15. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 15.1-15.37, 15.39-15.44, 15.46-15.55, 15.57-15.64, 15.66-15.75, 15.77-15.103, 15.105-15.117, 15.119-15.125, 15.127-15.134, 15.136-15.146, 15.148-15.156, 15.158-15.177, 15.179-15.197, 15.199-15.216, 15.218-15.231, 15.233-15.243, 15.245-15.269, 15.271-15.284, 15.286-15.304, 15.306-15.315, 15.317-15.320, 15.322-15.324, 15.326-15.327, 15.329-15.337, 15.339-15.346, 15.348-15.357, 15.359-15.360, 15.362-15.377, 15.379-15.389, 15.391-15.406, 15.408-15.415, 15.417-15.428, 15.430-15.440, 15.442-15.454, 15.456-15.469, 15.471-15.478 (1st cent. BCE - missingth cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Diogenes Laertius
Found in books: Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 164; Cornelli (2013), In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category, 167; Johnson Dupertuis and Shea (2018), Reading and Teaching Ancient Fiction : Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman Narratives 131; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 164
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15.1 Quaeritur interea quis tantae pondera molis 15.2 sustineat tantoque queat succedere regi: 15.3 destinat imperio clarum praenuntia veri 15.4 fama Numam; non ille satis cognosse Sabinae 15.5 gentis habet ritus: animo maiora capaci 15.6 concipit et, quae sit rerum natura, requirit. 15.7 Huius amor curae, patria Curibusque relictis, 15.8 fecit ut Herculei penetraret ad hospitis urbem. 15.9 Graia quis Italicis auctor posuisset in oris
15.10 moenia, quaerenti sic e senioribus unus
15.11 rettulit indigenis, veteris non inscius aevi:
15.12 “Dives ab Oceano bubus Iove natus Hiberis
15.13 litora felici tenuisse Lacinia cursu
15.14 fertur et, armento teneras errante per herbas,
15.15 ipse domum magni nec inhospita tecta Crotonis
15.16 intrasse et requie longum relevasse laborem
15.18 hic locus urbis erit”; promissaque vera fuerunt.
15.19 Nam fuit Argolico generatus Alemone quidam 15.20 Myscelos, illius dis acceptissimus aevi. 15.21 Hunc super incumbens pressum gravitate soporis 15.22 claviger adloquitur: “Lapidosas Aesaris undas 15.23 i, pete diversi! Patrias, age, desere sedes!” 15.24 et, nisi paruerit multa ac metuenda minatur; 15.25 post ea discedunt pariter somnusque deusque. 15.26 Surgit Alemonides tacitaque recentia mente 15.27 visa refert, pugnatque diu sententia secum: 15.28 numen abire iubet, prohibent discedere leges, 15.29 poenaque mors posita est patriam mutare volenti. 15.30 Candidus Oceano nitidum caput abdiderat Sol, 15.31 et caput extulerat densissima sidereum Nox: 15.32 visus adesse idem deus est eademque monere 15.33 et, nisi paruerit, plura et graviora minari. 15.34 Pertimuit patriumque simul transferre parabat 15.35 in sedes penetrale novas: fit murmur in urbe, 15.36 spretarumque agitur legum reus; utque peracta est 15.37 causa prior crimenque patens sine teste probatum,
15.39 “o cui ius caeli bis sex fecere labores, 15.40 fer, precor” inquit, “opem! nam tu mihi criminis auctor.” 15.41 Mos erat antiquus niveis atrisque lapillis, 15.42 his damnare reos, illis absolvere culpa; 15.43 tunc quoque sic lata est sententia tristis, et omnis 15.44 calculus inmitem demittitur ater in urnam.
15.46 omnibus e nigro color est mutatus in album, 15.47 candidaque Herculeo sententia numine facta 15.48 solvit Alemoniden. Grates agit ille parenti 15.49 Amphitryoniadae, ventisque faventibus aequor 15.50 navigat Ionium, Sallentinumque Neretum 15.51 praeterit et Sybarin Lacedaemoniumque Tarentum 15.51 praeterit et Sybarin Crimisenque et Iapygis arva; 15.52 Thurinosque sinus Crimisenque et Iapygis arva 15.53 vixque pererratis, quae spectant litora, terris, 15.54 invenit Aesarei fatalia fluminis ora 15.55 nec procul hinc tumulum, sub quo sacrata Crotonis
15.57 condidit et nomen tumulati traxit in urbem.” 15.58 Talia constabat certa primordia fama 15.59 esse loci positaeque Italis in finibus urbis. 15.60 Vir fuit hic, ortu Samius, sed fugerat una 15.61 et Samon et dominos odioque tyrannidis exsul 15.62 sponte erat, isque, licet caeli regione remotos, 15.63 mente deos adiit et quae natura negabat 15.64 visibus humanis, oculis ea pectoris hausit,
15.66 in medium discenda dabat coetusque silentum 15.67 dictaque mirantum magni primordia mundi 15.68 et rerum causas et, quid natura, docebat, 15.69 quid deus, unde nives, quae fulminis esset origo, 15.70 Iuppiter an venti discussa nube tonarent, 15.71 quid quateret terras, qua sidera lege mearent — 15.72 et quodcumque latet; primusque animalia mensis 15.73 arguit imponi, primus quoque talibus ora 15.74 docta quidem solvit, sed non et credita, verbis: 15.75 “Parcite, mortales, dapibus temerare nefandis
15.77 pondere poma suo tumidaeque in vitibus uvae, 15.78 sunt herbae dulces, sunt quae mitescere flamma 15.79 mollirique queant; nec vobis lacteus umor 15.80 eripitur, nec mella thymi redolentia flore: 15.81 prodiga divitias alimentaque mitia tellus 15.82 suggerit atque epulas sine caede et sanguine praebet. 15.83 Carne ferae sedant ieiunia, nec tamen omnes: 15.84 quippe equus et pecudes armentaque gramine vivunt. 15.85 At quibus ingenium est inmansuetumque ferumque, 15.86 Armeniae tigres iracundique leones 15.87 cumque lupis ursi, dapibus cum sanguine gaudent. 15.88 Heu quantum scelus est in viscera viscera condi 15.89 congestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus 15.90 alteriusque animantem animantis vivere leto! 15.91 Scilicet in tantis opibus, quas optima matrum 15.92 terra parit, nil te nisi tristia mandere saevo 15.93 vulnera dente iuvat ritusque referre Cyclopum, 15.94 nec, nisi perdideris alium, placare voracis 15.95 et male morati poteris ieiunia ventris? 15.96 At vetus illa aetas, cui fecimus aurea nomen, 15.97 fetibus arboreis et, quas humus educat, herbis 15.98 fortunata fuit nec polluit ora cruore. 15.99 Tunc et aves tutae movere per aera pennas,
15.100 et lepus impavidus mediis erravit in arvis,
15.101 nec sua credulitas piscem suspenderat hamo:
15.102 cuncta sine insidiis nullamque timentia fraudem
15.103 plenaque pacis erant. Postquam non utilis auctor
15.105 corporeasque dapes avidam demersit in alvum,
15.106 fecit iter sceleri, primoque e caede ferarum
15.107 incaluisse potest maculatum sanguine ferrum
15.108 (idque satis fuerat), nostrumque petentia letum
15.109 corpora missa neci salva pietate fatemur:
15.110 sed quam danda neci, tam non epulanda fuerunt.
15.111 Longius inde nefas abiit, et prima putatur
15.112 hostia sus meruisse mori, quia semina pando
15.113 eruerit rostro spemque interceperit anni.
15.114 Vite caper morsa Bacchi mactatus ad aras
15.115 dicitur ultoris; nocuit sua culpa duobus!
15.116 Quid meruistis oves, placidum pecus, inque tuendos
15.117 natum homines, pleno quae fertis in ubere nectar,
15.119 praebetis vitaque magis quam morte iuvatis?
15.120 Quid meruere boves, animal sine fraude dolisque,
15.121 innocuum, simplex, natum tolerare labores?
15.122 Inmemor est demum nec frugum munere dignus,
15.123 qui potuit curvi dempto modo pondere aratri
15.124 ruricolam mactare suum, qui trita labore
15.125 illa, quibus totiens durum renovaverat arvum,
15.127 Nec satis est, quod tale nefas committitur: ipsos
15.128 inscripsere deos sceleri, numenque supernum
15.129 caede laboriferi credunt gaudere iuvenci.
15.130 Victima labe carens et praestantissima forma
15.131 (nam placuisse nocet) vittis insignis et auro
15.132 sistitur ante aras auditque ignara precantem
15.133 imponique suae videt inter cornua fronti,
15.134 quas coluit, fruges percussaque sanguine cultros
15.136 Protinus ereptas viventi pectore fibras
15.137 inspiciunt mentesque deum scrutantur in illis:
15.138 unde (fames homini vetitorum tanta ciborum!)
15.139 audetis vesci, genus o mortale? Quod, oro,
15.140 ne facite, et monitis animos advertite nostris!
15.141 Cumque boum dabitis caesorum membra palato,
15.142 mandere vos vestros scite et sentite colonos.
15.143 Et quoniam deus ora movet, sequar ora moventem
15.144 rite deum Delphosque meos ipsumque recludam
15.145 aethera et augustae reserabo oracula mentis.
15.146 Magna nec ingeniis investigata priorum
15.148 astra, iuvat terris et inerti sede relicta
15.149 nube vehi validique umeris insistere Atlantis
15.150 palantesque homines passim ac rationis egentes
15.151 despectare procul trepidosque obitumque timentes
15.152 sic exhortari seriemque evolvere fati:
15.153 O genus attonitum gelidae formidine mortis,
15.154 quid Styga, quid manes et nomina vana timetis,
15.155 materiem vatum, falsique pericula mundi?
15.156 Corpora, sive rogus flamma, seu tabe vetustas
15.158 Morte carent animae, semperque priore relicta
15.159 sede novis domibus vivunt habitantque receptae.
15.160 Ipse ego (nam memini) Troiani tempore belli
15.161 Panthoides Euphorbus eram, cui pectore quondam
15.162 haesit in adverso gravis hasta minoris Atridae:
15.163 cognovi clipeum, laevae gestamina nostrae,
15.164 nuper Abanteis templo Iunonis in Argis.
15.165 Omnia mutantur, nihil interit: errat et illinc
15.166 huc venit, hinc illuc, et quoslibet occupat artus
15.167 spiritus eque feris humana in corpora transit
15.168 inque feras noster nec tempore deperit ullo;
15.169 utque novis facilis signatur cera figuris
15.171 sed tamen ipsa eadem est: animam sic semper eandem
15.172 esse, sed in varias doceo migrare figuras.
15.173 Ergo, ne pietas sit victa cupidine ventris,
15.174 parcite, vaticinor, cognatas caede nefanda
15.175 exturbare animas, nec sanguine sanguis alatur!
15.176 Et quoniam magno feror aequore plenaque ventis
15.177 vela dedi: nihil est toto, quod perstet, in orbe.
15.179 ipsa quoque adsiduo labuntur tempora motu,
15.180 non secus ac flumen, neque enim consistere flumen
15.181 nec levis hora potest, sed ut unda impellitur unda
15.182 urgeturque eadem veniente urgetque priorem,
15.183 tempora sic fugiunt pariter pariterque sequuntur
15.184 et nova sunt semper; nam quod fuit ante, relictum est,
15.185 fitque quod haud fuerat, momentaque cuncta novantur.
15.186 Cernis et emensas in lucem tendere noctes,
15.187 et iubar hoc nitidum nigrae succedere nocti.
15.188 Nec color est idem caelo, cum lassa quiete
15.189 cuncta iacent media, cumque albo Lucifer exit
15.190 clarus equo rursusque alius, cum praevia lucis
15.191 tradendum Phoebo Pallantias inficit orbem.
15.192 Ipse dei clipeus, terra cum tollitur ima,
15.193 mane rubet, terraque, rubet cum conditur ima,
15.194 candidus in summo est, melior natura quod illic
15.195 aetheris est terraeque procul contagia fugit.
15.196 Nec par aut eadem nocturnae forma Dianae
15.197 esse potest umquam, semperque hodierna sequente,
15.199 Quid? non in species succedere quattuor annum 15.200 adspicis, aetatis peragentem imitamina nostrae? 15.201 Nam tener ac lactens puerique simillimus aevo 15.202 vere novo est: tunc herba nitens et roboris expers 15.203 turget et insolida est et spe delectat agrestes. 15.204 Omnia tunc florent, florumque coloribus almus 15.205 ludit ager, neque adhuc virtus in frondibus ulla est. 15.206 Transit in aestatem post ver robustior annus 15.207 fitque valens iuvenis: neque enim robustior aetas 15.208 ulla nec uberior, nec quae magis ardeat, ulla est. 15.209 Excipit autumnus, posito fervore iuventae 15.210 maturus mitisque, inter iuvenemque senemque 15.211 temperie medius, sparsus quoque tempora canis. 15.212 Inde senilis hiems tremulo venit horrida passu, 15.213 aut spoliata suos, aut quos habet, alba capillos. 15.214 Nostra quoque ipsorum semper requieque sine ulla 15.215 corpora vertuntur, nec, quod fuimusve sumusve, 15.216 cras erimus; fuit illa dies, qua semina tantum
15.218 Artifices natura manus admovit et angi 15.219 corpora visceribus distentae condita matris 15.220 noluit eque domo vacuas emisit in auras. 15.221 Editus in lucem iacuit sine viribus infans; 15.222 mox quadrupes rituque tulit sua membra ferarum, 15.223 paulatimque tremens et nondum poplite firmo 15.224 constitit adiutis aliquo conamine nervis. 15.225 Inde valens veloxque fuit spatiumque iuventae 15.226 transit et emeritis medii quoque temporis annis 15.227 labitur occiduae per iter declive senectae. 15.228 Subruit haec aevi demoliturque prioris 15.229 robora, fletque Milon senior, cum spectat ies 15.230 (illos, qui fuerant solidorum mole tororum 15.231 Herculeis similes!) fluidos pendere lacertos;
15.233 Tyndaris et secum, cur sit bis rapta, requirit. 15.234 Tempus edax rerum, tuque, invidiosa vetustas, 15.235 omnia destruitis, vitiataque dentibus aevi 15.236 paulatim lenta consumitis omnia morte. 15.237 Haec quoque non perstant, quae nos elementa vocamus, 15.238 quasque vices peragant, (animos adhibete!) docebo. 15.239 Quattuor aeternus genitalia corpora mundus 15.240 continet; ex illis duo sunt onerosa suoque 15.241 pondere in inferius, tellus atque unda, feruntur, 15.242 et totidem gravitate carent nulloque premente 15.243 alta petunt, aer atque aere purior ignis.
15.245 ex ipsis et in ipsa cadunt, resolutaque tellus 15.246 in liquidas rarescit aquas, tenuatus in auras 15.247 aeraque umor abit, dempto quoque pondere rursus 15.248 in superos aer tenuissimus emicat ignes. 15.249 Inde retro redeunt, idemque retexitur ordo; 15.250 ignis enim densum spissatus in aera transit, 15.251 hic in aquas, tellus glomerata cogitur unda. 15.252 Nec species sua cuique manet, rerumque novatrix 15.253 ex aliis alias reddit natura figuras: 15.254 nec perit in toto quicquam, mihi credite, mundo, 15.255 sed variat faciemque novat, nascique vocatur 15.256 incipere esse aliud, quam quod fuit ante, morique 15.257 desinere illud idem. Cum sint huc forsitan illa, 15.258 haec translata illuc, summa tamen omnia constant. 15.259 Nil equidem durare diu sub imagine eadem 15.260 crediderim: sic ad ferrum venistis ab auro, 15.261 saecula, sic totiens versa est fortuna locorum. 15.262 Vidi ego, quod fuerat quondam solidissima tellus, 15.263 esse fretum, vidi factas ex aequore terras: 15.264 et procul a pelago conchae iacuere marinae, 15.265 et vetus inventa est in montibus ancora summis. 15.266 Quodque fuit campus, vallem decursus aquarum 15.267 fecit, et eluvie mons est deductus in aequor, 15.268 eque paludosa siccis humus aret harenis, 15.269 quaeque sitim tulerant, stagnata paludibus ument.
15.271 clausit, et antiquis tam multa tremoribus orbis 15.272 flumina prosiliunt aut excaecata residunt. 15.273 Sic ubi terreno Lycus est epotus hiatu, 15.274 exsistit procul hinc alioque renascitur ore: 15.275 Sic modo combibitur, tecto modo gurgite lapsus 15.276 redditur Argolicis ingens Erasinus in arvis, 15.277 et Mysum, capitisque sui ripaeque prioris 15.278 paenituisse ferunt, alia nunc ire Caicum; 15.279 nec non Sicanias volvens Ameus harenas 15.280 nunc fluit, interdum suppressis fontibus aret. 15.281 Ante bibebatur, nunc, quas contingere nolis, 15.282 fundit Anigros aquas, postquam, nisi vatibus omnis 15.283 eripienda fides, illic lavere bimembres 15.284 vulnera, clavigeri quae fecerat Herculis arcus.
