The Seven Sages

The Seven Sages (hoi hepta sophoi) were a canonical company of statesmen, lawgivers, and counsellors of the archaic age — the seventh and sixth centuries BCE — whom later Greeks revered as the founders of their wisdom. Theirs was sophia in its older sense: not the theoretical knowledge of the philosophers to come, but sound judgment in law, politics, and the conduct of life, distilled into memorable sayings.

The canonical seven

The lists varied, but the version Plato gives in the Protagoras names: Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mytilene, Bias of Priene, Solon of Athens, Cleobulus of Lindos, Myson of Chenae, and Chilon of Sparta. Other writers swap in Periander, the ruler of Corinth, or Anacharsis the Scythian. Several were real and powerful men — Solon the great lawgiver of Athens, Pittacus and Periander rulers of their cities — remembered as much for what they did as for what they said.

Sages of the maxim

Each Sage was attached to a famous saying, and the whole Delphic tradition of pithy wisdom was traced back to them. To Chilon was given 'know thyself'; to Solon 'nothing in excess'; to Cleobulus 'measure is best' (metron ariston); to Pittacus 'know the right moment'; to Bias the gloomy verdict that 'most men are bad'. Plato tells how the Seven came together and offered the firstfruits of their wisdom to Apollo at Delphi, carving the two greatest maxims upon his temple.

From sage to philosopher

The Sages mark a threshold. Thales stands in both worlds: counted among the Seven for his practical genius, he was also the first to seek a natural first principle of all things, and so the first philosopher. With him the older wisdom of maxim and counsel opened into the theoretical inquiry of the Milesians and all that came after. The Greeks never forgot the debt — Plutarch imagined the Seven at table in his Dinner of the Seven Wise Men, and Diogenes Laertius opened his Lives of the philosophers with them: the wise men from whom philosophy itself was felt to descend.