Introduction
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.
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.
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.
And thus did philosophy arise
among the Greeks, and indeed its very name shows that it has no
connection with the barbarians. But those who attribute its origin
to them, introduce Orpheus the Thracian, and say that he was a
philosopher, and the most ancient one of all. But if one ought to
call a man who has said such things about the gods as he has said,
a philosopher, I do not know what name one ought to give to him who
has not scrupled to attribute all sorts of human feelings to the
gods, and even such discreditable actions as are but rarely spoken
of among men; and tradition relates that he was murdered by women;7
but there is an inscription at Dium in Macedonia, saying that he
was killed by lightning, and it runs thus:
Here the bard buried by the Muses
lies,
The Thracian Orpheus of the
golden lyre;
Whom mighty Jove, the Sovereign
of the skies,
Removed from earth by his dread
lightn’ng’s fire.
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 apothegms in enigmatical language, bidding men worship the
gods and do no evil, and practice manly virtue.
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.
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.
But Pythagoras was the first
person who invented the term Philosophy, and who called himself a
philosopher; when he was conversing at Sicyon with Leon, who was
tyrant of the Sicyonians or of the Phliasians (as Heraclides
Ponticus relates in the book which he wrote about a dead woman);
for he said that no man ought to be called wise, but only God. For
formerly what is now called philosophy (φιλοσοφία) was called
wisdom (σοφία), and they who professed it were called wise men
(σοφοὶ), as being endowed with great acuteness and accuracy of
mind; but now he who embraces wisdom is called a philosopher
(φιλόσοφος).
But the wise men were also called
Sophists. And not only they, but poets also were called Sophists:
as Cratinus in his Archilochi calls Homer and Hesiod, while
praising them highly.
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.
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 of Citium was his; Cleanthes
was his; Chrysippus was his. Again it ends with Theophrastus in the
following manner:
Aristotle was the pupil of Plato,
Theophrastus the pupil of Aristotle; and in this way the Ionian
school comes to an end.
Now the Italian school was
carried on in this way: Pythagoras was the pupil of Pherecydes; his
pupil was Telauges his son; he was the master of Xenophanes, and he
of Parmenides; Parmenides of Zeno the Eleatic, he of Leucippus, he
of Democritus; Democritus had many disciples, the most eminent of
whom were Nausiphanes and Nausicydes, and they were the masters of
Epicurus.
Now, of Philosophers some were
dogmatic, and others were inclined to suspend their opinions. By
dogmatic, I mean those who explain their opinions about matters, as
if they could be comprehended. By those who suspend their opinions,
I mean those who give no positive judgment, thinking that these
things cannot be comprehended. And the former class have left many
memorials of themselves; but the others have never written a line;
as for instance, according to some people, Socrates, and Stilpo,
and Philippus, and Menedemus, and Pyrrho, and Theodorus, and
Carneades, and Bryson; and, as some people say, Pythagoras, and
Aristo of Chios, except that he wrote a few letters. There are some
men too who have written one work only: Melissus, Parmenides, and
Anaxagoras; but Zeno wrote many works, Xenophanes still more,
Democritus more, Aristotle more, Epicurus more, and Chrysippus
more.
Again, of philosophers some
derived a surname from cities, as the Elians, and Megaric sect, the
Eretrians, and the Cyrenaics. Some from the places which they
frequented, as the Academics and Stoics. Some from accidental
circumstances, as the Peripatetics; or from jests, as the Cynics.
Some again from their dispositions, as the Eudaemonics; some from
an opinion, as the Elenctic and Analogical schools. Some from their
masters, as the Socratic and Epicurean philosophers; and so on. The
Natural Philosophers were so called from their study of nature; the
Ethical philosophers from their investigation of questions of
morals (περὶ τὰ ἔθη). The Dialecticians are they who devote
themselves to quibbling on words.
Now there are three divisions of
philosophy: Natural, Ethical, and Dialectic. Natural philosophy
occupies itself about the world and the things in it; Ethical
philosophy about life, and the things which concern us; Dialectics
are conversant with the arguments by which both the others are
supported.
Natural philosophy prevailed till
the time of Archelaus; but after the time of Socrates, Ethical
philosophy was predominant; and after the time of Zeno the Eleatic,
Dialectic philosophy got the upper hand.
Ethical philosophy was subdivided
into ten sects; the Academic, the Cyrenaic, the Elian, the Megaric,
the Cynic, the Eretrian, the Dialectic, the Peripatetic, the Stoic,
and the Epicurean. Of the old Academic school Plato was the
president; of the middle, Arcesilaus; and of the New, Lacydes: the
Cyrenaic school was founded by Aristippus the Cyrenian; the Elian,
by Phaedo, of Elis; the Megaric, by Euclid, of Megara; the Cynic,
by Antisthenes, the Athenian; the Eretrian, by Menedemus, of
Eretria; the Dialectic by Clitomachus, the Carthaginian; the
Peripatetic, by Aristotle, the Stagirite; the Stoic, by Zeno of
Citium; the Epicurean school derives its name from Epicurus, its
founder.