15.286 qui fuerat dulcis, salibus vitiatur amaris? 15.287 Fluctibus ambitae fuerant Antissa Pharosque 15.288 et Phoenissa Tyros, quarum nunc insula nulla est. 15.289 Leucada continuam veteres habuere coloni: 15.290 nunc freta circueunt. Zancle quoque iuncta fuisse 15.291 dicitur Italiae, donec confinia pontus 15.292 abstulit et media tellurem reppulit unda. 15.293 Si quaeras Helicen et Burin, Achaidas urbes, 15.294 invenies sub aquis, et adhuc ostendere nautae 15.295 inclinata solent cum moenibus oppida mersis. 15.296 Est prope Pittheam tumulus Troezena, sine ullis 15.297 arduus arboribus, quondam planissima campi 15.298 area, nunc tumulus; nam (res horrenda relatu!) 15.299 vis fera ventorum, caecis inclusa cavernis, 15.300 exspirare aliqua cupiens luctataque frustra 15.301 liberiore frui caelo, cum carcere rima 15.302 nulla foret toto nec pervia flatibus esset, 15.303 extentam tumefecit humum, ceu spiritus oris 15.304 tendere vesicam solet aut derepta bicorni
15.306 collis habet speciem longoque induruit aevo. 15.307 Plurima cum subeant audita et cognita nobis, 15.308 pauca super referam. Quid? non et lympha figuras 15.309 datque capitque novas? Medio tua, corniger Ammon, 15.310 unda die gelida est, ortuque obituque calescit. 15.311 Admotis Athamanas aquis accendere lignum 15.312 narratur, minimos cum luna recessit in orbes. 15.313 Flumen habent Cicones, quod potum saxea reddit 15.314 viscera, quod tactis inducit marmora rebus. 15.315 Crathis et huic Sybaris, nostris conterminus oris
15.317 Quodque magis mirum est, sunt qui non corpora tantum, 15.318 verum animos etiam valeant mutare liquores. 15.319 Cui non audita est obscenae Salmacis undae 15.320 Aethiopesque lacus? Quos siquis faucibus hausit,
15.322 Clitorio quicumque sitim de fonte levavit, 15.323 vina fugit gaudetque meris abstemius undis, 15.324 seu vis est in aqua calido contraria vino,
15.326 Proetidas attonitas postquam per carmen et herbas 15.327 eripuit furiis, purgamina mentis in illas
15.329 Huic fluit effectu dispar Lyncestius amnis; 15.330 quem quicumque parum moderato gutture traxit, 15.331 haud aliter titubat, quam si mera vina bibisset. 15.332 Est locus Arcadiae (Pheneum dixere priores), 15.333 ambiguis suspectus aquis, quas nocte timeto: 15.334 nocte nocent potae, sine noxa luce bibuntur. 15.335 Sic alias aliasque lacus et flumina vires 15.336 concipiunt, tempusque fuit, quo navit in undis, 15.337 nunc sedet Ortygie. Timuit concursibus Argo
15.339 quae nunc inmotae perstant ventisque resistunt. 15.340 Nec, quae sulphureis ardet fornacibus, Aetne 15.341 ignea semper erit, neque enim fuit ignea semper. 15.342 Nam sive est animal tellus et vivit habetque 15.343 spiramenta locis flammam exhalantia multis, 15.344 spirandi mutare vias, quotiensque movetur, 15.345 has finire potest, illas aperire cavernas; 15.346 sive leves imis venti cohibentur in antris
15.348 materiam iactant, ea concipit ictibus ignem, 15.349 antra relinquentur sedatis frigida ventis; 15.350 sive bitumineae rapiunt incendia vires 15.351 luteave exiguis ardescunt sulphura fumis: 15.352 nempe ubi terra cibos alimentaque pinguia flammae 15.353 non dabit absumptis per longum viribus aevum 15.354 naturaeque suum nutrimen deerit edaci, 15.355 non feret illa famem desertaque deseret ignis. 15.356 Esse viros fama est in Hyperborea Pallene, 15.357 qui soleant levibus velari corpora plumis,
15.359 Haud equidem credo: sparsae quoque membra venenis 15.360 exercere artes Scythides memorantur easdem.
15.362 nonne vides, quaecumque mora fluidoque calore 15.363 corpora tabescunt, in parva animalia verti? 15.364 I quoque, delectos mactatos obrue tauros 15.365 (cognita res usu) de putri viscere passim 15.366 florilegae nascuntur apes, quae more parentum 15.367 rura colunt operique favent in spemque laborant; 15.368 pressus humo bellator equus crabronis origo est; 15.369 concava litoreo si demas bracchia cancro, 15.370 cetera supponas terrae, de parte sepulta 15.371 scorpius exibit caudaque minabitur unca; 15.372 quaeque solent canis frondes intexere filis 15.373 agrestes tineae (res observata colonis) 15.374 ferali mutant cum papilione figuram. 15.375 Semina limus habet virides generantia ranas, 15.376 et generat truncas pedibus, mox apta natando 15.377 cura dat, utque eadem sint longis saltibus apta,
15.379 Nec catulus, partu quem reddidit ursa recenti, 15.380 sed male viva caro est: lambendo mater in artus 15.381 fingit et in formam, quantam capit ipsa, reducit. 15.382 Nonne vides, quos cera tegit sexangula, fetus 15.383 melliferarum apium sine membris corpora nasci 15.384 et serosque pedes serasque adsumere pennas? 15.385 Iunonis volucrem, quae cauda sidera portat, 15.386 armigerumque Iovis Cythereiadasque columbas 15.387 et genus omne avium mediis e partibus ovi, 15.388 ni sciret fieri, quis nasci posse putaret? 15.389 Sunt qui, cum clauso putrefacta est spina sepulcro,
15.391 Haec tamen ex aliis generis primordia ducunt:
15.392 una est, quae reparet seque ipsa reseminet, ales.
15.393 Assyrii phoenica vocant; non fruge neque herbis,
15.394 sed turis lacrimis et suco vivit amomi.
15.395 Haec ubi quinque suae complevit saecula vitae,
15.396 ilicis in ramis tremulaeque cacumine palmae
15.397 unguibus et puro nidum sibi construit ore.
15.398 Quo simul ac casias et nardi lenis aristas
15.399 quassaque cum fulva substravit cinnama murra, 15.400 se super imponit finitque in odoribus aevum. 15.401 Inde ferunt, totidem qui vivere debeat annos, 15.402 corpore de patrio parvum phoenica renasci. 15.403 Cum dedit huic aetas vires, onerique ferendo est, 15.404 ponderibus nidi ramos levat arboris altae 15.405 fertque pius cunasque suas patriumque sepulcrum, 15.406 perque leves auras Hyperionis urbe potitus
15.408 Si tamen est aliquid mirae novitatis in istis, 15.409 alternare vices et quae modo femina tergo 15.410 passa marem est, nunc esse marem miremur hyaenam; 15.411 id quoque, quod ventis animal nutritur et aura, 15.412 protinus adsimulat, tetigit quoscumque colores. 15.413 Victa racemifero lyncas dedit India Baccho: 15.414 e quibus, ut memorant, quidquid vesica remisit, 15.415 vertitur in lapides et congelat aere tacto.
15.417 tempore, durescit: mollis fuit herba sub undis. 15.418 Desinet ante dies et in alto Phoebus anhelos 15.419 aequore tinget equos, quam consequar omnia verbis 15.420 in species translata novas: sic tempora verti 15.421 cernimus atque illas adsumere robora gentes, 15.422 concidere has. Sic magna fuit censuque virisque 15.423 perque decem potuit tantum dare sanguinis annos, 15.424 nunc humilis veteres tantummodo Troia ruinas 15.425 et pro divitiis tumulos ostendit avorum. 15.426 Clara fuit Sparte, magnae viguere Mycenae, 15.427 nec non et Cecropis nec non Amphionis arces. 15.428 Vile solum Sparte est, altae cecidere Mycenae,
15.430 Quid Pandioniae restant, nisi nomen, Athenae? 15.431 Nunc quoque Dardaniam fama est consurgere Romam, 15.432 Appenninigenae quae proxima Thybridis undis 15.433 mole sub ingenti rerum fundamina ponit: 15.434 haec igitur formam crescendo mutat et olim 15.435 immensi caput orbis erit. Sic dicere vates 15.436 faticinasque ferunt sortes quantumque recordor, 15.437 dixerat Aeneae, cum res Troiana labaret, 15.438 Priamides Helenus flenti dubioque salutis: 15.439 “Nate dea, si nota satis praesagia nostrae 15.440 mentis habes, non tota cadet te sospite Troia!
15.442 Pergama rapta feres, donec Troiaeque tibique 15.443 externum patrio contingat amicius arvum. 15.444 Urbem etiam cerno Phrygios debere nepotes, 15.445 quanta nec est nec erit nec visa prioribus annis. 15.446 Hanc alii proceres per saecula longa potentem, 15.447 sed dominam rerum de sanguine natus Iuli 15.448 efficiet; quo cum tellus erit usa, fruentur 15.449 aetheriae sedes, caelumque erit exitus illi.” 15.450 Haec Helenum cecinisse penatigero Aeneae 15.451 mente memor refero, cognataque moenia laetor 15.452 crescere et utiliter Phrygibus vicisse Pelasgos. 15.453 Ne tamen oblitis ad metam tendere longe 15.454 exspatiemur equis, caelum et quodcumque sub illo est,
15.456 nos quoque, pars mundi, quoniam non corpora solum, 15.457 verum etiam volucres animae sumus inque ferinas 15.458 possumus ire domos pecudumque in corpora condi, 15.459 corpora, quae possunt animas habuisse parentum
15.460 aut fratrum aut aliquo iunctorum foedere nobis
15.461 aut hominum certe, tuta esse et honesta sinamus
15.462 neve Thyesteis cumulemus viscera mensis!
15.463 Quam male consuescit, quam se parat ille cruori
15.464 impius humano, vituli qui guttura cultro
15.465 rumpit et inmotas praebet mugitibus aures,
15.466 aut qui vagitus similes puerilibus haedum
15.467 edentem iugulare potest, aut alite vesci,
15.468 cui dedit ipse cibos! Quantum est, quod desit in istis
15.469 ad plenum facinus? Quo transitus inde paratur?
15.471 horriferum contra borean ovis arma ministret, 15.472 ubera dent saturae manibus pressanda capellae! 15.473 Retia cum pedicis laqueosque artesque dolosas 15.474 tollite nec volucrem viscata fallite virga, 15.475 nec formidatis cervos includite pennis, 15.476 nec celate cibis uncos fallacibus hamos! 15.477 Perdite, siqua nocent, verum haec quoque perdite tantum: 15.478 ora vacent epulis alimentaque mitia carpant!”' ' None | sup>
15.1 While this was happening, they began to seek 15.2 for one who could endure the weight of such 15.3 a task and could succeed a king so great; 15.4 and Fame, the harbinger of truth, destined 15.5 illustrious Numa for the sovereign power. 15.6 It did not satisfy his heart to know 15.7 only the Sabine ceremonials, 15.8 and he conceived in his expansive mind 15.9 much greater views, examining the depth
15.10 and cause of things. His country and his care
15.11 forgotten, this desire led him to visit
15.12 the city that once welcomed Hercules .
15.13 Numa desired to know what founder built
15.14 a Grecian city on Italian shores.
15.15 One of the old inhabitants, who was well
15.16 acquainted with past history, replied:
15.18 turned from the ocean and with favoring wind' "
15.19 'Tis said he landed on Lacinian shores." '15.20 And, while the herd strayed in the tender grass, 15.21 he visited the house, the friendly home, 15.22 of far-famed Croton . There he rested from 15.23 his arduous labors. At the time of hi 15.24 departure, he said, ‘Here in future day 15.25 hall be a city of your numerous race.’ 15.26 The passing years have proved the promise true, 15.27 for Myscelus, choosing that site, marked out' "15.28 a city's walls. Argive Alemon's son," '15.29 of all men in his generation, he 15.30 was most acceptable to the heavenly gods. 15.31 Bending over him once at dawn, while he 15.32 was overwhelmed with drowsiness of sleep, 15.33 the huge club-bearer Hercules addressed 15.34 him thus: ‘Come now, desert your native shores. 15.35 Go quickly to the pebbly flowing stream 15.36 of distant Aesar.’ And he threatened ill 15.37 in fearful words, unless he should obey.' "
15.39 Alemon's son, arising from his couch," '15.40 pondered his recent vision thoughtfully, 15.41 with his conclusions at cross purposes.— 15.42 the god commanded him to quit that land, 15.43 the laws forbade departure, threatening death 15.44 to all who sought to leave their native land.
15.46 his shining head, and darkest Night had then 15.47 put forth her starry face; and at that time 15.48 it seemed as if the same god Hercule 15.49 was present and repeating his commands, 15.50 threatening still more and graver penalties, 15.51 if he should fail to obey. Now sore afraid 15.52 he set about to move his household god 15.53 to a new settlement, but rumors then 15.54 followed him through the city, and he wa 15.55 accused of holding statutes in contempt.
15.57 when his offense was evidently proved, 15.58 even without a witness. Then he raised 15.59 his face and hands up to the gods above 15.60 and suppliant in neglected garb, exclaimed, 15.61 ‘Oh mighty Hercules , for whom alone 15.62 the twice six labors gave the privilege 15.63 of heavenly residence, give me your aid, 15.64 for you were the true cause of my offence.’
15.66 to vote with chosen pebbles, white and black. 15.67 The white absolved, the black condemned the man. 15.68 And so that day the fateful votes were given—: 15.69 all cast into the cruel urn were black! 15.70 Soon as that urn inverted poured forth all 15.71 the pebbles to be counted, every one 15.72 was changed completely from its black to white, 15.73 and so the vote adjudged him innocent. 15.74 By that most fortunate aid of Hercule' "15.75 he was exempted from the country's law." 15.77 with favoring wind sailed on the Ionian sea, 15.78 past Sallentine Neretum, Sybaris , 15.79 Spartan Tarentum, and the Sirine Bay, 15.80 Crimisa, and on beyond the Iapygian fields. 15.81 Then, skirting shores which face these lands, he found' "15.82 the place foretold the river Aesar's mouth," '15.83 and found not far away a burial mound 15.84 which covered with its soil the hallowed bone 15.85 of Croton .—There, upon the appointed land, 15.86 he built up walls—and he conferred the name 15.87 of Croton, who was there entombed, on hi 15.88 new city, which has ever since been called 15.89 Crotona .” By tradition it is known 15.90 uch strange deeds caused that city to be built, 15.91 by men of Greece upon the Italian coast. 15.92 Here lived a man, by birth a Samian. 15.93 He had fled from Samos and the ruling class, 15.94 a voluntary exile, for his hate 15.95 against all tyranny. He had the gift 15.96 of holding mental converse with the gods, 15.97 who live far distant in the highth of heaven; 15.98 and all that Nature has denied to man 15.99 and human vision, he reviewed with eye
15.100 of his enlightened soul. And, when he had
15.101 examined all things in his careful mind
15.102 with watchful study, he released his thought
15.103 to knowledge of the public.
15.105 to crowds of people, silent and amazed,
15.106 while he revealed to them the origin
15.107 of this vast universe, the cause of things,
15.108 what is nature, what a god, whence came the snow,
15.109 the cause of lightning—was it Jupiter
15.110 or did the winds, that thundered when the cloud
15.111 was rent asunder, cause the lightning flash?
15.112 What shook the earth, what laws controlled the star
15.113 as they were moved—and every hidden thing
15.114 he was the first man to forbid the use' "
15.115 of any animal's flesh as human food," 15.116 he was the first to speak with learned lips,
15.117 though not believed in this, exhorting them.—
15.119 pollution of your bodies with such food,
15.120 for there are grain and good fruits which bear down
15.121 the branches by their weight, and ripened grape
15.122 upon the vines, and herbs—those sweet by nature
15.123 and those which will grow tender and mellow with
15.124 a fire, and flowing milk is not denied,
15.125 nor honey, redolent of blossoming thyme.
15.127 affording dainties without slaughter, death,
15.128 and bloodshed. Dull beasts delight to satisfy
15.129 their hunger with torn flesh; and yet not all:
15.130 horses and sheep and cattle live on grass.
15.131 But all the savage animals—the fierce
15.132 Armenian tigers and ferocious lions,
15.133 and bears, together with the roving wolves—
15.134 delight in viands reeking with warm blood.
15.136 vitals in vitals gorged, one greedy body' "
15.137 fattening with plunder of another's flesh," "
15.138 a living being fed on another's life!" 15.139 In that abundance, which our Earth, the best
15.140 of mothers, will afford have you no joy,
15.141 unless your savage teeth can gnaw
15.142 the piteous flesh of some flayed animal
15.143 to reenact the Cyclopean crime?
15.144 And can you not appease the hungry void—' "
15.145 the perverted craving of a stomach's greed," 15.146 unless you first destroy another life?
15.148 of ‘Golden,’ was so blest in fruit of trees,
15.149 and in the good herbs which the earth produced
15.150 that it never would pollute the mouth with blood.
15.151 The birds then safely moved their wings in air,
15.152 the timid hares would wander in the field
15.153 with no fear, and their own credulity
15.154 had not suspended fishes from the hook.
15.155 All life was safe from treacherous wiles,
15.156 fearing no injury, a peaceful world.
15.158 (it does not matter who it might have been)
15.159 envied the ways of lions and gulped into
15.160 his greedy paunch stuff from a carcass vile.
15.161 He opened the foul paths of wickedness.
15.162 It may be that in killing beasts of prey
15.163 our steel was for the first time warmed with blood.
15.164 And that could be defended, for I hold
15.165 that predatory creatures which attempt
15.166 destruction of mankind, are put to death
15.167 without evasion of the sacred laws:
15.168 but, though with justice they are put to death,
15.169 that cannot be a cause for eating them.
15.171 was thought to have deserved death as the first
15.172 of victims, for with her long turned-up snout
15.173 he spoiled the good hope of a harvest year.
15.174 The ravenous goat, that gnawed a sprouting vine,
15.175 was led for slaughter to the altar fire
15.176 of angry Bacchus. It was their own fault
15.177 that surely caused the ruin of those two.
15.179 harmless and useful for the good of man
15.180 with nectar in full udders? Their soft wool
15.181 affords the warmest coverings for our use,
15.182 their life and not their death would help us more.
15.183 Why have the oxen of the field deserved
15.184 a sad end—innocent, without deceit,
15.185 and harmless, without guile, born to endure
15.186 hard labor? Without gratitude is he,
15.187 unworthy of the gift of harvest fields,
15.188 who, after he relieved his worker from
15.189 weight of the curving plow could butcher him,
15.190 could sever with an axe that toil worn neck,
15.191 by which so often with hard work the ground
15.192 had been turned up, so many harvests reared.
15.193 For some, even crimes like these are not enough,
15.194 they have imputed to the gods themselve
15.195 abomination—they believe a god
15.196 in heaven above, rejoices at the death
15.197 of a laborious ox.
15.199 of blemish and most beautiful in form 15.200 (perfection brings destruction) is adorned 15.201 with garlands and with gilded horns before 15.202 the altar. In his ignorance he hear 15.203 one praying, and he sees the very grain 15.204 he labored to produce, fixed on his head 15.205 between the horns, and felled, he stains with blood 15.206 the knife which just before he may have seen 15.207 reflected in clear water. Instantly 15.208 they snatch out entrails from his throbbing form, 15.209 and seek in them intentions of the gods. 15.210 Then, in your lust for a forbidden food 15.211 you will presume to batten on his flesh, 15.212 O race of mortals! Do not eat such food! 15.213 Give your attention to my serious words; 15.214 and, when you next present the slaughtered flesh 15.215 of oxen to your palates, know and feel 15.216 that you gnaw your fellow tillers of the soil.
15.218 I will obey the god who urges me, 15.219 and will disclose to you the heavens above, 15.220 and I will even reveal the oracle 15.221 of the Divine Will. I will sing to you 15.222 of things most wonderful, which never were 15.223 investigated by the intellect 15.224 of ancient times and things which have been long 15.225 concealed from man. In fancy I delight 15.226 to float among the stars or take my stand' "15.227 on mighty Atlas' shoulders, and to look" '15.228 afar down on men wandering here and there— 15.229 afraid in life yet dreading unknown death, 15.230 and in these words exhort them and reveal 15.231 the sequence of events ordained by fate!
15.233 alarms of icy death, afraid of Styx, 15.234 fearful of moving shadows and empty names—' "15.235 of subjects harped on by the poets' tales," '15.236 the fabled perils of a fancied life? 15.237 Whether the funeral pile consumes your flesh 15.238 with hot flames, or old age dissolves it with 15.239 a gradual wasting power, be well assured 15.240 the body cannot meet with further ill. 15.241 And souls are all exempt from power of death. 15.242 When they have left their first corporeal home, 15.243 they always find and live in newer homes.
15.245 that in the days of the great Trojan War, 15.246 I was Euphorbus, son of Panthous. 15.247 In my opposing breast was planted then 15.248 the heavy spear-point of the younger son 15.249 of Atreus. Not long past I recognised 15.250 the shield, once burden of my left arm, where' "15.251 it hung in Juno 's temple at ancient Argos ," '15.252 the realm of Abas. Everything must change: 15.253 but nothing perishes. The moving soul 15.254 may wander, coming from that spot to this, 15.255 from this to that—in changed possession live 15.256 in any limbs whatever. It may pa 15.257 from beasts to human bodies, and again 15.258 to those of beasts. The soul will never die, 15.259 in the long lapse of time. As pliant wax 15.260 is moulded to new forms and does not stay 15.261 as it has been nor keep the self same form 15.262 yet is the selfsame wax, be well assured 15.263 the soul is always the same spirit, though 15.264 it passes into different forms. Therefore, 15.265 that natural love may not be vanquished by 15.266 unnatural craving of the appetite, 15.267 I warn you, stop expelling kindred soul 15.268 by deeds abhorrent as cold murder.—Let 15.269 not blood be nourished with its kindred blood!
