, saying this.
And Ion, the Chian, says of him:
Adorned with valour while alive, and modesty,
Now that he's dead he still exists in peace;
For, like the wise Pythagoras, he studied
The manners and the minds of many nations.
And I myself have composed an epigram on him in the Pherecratean metre :
The story is reported,
That noble Pherecydes
Whom Syros calls her own,
Was eaten up by lice;
And so he bade his friends,
Convey his corpse away
To the Magnesian land,
That he might victory give
To holy Ephesus.
For well the God had said,
(Though he alone did know
Th' oracular prediction),
That this was fate's decree.
So in that land he lies.
This then is surely true,
That those who're really wise
Are useful while alive,
And e'en when breath has left them.
VIII. And he flourished about the fifty-ninth Olympiad. There is a letter of his extant in the following terms:
PHERECYDES TO THALES.
May you die happily when fate overtakes you. Disease has seized upon me at the same time that I received your letter. I am all over lice, and suffering likewise under a low fever. Accordingly, I have charged my servants to convey this book of mine to you, after they have buried me. And do you, if you think fit, after consulting with the other wise men, publish it; but if you do not approve of doing so, then keep it unpublished, for I am not entirely pleased with it myself. The subject is not one about which there is any certain knowledge, nor do I undertake to say that I have arrived at the truth; but I have advanced arguments, from which any one who occupies himself with speculations on the divine nature, may make a selection; and as to other points, he must exercise his intellect, for I speak obscurely throughout. I, myself, as I am afflicted more severely by this disease every day, no longer admit any physicians, or any of my friends. But when they stand at the door, and ask me how I am, I put out my finger to them through the opening of the door, and show them how I am eaten up with the evil; and I desired them to come to-morrow to the funeral of Pherecydes.
These, then, are they who were called wise men; to which list some writers add the name of Pisistratus. But we must also speak of the philosophers. And we will begin first with the Ionic philosophy, the founder of which school was Thales, who was the master of Anaximander.
THE LIVES AND OPINIONS OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS
BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS, TRANSLATED BY C. D. YONGE
LIFE OF ANAXIMANDER
I. ANAXIMANDER, the son of Praxiadas, was a citizen of Miletus.
II. He used to assert that the principle and primary element of all things was the Infinity, giving no exact definition as to whether he meant air or water, or anything else. And he said that the parts were susceptible of change, but that the whole was unchangeable; and that the earth lay in the middle, being placed there as a sort of centre, of a spherical shape. The moon, he said, had a borrowed light, and borrowed it from the sun; and the sun he affirmed to be not less than the earth, and the purest possible fire.
III. He also was the first discoverer of the gnomon; and he placed some in Lacedaemon on the sun-dials there, as Favorinus says in his Universal History, and they showed the solstices and the equinoxes; he also made clocks. He was the first person, too, who drew a map of the earth and sea, and he also made a globe; and he published a concise statement of whatever opinions he embraced or entertained; and this treatise was met with by Apollodorus the Athenian.
IV. And Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, states, that in the second year of the fifty-eighth Olympiad, he was sixty-four years old. And soon after he died, having flourished much about the same time as Polycrates, the tyrant, of Samos. They say that when he sang, the children laughed; and that he, hearing of this, said, "We must then sing better for the sake of the children. "
V. There was also another Anaximander, a historian; and he too was a Milesian, and wrote in the Ionic dialect.
Maroon and midnight blue banner for Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers
BOOK I.
INTRODUCTION.
I. SOME say that the study of philosophy originated with the barbarians. In that among the Persians there existed the Magi,1 and among the Babylonians or Assyrians the Chaldaei,2 among the Indians the Gymnosophistae,3 and among the Celts and Gauls men who were called Druids4 and Semnothei, as Aristotle relates in his book on Magic, and Sotion in the twenty-third book of his Succession of Philosophers. Besides those men there were the Phoenician Ochus, the Thracian Zamolxis,5 and the Libyan Atlas. For the Egyptians say that Vulcan was the son of Nilus*, and that he was the author of philosophy, in which those who were especially eminent were called his priests and prophets.
II. From his age to that of Alexander, king of the Macedonians, were forty-eight thousand eight hundred and sixty-three years, and during this time there were three hundred and seventy-three eclipses of the sun, and eight hundred and thirty-two eclipses of the moon.