But Hippobotus, in his Treatise
on Sects, says that there are nine sects and schools: first, the
Megaric; secondly, the Eretrian; thirdly, the Cyrenaic; fourthly,
the Epicurean; fifthly, the Annicerean; sixthly, the Theodorean;
seventhly, the sect of Zeno and the Stoics; eighthly, that of the
Old Academy; and ninthly, the Peripatetic;—not counting either the
Cynic, or the Eliac, or the Dialectic school. That also which is
called the Pyrrhonean is repudiated by many writers, on account of
the obscurity of its principles. But others consider that in some
particulars it is a distinct sect, and in others not. For it does
appear to be a sect—for what we call a sect, say they, is one which
follows, or appears to follow, a principle which appears to it to
be the true one; on which principle we correctly call the Skeptics
a sect. But if by the name sect we understand those who incline to
rules which are consistent with the principles which they profess,
then the Pyrrhonean cannot be called a sect, for they have no rules
or principles.
These, then, are the beginnings,
these are the successive masters, these are the divisions, and
schools of philosophy.
Moreover, it is not long ago,
that a new Eclectic school was set up by Potamo, of Alexandria, who
picked out of the doctrines of each school what pleased him most.
And as he himself says, in his Elementary Instruction, he thinks
that there are certain criteria of truth: first of all the faculty
which judges, and this is the superior one; the other that which is
the foundation of the judgment, being a most exact appearance of
the objects. And the first principles of everything he calls
matter, and the agent, and the quality, and the place. For they
show out of what, and by what, and how, and where anything is done.
The end is that to which everything is referred; namely, a life
made perfect with every virtue, not without the natural and
external qualities of the body.
But we must now speak of the men
themselves; and first of all about Thales.
Thales
Thales, then, as Herodotus and
Duris and Democritus say, was the son of Euxamius and Cleobule; of
the family of the Thelidae, who are Phoenicians by descent, among
the most noble of all the descendants of Cadmus and Agenor, as
Plato testifies. And he was the first man to whom the name of Wise
was given, when Damasius was Archon at Athens, in whose time also
the seven wise men had that title given to them, as Demetrius
Phalereus records in his Catalog of the Archons. He was enrolled as
a citizen at Miletus when he came thither with Neleus, who had been
banished from Phoenicia; but a more common statement is that he was
a native Milesian, of noble extraction.
After having been immersed in
state affairs he applied himself to speculations in natural
philosophy; though, as some people state, he left no writings
behind him. For the book on Naval Astronomy which is attributed to
him is said in reality to be the work of Phocus the Samian. But
Callimachus was aware that he was the discoverer of the Lesser
Bear; for in his Iambics he speaks of him thus:
And, he, ’tis said, did first
compute the stars
Which beam in Charles’s wain, and
guide the bark
Of the Phoenician sailor o’er the
sea.
According to others he wrote two
books, and no more, about the solstice and the equinox; thinking
that everything else was easily to be comprehended. According to
other statements, he is said to have been the first who studied
astronomy, and who foretold the eclipses and motions of the sun, as
Eudemus relates in his history of the discoveries made in
astronomy; on which account Xenophanes and Herodotus praise him
greatly; and Heraclitus and Democritus confirm this
statement.
Some again (one of whom is
Choerilus the poet) say that he was the first person who affirmed
that the souls of men were immortal; and he was the first person,
too, who discovered the path of the sun from one end of the
ecliptic to the other, and who, as one account tells us, defined
the magnitude of the sun as being seven hundred and twenty times as
great as that of the moon. He was also the first person who called
the last day of the month the thirtieth. And likewise the first to
converse about natural philosophy, as some say. But Aristotle and
Hippias say that he attributed souls also to lifeless things,
forming his conjecture from the nature of the magnet, and of amber.
And Pamphile relates that he, having learnt geometry from the
Egyptians, was the first person to describe a right-angled triangle
in a circle, and that he sacrificed an ox in honor of his
discovery. But others, among whom is Apollodorus the calculator,
say that it was Pythagoras who made this discovery. It was Thales
also who carried to their greatest point of advancement the
discoveries which Callimachus in his iambics says were first made
by Euphebus the Phrygian, such as those of the scalene angle, and
of the triangle, and of other things which relate to investigations
about lines. He seems also to have been a man of the greatest
wisdom in political matters: For when Croesus sent to the Milesians
to invite them to an alliance, he prevented them from agreeing to
it, which step of his, as Cyrus got the victory, proved the
salvation of the city. But Clytus relates, as Heraclides assures
us, that he was attached to a solitary and recluse life.
Some assert that he was married,
and that he had a son named Cibissus; others, on the contrary, say
that he never had a wife, but that he adopted the son of his
sister; and that once being asked why he did not himself become a
father, he answered that it was because he was fond of children.
They say, too, that when his mother exhorted him to marry, he said,
“No, by Jove, it is not yet time.” And afterwards, when he was past
his youth, and she was again pressing him earnestly, he said, “It
is no longer time.”
Hieronymus, of Rhodes, also tells
us, in the second book of his Miscellaneous Memoranda, that when he
was desirous to show that it was easy to get rich, he, foreseeing
that there would be a great crop of olives, took some large
plantations of olive trees, and so made a great deal of
money.
He asserted water to be the
principle of all things, and that the world had life and was full
of daemons: they say too that he was the original definer of the
seasons of the year, and that it was he who divided the year into
three hundred and sixty-five days. And he never had any teacher
except during the time that he went to Egypt and associated with
the priests. Hieronymus also says that he measured the Pyramids:
watching their shadow, and calculating when they were of the same
size as that was. He lived with Thrasybulus the tyrant of Miletus,
as we are informed by Minyas.