15.271 and I have given my full sails to the wind, 15.272 nothing in all the world remains unchanged. 15.273 All things are in a state of flux, all shape 15.274 receive a changing nature. Time itself 15.275 glides on with constant motion, ever a 15.276 a flowing river. Neither river nor 15.277 the fleeting hour can stop its constant course. 15.278 But, as each wave drives on a wave, as each 15.279 is pressed by that which follows, and must pre 15.280 on that before it, so the moments fly, 15.281 and others follow, so they are renewed. 15.282 The moment which moved on before is past, 15.283 and that which was not, now exists in Time, 15.284 and every one comes, goes, and is replaced.
15.286 on to the dawn, then brilliant light of day 15.287 ucceeds the dark night. There is not the same 15.288 appearance in the heavens,: when all thing 15.289 for weariness are resting in vast night, 15.290 as when bright Lucifer rides his white steed. 15.291 And only think of that most glorious change,' "15.292 when loved Aurora, Pallas' daughter, come" '15.293 before the day and tints the world, almost 15.294 delivered to bright Phoebus. Even the disk 15.295 of that god, rising from beneath the earth, 15.296 is of a ruddy color in the dawn 15.297 and ruddy when concealed beneath the world. 15.298 When highest, it is a most brilliant white, 15.299 for there the ether is quite purified, 15.300 and far away avoids infection from' "15.301 impurities of earth. Diana's form" '15.302 at night remains not equal nor the same!' "15.303 'Tis less today than it will be tomorrow," '15.304 if she is waxing; greater, if she wanes.
15.306 four seasons, imitating human life:' "15.307 in early Spring it has a nursling's way" '15.308 resembling infancy, for at that time 15.309 the blade is shooting and devoid of strength. 15.310 Its flaccid substance swelling gives delight, 15.311 to every watching husbandman, alive 15.312 in expectation. Then all things are rich 15.313 in blossom, and the genial meadow smile 15.314 with tints of blooming flowers; but not as yet 15.315 is there a sign of vigor in the leaves.
15.317 it passes into Summer, and its youth 15.318 becomes robust. Indeed of all the year 15.319 the Summer is most vigorous and most 15.320 abounds with glowing and life-giving warmth.
15.322 removed, that ripe and mellow time succeed 15.323 between youth and old age, and a few white hair 15.324 are sprinkled here and there upon his brow.
15.326 follows, repulsive, strips of graceful lock 15.327 or white with those he has retained so long.
15.329 we are not now what we were yesterday 15.330 or we shall be tomorrow. And there wa 15.331 a time when we were only seeds of man,' "15.332 mere hopes that lived within a mother's womb." '15.333 But Nature changed us with her skilfull touch, 15.334 determined that our bodies should not be 15.335 held in such narrow room, below the entrail 15.336 in our distended parent; and in time 15.337 he brought us forth into the vacant air.
15.339 Then on all fours he lifts his body up, 15.340 feeling his way, like any young wild beast, 15.341 and then by slow degrees he stands upright, 15.342 weak-kneed and trembling, steadied by support 15.343 of some convenient prop. And soon more strong 15.344 and swift he passes through the hours of youth, 15.345 and, when the years of middle age are past, 15.346 lides down the steep path of declining age.
15.348 of former years: and Milon, now grown old, 15.349 weeps, when he sees his arms, which once were firm 15.350 with muscles big as those of Hercules, 15.351 hang flabby at his side: and Helen weeps, 15.352 when in the glass she sees her wrinkled face, 15.353 and wonders why two heroes fell in love 15.354 and carried her away.—O Time, 15.355 devourer of all things, and envious Age, 15.356 together you destroy all that exist 15.357 and, slowly gnawing, bring on lingering death.
15.359 do not endure. Now listen well to me, 15.360 and I will show the ways in which they change.
15.362 four elemental parts. And two of these 15.363 are heavy—earth and water—and are borne 15.364 downwards by weight. The other two devoid 15.365 of weight, are air and—even lighter—fire: 15.366 and, if these two are not constrained, they seek 15.367 the higher regions. These four elements, 15.368 though far apart in space, are all derived 15.369 from one another. Earth dissolve 15.370 as flowing water! Water, thinned still more, 15.371 departs as wind and air; and the light air, 15.372 till losing weight, sparkles on high as fire. 15.373 But they return, along their former way: 15.374 the fire, assuming weight, is changed to air; 15.375 and then, more dense, that air is changed again 15.376 to water; and that water, still more dense, 15.377 compacts itself again as primal earth.
15.379 and Nature, the renewer of all things, 15.380 continually changes every form 15.381 into some other shape. Believe my word, 15.382 in all this universe of vast extent, 15.383 not one thing ever perished. All have changed 15.384 appearance. Men say a certain thing is born, 15.385 if it takes a different form from what it had; 15.386 and yet they say, that certain thing has died, 15.387 if it no longer keeps the self same shape. 15.388 Though distant things move near, and near things far, 15.389 always the sum of all things is unchanged.
15.391 remains long under the same form unchanged.
15.392 Look at the change of times from gold to iron,:
15.393 look at the change in places. I have seen
15.394 what had been solid earth become salt waves,
15.395 and I have seen dry land made from the deep;
15.396 and, far away from ocean, sea-shells strewn,
15.397 and on the mountain-tops old anchors found.
15.398 Water has made that which was once a plain
15.399 into a valley, and the mountain ha 15.400 been levelled by the floods down to a plain. 15.401 A former marshland is now parched dry sand, 15.402 and places which endured severest drought 15.403 are wet with standing pools. Here Nature ha 15.404 opened fresh springs, but there has shut them up; 15.405 rivers aroused by ancient earthquakes have 15.406 rushed out or vanished, as they lost their depth.
15.408 a chasm in the earth, it rushes forth 15.409 at a distance and is reborn a different stream. 15.410 The Erasinus now flows down into a cave, 15.411 now runs beneath the ground a darkened course, 15.412 then rises lordly in the Argolic fields. 15.413 They say the Mysus, wearied of his spring 15.414 and of his former banks, appears elsewhere 15.415 and takes another name, the Caicus .
15.417 now smoothly rolling, at another time 15.418 is quenched, because its fountain springs are dry. 15.419 The water of the Anigros formerly 15.420 was used for drinking, but it pours out now 15.421 foul water which you would decline to touch, 15.422 because (unless all credit is denied 15.423 to poets) long ago the Centaurs, those 15.424 trange mortals double-limbed, bathed in the stream 15.425 wounds which club-bearing Hercules had made 15.426 with his strong bow.—Yes, does not Hypani 15.427 descending fresh from mountains of Sarmatia , 15.428 become embittered with the taste of salt?
15.430 were once surrounded by the wavy sea: 15.431 they are not islands now. Long years ago 15.432 Leucas was mainland, if we can believe 15.433 what the old timers there will tell, but now 15.434 the waves sweep round it. Zancle was a part 15.435 of Italy , until the sea cut off 15.436 the neighboring land with strong waves in between. 15.437 Should you seek Helice and Buris, those 15.438 two cities of Achaea , you will find 15.439 them underneath the waves, where sailors point 15.440 to sloping roofs and streets in the clear deep.
15.442 quite bare of trees, was once a level plain, 15.443 but now is a hill, for (dreadful even to tell) 15.444 the raging power of winds, long pent in deep, 15.445 dark caverns, tried to find a proper vent, 15.446 long struggling to attain free sky. 15.447 Finding no opening from the prison-caves, 15.448 imperious to their force, they raised the earth, 15.449 exactly as pent air breathed from the mouth 15.450 inflates a bladder, or the bottle-hide 15.451 tripped off the two-horned goats. The swollen earth 15.452 remained on that spot and has ever since 15.453 appearance of a high hill hardened by 15.454 the flight of time.
15.456 that I have heard and known, I will add a few. 15.457 Why, does not water give and take strange forms? 15.458 Your wave, O horned Ammon, will turn cold 15.459 at mid-day, but is always mild and warm
15.460 at sun-rise and at sun-set. I have heard
15.461 that Athamanians kindle wood, if they
15.462 pour water on it, when the waning moon
15.463 has shrunk away into her smallest orb.
15.464 The people of Ciconia have a stream' "
15.465 which turns the drinker's entrails into stone," 15.466 which changes into marble all it raves.
15.467 The Achaean Crathis and the Sybaris ,
15.468 which flow not far from here, will turn the hair
15.469 to something like clear amber or bright gold.
15.471 which change not only bodies but the minds: 15.472 who has no knowledge of the Salmaci 15.473 and of its ill famed waves? Who has not 15.474 heard of the lakes of Aethiopia: 15.475 how those who drink of them go raving mad 15.476 or fall in a deep sleep, most wonderful 15.477 in heaviness. Whoever quenches thirst 15.478 from the Clitorian spring will hate all wine,' ' None |
|
29. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 1.4, 1.13, 1.19, 1.76, 1.112, 1.114, 2.87, 2.109-2.110, 2.112-2.120, 2.140, 3.5-3.6, 3.9-3.14, 3.25-3.26, 3.33, 3.37, 3.40, 3.48, 3.65-3.70, 3.72, 4.17, 4.22, 4.33, 4.39-4.40, 5.12, 5.75, 5.78-5.81, 6.103-6.105, 7.1-7.34, 7.36, 7.38-7.41, 7.47, 7.51, 7.57-7.58, 7.60, 7.82-7.83, 7.87-7.89, 7.94, 7.119, 7.121-7.122, 7.127, 7.134, 7.136-7.139, 7.142, 7.148-7.151, 7.156, 7.160-7.167, 7.174, 7.180, 7.187-7.188, 7.201, 8.4, 8.6, 8.9, 8.12, 8.15, 8.19, 8.24-8.35, 8.85, 9.18, 9.20-9.21, 9.23, 9.44, 9.62, 9.64-9.65, 9.67, 9.71-9.74, 9.79-9.89, 9.94, 9.96, 9.99-9.105, 9.107-9.109, 9.111, 10.5-10.6, 10.9, 10.119 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Diogenes Laertius • Diogenes Laertius, • Diogenes Laertius, General Diogenes of Babylon • Diogenes Laertius, Verse in every metre • Diogenes Laertius, as source for Pythagoreanism • λογικός, example in Diogenes Laertius • λόγος, used by Diogenes Laertius
Found in books: Amendola (2022), The Demades Papyrus (P.Berol. inv. 13045): A New Text with Commentary, 56, 88; Athanassaki and Titchener (2022), Plutarch's Cities, 177, 180, 299; Bett (2019), How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism, 26, 27, 28, 31, 38, 49, 50, 52, 75, 76, 89, 92, 93, 108, 115, 119, 199; Bowie (2021), Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, 52, 404; Bowie (2023), Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, Volume 2: Comedy, Herodotus, Hellenistic and Imperial Greek Poetry, the Novels. 91, 120, 233, 275, 363; Brouwer (2013), The Stoic Sage: The Early Stoics on Wisdom, Sagehood and Socrates, 13, 19, 23, 25, 27, 30, 38, 39, 40, 46, 48, 61, 65, 82, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 134, 138, 139, 140, 141, 154, 156, 157; Bryan (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 85, 164, 209, 242, 243, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 259, 270, 318; Celykte (2020), The Stoic Theory of Beauty. 14, 15, 35, 85, 97, 113, 152; Cornelli (2013), In Search of Pythagoreanism: Pythagoreanism as an Historiographical Category, 17, 47, 68, 74, 79, 96, 124, 137, 138, 142, 157, 245, 255, 264, 309, 310, 317, 321, 330, 371, 373, 375, 379, 380, 394, 395, 447, 454, 464; Culík-Baird (2022), Cicero and the Early Latin Poets, 81; Del Lucchese (2019), Monstrosity and Philosophy: Radical Otherness in Greek and Latin Culture, 184, 224, 225, 229; Dürr (2022), Paul on the Human Vocation: Reason Language in Romans and Ancient Philosophical Tradition, 46, 258, 259; Ebrey and Kraut (2022), The Cambridge Companion to Plato, 2nd ed, 37; Eidinow and Kindt (2015), The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion, 421; Erler et al. (2021), Authority and Authoritative Texts in the Platonist Tradition, 117, 232; Fowler (2014), Plato in the Third Sophistic, 271; Frede and Laks (2001), Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath, 14; Geljon and Runia (2013), Philo of Alexandria: On Cultivation: Introduction, Translation and Commentary, 108, 156, 215, 225, 230; Geljon and Runia (2019), Philo of Alexandria: On Planting: Introduction, Translation and Commentary, 121, 256, 263, 272; Huffman (2019), A History of Pythagoreanism, 53, 54, 55, 56, 63, 69, 281; James (2021), Learning the Language of Scripture: Origen, Wisdom, and the Logic of Interpretation, 31, 33, 52, 78; Johnson Dupertuis and Shea (2018), Reading and Teaching Ancient Fiction : Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman Narratives 131; Johnston and Struck (2005), Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination, 181, 182; König (2012), Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture, 238; Lloyd (1989), The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science, 52, 101; Motta and Petrucci (2022), Isagogical Crossroads from the Early Imperial Age to the End of Antiquity, 39, 44, 46, 91, 130, 149; Neusner Green and Avery-Peck (2022), Judaism from Moses to Muhammad: An Interpretation: Turning Points and Focal Points, 33; Niehoff (2011), Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria, 33; Nijs (2023), The Epicurean Sage in the Ethics of Philodemus. 29, 69, 187, 200; Pevarello (2013), The Sentences of Sextus and the Origins of Christian Ascetiscism. 155, 157, 162; Rüpke and Woolf (2013), Religious Dimensions of the Self in the Second Century CE. 3, 38; Schliesser et al. (2021), Alexandria: Hub of the Hellenistic World. 84, 86, 312, 511; Seaford, Wilkins, Wright (2017), Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill. 49, 211; Vogt (2015), Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius. 10, 11, 12, 52, 56, 61, 64, 67, 69, 75, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123, 124, 126, 131, 132, 135, 136, 143, 144, 145, 147, 151, 152, 156, 158, 161, 172, 174, 176, 177, 179, 182, 185; Wardy and Warren (2018), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, 85, 164, 209, 242, 243, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 259, 270, 303, 318; Wolfsdorf (2020), Early Greek Ethics, 700; Wright (2015), The Letter of Aristeas : 'Aristeas to Philocrates' or 'On the Translation of the Law of the Jews' 112, 116, 351
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1.76 Pamphila in the second book of her Memorabilia narrates that, as his son Tyrraeus sat in a barber's shop in Cyme, a smith killed him with a blow from an axe. When the people of Cyme sent the murderer to Pittacus, he, on learning the story, set him at liberty and declared that It is better to pardon now than to repent later. Heraclitus, however, says that it was Alcaeus whom he set at liberty when he had got him in his power, and that what he said was: Mercy is better than vengeance.Among the laws which he made is one providing that for any offence committed in a state of intoxication the penalty should be doubled; his object was to discourage drunkenness, wine being abundant in the island. One of his sayings is, It is hard to be good, which is cited by Simonides in this form: Pittacus's maxim, 'Truly to become a virtuous man is hard.'" 1.112 He also compiled prose works On Sacrifices and the Cretan Constitution, also On Minos and Rhadamanthus, running to about 4000 lines. At Athens again he founded the sanctuary of the Solemn Gods (Semnai Theai), as Lobon of Argos tells us in his work On Poets. He is stated to have been the first who purified houses and fields, and the first who founded sanctuaries. Some are found to maintain that he did not go to sleep but withdrew himself for a while, engaged in gathering simples.There is extant a letter of his to Solon the lawgiver, containing a scheme of government which Minos drew up for the Cretans. But Demetrius of Magnesia, in his work on poets and writers of the same name, endeavours to discredit the letter on the ground that it is late and not written in the Cretan dialect but in Attic, and New Attic too. However, I have found another letter by him which runs as follows:Epimenides to Solon' "
1.114 This is the tenor of the letter. But Demetrius reports a story that he received from the Nymphs food of a special sort and kept it in a cow's hoof; that he took small doses of this food, which was entirely absorbed into his system, and he was never seen to eat. Timaeus mentions him in his second book. Some writers say that the Cretans sacrifice to him as a god; for they say that he had superhuman foresight. For instance, when he saw Munichia, at Athens, he said the Athenians did not know how many evils that place would bring upon them; for, if they did, they would destroy it even if they had to do so with their teeth. And this he said so long before the event. It is also stated that he was the first to call himself Aeacus; that he foretold to the Lacedaemonians their defeat by the Arcadians; and that he claimed that his soul had passed through many incarnations." 2.87 The one state is agreeable and the other repellent to all living things. However, the bodily pleasure which is the end is, according to Panaetius in his work On the Sects, not the settled pleasure following the removal of pains, or the sort of freedom from discomfort which Epicurus accepts and maintains to be the end. They also hold that there is a difference between end and happiness. Our end is particular pleasure, whereas happiness is the sum total of all particular pleasures, in which are included both past and future pleasures.