Again, from the time of the Magi, the first of whom was Zoroaster the Persian, to that of the fall of Troy, Hermodorus the Platonic philosopher, in his treatise on Mathematics, calculates that fifteen thousand years elapsed. But Xanthus the Lydian says that the passage of the Hellespont by Xerxes took place six thousand years after the time of Zoroaster,6 and that after him there was a regular succession of Magi under the names of Ostanes and Astrampsychos and Gobryas and Pazatas, until the destruction of the Persian empire by Alexander.
III. But those who say this, ignorantly impute to the barbarians the merits of the Greeks, from whom not only all philosophy, but even the whole human race in reality originated. For Musaeus was born among the Athenians, and Linus among the Thebans; and they say that the former, who was the son of Eumolpus, was the first person who taught the system of the genealogy of the gods, and who invented the spheres; and that he taught that all things originated in one thing, and when dissolved returned to that same thing; and that he died at Phalerum, and that this epitaph was inscribed on his tomb:
Phalerum's soil beneath this tomb contains
Musaeus dead, Eumolpus' darling son.
And it is from the father of Musaeus that the family called Eumolpidae among the Athenians derive their name. They say too that Linus was the son of Mercury and the Muse Urania; and that he invented a system of Cosmogony, and of the motions of the sun and moon, and of the generation of animals and fruits; and the following is the beginning of his poem,
There was a time when all the present world
Uprose at once.
From which Anaxagoras derived his theory, when he said that all things had been produced at the same time, and that then intellect had come and arranged them all in order.
They say, moreover, that Linus died in Euboea, having been shot with an arrow by Apollo, and that this epitaph was set over him:
The Theban Linus sleeps beneath this ground,
Urania's son with fairest garlands crown'd.
IV. And thus did philosophy arise among the Greeks, and indeed its very name shows that it has no connection with the barbarians. But those who attribute its origin to them, introduce Orpheus the Thracian, and say that he was a philosopher, and the most ancient one of all. But if one ought to call a man who has said such things about the gods as he has said, a philosopher, I do not know what name one ought to give to him who has not scrupled to attribute all sorts of human feelings to the gods, and even such discreditable actions as are but rarely spoken of among men; and tradition relates that he was murdered by women;7 but there is an inscription at Dium in Macedonia, saying that he was killed by lightning, and it runs thus:
Here the bard buried by the Muses lies,
The Thracian Orpheus of the golden lyre;
Whom mighty Jove, the Sovereign of the skies,
Removed from earth by his dread lightning's fire.
V. But they who say that philosophy had its rise among the barbarians, give also an account of the different systems prevailing among the various tribes. And they say that the Gymnosophists and the Druids philosophize, delivering their apophthegmns in enigmatical language, bidding men worship the gods and do no evil, and practise manly virtue.
VI. Accordingly Clitarchus, in his twelfth book, says that the Gymnosophists despise death, and that the Chaldaeans study astronomy and the science of soothsaying--that the Magi occupy themselves about the service to be paid to the gods, and about sacrifices and prayers, as if they were the only people to whom the deities listen: and that they deliver accounts of the existence and generation of the gods, saying that they are fire, and earth, and water; and they condemn the use of images, and above all things do they condemn those who say that the gods are male and female; they speak much of justice, and think it impious to destroy the bodies of the dead by fire; they allow men to marry their mothers or their daughters, as Sotion tells us in his twenty-third book; they study the arts of soothsaying and divination, and assert that the gods reveal their will to them by those sciences. They teach also that the air is full of phantoms, which, by emanation and a sort of evaporation, glide into the sight of those who have a clear perception; they forbid any extravagance of ornament, and the use of gold; their garments are white, their beds are made of leaves, and vegetables are their food, with cheese and coarse bread; they use a rush for a staff, the top of which they run into the cheese, and so taking up a piece of it they eat it. Of all kinds of magical divination they are ignorant, as Aristotle asserts in his book on Magic, and Dinon in the fifth book of his Histories. And this writer says, that the name of Zoroaster being interpreted means, a sacrifice to the stars; and Hermodorus makes the same statement. But Aristotle, in the first book of his Treatise on Philosophy, says, that the Magi are more ancient than the Egyptians; and that according to them there are two principles, a good demon and an evil demon, and that the name of the one is Jupiter or Oromasdes, and that of the other Pluto or Arimanius. And Hermippus gives the same account in the first book of his History of the Magi; and so does Eudoxus in his Period; and so does Theopompus in the eighth book of his History of the Affairs of Philip; and this last writer tells us also, that according to the Magi men will have a resurrection and be immortal, and that what exists now will exist hereafter under its own present name; and Eudemus of Rhodes coincides in this statement. But Hecataeus says, that according to their doctrines the gods also are beings who have been born. But Clearchus the Solensian, in his Treatise on Education says, that the Gymnosophists are descendants of the Magi; and some say that the Jews also are derived from them. Moreover, those who have written on the subject of the Magi condemn Herodotus; for they say that Xerxes would never have shot arrows against the sun, or have put fetters on the sea, as both sun and sea have been handed down by the Magi as gods, but that it was quite consistent for Xerxes to destroy the images of the gods.