Now it is known to everyone what
happened with respect to the tripod that was found by the fishermen
and sent to the wise men by the people of the Milesians. For they
say that some Ionian youths bought a cast of their net from some
Milesian fishermen. And when the tripod was drawn up in the net
there was a dispute about it; until the Milesians sent to Delphi:
and the God gave them the following answer:
You ask about the tripod, to whom
you shall present it;
’Tis for the wisest, I reply,
that fortune surely meant it.
Accordingly they gave it to
Thales, and he gave it to someone, who again handed it over to
another, till it came to Solon. But he said that it was the God
himself who was the first in wisdom; and so he sent it to Delphi.
But Callimachus gives a different account of this in his Iambics,
taking the tradition which he mentions from Leander the Milesian;
for he says that a certain Arcadian of the name of Bathycles, when
dying, left a goblet behind him with an injunction that it should
be given to the first of the wise men. And it was given to Thales,
and went the whole circle till it came back to Thales, on which he
sent it to Apollo Didymaeus, adding (according to Callimachus,) the
following distich:
Thales, who’s twice received me
as a prize,
Gives me to him who rules the
race of Neleus.
And the prose inscription runs
thus:
Thales the son of Examius, a
Milesian, offers this to Apollo Didymaeus, having twice received it
from the Greeks as the reward for virtue.
And the name of the son of
Bathycles who carried the goblet about from one to the other, was
Thyrion, as Eleusis tells us in his History of Achilles. And
Alexander the Myndian agrees with him in the ninth book of his
Traditions. But Eudoxus of Cnidos, and Evanthes of Miletus, say
that one of the friends of Croesus received from the king a golden
goblet, for the purpose of giving it to the wisest of the Greeks;
and that he gave it to Thales, and that it came round to Chilo, and
that he inquired of the God at Delphi who was wiser than himself;
and that the God replied, Myson, whom we shall mention hereafter.
(He is the man whom Eudoxus places among the seven wise men instead
of Cleobulus; but Plato inserts his name instead of Periander.) The
God accordingly made this reply concerning him:
I say that Myson, the Oetaean
sage,
The citizen of Chen, is wiser
far
In his deep mind than you.
The person who went to the temple
to ask the question was Anacharsis; but again Daedacus, the
Platonic philosopher, and Clearchus, state that the goblet was sent
by Croesus to Pittacus, and so was carried round to the different
men. But Andron, in his book called The Tripod, says that the
Argives offered the tripod as a prize for excellence to the wisest
of the Greeks; and that Aristodemus, a Spartan, was judged to
deserve it, but that he yielded the palm to Chilo; and Alcaeus
mentions Aristodemus in these lines:
And so they say Aristodemus
once
Uttered a truthful speech in
noble Sparta:
’Tis money makes the man; and he
who’s none,
Is counted neither good nor
honorable.
But some say that a vessel fully
loaded was sent by Periander to Thrasybulus the tyrant of the
Milesians; and that as the ship was wrecked in the sea, near the
island of Cos, this tripod was afterwards found by some fishermen.
Phanodicus says that it was found in the sea near Athens, and so
brought into the city; and then, after an assembly had been held to
decide on the disposal, it was sent to Bias—and the reason why we
will mention in our account of Bias. Others say that this goblet
had been made by Vulcan, and presented by the Gods to Pelops on his
marriage; and that subsequently it came into the possession of
Menelaus, and was taken away by Paris when he carried off Helen,
and was thrown into the sea near Cos by her, as she said that it
would become a cause of battle. And after some time, some of the
citizens of Lebedos having bought a net, this tripod was brought up
in it; and as they quarrelled with the fishermen about it, they
went to Cos; and not being able to get the matter settled there,
they laid it before the Milesians, as Miletus was their metropolis;
and they sent ambassadors, who were treated with neglect, on which
account they made war on the Coans; and after each side had met
with many revolutions of fortune, an oracle directed that the
tripod should be given to the wisest; and then both parties agreed
that it belonged to Thales; and he, after it had gone the circuit
of all the wise men, presented it to the Didymaean Apollo. Now, the
assignation of the oracle was given to the Coans in the following
words:
The war between the brave Ionian
race
And the proud Meropes will never
cease,
Till the rich golden tripod which
the God,
Its maker, cast beneath the briny
waves,
Is from your city sent, and
justly given
To that wise being who knows all
present things,
And all that’s past, and all that
is to come.
And the reply given to the
Milesians was—
You ask about the tripod:
and so on, as I have related it
before. And now we have said enough on this subject.
But Hermippus, in his Lives,
refers to Thales what has been by some people reported of Socrates;
for he recites that he used to say that he thanked fortune for
three things: first of all, that he had been born a man and not a
beast; secondly, that he was a man and not a woman; and thirdly,
that he was a Greek and not a barbarian.
It is said that once he was led
out of his house by an old woman for the purpose of observing the
stars, and he fell into a ditch and bewailed himself, on which the
old woman said to him—“Do you, O Thales, who cannot see what is
under your feet, think that you shall understand what is in
heaven?” Timon also knew that he was an astronomer, and in his
Silloi he praises him, saying:
Like Thales, wisest of the seven
sages,
That great astronomer.
And Lobon of Argos says that
which was written by him extends to about two hundred verses; and
that the following inscription is engraved upon his statue:
Miletus, fairest of Ionian
cities,
Gave birth to Thales, great
astronomer,
Wisest of mortals in all kinds of
knowledge.