2.109 Eubulides kept up a controversy with Aristotle and said much to discredit him.Among other members the school of Eubulides included Alexinus of Elis, a man very fond of controversy, for which reason he was called Elenxinus. In particular he kept up a controversy with Zeno. Hermippus says of him that he left Elis and removed to Olympia, where he studied philosophy. His pupils inquired why he took up his abode here, and were told that it was his intention to found a school which should be called the Olympian school. But as their provisions ran short and they found the place unhealthy, they left it, and for the rest of his days Alexinus lived in solitude with a single servant. And some time afterwards, as he was swimming in the Alpheus, the point of a reed ran into him, and of this injury he died. 2.110 I have composed the following lines upon him:It was not then a vain tale that once an unfortunate man, while diving, pierced his foot somehow with a nail; since that great man Alexinus, before he could cross the Alpheus, was pricked by a reed and met his death.He has written not only a reply to Zeno but other works, including one against Ephorus the historian.To the school of Eubulides also belonged Euphantus of Olynthus, who wrote a history of his own times. He was besides a poet and wrote several tragedies, with which he made a great reputation at the festivals. He taught King Antigonus and dedicated to him a work On Kingship which was very popular. He died of old age. 2.113 11. STILPOStilpo, a citizen of Megara in Greece, was a pupil of some of the followers of Euclides, although others make him a pupil of Euclides himself, and furthermore of Thrasymachus of Corinth, who was the friend of Ichthyas, according to Heraclides. And so far did he excel all the rest in inventiveness and sophistry that nearly the whole of Greece was attracted to him and joined the school of Megara. On this let me cite the exact words of Philippus the Megarian philosopher: for from Theophrastus he drew away the theorist Metrodorus and Timagoras of Gela, from Aristotle the Cyrenaic philosopher, Clitarchus, and Simmias; and as for the dialecticians themselves, he gained over Paeonius from Aristides; Diphilus of Bosphorus, the son of Euphantus, and Myrmex, the son of Exaenetus, who had both come to refute him, he made his devoted adherents. 2.114 And besides these he won over Phrasidemus the Peripatetic, an accomplished physicist, and Alcimus the rhetorician, the first orator in all Greece; Crates, too, and many others he got into his toils, and, what is more, along with these, he carried off Zeno the Phoenician.He was also an authority on politics.He married a wife, and had a mistress named Nicarete, as Onetor has somewhere stated. He had a profligate daughter, who was married to his friend Simmias of Syracuse. And, as she would not live by rule, some one told Stilpo that she was a disgrace to him. To this he replied, Not so, any more than I am an honour to her.' "2.115 Ptolemy Soter, they say, made much of him, and when he had got possession of Megara, offered him a sum of money and invited him to return with him to Egypt. But Stilpo would only accept a very moderate sum, and he declined the proposed journey, and removed to Aegina until Ptolemy set sail. Again, when Demetrius, the son of Antigonus, had taken Megara, he took measures that Stilpo's house should be preserved and all his plundered property restored to him. But when he requested that a schedule of the lost property should be drawn up, Stilpo denied that he had lost anything which really belonged to him, for no one had taken away his learning, while he still had his eloquence and knowledge." '2.116 And conversing upon the duty of doing good to men he made such an impression on the king that he became eager to hear him. There is a story that he once used the following argument concerning the Athena of Phidias: Is it not Athena the daughter of Zeus who is a goddess? And when the other said Yes, he went on, But this at least is not by Zeus but by Phidias, and, this being granted, he concluded, This then is not a god. For this he was summoned before the Areopagus; he did not deny the charge, but contended that the reasoning was correct, for that Athena was no god but a goddess; it was the male divinities who were gods. However, the story goes that the Areopagites ordered him to quit the city, and that thereupon Theodorus, whose nickname was Θεός, said in derision, Whence did Stilpo learn this? and how could he tell whether she was a god or a goddess? But in truth Theodorus was most impudent, and Stilpo most ingenious.' "2.117 When Crates asked him whether the gods take delight in prayers and adorations, he is said to have replied, Don't put such a question in the street, simpleton, but when we are alone! It is said that Bion, when he was asked the same question whether there are gods, replied:Will you not scatter the crowd from me, O much-enduring elder?In character Stilpo was simple and unaffected, and he could readily adapt himself to the plain man. For instance, when Crates the Cynic did not answer the question put to him and only insulted the questioner, I knew, said Stilpo, that you would utter anything rather than what you ought." '2.118 And once when Crates held out a fig to him when putting a question, he took the fig and ate it. Upon which the other exclaimed, O Heracles, I have lost the fig, and Stilpo remarked, Not only that but your question as well, for which the fig was payment in advance. Again, on seeing Crates shrivelled with cold in the winter, he said, You seem to me, Crates, to want a new coat, i.e. to be wanting in sense as well. And the other being annoyed replied with the following burlesque:And Stilpo I saw enduring toilsome woes in Megara, where men say that the bed of Typhos is. There he would ever be wrangling, and many comrades about him, wasting time in the verbal pursuit of virtue. 2.119 It is said that at Athens he so attracted the public that people would run together from the workshops to look at him. And when some one said, Stilpo, they stare at you as if you were some strange creature. No, indeed, said he, but as if I were a genuine man. And, being a consummate master of controversy, he used to demolish even the ideas, and say that he who asserted the existence of Man meant no individual; he did not mean this man or that. For why should he mean the one more than the other? Therefore neither does he mean this individual man. Again, vegetable is not what is shown to me, for vegetable existed ten thousand years ago. Therefore this is not vegetable. The story goes that while in the middle of an argument with Crates he hurried off to buy fish, and, when Crates tried to detain him and urged that he was leaving the argument, his answer was, Not I. I keep the argument though I am leaving you; for the argument will remain, but the fish will soon be sold.' "2.120 Nine dialogues of his are extant written in frigid style, Moschus, Aristippus or Callias, Ptolemy, Chaerecrates, Metrocles, Anaximenes, Epigenes, To his Daughter, Aristotle. Heraclides relates that Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school, was one of Stilpo's pupils; Hermippus that Stilpo died at a great age after taking wine to hasten his end.I have written an epitaph on him also:Surely you know Stilpo the Megarian; old age and then disease laid him low, a formidable pair. But he found in wine a charioteer too strong for that evil team; he quaffed it eagerly and was borne along.He was also ridiculed by Sophilus the Comic poet in his drama The Wedding:What Charinus says is just Stilpo's stoppers." 2.140 All of these facts are mentioned by Lycophron in his satiric drama entitled Menedemus, which was composed as a tribute to him. Here is a specimen of it:And after a temperate feast the modest cup was passed round with discretion, and their dessert was temperate discourse for such as cared to listen.At first he was despised, being called a cynic and a humbug by the Eretrians. But afterwards he was greatly admired, so much so that they entrusted him with the government of the state. He was sent as envoy to Ptolemy and to Lysimachus, being honoured wherever he went. He was, moreover, envoy to Demetrius, and he caused the yearly tribute of two hundred talents which the city used to pay Demetrius to be reduced by fifty talents. And when he was accused to Demetrius of intriguing to hand over the city to Ptolemy, he defended himself in a letter which commences thus:
3.5 and that he applied himself to painting and wrote poems, first dithyrambs, afterwards lyric poems and tragedies. He had, they say, a weak voice; this is confirmed by Timotheus the Athenian in his book On Lives. It is stated that Socrates in a dream saw a cygnet on his knees, which all at once put forth plumage, and flew away after uttering a loud sweet note. And the next day Plato was introduced as a pupil, and thereupon he recognized in him the swan of his dream.At first he used to study philosophy in the Academy, and afterwards in the garden at Colonus (as Alexander states in his Successions of Philosophers), as a follower of Heraclitus. Afterwards, when he was about to compete for the prize with a tragedy, he listened to Socrates in front of the theatre of Dionysus, and then consigned his poems to the flames, with the words:Come hither, O fire-god, Plato now has need of thee. 3.6 From that time onward, having reached his twentieth year (so it is said), he was the pupil of Socrates. When Socrates was gone, he attached himself to Cratylus the Heraclitean, and to Hermogenes who professed the philosophy of Parmenides. Then at the age of twenty-eight, according to Hermodorus, he withdrew to Megara to Euclides, with certain other disciples of Socrates. Next he proceeded to Cyrene on a visit to Theodorus the mathematician, thence to Italy to see the Pythagorean philosophers Philolaus and Eurytus, and thence to Egypt to see those who interpreted the will of the gods; and Euripides is said to have accompanied him thither. There he fell sick and was cured by the priests, who treated him with sea-water, and for this reason he cited the line:The sea doth wash away all human ills.
3.9 Some authorities, amongst them Satyrus, say that he wrote to Dion in Sicily instructing him to purchase three Pythagorean books from Philolaus for 100 minae. For they say he was well off, having received from Dionysius over eighty talents. This is stated by Onetor in an essay upon the theme, Whether a wise man will make money. Further, he derived great assistance from Epicharmus the Comic poet, for he transcribed a great deal from him, as Alcimus says in the essays dedicated to Amyntas, of which there are four. In the first of them he writes thus:It is evident that Plato often employs the words of Epicharmus. Just consider. Plato asserts that the object of sense is that which never abides in quality or quantity, but is ever in flux and change. 3.10 The assumption is that the things from which you take away number are no longer equal nor determinate, nor have they quantity or quality. These are the things to which becoming always, and being never, belongs. But the object of thought is something constant from which nothing is subtracted, to which nothing is added. This is the nature of the eternal things, the attribute of which is to be ever alike and the same. And indeed Epicharmus has expressed himself plainly about objects of sense and objects of thought.a. But gods there always were; never at any time were they wanting, while things in this world are always alike, and are brought about through the same agencies.b. Yet it is said that Chaos was the first-born of the gods.a. How so? If indeed there was nothing out of which, or into which, it could come first.b. What! Then did nothing come first after all?a. No, by Zeus, nor second either, 3.11 at least of the things which we are thus talking about now; on the contrary, they existed from all eternity. . . .a. But suppose some one chooses to add a single pebble to a heap containing either an odd or an even number, whichever you please, or to take away one of those already there; do you think the number of pebbles would remain the same?b. Not I.a. Nor yet, if one chooses to add to a cubit-measure another length, or cut off some of what was there already, would the original measure still exist?b. of course not.a. Now consider mankind in this same way. One man grows, and another again shrinks; and they are all undergoing change the whole time. But a thing which naturally changes and never remains in the same state must ever be different from that which has thus changed. And even so you and I were one pair of men yesterday, are another to-day, and again will be another to-morrow, and will never remain ourselves, by this same argument. 3.12 Again, Alcimus makes this further statement: There are some things, say the wise, which the soul perceives through the body, as in seeing and hearing; there are other things which it discerns by itself without the aid of the body. Hence it follows that of existing things some are objects of sense and others objects of thought. Hence Plato said that, if we wish to take in at one glance the principles underlying the universe, we must first distinguish the ideas by themselves, for example, likeness, unity and plurality, magnitude, rest and motion; next we must assume the existence of 3.13 beauty, goodness, justice and the like, each existing in and for itself; in the third place we must see how many of the ideas are relative to other ideas, as are knowledge, or magnitude, or ownership, remembering that the things within our experience bear the same names as those ideas because they partake of them; I mean that things which partake of justice are just, things which partake of beauty are beautiful. Each one of the ideas is eternal, it is a notion, and moreover is incapable of change. Hence Plato says that they stand in nature like archetypes, and that all things else bear a resemblance to the ideas because they are copies of these archetypes. Now here are the words of Epicharmus about the good and about the ideas:' "3.14 a. Is flute-playing a thing?b. Most certainly.a. Is man then flute-playing?b. By no means.a. Come, let me see, what is a flute-player? Whom do you take him to be? Is he not a man?b. Most certainly.a. Well, don't you think the same would be the case with the good? Is not the good in itself a thing? And does not he who has learnt that thing and knows it at once become good? For, just as he becomes a flute-player by learning flute-playing, or a dancer when he has learnt dancing, or a plaiter when he has learnt plaiting, in the same way, if he has learnt anything of the sort, whatever you like, he would not be one with the craft but he would be the craftsman." 3.25 He was also the first philosopher who controverted the speech of Lysias, the son of Cephalus, which he has set out word for word in the Phaedrus, and the first to study the significance of grammar. And, as he was the first to attack the views of almost all his predecessors, the question is raised why he makes no mention of Democritus. Neanthes of Cyzicus says that, on his going to Olympia, the eyes of all the Greeks were turned towards him, and there he met Dion, who was about to make his expedition against Dionysius. In the first book of the Memorabilia of Favorinus there is a statement that Mithradates the Persian set up a statue of Plato in the Academy and inscribed upon it these words: Mithradates the Persian, the son of Orontobates, dedicated to the Muses a likeness of Plato made by Silanion. 3.26 Heraclides declares that in his youth he was so modest and orderly that he was never seen to laugh outright. In spite of this he too was ridiculed by the Comic poets. At any rate Theopompus in his Hedychares says:There is not anything that is truly one, even the number two is scarcely one, according to Plato.Moreover, Anaxandrides in his Theseus says:He was eating olives exactly like Plato.Then there is Timon who puns on his name thus:As Plato placed strange platitudes.
3.37 Nowhere in his writings does Plato mention himself by name, except in the dialogue On the Soul and the Apology. Aristotle remarks that the style of the dialogues is half-way between poetry and prose. And according to Favorinus, when Plato read the dialogue On the Soul, Aristotle alone stayed to the end; the rest of the audience got up and went away. Some say that Philippus of Opus copied out the Laws, which were left upon waxen tablets, and it is said that he was the author of the Epinomis. Euphorion and Panaetius relate that the beginning of the Republic was found several times revised and rewritten, and the Republic itself Aristoxenus declares to have been nearly all of it included in the Controversies of Protagoras.
3.48 They say that Zeno the Eleatic was the first to write dialogues. But, according to Favorinus in his Memorabilia, Aristotle in the first book of his dialogue On Poets asserts that it was Alexamenus of Styra or Teos. In my opinion Plato, who brought this form of writing to perfection, ought to be adjudged the prize for its invention as well as for its embellishment. A dialogue is a discourse consisting of question and answer on some philosophical or political subject, with due regard to the characters of the persons introduced and the choice of diction. Dialectic is the art of discourse by which we either refute or establish some proposition by means of question and answer on the part of the interlocutors.
3.65 The right interpretation of his dialogues includes three things: first, the meaning of every statement must be explained; next, its purpose, whether it is made for a primary reason or by way of illustration, and whether to establish his own doctrines or to refute his interlocutor; in the third place it remains to examine its truth.And since certain critical marks are affixed to his works let us now say a word about these. The cross × is taken to indicate peculiar expressions and figures of speech, and generally any idiom of Platonic usage; the diple (<) calls attention to doctrines and opinions characteristic of Plato;' "3.66 the dotted cross (⨰) denotes select passages and beauties of style; the dotted diple (⋗) editors' corrections of the text; the dotted obelus (÷) passages suspected without reason; the dotted antisigma (Ꜿ) repetitions and proposals for transpositions; the ceraunium the philosophical school; the asterisk (∗) an agreement of doctrine; the obelus (−) a spurious passage. So much for the critical marks and his writings in general. As Antigonus of Carystus says in his Life of Zeno, when the writings were first edited with critical marks, their possessors charged a certain fee to anyone who wished to consult them." '3.67 The doctrines he approved are these. He held that the soul is immortal, that by transmigration it puts on many bodies, and that it has a numerical first principle, whereas the first principle of the body is geometrical; and he defined soul as the idea of vital breath diffused in all directions. He held that it is self-moved and tripartite, the rational part of it having its seat in the head, the passionate part about the heart, while the appetitive is placed in the region of the navel and the liver. 3.69 And the division from the centre to the circumference which is adjusted in harmony with the soul being thus determined, the soul knows that which is, and adjusts it proportionately because she has the elements proportionately disposed in herself. And when the circle of the Other revolves aright, the result is opinion; but from the regular motion of the circle of the Same comes knowledge. He set forth two universal principles, God and matter, and he calls God mind and cause; he held that matter is devoid of form and unlimited, and that composite things arise out of it; and that it was once in disorderly motion but, inasmuch as God preferred order to disorder, was by him brought together in one place. 3.70 This substance, he says, is converted into the four elements, fire, water, air, earth, of which the world itself and all that therein is are formed. Earth alone of these elements is not subject to change, the assumed cause being the peculiarity of its constituent triangles. For he thinks that in all the other elements the figures employed are homogeneous, the scalene triangle out of which they are all put together being one and the same, whereas for earth a triangle of peculiar shape is employed; the element of fire is a pyramid, of air an octahedron, of water an icosahedron, of earth a cube. Hence earth is not transmuted into the other three elements, nor these three into earth.
3.72 For that maker contains the other living things, and this universe the shapes of them all. It is smooth and has no organ all round because it has no need of organs. Moreover, the universe remains imperishable because it is not dissolved into the Deity. And the creation as a whole is caused by God, because it is the nature of the good to be beneficent, and the creation of the universe has the highest good for its cause. For the most beautiful of created things is due to the best of intelligible causes; so that, as God is of this nature, and the universe resembles the best in its perfect beauty, it will not be in the likeness of anything created, but only of God.
4.17 Antigonus of Carystus in his Biographies says that his father was foremost among the citizens and kept horses to compete in the chariot-race; that Polemo himself had been defendant in an action brought by his wife, who charged him with cruelty owing to the irregularities of his life; but that, from the time when he began to study philosophy, he acquired such strength of character as always to maintain the same unruffled calm of demeanour. Nay more, he never lost control of his voice. This in fact accounts for the fascination which he exercised over Crantor. Certain it is that, when a mad dog bit him in the back of his thigh, he did not even turn pale, but remained undisturbed by all the clamour which arose in the city at the news of what had happened. In the theatre too he was singularly unmoved.
4.22 Hence Arcesilaus, who had quitted Theophrastus and gone over to their school, said of them that they were gods or a remt of the Golden Age. They did not side with the popular party, but were such as Dionysodorus the flute-player is said to have claimed to be, when he boasted that no one ever heard his melodies, as those of Ismenias were heard, either on shipboard or at the fountain. According to Antigonus, their common table was in the house of Crantor; and these two and Arcesilaus lived in harmony together. Arcesilaus and Crantor shared the same house, while Polemo and Crates lived with Lysicles, one of the citizens. Crates, as already stated, was the favourite of Polemo and Arcesilaus of Crantor.
4.33 Some represent him as emulous of Pyrrho as well. He was devoted to dialectic and adopted the methods of argument introduced by the Eretrian school. On account of this Ariston said of him:Plato the head of him, Pyrrho the tail, midway Diodorus.And Timon speaks of him thus:Having the lead of Menedemus at his heart, he will run either to that mass of flesh, Pyrrho, or to Diodorus.And a little farther on he introduces him as saying:I shall swim to Pyrrho and to crooked Diodorus.He was highly axiomatic and concise, and in his discourse fond of distinguishing the meaning of terms. He was satirical enough, and outspoken.
4.39 And whereas many persons courted Antigonus and went to meet him whenever he came to Athens, Arcesilaus remained at home, not wishing to thrust himself upon his acquaintance. He was on the best of terms with Hierocles, the commandant in Munichia and Piraeus, and at every festival would go down to see him. And though Hierocles joined in urging him to pay his respects to Antigonus, he was not prevailed upon, but, after going as far as the gates, turned back. And after the battle at sea, when many went to Antigonus or wrote him flattering letters, he held his peace. However, on behalf of his native city, he did go to Demetrias as envoy to Antigonus, but failed in his mission. He spent his time wholly in the Academy, shunning politics. 4.40 Once indeed, when at Athens, he stopped too long in the Piraeus, discussing themes, out of friendship for Hierocles, and for this he was censured by certain persons. He was very lavish, in short another Aristippus, and he was fond of dining well, but only with those who shared his tastes. He lived openly with Theodete and Phila, the Elean courtesans, and to those who censured him he quoted the maxims of Aristippus. He was also fond of boys and very susceptible. Hence he was accused by Ariston of Chios, the Stoic, and his followers, who called him a corrupter of youth and a shameless teacher of immorality.
5.12 but, until Nicanor shall arrive, Aristomenes, Timarchus, Hipparchus, Dioteles and (if he consent and if circumstances permit him) Theophrastus shall take charge as well of Herpyllis and the children as of the property. And when the girl shall be grown up she shall be given in marriage to Nicanor; but if anything happen to the girl (which heaven forbid and no such thing will happen) before her marriage, or when she is married but before there are children, Nicanor shall have full powers, both with regard to the child and with regard to everything else, to administer in a manner worthy both of himself and of us. Nicanor shall take charge of the girl and of the boy Nicomachus as he shall think fit in all that concerns them as if he were father and brother. And if anything should happen to Nicanor (which heaven forbid!) either before he marries the girl, or when he has married her but before there are children, any arrangements that he may make shall be valid.