VII. The following is the account that authors give of the philosophy of the Egyptians, as bearing on the gods and on justice. They say that the first principle is matter; then that the four elements were formed out of matter and divided, and that some animals were created, and that the sun and moon are gods, of whom the former is called Osiris and the latter Isis, and they are symbolised under the names of beetles and dragons, and hawks, and other animals, as Manetho tells us in his abridged account of Natural Philosophy, and Hecataeus confirms the statement in the first book of his History of the Philosophy of the Egyptians. They also make images of the gods, and assign them temples because they do not know the form of God. They consider that the world had a beginning and will have an end, and that it is a sphere; they think that the stars are fire, and that it is by a combination of them that the things on earth are generated; that the moon is eclipsed when it falls into the shadow of the earth; that the soul is eternal and migratory; that rain is caused by the changes of the atmosphere; and they enter into other speculations on points of natural history, as Hecataeus and Aristagoras inform us.
They also have made laws about justice, which they attribute to Mercury, and they consider those animals which are useful to be gods. They claim to themselves the merit of having been the inventors of geometry, and astrology, and arithmetic. So much then for the subject of invention.
VIII. But Pythagoras was the first person who invented the term Philosophy, and who called himself a philosopher; when he was conversing at Sicyon with Leon, who was tyrant of the Sicyonians or of the Phliasians (as Heraclides Ponticus relates in the book which he wrote about a dead woman); for he said that no man ought to be called wise, but only God. For formerly what is now called philosophy (philosophia) was called wisdom (sophia), and they who professed it were called wise men (sophoi), as being endowed with great acuteness and accuracy of mind; but now he who embraces wisdom is called a philosopher (philosophos).
But the wise men were also called Sophists. And not only they, but poets also were called Sophists: as Cratinus in his Archilochi calls Homer and Hesiod, while praising them highly.
IX. Now these were they who were accounted wise men. Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilo, Bias, Pittacus. To these men add Anacharsis the Scythian, Myson the Chenean, Pherecydes the Syrian, and Epimenides the Cretan; and some add, Pisistratus, the tyrant: These then are they who were called the wise men.
X. But of Philosophy there arose two schools. One derived from Anaximander, the other from Pythagoras. Now, Thales had been the preceptor of Anaximander, and Pherecydes of Pythagoras. And the one school was called the Ionian, because Thales, being an Ionian (for he was a native of Miletus), had been the tutor of Anaximander; --but the other was called the Italian from Pythagoras, because he spent the chief part of his life in Italy. And the Ionic school ends with Clitomachus, and Chrysippus, and Theophrastus; and the Italian one with Epicurus; for Anaximander succeeded Thales, and he was succeeded again by Anaximenes, and he by Anaxagoras, and he by Archelaus, who was the master of Socrates, who was the originator of moral philosophy. And he was the master of the sect of the Socratic philosophers, and of Plato, who was the founder of the old Academy; and Plato's pupils were Speusippus and Xenocrates; and Polemo was the pupil of Xenocrates, and Crantor and Crates of Polemo. Crates again was the master of Arcesilaus, the founder of the Middle Academy, and his pupil was Lacydes, who gave the new Academy its distinctive principles. His pupil was Carneades, and he in his turn was the master of Clitomachus. And this school ends in this way with Clitomachus and Chrysippus.
Antisthenes was the pupil of Socrates, and the master of Diogenes the Cynic; and the pupil of Diogenes was Crates the Theban; Zeno the Cittiaean was his; Cleanthes was his; Chrysippus was his. Again it ends with Theophrastus in the following manner:
Aristotle was the pupil of Plato, Theophrastus the pupil of Aristotle; and in this way the Ionian school comes to an end.
Now the Italian school was carried on in this way.