And these are quoted as some of
his lines:
It is not many words that real
wisdom proves;
Breathe rather one wise
thought,
Select one worthy object,
So shall you best the endless
prate of silly men reprove.—
And the following are quoted as
sayings of his: “God is the most ancient of all things, for he had
no birth; the world is the most beautiful of things, for it is the
work of God; place is the greatest of things, for it contains all
things; intellect is the swiftest of things, for it runs through
everything; necessity is the strongest of things, for it rules
everything; time is the wisest of things, for it finds out
everything.”
He said also that there was no
difference between life and death. “Why, then,” said someone to
him, “do not you die?” “Because,” said he, “it does make no
difference.” A man asked him which was made first, night or day,
and he replied, “Night was made first by one day.” Another man
asked him whether a man who did wrong could escape the notice of
the Gods. “No, not even if he thinks wrong,” said he. An adulterer
inquired of him whether he should swear that he had not committed
adultery. “Perjury,” said he, “is no worse than adultery.” When he
was asked what was very difficult, he said, “To know oneself.” And
what was easy, “To advise another.” What was most pleasant? “To be
successful.” To the question, “What is the divinity?” he replied,
“That which has neither beginning nor end.” When asked what hard
thing he had seen, he said, “An old man a tyrant.” When the
question was put to him how a man might most easily endure
misfortune, he said, “If he saw his enemies more unfortunate
still.” When asked how men might live most virtuously and most
justly, he said, “If we never do ourselves what we blame in
others.” To the question, “Who was happy?” he made answer, “He who
is healthy in his body, easy in his circumstances, and
well-instructed as to his mind.” He said that men ought to remember
those friends who were absent as well as those who were present,
and not to care about adorning their faces, but to be beautified by
their studies. “Do not,” said he, “get rich by evil actions, and
let not anyone ever be able to reproach you with speaking against
those who partake of your friendship. All the assistance that you
give to your parents, the same you have a right to expect from your
children.” He said that the reason of the Nile overflowing was that
its streams were beaten back by the Etesian winds blowing in a
contrary direction.
Apollodorus, in his Chronicles,
says that Thales was born in the first year of the thirty-fifth
Olympiad; and he died at the age of seventy-eight years, or
according to the statement of Sosicrates at the age of ninety, for
he died in the fifty-eighth Olympiad, having lived in the time of
Croesus, to whom he promised that he would enable him to pass the
Halys without a bridge, by turning the course of the river.
There have also been other men of
the name of Thales, as Demetrius of Magnesia says, in his Treatise
on People and Things of the same name; of whom five are
particularly mentioned, an orator of Calatia of a very affected
style of eloquence; a painter of Sicyon, a great man; the third was
one who lived in very ancient times, in the age of Homer and Hesiod
and Lycurgus; the fourth is a man who is mentioned by Duris in his
work on Painting; the fifth is a more modern person, of no great
reputation, who is mentioned by Dionysius in his Criticisms.
But this wise Thales died while
present as a spectator at a gymnastic contest, being worn out with
heat and thirst and weakness, for he was very old, and the
following inscription was placed on his tomb:
You see this tomb is small—but
recollect,
The fame of Thales reaches to the
skies.
I have also myself composed this
epigram on him in the first book of my epigrams or poems in various
meters:
O mighty sun, our wisest Thales
sat
Spectator of the games, when you
did seize upon him;
But you were right to take him
near yourself,
Now that his aged sight could
scarcely reach to heaven.
The apothegm, “know yourself,” is
his; though Antisthenes in his Successions says that it belongs to
Phemonoe, but that Chilo appropriated it as his own.
Now concerning the seven (for it
is well here to speak of them all together), the following
traditions are handed down: Damon the Cyrenaean, who wrote about
the philosophers, reproaches them all, but most especially the
seven. And Anaximenes says that they all applied themselves to
poetry. But Dicaearchus says that they were neither wise men nor
philosophers, but merely shrewd men, who had studied legislation.
And Archetimus, the Syracusian, wrote an account of their having a
meeting at the palace of Cypselus, at which he says that he himself
was present. Ephorus says that they all except Thales met at the
court of Croesus. And some say that they also met at the
Pandionium,8 and at Corinth, and at Delphi. There is a good deal of
disagreement between different writers with respect to their
apothegms, as the same one is attributed by them to various
authors. For instance there is the epigram:
Chilo, the Spartan sage, this
sentence said:
Seek no excess—all timely things
are good.
There is also a difference of
opinion with respect to their number. Leander inserts in the number
instead of Cleobulus and Myson, Leophantus Gorsias, a native of
either Lebedos or Ephesus; and Epimenides, the Cretan; Plato, in
his Protagoras, reckons Myson among them instead of Periander. And
Ephorus mentions Anacharsis in the place of Myson; some also add
Pythagoras to the number. Dicaearchus speaks of four, as
universally agreed upon: Thales, Bias, Pittacus, and Solon; and
then enumerates six more, of whom we are to select three, namely,
Aristodemus, Pamphilus, Chilo the Lacedaemonian, Cleobulus,
Anacharsis, and Periander. Some add Acusilaus of Argos, the son of
Cabas, or Scabras. But Hermippus, in his Treatise on the Wise Men
says that there were altogether seventeen, out of whom different
authors selected different individuals to make up the seven. These
seventeen were Solon, Thales, Pittacus, Bias, Chilo, Myson,
Cleobulus, Periander, Anacharsis, Acusilaus, Epimenides,
Leophantus, Pherecydes, Aristodemus, Pythagoras, Lasus the son of
Charmantides, or Sisymbrinus, or as Aristoxenus calls him the son
of Chabrinus, a citizen of Hermione, and Anaxagoras. But Hippobotus
in his Description of the Philosophers enumerates among them
Orpheus, Linus, Solon, Periander, Anacharsis, Cleobulus, Myson,
Thales, Bias, Pittacus, Epicharmus, and Pythagoras.