5.75 5. DEMETRIUSDemetrius, the son of Phanostratus, was a native of Phalerum. He was a pupil of Theophrastus, but by his speeches in the Athenian assembly he held the chief power in the State for ten years and was decreed 360 bronze statues, most of them representing him either on horseback or else driving a chariot or a pair of horses. And these statues were completed in less than 300 days, so much was he esteemed. He entered politics, says Demetrius of Magnesia in his work on Men of the Same Name, when Harpalus, fleeing from Alexander, came to Athens. As a statesman he rendered his country many splendid services. For he enriched the city with revenues and buildings, though he was not of noble birth.' "
5.78 And in the official list the year in which he was archon was styled the year of lawlessness, according to this same Favorinus.Hermippus tells us that upon the death of Casander, being in fear of Antigonus, he fled to Ptolemy Soter. There he spent a considerable time and advised Ptolemy, among other things, to invest with sovereign power his children by Eurydice. To this Ptolemy would not agree, but bestowed the diadem on his son by Berenice, who, after Ptolemy's death, thought fit to detain Demetrius as a prisoner in the country until some decision should be taken concerning him. There he lived in great dejection, and somehow, in his sleep, received an asp-bite on the hand which proved fatal. He is buried in the district of Busiris near Diospolis." "5.79 Here are my lines upon him:A venomous asp was the death of the wise Demetrius, an asp withal of sticky venom, darting, not light from its eyes, but black death.Heraclides in his epitome of Sotion's Successions of Philosophers says that Ptolemy himself wished to transmit the kingdom to Philadelphus, but that Demetrius tried to dissuade him, saying, If you give it to another, you will not have it yourself. At the time when he was being continually attacked in Athens, Meder, the Comic poet, as I have also learnt, was very nearly brought to trial for no other cause than that he was a friend of Demetrius. However, Telesphorus, the nephew of Demetrius, begged him off.In the number of his works and their total length in lines he has surpassed almost all contemporary Peripatetics. For in learning and versatility he ha" "5.81 On the Iliad, two books.On the Odyssey, four books.And the following works, each in one book:Ptolemy.Concerning Love.Phaedondas.Maedon.Cleon.Socrates.Artaxerxes.Concerning Homer.Aristides.Aristomachus.An Exhortation to Philosophy.of the Constitution.On the ten years of his own Supremacy.of the Ionians.Concerning Embassies.of Belief.of Favour.of Fortune.of Magimity.of Marriage.of the Beam in the Sky.of Peace.On Laws.On Customs.of Opportunity.Dionysius.Concerning Chalcis.A Denunciation of the Athenians.On Antiphanes.Historical Introduction.Letters.A Sworn Assembly.of Old Age.Rights.Aesop's Fables.Anecdotes." "
6.103 Such are the lives of the several Cynics. But we will go on to append the doctrines which they held in common – if, that is, we decide that Cynicism is really a philosophy, and not, as some maintain, just a way of life. They are content then, like Ariston of Chios, to do away with the subjects of Logic and Physics and to devote their whole attention to Ethics. And what some assert of Socrates, Diocles records of Diogenes, representing him as saying: We must inquire intoWhate'er of good or ill within our halls is wrought.They also dispense with the ordinary subjects of instruction. At least Antisthenes used to say that those who had attained discretion had better not study literature, lest they should be perverted by alien influences." "6.104 So they get rid of geometry and music and all such studies. Anyhow, when somebody showed Diogenes a clock, he pronounced it a serviceable instrument to save one from being late for dinner. Again, to a man who gave a musical recital before him he said:By men's minds states are ordered well, and households,Not by the lyre's twanged strings or flute's trilled notes.They hold further that Life according to Virtue is the End to be sought, as Antisthenes says in his Heracles: exactly like the Stoics. For indeed there is a certain close relationship between the two schools. Hence it has been said that Cynicism is a short cut to virtue; and after the same pattern did Zeno of Citium live his life." '6.105 They also hold that we should live frugally, eating food for nourishment only and wearing a single garment. Wealth and fame and high birth they despise. Some at all events are vegetarians and drink cold water only and are content with any kind of shelter or tubs, like Diogenes, who used to say that it was the privilege of the gods to need nothing and of god-like men to want but little.They hold, further, that virtue can be taught, as Antisthenes maintains in his Heracles, and when once acquired cannot be lost; and that the wise man is worthy to be loved, impeccable, and a friend to his like; and that we should entrust nothing to fortune. Whatever is intermediate between Virtue and Vice they, in agreement with Ariston of Chios, account indifferent.So much, then, for the Cynics. We must now pass on to the Stoics, whose founder was Zeno, a disciple of Crates.
7.1 BOOK 7: 1. ZENOZeno, the son of Mnaseas (or Demeas), was a native of Citium in Cyprus, a Greek city which had received Phoenician settlers. He had a wry neck, says Timotheus of Athens in his book On Lives. Moreover, Apollonius of Tyre says he was lean, fairly tall, and swarthy – hence some one called him an Egyptian vine-branch, according to Chrysippus in the first book of his Proverbs. He had thick legs; he was flabby and delicate. Hence Persaeus in his Convivial Reminiscences relates that he declined most invitations to dinner. They say he was fond of eating green figs and of basking in the sun.' "7.2 He was a pupil of Crates, as stated above. Next they say he attended the lectures of Stilpo and Xenocrates for ten years – so Timocrates says in his Dion – and Polemo as well. It is stated by Hecato and by Apollonius of Tyre in his first book on Zeno that he consulted the oracle to know what he should do to attain the best life, and that the god's response was that he should take on the complexion of the dead. Whereupon, perceiving what this meant, he studied ancient authors. Now the way he came across Crates was this. He was shipwrecked on a voyage from Phoenicia to Peiraeus with a cargo of purple. He went up into Athens and sat down in a bookseller's shop, being then a man of thirty." "7.3 As he went on reading the second book of Xenophon's Memorabilia, he was so pleased that he inquired where men like Socrates were to be found. Crates passed by in the nick of time, so the bookseller pointed to him and said, Follow yonder man. From that day he became Crates's pupil, showing in other respects a strong bent for philosophy, though with too much native modesty to assimilate Cynic shamelessness. Hence Crates, desirous of curing this defect in him, gave him a potful of lentil-soup to carry through the Ceramicus; and when he saw that he was ashamed and tried to keep it out of sight, with a blow of his staff he broke the pot. As Zeno took to flight with the lentil-soup flowing down his legs, Why run away, my little Phoenician? quoth Crates, nothing terrible has befallen you." "7.4 For a certain space, then, he was instructed by Crates, and when at this time he had written his Republic, some said in jest that he had written it on Cynosura, i.e. on the dog's tail. Besides the Republic he wrote the following works:of Life according to Nature.of Impulse, or Human Nature.of Emotions.of Duty.of Law.of Greek Education.of Vision.of the Whole World.of Signs.Pythagorean Questions.Universals.of Varieties of Style.Homeric Problems, in five books.of the Reading of Poetry.There are also by him:A Handbook of Rhetoric.Solutions.Two books of Refutations.Recollections of Crates.Ethics.This is a list of his writings. But at last he left Crates, and the men above mentioned were his masters for twenty years. Hence he is reported to have said, I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered shipwreck. But others attribute this saying of his to the time when he was under Crates." '7.5 A different version of the story is that he was staying at Athens when he heard his ship was wrecked and said, It is well done of thee, Fortune, thus to drive me to philosophy. But some say that he disposed of his cargo in Athens, before he turned his attention to philosophy.He used then to discourse, pacing up and down in the Stoa Poikile, which is also called the stoa or Portico of Pisianax, but which received its name from the painting of Polygnotus; his object being to keep the spot clear of a concourse of idlers. It was the spot where in the time of the Thirty 1400 Athenian citizens had been put to death. Hither, then, people came henceforth to hear Zeno, and this is why they were known as men of the Stoa, or Stoics; and the same name was given to his followers, who had formerly been known as Zenonians. So it is stated by Epicurus in his letters. According to Eratosthenes in his eighth book On the Old Comedy, the name of Stoic had formerly been applied to the poets who passed their time there, and they had made the name of Stoic still more famous. 7.6 The people of Athens held Zeno in high honour, as is proved by their depositing with him the keys of the city walls, and their honouring him with a golden crown and a bronze statue. This last mark of respect was also shown to him by citizens of his native town, who deemed his statue an ornament to their city, and the men of Citium living in Sidon were also proud to claim him for their own. Antigonus (Gonatas) also favoured him, and whenever he came to Athens would hear him lecture and often invited him to come to his court. This offer he declined but dispatched thither one of his friends, Persaeus, the son of Demetrius and a native of Citium, who flourished in the 130th Olympiad, at which time Zeno was already an old man. According to Apollonius of Tyre in his work upon Zeno, the letter of Antigonus was couched in the following terms:' "7.7 King Antigonus to Zeno the philosopher, greeting.While in fortune and fame I deem myself your superior, in reason and education I own myself inferior, as well as in the perfect happiness which you have attained. Wherefore I have decided to ask you to pay me a visit, being persuaded that you will not refuse the request. By all means, then, do your best to hold conference with me, understanding clearly that you will not be the instructor of myself alone but of all the Macedonians taken together. For it is obvious that whoever instructs the ruler of Macedonia and guides him in the paths of virtue will also be training his subjects to be good men. As is the ruler, such for the most part it may be expected that his subjects will become.And Zeno's reply is as follows:" '7.8 Zeno to King Antigonus, greeting.I welcome your love of learning in so far as you cleave to that true education which tends to advantage and not to that popular counterfeit of it which serves only to corrupt morals. But if anyone has yearned for philosophy, turning away from much-vaunted pleasure which renders effeminate the souls of some of the young, it is evident that not by nature only, but also by the bent of his will he is inclined to nobility of character. But if a noble nature be aided by moderate exercise and further receive ungrudging instruction, it easily comes to acquire virtue in perfection. 7.9 But I am constrained by bodily weakness, due to old age, for I am eighty years old; and for that reason I am unable to join you. But I send you certain companions of my studies whose mental powers are not inferior to mine, while their bodily strength is far greater, and if you associate with these you will in no way fall short of the conditions necessary to perfect happiness.So he sent Persaeus and Philonides the Theban; and Epicurus in his letter to his brother Aristobulus mentions them both as living with Antigonus. I have thought it well to append the decree also which the Athenians passed concerning him. It reads as follows:
7.10 In the archonship of Arrhenides, in the fifth prytany of the tribe Acamantis on the twenty-first day of Maemacterion, at the twenty-third plenary assembly of the prytany, one of the presidents, Hippo, the son of Cratistoteles, of the deme Xypetaeon, and his co-presidents put the question to the vote; Thraso, the son of Thraso of the deme Anacaea, moved:Whereas Zeno of Citium, son of Mnaseas, has for many years been devoted to philosophy in the city and has continued to be a man of worth in all other respects, exhorting to virtue and temperance those of the youth who come to him to be taught, directing them to what is best, affording to all in his own conduct a pattern for imitation in perfect consistency with his teaching, it has seemed good to the people –
7.11 and may it turn out well – to bestow praise upon Zeno of Citium, the son of Mnaseas, and to crown him with a golden crown according to the law, for his goodness and temperance, and to build him a tomb in the Ceramicus at the public cost. And that for the making of the crown and the building of the tomb, the people shall now elect five commissioners from all Athenians, and the Secretary of State shall inscribe this decree on two stone pillars and it shall be lawful for him to set up one in the Academy and the other in the Lyceum. And that the magistrate presiding over the administration shall apportion the expense incurred upon the pillars, that all may know that the Athenian people honour the good both in their life and after their death.
7.12 Thraso of the deme Anacaea, Philocles of Peiraeus, Phaedrus of Anaphlystus, Medon of Acharnae, Micythus of Sypalettus, and Dion of Paeania have been elected commissioners for the making of the crown and the building.These are the terms of the decree.Antigonus of Carystus tells us that he never denied that he was a citizen of Citium. For when he was one of those who contributed to the restoration of the baths and his name was inscribed upon the pillar as Zeno the philosopher, he requested that the words of Citium should be added. He made a hollow lid for a flask and used to carry about money in it, in order that there might be provision at hand for the necessities of his master Crates.
7.13 It is said that he had more than a thousand talents when he came to Greece, and that he lent this money on bottomry. He used to eat little loaves and honey and to drink a little wine of good bouquet. He rarely employed men-servants; once or twice indeed he might have a young girl to wait on him in order not to seem a misogynist. He shared the same house with Persaeus, and when the latter brought in a little flute-player he lost no time in leading her straight to Persaeus. They tell us he readily adapted himself to circumstances, so much so that King Antigonus often broke in on him with a noisy party, and once took him along with other revellers to Aristocles the musician; Zeno, however, in a little while gave them the slip.
7.14 He disliked, they say, to be brought too near to people, so that he would take the end seat of a couch, thus saving himself at any rate from one half of such inconvenience. Nor indeed would he walk about with more than two or three. He would occasionally ask the bystanders for coppers, in order that, for fear of being asked to give, people might desist from mobbing him, as Cleanthes says in his work On Bronze. When several persons stood about him in the Colonnade he pointed to the wooden railing at the top round the altar and said, This was once open to all, but because it was found to be a hindrance it was railed off. If you then will take yourselves off out of the way you will be the less annoyance to us.When Demochares, the son of Laches, greeted him and told him he had only to speak or write for anything he wanted to Antigonus, who would be sure to grant all his requests, Zeno after hearing this would have nothing more to do with him.' "
7.15 After Zeno's death Antigonus is reported to have said, What an audience I have lost. Hence too he employed Thraso as his agent to request the Athenians to bury Zeno in the Ceramicus. And when asked why he admired him, Because, said he, the many ample gifts I offered him never made him conceited nor yet appear poor-spirited.His bent was towards inquiry, and he was an exact reasoner on all subjects. Hence the words of Timon in his Silli:A Phoenician too I saw, a pampered old woman ensconced in gloomy pride, longing for all things; but the meshes of her subtle web have perished, and she had no more intelligence than a banjo." "
7.16 He used to dispute very carefully with Philo the logician and study along with him. Hence Zeno, who was the junior, had as great an admiration for Philo as his master Diodorus. And he had about him certain ragged dirty fellows, as Timon says in these lines:The while he got together a crowd of ignorant serfs, who surpassed all men in beggary and were the emptiest of townsfolk.Zeno himself was sour and of a frowning countece. He was very niggardly too, clinging to meanness unworthy of a Greek, on the plea of economy, If he pitched into anyone he would do it concisely, and not effusively, keeping him rather at arm's length. I mean, for example, his remark upon the fop showing himself off." "
7.17 When he was slowly picking his way across a watercourse, With good reason, quoth Zeno, he looks askance at the mud, for he can't see his face in it. When a certain Cynic declared he had no oil in his flask and begged some of him, Zeno refused to give him any. However, as the man went away, Zeno bade him consider which of the two was the more impudent. Being enamoured of Chremonides, as he and Cleanthes were sitting beside the youth, he got up, and upon Cleanthes expressing surprise, Good physicians tell us, said he, that the best cure for inflammation is repose. When of two reclining next to each other over the wine, the one who was neighbour to Zeno kicked the guest below him, Zeno himself nudged the man with his knee, and upon the man turning round, inquired, How do you think your neighbour liked what you did to him?" 7.18 To a lover of boys he remarked, Just as schoolmasters lose their common-sense by spending all their time with boys, so it is with people like you. He used to say that the very exact expressions used by those who avoided solecisms were like the coins struck by Alexander: they were beautiful in appearance and well-rounded like the coins, but none the better on that account. Words of the opposite kind he would compare to the Attic tetradrachms, which, though struck carelessly and inartistically, nevertheless outweighed the ornate phrases. When his pupil Ariston discoursed at length in an uninspired manner, sometimes in a headstrong and over-confident way. Your father, said he, must have been drunk when he begat you. Hence he would call him a chatterbox, being himself concise in speech.' "
7.19 There was a gourmand so greedy that he left nothing for his table companions. A large fish having been served, Zeno took it up as if he were about to eat the whole. When the other looked at him, What do you suppose, said he, those who live with you feel every day, if you cannot put up with my gourmandise in this single instance? A youth was putting a question with more curiosity than became his years, whereupon Zeno led him to a mirror, and bade him look in it; after which he inquired if he thought it became anyone who looked like that to ask such questions. Some one said that he did not in general agree with Antisthenes, whereupon Zeno produced that author's essay on Sophocles, and asked him if he thought it had any excellence; to which the reply was that he did not know. Then are you not ashamed, quoth he, to pick out and mention anything wrong said by Antisthenes, while you suppress his good things without giving them a thought?" '7.20 Some one having said that he thought the chain-arguments of the philosophers seemed brief and curt, Zeno replied, You are quite right; indeed, the very syllables ought, if possible, to be clipped. Some one remarked to him about Polemo, that his discourse was different from the subject he announced. He replied with a frown, Well, what value would you have set upon what was given out? He said that when conversing we ought to be earnest and, like actors, we should have a loud voice and great strength; but we ought not to open the mouth too wide, which is what your senseless chatterbox does. Telling periods, he said, unlike the works of good craftsmen, should need no pause for the contemplation of their excellences; on the contrary, the hearer should be so absorbed in the discourse itself as to have no leisure even to take notes. 7.21 Once when a young man was talking a good deal, he said, Your ears have slid down and merged in your tongue. To the fair youth, who gave it as his opinion that the wise man would not fall in love, his reply was: Then who can be more hapless than you fair youths? He used to say that even of philosophers the greater number were in most things unwise, while about small and casual things they were quite ignorant. And he used to cite the saying of Caphisius, who, when one of his pupils was endeavouring to blow the flute lustily, gave him a slap and told him that to play well does not depend on loudness, though playing loudly may follow upon playing well. And to a youth who was talking somewhat saucily his rejoinder was, I would rather not tell you what I am thinking, my lad. 7.22 A Rhodian, who was handsome and rich, but nothing more, insisted on joining his class; but so unwelcome was this pupil, that first of all Zeno made him sit on the benches that were dusty, that he might soil his cloak, and then he consigned him to the place where the beggars sat, that he might rub shoulders with their rags; so at last the young man went away. Nothing, he declared, was more unbecoming than arrogance, especially in the young. He used also to say that it was not the words and expressions that we ought to remember, but we should exercise our mind in disposing to advantage of what we hear, instead of, as it were, tasting a well-cooked dish or well-dressed meal. The young, he thought, should behave with perfect propriety in walk, gait and dress, and he used continually to quote the lines of Euripides about Capaneus:Large means had he, yet not the haughtinessThat springs from wealth, nor cherished prouder thoughtsof vain ambition than the poorest man. 7.23 Again he would say that if we want to master the sciences there is nothing so fatal as conceit, and again there is nothing we stand so much in need of as time. To the question Who is a friend? his answer was, A second self (alter ego). We are told that he was once chastising a slave for stealing, and when the latter pleaded that it was his fate to steal, Yes, and to be beaten too, said Zeno. Beauty he called the flower of chastity, while according to others it was chastity which he called the flower of beauty. Once when he saw the slave of one of his acquaintance marked with weals, I see, said he, the imprints of your anger. To one who had been drenched with unguent, Who is this, quoth he, who smells of woman? When Dionysius the Renegade asked, Why am I the only pupil you do not correct? the reply was, Because I mistrust you. To a stripling who was talking nonsense his words were, The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is that we may listen the more and talk the less. 7.24 One day at a banquet he was reclining in silence and was asked the reason: whereupon he bade his critic carry word to the king that there was one present who knew how to hold his tongue. Now those who inquired of him were ambassadors from King Ptolemy, and they wanted to know what message they should take back from him to the king. On being asked how he felt about abuse, he replied, As an envoy feels who is dismissed without an answer. Apollonius of Tyre tells us how, when Crates laid hold on him by the cloak to drag him from Stilpo, Zeno said, The right way to seize a philosopher, Crates, is by the ears: persuade me then and drag me off by them; but, if you use violence, my body will be with you, but my mind with Stilpo.' "7.25 According to Hippobotus he forgathered with Diodorus, with whom he worked hard at dialectic. And when he was already making progress, he would enter Polemo's school: so far from all self-conceit was he. In consequence Polemo is said to have addressed him thus: You slip in, Zeno, by the garden door – I'm quite aware of it – you filch my doctrines and give them a Phoenician make-up. A dialectician once showed him seven logical forms concerned with the sophism known as The Reaper, and Zeno asked him how much he wanted for them. Being told a hundred drachmas, he promptly paid two hundred: to such lengths would he go in his love of learning. They say too that he first introduced the word Duty and wrote a treatise on the subject. It is said, moreover, that he corrected Hesiod's lines thus:He is best of all men who follows good advice: good too is he who finds out all things for himself." '7.26 The reason he gave for this was that the man capable of giving a proper hearing to what is said and profiting by it was superior to him who discovers everything himself. For the one had merely a right apprehension, the other in obeying good counsel superadded conduct.When he was asked why he, though so austere, relaxed at a drinking-party, he said, Lupins too are bitter, but when they are soaked become sweet. Hecato too in the second book of his Anecdotes says that he indulged freely at such gatherings. And he would say, Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue. Well-being is attained by little and little, and nevertheless it is no little thing itself. Others attribute this to Socrates.' "7.27 He showed the utmost endurance, and the greatest frugality; the food he used required no fire to dress, and the cloak he wore was thin. Hence it was said of him:The cold of winter and the ceaseless rainCome powerless against him: weak the dartof the fierce summer sun or racking painTo bend that iron frame. He stands apartUnspoiled by public feast and jollity:Patient, unwearied night and day doth heCling to his studies of philosophy.Nay more: the comic poets by their very jests at his expense praised him without intending it. Thus Philemon says in a play, Philosophers:This man adopts a new philosophy.He teaches to go hungry: yet he getsDisciples. One sole loaf of bread his food;His best dessert dried figs; water his drink.Others attribute these lines to Poseidippus.By this time he had almost become a proverb. At all events, More temperate than Zeno the philosopher was a current saying about him. Poseidippus also writes in his Men Transported:So that for ten whole daysMore temperate than Zeno's self he seemed." '7.28 And in very truth in this species of virtue and in dignity he surpassed all mankind, ay, and in happiness; for he was ninety-eight when he died and had enjoyed good health without an ailment to the last. Persaeus, however, in his ethical lectures makes him die at the age of seventy-two, having come to Athens at the age of twenty-two. But Apollonius says that he presided over the school for fifty-eight years. The manner of his death was as follows. As he was leaving the school he tripped and fell, breaking a toe. Striking the ground with his fist, he quoted the line from the Niobe:I come, I come, why dost thou call for me?and died on the spot through holding his breath. 7.29 The Athenians buried him in the Ceramicus and honoured him in the decrees already cited above, adding their testimony of his goodness. Here is the epitaph composed for him by Antipater of Sidon:Here lies great Zeno, dear to Citium, who scaled high Olympus, though he piled not Pelion on Ossa, nor toiled at the labours of Heracles, but this was the path he found out to the stars – the way of temperance alone.' "7.30 Here too is another by Zenodotus the Stoic, a pupil of Diogenes:Thou madest self-sufficiency thy rule,Eschewing haughty wealth, O godlike Zeno,With aspect grave and hoary brow serene.A manly doctrine thine: and by thy prudenceWith much toil thou didst found a great new school,Chaste parent of unfearing liberty.And if thy native country was Phoenicia,What need to slight thee? came not Cadmus thence,Who gave to Greece her books and art of writing?And Athenaeus the epigrammatist speaks of all the Stoics in common as follows:O ye who've learnt the doctrines of the StoaAnd have committed to your books divineThe best of human learning, teaching menThat the mind's virtue is the only good!She only it is who keeps the lives of menAnd cities, – safer than high gates and walls.But those who place their happiness in pleasureAre led by the least worthy of the Muses." "7.31 We have ourselves mentioned the manner of Zeno's death in the Pammetros (a collection of poems in various metres):The story goes that Zeno of Citium after enduring many hardships by reason of old age was set free, some say by ceasing to take food; others say that once when he had tripped he beat with his hand upon the earth and cried, I come of my own accord; why then call me?For there are some who hold this to have been the manner of his death.So much then concerning his death.Demetrius the Magnesian, in his work on Men of the Same Name, says of him: his father, Mnaseas, being a merchant often went to Athens and brought away many books about Socrates for Zeno while still a boy." '7.32 Hence he had been well trained even before he left his native place. And thus it came about that on his arrival at Athens he attached himself to Crates. And it seems, he adds, that, when the rest were at a loss how to express their views, Zeno framed a definition of the end. They say that he was in the habit of swearing by capers just as Socrates used to swear by the dog. Some there are, and among them Cassius the Sceptic and his disciples, who accuse Zeno at length. Their first count is that in the beginning of his Republic he pronounced the ordinary education useless: the next is that he applies to all men who are not virtuous the opprobrious epithets of foemen, enemies, slaves, and aliens to one another, parents to children, brothers to brothers, friends to friends. 7.33 Again, in the Republic, making an invidious contrast, he declares the good alone to be true citizens or friends or kindred or free men; and accordingly in the view of the Stoics parents and children are enemies, not being wise. Again, it is objected, in the Republic he lays down community of wives, and at line 200 prohibits the building of sanctuaries, law-courts and gymnasia in cities; while as regards a currency he writes that we should not think it need be introduced either for purposes of exchange or for travelling abroad. Further, he bids men and women wear the same dress and keep no part of the body entirely covered. 7.34 That the Republic is the work of Zeno is attested by Chrysippus in his De Republica. And he discussed amatory subjects in the beginning of that book of his which is entitled The Art of Love. Moreover, he writes much the same in his Interludes. So much for the criticisms to be found not only in Cassius but in Isidorus of Pergamum, the rhetorician. Isidorus likewise affirms that the passages disapproved by the school were expunged from his works by Athenodorus the Stoic, who was in charge of the Pergamene library; and that afterwards, when Athenodorus was detected and compromised, they were replaced. So much concerning the passages in his writings which are regarded as spurious.' "
7.36 of the many disciples of Zeno the following are the most famous: Persaeus, son of Demetrius, of Citium, whom some call a pupil and others one of the household, one of those sent him by Antigonus to act as secretary; he had been tutor to Antigonus's son Halcyoneus. And Antigonus once, wishing to make trial of him, caused some false news to be brought to him that his estate had been ravaged by the enemy, and as his countece fell, Do you see, said he, that wealth is not a matter of indifference?The following works are by Persaeus:of Kingship.The Spartan Constitution.of Marriage.of Impiety.Thyestes.of Love.Exhortations.Interludes.Four books of Anecdotes.Memorabilia.A Reply to Plato's Laws in seven books." 7.38 And furthermore the following according to Hippobotus were pupils of Zeno: Philonides of Thebes; Callippus of Corinth; Posidonius of Alexandria; Athenodorus of Soli; and Zeno of Sidon.I have decided to give a general account of all the Stoic doctrines in the life of Zeno because he was the founder of the School. I have already given a list of his numerous writings, in which he has spoken as has no other of the Stoics. And his tenets in general are as follows. In accordance with my usual practice a summary statement must suffice. 7.39 Philosophic doctrine, say the Stoics, falls into three parts: one physical, another ethical, and the third logical. Zeno of Citium was the first to make this division in his Exposition of Doctrine, and Chrysippus too did so in the first book of his Exposition of Doctrine and the first book of his Physics; and so too Apollodorus and Syllus in the first part of their Introductions to Stoic Doctrine, as also Eudromus in his Elementary Treatise on Ethics, Diogenes the Babylonian, and Posidonius.These parts are called by Apollodorus Heads of Commonplace; by Chrysippus and Eudromus specific divisions; by others generic divisions. 7.40 Philosophy, they say, is like an animal, Logic corresponding to the bones and sinews, Ethics to the fleshy parts, Physics to the soul. Another simile they use is that of an egg: the shell is Logic, next comes the white, Ethics, and the yolk in the centre is Physics. Or, again, they liken Philosophy to a fertile field: Logic being the encircling fence, Ethics the crop, Physics the soil or the trees. Or, again, to a city strongly walled and governed by reason.No single part, some Stoics declare, is independent of any other part, but all blend together. Nor was it usual to teach them separately. Others, however, start their course with Logic, go on to Physics, and finish with Ethics; and among those who so do are Zeno in his treatise On Exposition, Chrysippus, Archedemus and Eudromus. 7.41 Diogenes of Ptolemas, it is true, begins with Ethics; but Apollodorus puts Ethics second, while Panaetius and Posidonius begin with Physics, as stated by Phanias, the pupil of Posidonius, in the first book of his Lectures of Posidonius. Cleanthes makes not three, but six parts, Dialectic, Rhetoric, Ethics, Politics, Physics, Theology. But others say that these are divisions not of philosophic exposition, but of philosophy itself: so, for instance, Zeno of Tarsus. Some divide the logical part of the system into the two sciences of rhetoric and dialectic; while some would add that which deals with definitions and another part concerning canons or criteria: some, however, dispense with the part about definitions.
7.47 By wariness they mean a strong presumption against what at the moment seems probable, so as not to be taken in by it. Irrefutability is strength in argument so as not to be brought over by it to the opposite side. Earnestness (or absence of frivolity) is a habit of referring presentations to right reason. Knowledge itself they define either as unerring apprehension or as a habit or state which in reception of presentations cannot be shaken by argument. Without the study of dialectic, they say, the wise man cannot guard himself in argument so as never to fall; for it enables him to distinguish between truth and falsehood, and to discriminate what is merely plausible and what is ambiguously expressed, and without it he cannot methodically put questions and give answers.
7.51 According to them some presentations are data of sense and others are not: the former are the impressions conveyed through one or more sense-organs; while the latter, which are not data of sense, are those received through the mind itself, as is the case with incorporeal things and all the other presentations which are received by reason. of sensuous impressions some are from real objects and are accompanied by yielding and assent on our part. But there are also presentations that are appearances and no more, purporting, as it were, to come from real objects.Another division of presentations is into rational and irrational, the former being those of rational creatures, the latter those of the irrational. Those which are rational are processes of thought, while those which are irrational have no name. Again, some of our impressions are scientific, others unscientific: at all events a statue is viewed in a totally different way by the trained eye of a sculptor and by an ordinary man.
7.57 Seven of the letters are vowels, a, e, ē i, o, u, ō, and six are mutes, b, g, d, k, p, t. There is a difference between voice and speech; because, while voice may include mere noise, speech is always articulate. Speech again differs from a sentence or statement, because the latter always signifies something, whereas a spoken word, as for example βλίτυρι, may be unintelligible – which a sentence never is. And to frame a sentence is more than mere utterance, for while vocal sounds are uttered, things are meant, that is, are matters of discourse. 7.58 There are, as stated by Diogenes in his treatise on Language and by Chrysippus, five parts of speech: proper name, common noun, verb, conjunction, article. To these Antipater in his work On Words and their Meaning adds another part, the mean.A common noun or appellative is defined by Diogenes as part of a sentence signifying a common quality, e.g. man, horse; whereas a name is a part of speech expressing a quality peculiar to an individual, e.g. Diogenes, Socrates. A verb is, according to Diogenes, a part of speech signifying an isolated predicate, or, as others define it, an un-declined part of a sentence, signifying something that can be attached to one or more subjects, e.g. I write, I speak. A conjunction is an indeclinable part of speech, binding the various parts of a statement together; and an article is a declinable part of speech, distinguishing the genders and numbers of nouns, e.g. ὁ, ἡ, τό, οἱ, αἱ, τά.' "
7.60 Posidonius in his treatise On Style defines a poetical phrase as one that is metrical or rhythmical, thus mechanically avoiding the character of prose; an example of such rhythmical phrase is:O mightiest earth, O sky, God's canopy.And if such poetical phraseology is significant and includes a portrayal or representation of things human and divine, it is poetry.A term is, as stated by Antipater in his first book On Terms, a word which, when a sentence is analysed, is uttered with complete meaning; or, according to Chrysippus in his book On Definitions, is a rendering back one's own. Delineation is a statement which brings one to a knowledge of the subject in outline, or it may be called a definition which embodies the force of the definition proper in a simpler form. Genus (in logic) is the comprehension in one of a number of inseparable objects of thought: e.g. Animal; for this includes all particular animals." 7.82 There are also certain insoluble arguments: the Veiled Men, the Concealed, Sorites, Horned Folk, the Nobodies. The Veiled is as follows: . . . It cannot be that if two is few, three is not so likewise, nor that if two or three are few, four is not so; and so on up to ten. But two is few, therefore so also is ten. . . . The Nobody argument is an argument whose major premiss consists of an indefinite and a definite clause, followed by a minor premiss and conclusion; for example, If anyone is here, he is not in Rhodes; but there is some one here, therefore there is not anyone in Rhodes. . . . 7.83 Such, then, is the logic of the Stoics, by which they seek to establish their point that the wise man is the true dialectician. For all things, they say, are discerned by means of logical study, including whatever falls within the province of Physics, and again whatever belongs to that of Ethics. For else, say they, as regards statement and reasoning Physics and Ethics could not tell how to express themselves, or again concerning the proper use of terms, how the laws have defined various actions. Moreover, of the two kinds of common-sense inquiry included under Virtue one considers the nature of each particular thing, the other asks what it is called. Thus much for their logic.
7.87 This is why Zeno was the first (in his treatise On the Nature of Man) to designate as the end life in agreement with nature (or living agreeably to nature), which is the same as a virtuous life, virtue being the goal towards which nature guides us. So too Cleanthes in his treatise On Pleasure, as also Posidonius, and Hecato in his work On Ends. Again, living virtuously is equivalent to living in accordance with experience of the actual course of nature, as Chrysippus says in the first book of his De finibus; for our individual natures are parts of the nature of the whole universe. 7.88 And this is why the end may be defined as life in accordance with nature, or, in other words, in accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the universe, a life in which we refrain from every action forbidden by the law common to all things, that is to say, the right reason which pervades all things, and is identical with this Zeus, lord and ruler of all that is. And this very thing constitutes the virtue of the happy man and the smooth current of life, when all actions promote the harmony of the spirit dwelling in the individual man with the will of him who orders the universe. Diogenes then expressly declares the end to be to act with good reason in the selection of what is natural. Archedemus says the end is to live in the performance of all befitting actions. 7.89 By the nature with which our life ought to be in accord, Chrysippus understands both universal nature and more particularly the nature of man, whereas Cleanthes takes the nature of the universe alone as that which should be followed, without adding the nature of the individual.And virtue, he holds, is a harmonious disposition, choice-worthy for its own sake and not from hope or fear or any external motive. Moreover, it is in virtue that happiness consists; for virtue is the state of mind which tends to make the whole of life harmonious. When a rational being is perverted, this is due to the deceptiveness of external pursuits or sometimes to the influence of associates. For the starting-points of nature are never perverse.
7.94 Good in general is that from which some advantage comes, and more particularly what is either identical with or not distinct from benefit. Whence it follows that virtue itself and whatever partakes of virtue is called good in these three senses – viz. as being (1) the source from which benefit results; or (2) that in respect of which benefit results, e.g. the virtuous act; or (3) that by the agency of which benefit results, e.g. the good man who partakes in virtue.Another particular definition of good which they give is the natural perfection of a rational being qua rational. To this answers virtue and, as being partakers in virtue, virtuous acts and good men; as also its supervening accessories, joy and gladness and the like.
7.119 They are also, it is declared, godlike; for they have a something divine within them; whereas the bad man is godless. And yet of this word – godless or ungodly – there are two senses, one in which it is the opposite of the term godly, the other denoting the man who ignores the divine altogether: in this latter sense, as they note, the term does not apply to every bad man. The good, it is added, are also worshippers of God; for they have acquaintance with the rites of the gods, and piety is the knowledge of how to serve the gods. Further, they will sacrifice to the gods and they keep themselves pure; for they avoid all acts that are offences against the gods, and the gods think highly of them: for they are holy and just in what concerns the gods. The wise too are the only priests; for they have made sacrifices their study, as also establishing holy places, purifications, and all the other matters appertaining to the gods.
7.121 But Heraclides of Tarsus, who was the disciple of Antipater of Tarsus, and Athenodorus both assert that sins are not equal.Again, the Stoics say that the wise man will take part in politics, if nothing hinders him – so, for instance, Chrysippus in the first book of his work On Various Types of Life – since thus he will restrain vice and promote virtue. Also (they maintain) he will marry, as Zeno says in his Republic, and beget children. Moreover, they say that the wise man will never form mere opinions, that is to say, he will never give assent to anything that is false; that he will also play the Cynic, Cynicism being a short cut to virtue, as Apollodorus calls it in his Ethics; that he will even turn cannibal under stress of circumstances. They declare that he alone is free and bad men are slaves, freedom being power of independent action, whereas slavery is privation of the same;' "
7.122 though indeed there is also a second form of slavery consisting in subordination, and a third which implies possession of the slave as well as his subordination; the correlative of such servitude being lordship; and this too is evil. Moreover, according to them not only are the wise free, they are also kings; kingship being irresponsible rule, which none but the wise can maintain: so Chrysippus in his treatise vindicating Zeno's use of terminology. For he holds that knowledge of good and evil is a necessary attribute of the ruler, and that no bad man is acquainted with this science. Similarly the wise and good alone are fit to be magistrates, judges, or orators, whereas among the bad there is not one so qualified."
7.127 It is a tenet of theirs that between virtue and vice there is nothing intermediate, whereas according to the Peripatetics there is, namely, the state of moral improvement. For, say the Stoics, just as a stick must be either straight or crooked, so a man must be either just or unjust. Nor again are there degrees of justice and injustice; and the same rule applies to the other virtues. Further, while Chrysippus holds that virtue can be lost, Cleanthes maintains that it cannot. According to the former it may be lost in consequence of drunkenness or melancholy; the latter takes it to be inalienable owing to the certainty of our mental apprehension. And virtue in itself they hold to be worthy of choice for its own sake. At all events we are ashamed of bad conduct as if we knew that nothing is really good but the morally beautiful. Moreover, they hold that it is in itself sufficient to ensure well-being: thus Zeno, and Chrysippus in the first book of his treatise On Virtues, and Hecato in the second book of his treatise On Goods:
7.134 They hold that there are two principles in the universe, the active principle and the passive. The passive principle, then, is a substance without quality, i.e. matter, whereas the active is the reason inherent in this substance, that is God. For he is everlasting and is the artificer of each several thing throughout the whole extent of matter. This doctrine is laid down by Zeno of Citium in his treatise On Existence, Cleanthes in his work On Atoms, Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics towards the end, Archedemus in his treatise On Elements, and Posidonius in the second book of his Physical Exposition. There is a difference, according to them, between principles and elements; the former being without generation or destruction, whereas the elements are destroyed when all things are resolved into fire. Moreover, the principles are incorporeal and destitute of form, while the elements have been endowed with form.
7.136 In the beginning he was by himself; he transformed the whole of substance through air into water, and just as in animal generation the seed has a moist vehicle, so in cosmic moisture God, who is the seminal reason of the universe, remains behind in the moisture as such an agent, adapting matter to himself with a view to the next stage of creation. Thereupon he created first of all the four elements, fire, water, air, earth. They are discussed by Zeno in his treatise On the Whole, by Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics, and by Archedemus in a work On Elements. An element is defined as that from which particular things first come to be at their birth and into which they are finally resolved.