The following letters are
preserved as having been written by Thales:
Thales to Pherecydes
I hear that you are disposed, as
no other Ionian has been, to discourse to the Greeks about divine
things, and perhaps it will be wiser of you to reserve for your own
friends what you write rather than to entrust it to any chance
people, without any advantage. If therefore it is agreeable to you,
I should be glad to become a pupil of yours as to the matters about
which you write; and if you invite me I will come to you to Syros;
for Solon the Athenian and I must be out of our senses if we sailed
to Crete to investigate the history of that country, and to Egypt
for the purpose of conferring with the priests and astronomers who
are to be found there, and yet are unwilling to make a voyage to
you; for Solon will come too, if you will give him leave, for as
you are fond of your present habitation you are not likely to come
to Ionia, nor are you desirous of seeing strangers; but you rather,
as I hope, devote yourself wholly to the occupation of writing. We,
on the other hand, who write nothing, travel over all Greece and
Asia.
Thales to Solon
If you should leave Athens it
appears to me that you would find a home at Miletus among the
colonists of Athens more suitably than anywhere else, for here
there are no annoyances of any kind. And if you are indignant
because we Milesians are governed by a tyrant, (for you yourself
hate all despotic rulers), still at all events you will find it
pleasant to live with us for your companions. Bias has also written
to invite you to Priene, and if you prefer taking up your abode in
the city of the Prieneans, then we ourselves will come thither and
settle near you.
Solon
Solon the son of Execestides, a
native of Salamis, was the first person who introduced among the
Athenians an ordinance for the lowering9 of debts; for this was the
name given to the release of the bodies and possessions of the
debtors. For men used to borrow on the security of their own
persons, and many became slaves in consequence of their inability
to pay; and as seven talents were owed to him as a part of his
paternal inheritance when he succeeded to it, he was the first
person who made a composition with his debtors, and who exhorted
the other men who had money owing to them to do likewise, and this
ordinance was called σεισάχθεια; and the reason why is plain. After
that he enacted his other laws, which it would take a long time to
enumerate; and he wrote them on wooden revolving tablets.
But what was his most important
act of all was when there had been a great dispute about his native
land Salamis, between the Athenians and Megarians, and when the
Athenians had met with many disasters in war, and had passed a
decree that if anyone proposed to the people to go to war for the
sake of Salamis he should be punished with death, he then pretended
to be mad and putting on a crown rushed into the market place, and
there he recited to the Athenians by the agency of a crier, the
elegies which he had composed, and which were all directed to the
subject of Salamis, and by these means he excited them; and so they
made war again upon the Megarians and conquered them by means of
Solon. And the elegies which had the greatest influence on the
Athenians were these:
Would that I were a man of
Pholegandros,10
Or small Sicinna,11 rather than
of Athens:
For soon this will a common
proverb be,
That’s an Athenian who won’t
fight for Salamis.
And another was:
Let’s go and fight for lovely
Salamis,
And wipe off this our present
infamy.
He also persuaded them to take
possession of the Thracian Chersonesus, and in order that it might
appear that the Athenians had got possession of Salamis not by
force alone, but also with justice, he opened some tombs, and
showed that the corpses buried in them were all turned towards the
east, according to the Athenian fashion of sepulture; likewise the
tombs themselves all looked east, and the titles of the boroughs to
which the dead belonged were inscribed on them, which was a custom
peculiar to the Athenians. Some also say that it was he who added
to the catalog of Homer, after the lines:
With these appear the Salaminian
bands,
Whom Telamon’s gigantic son
commands—
These other verses:
In twelve black ships to Troy
they steer their course,
And with the great Athenians join
their force.12
And ever after this time the
people were willingly obedient to him, and were contented to be
governed by him; but he did not choose to be their ruler, and
moreover, as Sosicrates relates, he, as far as in him lay, hindered
also his relative Pisistratus from being so, when he saw that he
was inclined to such a step. Rushing into one of the assemblies
armed with a spear and shield, he forewarned the people of the
design of Pisistratus, and not only that but told them that he was
prepared to assist them; and these were his words: “Ye men of
Athens, I am wiser than some of you, and braver than others. Wiser
than those of you who do not perceive the treachery of Pisistratus;
and braver than those who are aware of it, but out of fear hold
their peace.” But the council, being in the interest of
Pisistratus, said that he was mad, on which he spoke as
follows:
A short time will to all my
madness prove,
When stern reality presents
itself.
And these elegiac verses were
written by him about the tyranny of Pisistratus, which he
foretold,
Fierce snow and hail are from the
clouds borne down,
And thunder after brilliant
lightning roars;
And by its own great men a city
falls,
The ignorant mob becoming slaves
to kings.
And when Pisistratus had obtained
the supreme power, he, as he would not influence him, laid down his
arms before the chief council-house and said, “O my country, I have
stood by you in word and deed.” And then he sailed away to Egypt,
and Cyprus, and came to Croesus. And while at his court being asked
by him, “Who appears to you to be happy?”13 He replied, “Tellus the
Athenian, and Cleobis and Biton,” and enumerated other commonly
spoken of instances. But some people say that once Croesus adorned
himself in every possible manner, and took his seat upon his
throne, and then asked Solon whether he had ever seen a more
beautiful sight. But he said, “Yes, I have seen cocks and
pheasants, and peacocks; for they are adorned with natural colors,
and such as are ten thousand times more beautiful.” Afterwards
leaving Sardis he went to Cilicia, and there he founded a city
which he called Soli after his own name; and he placed in it a few
Athenians as colonists, who in time departed from the strict use of
their native language, and were said to speak “Solecisms;” and the
inhabitants of that city are called Solensians; but those of Soli
in Cyprus are called Solians.