7.137 The four elements together constitute unqualified substance or matter. Fire is the hot element, water the moist, air the cold, earth the dry. Not but what the quality of dryness is also found in the air. Fire has the uppermost place; it is also called aether, and in it the sphere of the fixed stars is first created; then comes the sphere of the planets, next to that the air, then the water, and lowest of all the earth, which is at the centre of all things.The term universe or cosmos is used by them in three senses: (1) of God himself, the individual being whose quality is derived from the whole of substance; he is indestructible and ingenerable, being the artificer of this orderly arrangement, who at stated periods of time absorbs into himself the whole of substance and again creates it from himself. (2)
7.138 Again, they give the name of cosmos to the orderly arrangement of the heavenly bodies in itself as such; and (3) in the third place to that whole of which these two are parts. Again, the cosmos is defined as the individual being qualifying the whole of substance, or, in the words of Posidonius in his elementary treatise on Celestial Phenomena, a system made up of heaven and earth and the natures in them, or, again, as a system constituted by gods and men and all things created for their sake. By heaven is meant the extreme circumference or ring in which the deity has his seat.The world, in their view, is ordered by reason and providence: so says Chrysippus in the fifth book of his treatise On Providence and Posidonius in his work On the Gods, book iii. – inasmuch as reason pervades every part of it, just as does the soul in us. Only there is a difference of degree; in some parts there is more of it, in others less.
7.139 For through some parts it passes as a hold or containing force, as is the case with our bones and sinews; while through others it passes as intelligence, as in the ruling part of the soul. Thus, then, the whole world is a living being, endowed with soul and reason, and having aether for its ruling principle: so says Antipater of Tyre in the eighth book of his treatise On the Cosmos. Chrysippus in the first book of his work On Providence and Posidonius in his book On the Gods say that the heaven, but Cleanthes that the sun, is the ruling power of the world. Chrysippus, however, in the course of the same work gives a somewhat different account, namely, that it is the purer part of the aether; the same which they declare to be preeminently God and always to have, as it were in sensible fashion, pervaded all that is in the air, all animals and plants, and also the earth itself, as a principle of cohesion.
7.142 The world, they hold, comes into being when its substance has first been converted from fire through air into moisture and then the coarser part of the moisture has condensed as earth, while that whose particles are fine has been turned into air, and this process of rarefaction goes on increasing till it generates fire. Thereupon out of these elements animals and plants and all other natural kinds are formed by their mixture. The generation and the destruction of the world are discussed by Zeno in his treatise On the Whole, by Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics, by Posidonius in the first book of his work On the Cosmos, by Cleanthes, and by Antipater in his tenth book On the Cosmos. Panaetius, however, maintained that the world is indestructible.The doctrine that the world is a living being, rational, animate and intelligent, is laid down by Chrysippus in the first book of his treatise On Providence, by Apollodorus in his Physics, and by Posidonius.
7.148 The substance of God is declared by Zeno to be the whole world and the heaven, as well as by Chrysippus in his first book of the Gods, and by Posidonius in his first book with the same title. Again, Antipater in the seventh book of his work On the Cosmos says that the substance of God is akin to air, while Boethus in his work On Nature speaks of the sphere of the fixed stars as the substance of God. Now the term Nature is used by them to mean sometimes that which holds the world together, sometimes that which causes terrestrial things to spring up. Nature is defined as a force moving of itself, producing and preserving in being its offspring in accordance with seminal principles within definite periods, and effecting results homogeneous with their sources.
7.149 Nature, they hold, aims both at utility and at pleasure, as is clear from the analogy of human craftsmanship. That all things happen by fate or destiny is maintained by Chrysippus in his treatise De fato, by Posidonius in his De fato, book ii., by Zeno and by Boethus in his De fato, book i. Fate is defined as an endless chain of causation, whereby things are, or as the reason or formula by which the world goes on. What is more, they say that divination in all its forms is a real and substantial fact, if there is really Providence. And they prove it to be actually a science on the evidence of certain results: so Zeno, Chrysippus in the second book of his De divinatione, Athenodorus, and Posidonius in the second book of his Physical Discourse and the fifth book of his De divinatione. But Panaetius denies that divination has any real existence.
7.150 The primary matter they make the substratum of all things: so Chrysippus in the first book of his Physics, and Zeno. By matter is meant that out of which anything whatsoever is produced. Both substance and matter are terms used in a twofold sense according as they signify (1) universal or (2) particular substance or matter. The former neither increases nor diminishes, while the matter of particular things both increases and diminishes. Body according to them is substance which is finite: so Antipater in his second book On Substance, and Apollodorus in his Physics. Matter can also be acted upon, as the same author says, for if it were immutable, the things which are produced would never have been produced out of it. Hence the further doctrine that matter is divisible ad infinitum. Chrysippus says that the division is not ad infinitum, but itself infinite; for there is nothing infinitely small to which the division can extend. But nevertheless the division goes on without ceasing.' "
7.151 Hence, again, their explanation of the mixture of two substances is, according to Chrysippus in the third book of his Physics, that they permeate each other through and through, and that the particles of the one do not merely surround those of the other or lie beside them. Thus, if a little drop of wine be thrown into the sea, it will be equally diffused over the whole sea for a while and then will be blended with it.Also they hold that there are daemons (δαίμονες) who are in sympathy with mankind and watch over human affairs. They believe too in heroes, that is, the souls of the righteous that have survived their bodies.of the changes which go on in the air, they describe winter as the cooling of the air above the earth due to the sun's departure to a distance from the earth; spring as the right temperature of the air consequent upon his approach to us;"
7.156 And there are five terrestrial zones: first, the northern zone which is beyond the arctic circle, uninhabitable because of the cold; second, a temperate zone; a third, uninhabitable because of great heats, called the torrid zone; fourth, a counter-temperate zone; fifth, the southern zone, uninhabitable because of its cold.Nature in their view is an artistically working fire, going on its way to create; which is equivalent to a fiery, creative, or fashioning breath. And the soul is a nature capable of perception. And they regard it as the breath of life, congenital with us; from which they infer first that it is a body and secondly that it survives death. Yet it is perishable, though the soul of the universe, of which the individual souls of animals are parts, is indestructible.
7.160 2. ARISTONAriston the Bald, of Chios, who was also called the Siren, declared the end of action to be a life of perfect indifference to everything which is neither virtue nor vice; recognizing no distinction whatever in things indifferent, but treating them all alike. The wise man he compared to a good actor, who, if called upon to take the part of a Thersites or of an Agamemnon, will impersonate them both becomingly. He wished to discard both Logic and Physics, saying that Physics was beyond our reach and Logic did not concern us: all that did concern us was Ethics.' "
7.161 Dialectical reasonings, he said, are like spiders' webs, which, though they seem to display some artistic workmanship, are yet of no use. He would not admit a plurality of virtues with Zeno, nor again with the Megarians one single virtue called by many names; but he treated virtue in accordance with the category of relative modes. Teaching this sort of philosophy, and lecturing in the Cynosarges, he acquired such influence as to be called the founder of a sect. At any rate Miltiades and Diphilus were denominated Aristoneans. He was a plausible speaker and suited the taste of the general public. Hence Timon's verse about him:One who from wily Ariston's line boasts his descent." "
7.162 After meeting Polemo, says Diocles of Magnesia, while Zeno was suffering from a protracted illness, he recanted his views. The Stoic doctrine to which he attached most importance was the wise man's refusal to hold mere opinions. And against this doctrine Persaeus was contending when he induced one of a pair of twins to deposit a certain sum with Ariston and afterwards got the other to reclaim it. Ariston being thus reduced to perplexity was refuted. He was at variance with Arcesilaus; and one day when he saw an abortion in the shape of a bull with a uterus, he said, Alas, here Arcesilaus has had given into his hand an argument against the evidence of the senses." "
7.163 When some Academic alleged that he had no certainty of anything, Ariston said, Do you not even see your neighbour sitting by you? and when the other answered No, he rejoined,Who can have blinded you? who robbed you of luminous eyesight?The books attributed to him are as follows:Exhortations, two books.of Zeno's Doctrines.Dialogues.Lectures, six books.Dissertations on Philosophy, seven books.Dissertations on Love.Commonplaces on Vainglory.Notebooks, twenty-five volumes.Memorabilia, three books.Anecdotes, eleven books.Against the Rhetoricians.An Answer to the Counter-pleas of Alexinus.Against the Dialecticians, three books.Letters to Cleanthes, four books.Panaetius and Sosicrates consider the Letters to be alone genuine; all the other works named they attribute to Ariston the Peripatetic." 7.164 The story goes that being bald he had a sunstroke and so came to his end. I have composed a trifling poem upon him in limping iambics as follows:Wherefore, Ariston, when old and bald did you let the sun roast your forehead? Thus seeking warmth more than was reasonable, you lit unwillingly upon the chill reality of Death.There was also another Ariston, a native of Iulis; a third, a musician of Athens; a fourth, a tragic poet; a fifth, of Halae, author of treatises on rhetoric; a sixth, a Peripatetic philosopher of Alexandria.
7.165 3. HERILLUSHerillus of Carthage declared the end of action to be Knowledge, that is, so to live always as to make the scientific life the standard in all things and not to be misled by ignorance. Knowledge he defined as a habit of mind, not to be upset by argument, in the acceptance of presentations. Sometimes he used to say there was no single end of action, but it shifted according to varying circumstances and objects, as the same bronze might become a statue either of Alexander or of Socrates. He made a distinction between end-in-chief and subordinate end: even the unwise may aim at the latter, but only the wise seek the true end of life. Everything that lies between virtue and vice he pronounced indifferent. His writings, though they do not occupy much space, are full of vigour and contain some controversial passages in reply to Zeno.
7.166 He is said to have had many admirers when a boy; and as Zeno wished to drive them away, he compelled Herillus to have his head shaved, which disgusted them.His books are the following:of Training.of the Passions.Concerning Opinion or Belief.The Legislator.The Obstetrician.The Challenger.The Teacher.The Reviser.The Controller.Hermes.Medea.Dialogues.Ethical Themes.
7.167 4. DIONYSIUSDionysiusDionysius, the Renegade, declared that pleasure was the end of action; this under the trying circumstance of an attack of ophthalmia. For so violent was his suffering that he could not bring himself to call pain a thing indifferent.He was the son of Theophantus and a native of Heraclea. At first, as Diocles relates, he was a pupil of his fellow-townsman, Heraclides, next of Alexinus and Menedemus, and lastly of Zeno. At the outset of his career he was fond of literature and tried his hand at all kinds of poetry; afterwards he took Aratus for his model, whom he strove to imitate. When he fell away from Zeno, he went over to the Cyrenaics, and used to frequent houses of ill fame and indulge in all other excesses without disguise. After living till he was nearly eighty years of age, he committed suicide by starving himself.The following works are attributed to him:of Apathy, two booksOn Training, two books.of Pleasure, four books.of Wealth, Popularity and RevengeHow to live amongst Men.of Prosperity.of Ancient Kings.of those who are Praised.of the Customs of Barbarians.These three, then, are the heterodox Stoics. The legitimate successor to Zeno, however, was Cleanthes: of whom we have now to speak.' "
7.174 To the solitary man who talked to himself he remarked, You are not talking to a bad man. When some one twitted him on his old age, his reply was, I too am ready to depart; but when again I consider that I am in all points in good health and that I can still write and read, I am content to wait. We are told that he wrote down Zeno's lectures on oyster-shells and the blade-bones of oxen through lack of money to buy paper. Such was he; and yet, although Zeno had many other eminent disciples, he was able to succeed him in the headship of the school.He has left some very fine writings, which are as follows:of Time.of Zeno's Natural Philosophy, two books.Interpretations of Heraclitus, four books.De Sensu.of Art.A Reply to Democritus.A Reply to Aristarchus.A Reply to Herillus.of Impulse, two books." "
7.180 So renowned was he for dialectic that most people thought, if the gods took to dialectic, they would adopt no other system than that of Chrysippus. He had abundance of matter, but in style he was not successful. In industry he surpassed every one, as the list of his writings shows; for there are more than 705 of them. He increased their number by arguing repeatedly on the same subject, setting down anything that occurred to him, making many corrections and citing numerous authorities. So much so that in one of his treatises he copied out nearly the whole of Euripides' Medea, and some one who had taken up the volume, being asked what he was reading, replied, The Medea of Chrysippus."
7.187 Again: If anyone is in Megara, he is not in Athens: now there is a man in Megara, therefore there is not a man in Athens. Again: If you say something, it passes through your lips: now you say wagon, consequently a wagon passes through your lips. And further: If you never lost something, you have it still; but you never lost horns, ergo you have horns. Others attribute this to Eubulides.There are people who run Chrysippus down as having written much in a tone that is gross and indecent. For in his work On the ancient Natural Philosophers at line 600 or thereabouts he interprets the story of Hera and Zeus coarsely, with details which no one would soil his lips by repeating.
7.188 Indeed, his interpretation of the story is condemned as most indecent. He may be commending physical doctrine; but the language used is more appropriate to street-walkers than to deities; and it is moreover not even mentioned by bibliographers, who wrote on the titles of books. What Chrysippus makes of it is not to be found in Polemo nor Hypsicrates, no, nor even in Antigonus. It is his own invention. Again, in his Republic he permits marriage with mothers and daughters and sons. He says the same in his work On Things for their own Sake not Desirable, right at the outset. In the third book of his treatise On Justice, at about line 1000, he permits eating of the corpses of the dead. And in the second book of his On the Means of Livelihood, where he professes to be considering a priori how the wise man is to get his living, occur the words:' "
8.4 This is what Heraclides of Pontus tells us he used to say about himself: that he had once been Aethalides and was accounted to be Hermes' son, and Hermes told him he might choose any gift he liked except immortality; so he asked to retain through life and through death a memory of his experiences. Hence in life he could recall everything, and when he died he still kept the same memories. Afterwards in course of time his soul entered into Euphorbus and he was wounded by Menelaus. Now Euphorbus used to say that he had once been Aethalides and obtained this gift from Hermes, and then he told of the wanderings of his soul, how it migrated hither and thither, into how many plants and animals it had come, and all that it underwent in Hades, and all that the other souls there have to endure." "
8.6 There are some who insist, absurdly enough, that Pythagoras left no writings whatever. At all events Heraclitus, the physicist, almost shouts in our ear, Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, practised inquiry beyond all other men, and in this selection of his writings made himself a wisdom of his own, showing much learning but poor workmanship. The occasion of this remark was the opening words of Pythagoras's treatise On Nature, namely, Nay, I swear by the air I breathe, I swear by the water I drink, I will never suffer censure on account of this work. Pythagoras in fact wrote three books. On Education, On Statesmanship, and On Nature." 8.9 The contents in general of the aforesaid three treatises of Pythagoras are as follows. He forbids us to pray for ourselves, because we do not know what will help us. Drinking he calls, in a word, a snare, and he discounteces all excess, saying that no one should go beyond due proportion either in drinking or in eating. of sexual indulgence, too, he says, Keep to the winter for sexual pleasures, in summer abstain; they are less harmful in autumn and spring, but they are always harmful and not conducive to health. Asked once when a man should consort with a woman, he replied, When you want to lose what strength you have.
8.12 and further that Pythagoras spent most of his time upon the arithmetical aspect of geometry; he also discovered the musical intervals on the monochord. Nor did he neglect even medicine. We are told by Apollodorus the calculator that he offered a sacrifice of oxen on finding that in a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angle. And there is an epigram running as follows:What time Pythagoras that famed figure found,For which the noble offering he brought.He is also said to have been the first to diet athletes on meat, trying first with Eurymenes – so we learn from Favorinus in the third book of his Memorabilia – whereas in former times they had trained on dried figs, on butter, and even on wheatmeal, as we are told by the same Favorinus in the eighth book of his Miscellaneous History.
8.15 Down to the time of Philolaus it was not possible to acquire knowledge of any Pythagorean doctrine, and Philolaus alone brought out those three celebrated books which Plato sent a hundred minas to purchase. Not less than six hundred persons went to his evening lectures; and those who were privileged to see him wrote to their friends congratulating themselves on a great piece of good fortune. Moreover, the Metapontines named his house the Temple of Demeter and his porch the Museum, so we learn from Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History. And the rest of the Pythagoreans used to say that not all his doctrines were for all men to hear, our authority for this being Aristoxenus in the tenth book of his Rules of Pedagogy,
8.19 Above all, he forbade as food red mullet and blacktail, and he enjoined abstinence from the hearts of animals and from beans, and sometimes, according to Aristotle, even from paunch and gurnard. Some say that he contented himself with just some honey or a honeycomb or bread, never touching wine in the daytime, and with greens boiled or raw for dainties, and fish but rarely. His robe was white and spotless, his quilts of white wool, for linen had not yet reached those parts.
8.24 to respect all divination, to sing to the lyre and by hymns to show due gratitude to gods and to good men. To abstain from beans because they are flatulent and partake most of the breath of life; and besides, it is better for the stomach if they are not taken, and this again will make our dreams in sleep smooth and untroubled.Alexander in his Successions of Philosophers says that he found in the Pythagorean memoirs the following tenets as well. 8.25 The principle of all things is the monad or unit; arising from this monad the undefined dyad or two serves as material substratum to the monad, which is cause; from the monad and the undefined dyad spring numbers; from numbers, points; from points, lines; from lines, plane figures; from plane figures, solid figures; from solid figures, sensible bodies, the elements of which are four, fire, water, earth and air; these elements interchange and turn into one another completely, and combine to produce a universe animate, intelligent, spherical, with the earth at its centre, the earth itself too being spherical and inhabited round about. There are also antipodes, and our down is their up. 8.26 Light and darkness have equal part in the universe, so have hot and cold, and dry and moist; and of these, if hot preponderates, we have summer; if cold, winter; if dry, spring; if moist, late autumn. If all are in equilibrium, we have the best periods of the year, of which the freshness of spring constitutes the healthy season, and the decay of late autumn the unhealthy. So too, in the day, freshness belongs to the morning, and decay to the evening, which is therefore more unhealthy. The air about the earth is stagt and unwholesome, and all within it is mortal; but the uppermost air is ever-moved and pure and healthy, and all within it is immortal and consequently divine.' "8.27 The sun, the moon, and the other stars are gods; for, in them, there is a preponderance of heat, and heat is the cause of life. The moon is illumined by the sun. Gods and men are akin, inasmuch as man partakes of heat; therefore God takes thought for man. Fate is the cause of things being thus ordered both as a whole and separately. The sun's ray penetrates through the aether, whether cold or dense – the air they call cold aether, and the sea and moisture dense aether – and this ray descends even to the depths and for this reason quickens all things." '8.28 All things live which partake of heat – this is why plants are living things – but all have not soul, which is a detached part of aether, partly the hot and partly the cold, for it partakes of cold aether too. Soul is distinct from life; it is immortal, since that from which it is detached is immortal. Living creatures are reproduced from one another by germination; there is no such thing as spontaneous generation from earth. The germ is a clot of brain containing hot vapour within it; and this, when brought to the womb, throws out, from the brain, ichor, fluid and blood, whence are formed flesh, sinews, bones, hairs, and the whole of the body, while soul and sense come from the vapour within. 8.29 First congealing in about forty days, it receives form and, according to the ratios of harmony, in seven, nine, or at the most ten, months, the mature child is brought forth. It has in it all the relations constituting life, and these, forming a continuous series, keep it together according to the ratios of harmony, each appearing at regulated intervals. Sense generally, and sight in particular, is a certain unusually hot vapour. This is why it is said to see through air and water, because the hot aether is resisted by the cold; for, if the vapour in the eyes had been cold, it would have been dissipated on meeting the air, its like. As it is, in certain lines he calls the eyes the portals of the sun. His conclusion is the same with regard to hearing and the other senses. 8.30 The soul of man, he says, is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason, and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals as well, but reason by man alone. The seat of the soul extends from the heart to the brain; the part of it which is in the heart is passion, while the parts located in the brain are reason and intelligence. The senses are distillations from these. Reason is immortal, all else mortal. The soul draws nourishment from the blood; the faculties of the soul are winds, for they as well as the soul are invisible, just as the aether is invisible. 8.31 The veins, arteries, and sinews are the bonds of the soul. But when it is strong and settled down into itself, reasonings and deeds become its bonds. When cast out upon the earth, it wanders in the air like the body. Hermes is the steward of souls, and for that reason is called Hermes the Escorter, Hermes the Keeper of the Gate, and Hermes of the Underworld, since it is he who brings in the souls from their bodies both by land and sea; and the pure are taken into the uppermost region, but the impure are not permitted to approach the pure or each other, but are bound by the Furies in bonds unbreakable. 8.32 The whole air is full of souls which are called genii or heroes; these are they who send men dreams and signs of future disease and health, and not to men alone, but to sheep also and cattle as well; and it is to them that purifications and lustrations, all divination, omens and the like, have reference. The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or to evil. Blest are the men who acquire a good soul; they can never be at rest, nor ever keep the same course two days together. 8.33 Right has the force of an oath, and that is why Zeus is called the God of Oaths. Virtue is harmony, and so are health and all good and God himself; this is why they say that all things are constructed according to the laws of harmony. The love of friends is just concord and equality. We should not pay equal worship to gods and heroes, but to the gods always, with reverent silence, in white robes, and after purification, to the heroes only from midday onwards. Purification is by cleansing, baptism and lustration, and by keeping clean from all deaths and births and all pollution, and abstaining from meat and flesh of animals that have died, mullets, gurnards, eggs and egg-sprung animals, beans, and the other abstinences prescribed by those who perform rites in the sanctuaries.' "8.34 According to Aristotle in his work On the Pythagoreans, Pythagoras counselled abstinence from beans either because they are like the genitals, or because they are like the gates of Hades . . . as being alone unjointed, or because they are injurious, or because they are like the form of the universe, or because they belong to oligarchy, since they are used in election by lot. He bade his disciples not to pick up fallen crumbs, either in order to accustom them not to eat immoderately, or because connected with a person's death; nay, even, according to Aristophanes, crumbs belong to the heroes, for in his Heroes he says:Nor taste ye of what falls beneath the board !Another of his precepts was not to eat white cocks, as being sacred to the Month and wearing suppliant garb – now supplication ranked with things good – sacred to the Month because they announce the time of day; and again white represents the nature of the good, black the nature of evil. Not to touch such fish as were sacred; for it is not right that gods and men should be allotted the same things, any more than free men and slaves." '8.35 Not to break bread; for once friends used to meet over one loaf, as the barbarians do even to this day; and you should not divide bread which brings them together; some give as the explanation of this that it has reference to the judgement of the dead in Hades, others that bread makes cowards in war, others again that it is from it that the whole world begins.He held that the most beautiful figure is the sphere among solids, and the circle among plane figures. Old age may be compared to everything that is decreasing, while youth is one with increase. Health means retention of the form, disease its destruction. of salt he said it should be brought to table to remind us of what is right; for salt preserves whatever it finds, and it arises from the purest sources, sun and sea.' "
9.18 2. XENOPHANESXenophanes, a native of Colophon, the son of Dexius, or, according to Apollodorus, of Orthomenes, is praised by Timon, whose words at all events are:Xenophanes, not over-proud, perverter of Homer, castigator.He was banished from his native city and lived at Zancle in Sicily and having joined the colony planted at Elea taught there. He also lived in Catana. According to some he was no man's pupil, according to others he was a pupil of Boton of Athens, or, as some say, of Archelaus. Sotion makes him a contemporary of Anaximander. His writings are in epic metre, as well as elegiacs and iambics attacking Hesiod and Homer and denouncing what they said about the gods. Furthermore he used to recite his own poems. It is stated that he opposed the views of Thales and Pythagoras, and attacked Epimenides also. He lived to a very great age, as his own words somewhere testify:" 9.20 He also said that the mass of things falls short of thought; and again that our encounters with tyrants should be as few, or else as pleasant, as possible. When Empedocles remarked to him that it is impossible to find a wise man, Naturally, he replied, for it takes a wise man to recognize a wise man. Sotion says that he was the first to maintain that all things are incognizable, but Sotion is in error.One of his poems is The Founding of Colophon, and another The Settlement of a Colony at Elea in Italy, making 2000 lines in all. He flourished about the 60th Olympiad. That he buried his sons with his own hands like Anaxagoras is stated by Demetrius of Phalerum in his work On Old Age and by Panaetius the Stoic in his book of Cheerfulness. He is believed to have been sold into slavery by ... and to have been set free by the Pythagoreans Parmeniscus and Orestades: so Favorinus in the first book of his Memorabilia. There was also another Xenophanes, of Lesbos, an iambic poet.Such were the sporadic philosophers. 9.21 3. PARMENIDESParmenides, a native of Elea, son of Pyres, was a pupil of Xenophanes (Theophrastus in his Epitome makes him a pupil of Anaximander). Parmenides, however, though he was instructed by Xenophanes, was no follower of his. According to Sotion he also associated with Ameinias the Pythagorean, who was the son of Diochaetas and a worthy gentleman though poor. This Ameinias he was more inclined to follow, and on his death he built a shrine to him, being himself of illustrious birth and possessed of great wealth; moreover it was Ameinias and not Xenophanes who led him to adopt the peaceful life of a student.He was the first to declare that the earth is spherical and is situated in the centre of the universe. He held that there were two elements, fire and earth, and that the former discharged the function of a craftsman, the latter of his material.' "
9.23 Hence Timon says of him:And the strength of high-souled Parmenides, of no diverse opinions, who introduced thought instead of imagination's deceit.It was about him that Plato wrote a dialogue with the title Parmenides or Concerning Ideas.He flourished in the 69th Olympiad. He is believed to have been the first to detect the identity of Hesperus, the evening-star, and Phosphorus, the morning-star; so Favorinus in the fifth book of his Memorabilia; but others attribute this to Pythagoras, whereas Callimachus holds that the poem in question was not the work of Pythagoras. Parmenides is said to have served his native city as a legislator: so we learn from Speusippus in his book On Philosophers. Also to have been the first to use the argument known as Achilles and the tortoise: so Favorinus tells us in his Miscellaneous History.There was also another Parmenides, a rhetorician who wrote a treatise on his art." "
9.62 He led a life consistent with this doctrine, going out of his way for nothing, taking no precaution, but facing all risks as they came, whether carts, precipices, dogs or what not, and, generally, leaving nothing to the arbitrament of the senses; but he was kept out of harm's way by his friends who, as Antigonus of Carystus tells us, used to follow close after him. But Aenesidemus says that it was only his philosophy that was based upon suspension of judgement, and that he did not lack foresight in his everyday acts. He lived to be nearly ninety.This is what Antigonus of Carystus says of Pyrrho in his book upon him. At first he was a poor and unknown painter, and there are still some indifferent torch-racers of his in the gymnasium at Elis." "
9.64 On being discovered once talking to himself, he answered, when asked the reason, that he was training to be good. In debate he was looked down upon by no one, for he could both discourse at length and also sustain a cross-examination, so that even Nausiphanes when a young man was captivated by him: at all events he used to say that we should follow Pyrrho in disposition but himself in doctrine; and he would often remark that Epicurus, greatly admiring Pyrrho's way of life, regularly asked him for information about Pyrrho; and that he was so respected by his native city that they made him high priest, and on his account they voted that all philosophers should be exempt from taxation.Moreover, there were many who emulated his abstention from affairs, so that Timon in his Pytho and in his Silli says:" "9.65 O Pyrrho, O aged Pyrrho, whence and howFound'st thou escape from servitude to sophists,Their dreams and vanities; how didst thou looseThe bonds of trickery and specious craft?Nor reck'st thou to inquire such things as these,What breezes circle Hellas, to what end,And from what quarter each may chance to blow.And again in the Conceits:This, Pyrrho, this my heart is fain to know,Whence peace of mind to thee doth freely flow,Why among men thou like a god dost show?Athens honoured him with her citizenship, says Diocles, for having slain the Thracian Cotys." 9.67 They say that, when septic salves and surgical and caustic remedies were applied to a wound he had sustained, he did not so much as frown. Timon also portrays his disposition in the full account which he gives of him to Pytho. Philo of Athens, a friend of his, used to say that he was most fond of Democritus, and then of Homer, admiring him and continually repeating the lineAs leaves on trees, such is the life of man.He also admired Homer because he likened men to wasps, flies, and birds, and would quote these verses as well:Ay, friend, die thou; why thus thy fate deplore?Patroclus too, thy better, is no more,and all the passages which dwell on the unstable purpose, vain pursuits, and childish folly of man.' "9.72 Furthermore, they find Xenophanes, Zeno of Elea, and Democritus to be sceptics: Xenophanes because he says,Clear truth hath no man seen nor e'er shall knowand Zeno because he would destroy motion, saying, A moving body moves neither where it is nor where it is not; Democritus because he rejects qualities, saying, Opinion says hot or cold, but the reality is atoms and empty space, and again, of a truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well. Plato, too, leaves the truth to gods and sons of gods, and seeks after the probable explanation. Euripides says:" '9.74 The Sceptics, then, were constantly engaged in overthrowing the dogmas of all schools, but enuntiated none themselves; and though they would go so far as to bring forward and expound the dogmas of the others, they themselves laid down nothing definitely, not even the laying down of nothing. So much so that they even refuted their laying down of nothing, saying, for instance, We determine nothing, since otherwise they would have been betrayed into determining; but we put forward, say they, all the theories for the purpose of indicating our unprecipitate attitude, precisely as we might have done if we had actually assented to them. Thus by the expression We determine nothing is indicated their state of even balance; which is similarly indicated by the other expressions, Not more (one thing than another),
9.79 They showed, then, on the basis of that which is contrary to what induces belief, that the probabilities on both sides are equal. Perplexities arise from the agreements between appearances or judgements, and these perplexities they distinguished under ten different modes in which the subjects in question appeared to vary. The following are the ten modes laid down.The first mode relates to the differences between living creatures in respect of those things which give them pleasure or pain, or are useful or harmful to them. By this it is inferred that they do not receive the same impressions from the same things, with the result that such a conflict necessarily leads to suspension of judgement. For some creatures multiply without intercourse, for example, creatures that live in fire, the Arabian phoenix and worms; others by union, such as man and the rest.' "9.80 Some are distinguished in one way, some in another, and for this reason they differ in their senses also, hawks for instance being most keen-sighted, and dogs having a most acute sense of smell. It is natural that if the senses, e.g. eyes, of animals differ, so also will the impressions produced upon them; so to the goat vine-shoots are good to eat, to man they are bitter; the quail thrives on hemlock, which is fatal to man; the pig will eat ordure, the horse will not.The second mode has reference to the natures and idiosyncrasies of men; for instance, Demophon, Alexander's butler, used to get warm in the shade and shiver in the sun." '9.81 Andron of Argos is reported by Aristotle to have travelled across the waterless deserts of Libya without drinking. Moreover, one man fancies the profession of medicine, another farming, and another commerce; and the same ways of life are injurious to one man but beneficial to another; from which it follows that judgement must be suspended.The third mode depends on the differences between the sense-channels in different cases, for an apple gives the impression of being pale yellow in colour to the sight, sweet in taste and fragrant in smell. An object of the same shape is made to appear different by differences in the mirrors reflecting it. Thus it follows that what appears is no more such and such a thing than something different.' "9.82 The fourth mode is that due to differences of condition and to changes in general; for instance, health, illness, sleep, waking, joy, sorrow, youth, old age, courage, fear, want, fullness, hate, love, heat, cold, to say nothing of breathing freely and having the passages obstructed. The impressions received thus appear to vary according to the nature of the conditions. Nay, even the state of madmen is not contrary to nature; for why should their state be so more than ours? Even to our view the sun has the appearance of standing still. And Theon of Tithorea used to go to bed and walk in his sleep, while Pericles' slave did the same on the housetop." '9.83 The fifth mode is derived from customs, laws, belief in myths, compacts between nations and dogmatic assumptions. This class includes considerations with regard to things beautiful and ugly, true and false, good and bad, with regard to the gods, and with regard to the coming into being and the passing away of the world of phenomena. Obviously the same thing is regarded by some as just and by others as unjust, or as good by some and bad by others. Persians think it not unnatural for a man to marry his daughter; to Greeks it is unlawful. The Massagetae, according to Eudoxus in the first book of his Voyage round the World, have their wives in common; the Greeks have not. The Cilicians used to delight in piracy; not so the Greeks. 9.84 Different people believe in different gods; some in providence, others not. In burying their dead, the Egyptians embalm them; the Romans burn them; the Paeonians throw them into lakes. As to what is true, then, let suspension of judgement be our practice.The sixth mode relates to mixtures and participations, by virtue of which nothing appears pure in and by itself, but only in combination with air, light, moisture, solidity, heat, cold, movement, exhalations and other forces. For purple shows different tints in sunlight, moonlight, and lamplight; and our own complexion does not appear the same at noon and when the sun is low. 9.85 Again, a rock which in air takes two men to lift is easily moved about in water, either because, being in reality heavy, it is lifted by the water or because, being light, it is made heavy by the air. of its own inherent property we know nothing, any more than of the constituent oils in an ointment.The seventh mode has reference to distances, positions, places and the occupants of the places. In this mode things which are thought to be large appear small, square things round; flat things appear to have projections, straight things to be bent, and colourless coloured. So the sun, on account of its distance, appears small, mountains when far away appear misty and smooth, but when near at hand rugged.' "9.86 Furthermore, the sun at its rising has a certain appearance, but has a dissimilar appearance when in mid-heaven, and the same body one appearance in a wood and another in open country. The image again varies according to the position of the object, and a dove's neck according to the way it is turned. Since, then, it is not possible to observe these things apart from places and positions, their real nature is unknowable.The eighth mode is concerned with quantities and qualities of things, say heat or cold, swiftness or slowness, colourlessness or variety of colours. Thus wine taken in moderation strengthens the body, but too much of it is weakening; and so with food and other things." '9.87 The ninth mode has to do with perpetuity, strangeness, or rarity. Thus earthquakes are no surprise to those among whom they constantly take place; nor is the sun, for it is seen every day. This ninth mode is put eighth by Favorinus and tenth by Sextus and Aenesidemus; moreover the tenth is put eighth by Sextus and ninth by Favorinus.The tenth mode rests on inter-relation, e.g. between light and heavy, strong and weak, greater and less, up and down. Thus that which is on the right is not so by nature, but is so understood in virtue of its position with respect to something else; for, if that change its position, the thing is no longer on the right. 9.88 Similarly father and brother are relative terms, day is relative to the sun, and all things relative to our mind. Thus relative terms are in and by themselves unknowable. These, then, are the ten modes of perplexity.But Agrippa and his school add to them five other modes, resulting respectively from disagreement, extension ad infinitum, relativity, hypothesis and reciprocal inference. The mode arising from disagreement proves, with regard to any inquiry whether in philosophy or in everyday life, that it is full of the utmost contentiousness and confusion. The mode which involves extension ad infinitum refuses to admit that what is sought to be proved is firmly established, because one thing furnishes the ground for belief in another, and so on ad infinitum. 9.105 We see that a man moves, and that he perishes; how it happens we do not know. We merely object to accepting the unknown substance behind phenomena. When we say a picture has projections, we are describing what is apparent; but if we say that it has no projections, we are then speaking, not of what is apparent, but of something else. This is what makes Timon say in his Python that he has not gone outside what is customary. And again in the Conceits he says:But the apparent is omnipotent wherever it goes;and in his work On the Senses, I do not lay it down that honey is sweet, but I admit that it appears to be so. 9.108 For in matters which are for us to decide we shall neither choose this nor shrink from that; and things which are not for us to decide but happen of necessity, such as hunger, thirst and pain, we cannot escape, for they are not to be removed by force of reason. And when the dogmatists argue that he may thus live in such a frame of mind that he would not shrink from killing and eating his own father if ordered to do so, the Sceptic replies that he will be able so to live as to suspend his judgement in cases where it is a question of arriving at the truth, but not in matters of life and the taking of precautions. Accordingly we may choose a thing or shrink from a thing by habit and may observe rules and customs. According to some authorities the end proposed by the Sceptics is insensibility; according to others, gentleness.
9.111 There are also reputed works of his extending to twenty thousand verses which are mentioned by Antigonus of Carystus, who also wrote his life. There are three silli in which, from his point of view as a Sceptic, he abuses every one and lampoons the dogmatic philosophers, using the form of parody. In the first he speaks in the first person throughout, the second and third are in the form of dialogues; for he represents himself as questioning Xenophanes of Colophon about each philosopher in turn, while Xenophanes answers him; in the second he speaks of the more ancient philosophers, in the third of the later, which is why some have entitled it the Epilogue.' "
10.5 Furthermore that he extolled Idomeneus, Herodotus, and Timocrates, who had published his esoteric doctrines, and flattered them for that very reason. Also that in his letters he wrote to Leontion, O Lord Apollo, my dear little Leontion, with what tumultuous applause we were inspired as we read your letter. Then again to Themista, the wife of Leonteus: I am quite ready, if you do not come to see me, to spin thrice on my own axis and be propelled to any place that you, including Themista, agree upon; and to the beautiful Pythocles he writes: I will sit down and await thy divine advent, my heart's desire. And, as Theodorus says in the fourth book of his work, Against Epicurus, in another letter to Themista he thinks he preaches to her." '10.6 It is added that he corresponded with many courtesans, and especially with Leontion, of whom Metrodorus also was enamoured. It is observed too that in his treatise On the Ethical End he writes in these terms: I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound and the pleasures of beautiful form. And in his letter to Pythocles: Hoist all sail, my dear boy, and steer clear of all culture. Epictetus calls him preacher of effeminacy and showers abuse on him.Again there was Timocrates, the brother of Metrodorus, who was his disciple and then left the school. He in the book entitled Merriment asserts that Epicurus vomited twice a day from over-indulgence, and goes on to say that he himself had much ado to escape from those notorious midnight philosophizings and the confraternity with all its secrets;' "
10.9 But these people are stark mad. For our philosopher has abundance of witnesses to attest his unsurpassed goodwill to all men – his native land, which honoured him with statues in bronze; his friends, so many in number that they could hardly be counted by whole cities, and indeed all who knew him, held fast as they were by the siren-charms of his doctrine, save Metrodorus of Stratonicea, who went over to Carneades, being perhaps burdened by his master's excessive goodness; the School itself which, while nearly all the others have died out, continues for ever without interruption through numberless reigns of one scholarch after another;" 10.119 Nor, again, will the wise man marry and rear a family: so Epicurus says in the Problems and in the De Natura. Occasionally he may marry owing to special circumstances in his life. Some too will turn aside from their purpose. Nor will he drivel, when drunken: so Epicurus says in the Symposium. Nor will he take part in politics, as is stated in the first book On Life; nor will he make himself a tyrant; nor will he turn Cynic (so the second book On Life tells us); nor will he be a mendicant. But even when he has lost his sight, he will not withdraw himself from life: this is stated in the same book. The wise man will also feel grief, according to Diogenes in the fifth book of his Epilecta.' " None |
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