And when he learnt that
Pisistratus continued to rule in Athens as a tyrant, he wrote these
verses on the Athenians:
If through your vices you
afflicted are,
Lay not the blame of your
distress on God;
You made your rulers mighty, gave
them guards,
So now you groan ’neath slavery’s
heavy rod—
Each one of you now treads in
foxes’ steps,
Bearing a weak, inconstant,
faithless mind,
Trusting the tongue and slippery
speech of man;
Though in his acts alone you
truth can find.
This, then, he said to
them.
But Pisistratus, when he was
leaving Athens, wrote him a letter in the following terms:
Pisistratus to Solon
I am not the only one of the
Greeks who has seized the sovereignty of his country, nor am I one
who had no right whatever to do so, since I am of the race of
Codrus; for I have only recovered what the Athenians swore that
they would give to Codrus and all his family, and what they
afterwards deprived them of. And in all other respects I sin
neither against men nor against gods, but I allow the Athenians to
live under the laws which you established amongst them, and they
are now living in a better manner than they would if they were
under a democracy; for I allow no one to behave with violence: and
I, though I am the tyrant, derive no other advantage beyond my
superiority in rank and honor, being content with the fixed honors
which belonged to the former kings. And every one of the Athenians
brings the tithe of his possessions, not to me, but to the proper
place in order that it may be devoted to the public sacrifices of
the city; and for any other public purposes, or for any emergencies
of war which may arise.
But I do not blame you for laying
open my plans, for I know that you did so out of regard for the
city rather than out of dislike to me; and also because you did not
know what sort of government I was about to establish; since, if
you had been acquainted with it, you would have been content to
live under it and would not have fled. Now, therefore, return home
again; believing me even without my swearing to you that Solon
shall never receive any harm at the hands of Pisistratus; know also
that none of my enemies have suffered any evil from me; and if you
will consent to be one of my friends, you shall be among the first;
for I know that there is no treachery or faithlessness in you. Or
if you wish to live at Athens in any other manner, you shall be
allowed to do so; only do not deprive yourself of your country
because of my actions.
Thus wrote Pisistratus.
Solon also said that the limit of
human life was seventy years, and he appears to have been a most
excellent lawgiver, for he enjoined, “that if anyone did not
support his parents he should be accounted infamous; and that the
man who squandered his patrimony should be equally so, and the
inactive man was liable to prosecution by anyone who choose to
impeach him.” But Lysias, in his speech against Nicias, says that
Draco first proposed this law, but that it was Solon who enacted
it. He also prohibited all who lived in debauchery from ascending
the tribunal; and he diminished the honors paid to Athletes who
were victorious in the games, fixing the prize for a victor at
Olympia at five hundred drachmae,14 and for one who conquered at
the Isthmian games at one hundred; and in the same proportion did
he fix the prizes for the other games, for he said that it was
absurd to give such great honors to those men as ought to be
reserved for those only who died in the wars; and their sons he
ordered to be educated and bred up at the public expense. And owing
to this encouragement, the Athenians behave themselves nobly and
valiantly in war; as for instance, Polyzelus, and Cynaegirus, and
Callimachus, and all the soldiers who fought at Marathon, and
Harmodius, and Aristogiton, and Miltiades, and numberless other
heroes.
But as for the Athletes, their
training is very expensive, and their victories injurious, and they
are crowned rather as conquerors of their country than of their
antagonists, and when they become old, as Euripides says:
They’re like old cloaks worn to
the very woof.
So Solon, appreciating these
facts, treated them with moderation. This also was an admirable
regulation of his, that a guardian of orphans should not live with
their mother, and that no one should be appointed a guardian, to
whom the orphans’ property would come if they died. Another
excellent law was that a seal engraver might not keep an impression
of any ring which had been sold by him, and that if a person struck
out the eye of a man who had but one, he should lose both his own,
and that no one should claim what he had not deposited, otherwise
death should be his punishment. If an archon was detected being
drunk, that too was a capital crime. And he compiled the poems of
Homer, so that they might be recited by different bards, taking the
cue from one another, so that where one had left off the next one
might take him up, so that it was Solon rather than Pisistratus who
brought Homer to light, as Dieuchidas says, in the fifth book of
his History of Megara, and the most celebrated of his verses
were:
Full fifty more from Athens stem
the main.
And the rest of that passage—“And
Solon was the first person who called the thirtieth day of the
month ἔνη καὶ νέα.”15 He was the first person also who assembled
the nine archons together to deliver their opinions, as Apollodorus
tells us in the second book of his Treatise on Lawgivers. And once,
when there was a sedition in the city, he took part neither with
the citizens, nor with the inhabitants of the plain, nor with the
men of the seacoast.
He used to say, too, that speech
was the image of actions, and that the king was the mightiest man
as to his power; but that laws were like cobwebs—for that if any
trifling or powerless thing fell into them, they held it fast; but
if a thing of any size fell into them, it broke the meshes and
escaped. He used also to say that discourse ought to be sealed by
silence, and silence by opportunity. It was also a saying of his
that those who had influence with tyrants were like the pebbles
which are used in making calculations; for that every one of those
pebbles were sometimes worth more, and sometimes less, and so that
the tyrants sometimes made each of these men of consequence, and
sometimes neglected them. Being asked why he had made no law
concerning parricides, he made answer that he did not expect that
any such person would exist. When he was asked how men could be
most effectually deterred from committing injustice, he said, “If
those who are not injured feel as much indignation as those who
are.” Another apothegm of his was that satiety was generated by
wealth, and insolence by satiety.
He it was who taught the
Athenians to regulate their days by the course of the moon; and he
also forbade Thespis to perform and represent his tragedies, on the
ground of falsehood being unprofitable; and when Pisistratus
wounded himself, he said it all came of Thespis’s tragedies.
He gave the following advice, as
is recorded by Apollodorus in his Treatise on the Sects of
Philosophers: “Consider your honor, as a gentleman, of more weight
than an oath.—Never speak falsely.—Pay attention to matters of
importance.—Be not hasty in making friends; and do not cast off
those whom you have made.—Rule, after you have first learnt to
submit to rule.—Advise not what is most agreeable, but what is
best.—Make reason your guide.—Do not associate with the
wicked.—Honor the gods; respect your parents.”
They say also that when Mimnermus
had written:
Happy’s the man who ’scapes
disease and care,
And dies contented in his
sixtieth year
Solon rebuked him, and
said:
Be guided now by me, erase this
verse,
Nor envy me if I’m more wise than
you.
If you write thus, your wish
would not be worse,
May I be eighty ere death lays me
low.
The following are some lines out
of his poems:
Watch well each separate
citizen,
Lest having in his heart of
hearts
A secret spear, one still may
come
Saluting you with cheerful
face,
And utter with a double
tongue
The feigned good wishes of his
wary mind.
As for his having made laws, that
is notorious; he also composed speeches to the people, and a book
of suggestions to himself, and some elegiac poems, and five
thousand verses about Salamis and the constitution of the
Athenians, and some iambics and epodes.
And on his statue is the
following inscription—
Salamis that checked the Persian
insolence,
Brought forth this holy lawgiver,
wise Solon.
He flourished about the
forty-sixth Olympiad, in the third year of which he was archon at
Athens, as Sosicrates records; and it was in this year that he
enacted his laws; and he died in Cyprus, after he had lived eighty
years, having given charge to his relations to carry his bones to
Salamis, and there to burn them to ashes and to scatter the ashes
on the ground. In reference to which Cratinus in his Chiron
represents him as speaking thus:
And as men say, I still this isle
inhabit,
Sown o’er the whole of Ajax’
famous city.
There is also an epigram in the
before mentioned collection of poems, in various meters, in which I
have made a collection of notices of all the illustrious men that
have ever died, in every kind of meter and rhythm, in epigrams and
odes. And it runs thus:
The Cyprian flame devour’d great
Solon’s corpse
Far in a foreign land; but
Salamis
Retains his bones, whose dust is
turned to corn.
The tablets of his laws do bear
aloft
His mind to heaven. Such a burden
light
Are these immortal rules to th’
happy wood.
He also, as some say, was the
author of the apothegm—“Seek excess in nothing.” And Dioscorides,
in his Commentaries, says that when he was lamenting his son, who
was dead (with whose name I am not acquainted), and when someone
said to him, “You do no good by weeping,” he replied, “But that is
the very reason why I weep, because I do no good.”
The following letters also are
attributed to him:
Solon to Periander
You send me word that many people
are plotting against you; but if you were to think of putting every
one of them out of the way, you would do no good; but someone whom
you do not suspect would still plot against you, partly because he
would fear for himself, and partly out of dislike to you for
fearing all sorts of things; and he would think, too, that he would
make the city grateful to him, even if you were not suspected. It
is better therefore to abstain from the tyranny, in order to escape
from blame. But if you absolutely must be a tyrant, then you had
better provide for having a foreign force in the city superior to
that of the citizens; and then no one need be formidable to you,
nor need you put anyone out of the way.
Solon to Epimenides
My laws were not destined to be
long of service to the Athenians, nor have you done any great good
by purifying the city. For neither can the Deity nor lawgivers do
much good to cities by themselves; but these people rather give
this power, who, from time to time, can lead the people in any
opinions they choose; so also the Deity and the laws, when the
citizens are well governed, are useful; but when they are ill
governed, they are no good. Nor are my laws or all the enactments
that I made any better; but those who were in power transgressed
them, and did great injury to the commonwealth, inasmuch as they
did not hinder Pisistratus from usurping the tyranny. Nor did they
believe me when I gave them warning beforehand. But he obtained
more credit than I did, who flattered the Athenians while I told
him the truth: but I, placing my arms before the principal
council-house, being wiser than they, told those who had no
suspicion of it that Pisistratus was desirous to make himself a
tyrant; and I showed myself more valiant than those who hesitated
to defend the state against him. But they condemned the madness of
Solon. But at last I spoke loudly—“O my country, I, Solon, here am
ready to defend you by word and deed; but to these men I seem to be
mad. So I will depart from you, being the only antagonist of
Pisistratus; and let these men be his guards if they please.” For
you know the man, my friend, and how cleverly he seized upon the
tyranny. He first began by being a demagogue; then, having
inflicted wounds on himself, he came to the Heliaea, crying out,
and saying “that he had been treated in this way by his enemies.”
And he entreated the people to assign him as guards four hundred
young men; and they, disregarding my advice, gave them to him. And
they were all armed with bludgeons. And after that he put down the
democracy. They in vain hoped to deliver the poor from their state
of slavery, and so now they are all of them slaves to
Pisistratus.
Solon to Pisistratus
I am well assured that I should
suffer no evil at your hands. For before your assumption of the
tyranny I was a friend of yours, and now my case is not different
from that of any other Athenian who is not pleased with tyranny.
And whether it is better for them to be governed by one individual,
or to live under a democracy, that each person may decide according
to his own sentiments. And I admit that of all tyrants you are the
best. But I do not judge it to be good for me to return to Athens,
lest anyone should blame me for, after having established equality
of civil rights among the Athenians, and after having refused to be
a tyrant myself when it was in my power, returning now and
acquiescing in what you are doing.
Solon to Croesus
I thank you for your goodwill
towards me. And, by Minerva, if I did not think it precious above
everything to live in a democracy, I would willingly prefer living
in your palace with you to living at Athens, since Pisistratus has
made himself tyrant by force. But life is more pleasant to me where
justice and equality prevail universally. However, I will come and
see you, being anxious to enjoy your hospitality for a
season.
Chilo
Chilo was a Lacedaemonian, the
son of Damagetus. He composed verses in elegiac meter to the number
of two hundred: and it was a saying of his that a foresight of
future events, such as could be arrived at by consideration, was
the virtue of a man. He also said once to his brother, who was
indignant at not being an ephor, while he himself was one: “The
reason is because I know how to bear injustice, but you do not.”
And he was made ephor in the fifty-fifth Olympiad; but Pamphila
says that it was in the fifty-sixth. And he was made first ephor in
the year of the archonship of Euthydemus, as we are told by
Sosicrates. Chilo was also the first person who introduced the
custom of joining the ephors to the kings as their counsellors,
though Satyrus attributes this institution to Lycurgus. He, as
Herodotus says in his first book, when Hippocrates was sacrificing
at Olympia, and the cauldrons began to boil of their own accord,
advised him either to marry, or, if he were married already, to
discard his wife, and disown his children.
They tell a story, also, of his
having asked Aesop what Jupiter was doing, and that Aesop replied,
“He is lowering what is high, and exalting what is low.” Being
asked in what educated men differed from those who were illiterate,
he said: “In good hopes.” Having had the question put to him, “What
was difficult?” he said: “To be silent about secrets; to make good
use of one’s leisure, and to be able to submit to injustice.” And
besides these three things he added further: “To rule one’s tongue,
especially at a banquet, and not to speak ill of one’s neighbors;
for if one does so one is sure to hear what one will not like.” He
advised, moreover: “To threaten no one; for that is a womanly
trick. To be more prompt to go to one’s friends in adversity than
in prosperity. To make but a moderate display at one’s marriage.
Not to speak evil of the dead. To honor old age.—To keep a watch
upon oneself.—To prefer punishment to disgraceful gain; for the one
is painful but once, but the other for one’s whole life.—Not to
laugh at a person in misfortune.—If one is strong to be also
merciful, so that one’s neighbors may respect one rather than fear
one.—To learn how to regulate one’s own house well.—Not to let
one’s tongue outrun one’s sense.—To restrain anger.—Not to dislike
divination.—Not to desire what is impossible.—Not to make too much
haste on one’s road.—When speaking not to gesticulate with the
hand; for that is like a madman.—To obey the laws.—To love
quiet.”
And of all his songs this one was
the most approved:
Gold is best tested by a
whetstone hard,
Which gives a certain proof of
purity;
And gold itself acts as the test
of men,
By which we know the temper of
their minds.
They say, too, that when he was
old he said that he was not conscious of having ever done an unjust
action in his life; but that he doubted about one thing: For that
once when judging in a friend’s cause he had voted himself in
accordance with the law, but had persuaded a friend to vote for his
acquittal, in order that so he might maintain the law and yet save
his friend.
But he was most especially
celebrated among the Greeks for having delivered an early opinion
about Cythera, an island belonging to Laconia. For having become
acquainted with its nature, he said, “I wish it had never existed,
or that, as it does exist, it were sunk at the bottom of the sea.”
And his foresight was proved afterwards. For when Demaratus was
banished by the Lacedaemonians, he advised Xerxes to keep his ships
at that island: and Greece would have been subdued, if Xerxes had
taken the advice. And afterwards Nicias, having reduced the island
at the time of the Peloponnesian war, placed in it a garrison of
Athenians, and did a great deal of harm to the
Lacedaemonians.
He was very brief in his speech.
On which account Aristagoras, the Milesian, calls such conciseness
the Chilonean fashion, and says that it was adopted by Branchus,
who built the temple among the Branchidae. Chilo was an old man,
about the fifty-second Olympiad, when Aesop the fable writer
flourished. And he died, as Hermippus says, at Pisa, after
embracing his son, who had gained the victory in boxing at the
Olympic games. The cause of his death was excess of joy, and
weakness caused by extreme old age. All the spectators who were
present at the games attended his funeral, paying him the highest
honors. And we have written the following epigram on him:
I thank you, brightest Pollux,
that the son
Of Chilo wears the wreath of
victory;
Nor need we grieve if at the
glorious sight
His father died. May such my last
end be!
And the following inscription is
engraved on his statue:
The warlike Sparta called this
Chilo son,
The wisest man of all the seven
sages.
One of his sayings was,
“Suretyship, and then destruction.” The following letter of his is
also extant:
Chilo to Periander