Moralia, Part IV (Books X–XIV) — Plutarch
=========================================
Translation/edition: H. N. Fowler, H. Cherniss and W. C. Helmbold; the Goodwin edition
Language: English
Read in Plato Scroll: https://plato-scroll.com/s/plut-moralia-4/
This file: https://plato-scroll.com/text/plut-moralia-4.txt
Other editions of this work:
  - Greek text: https://plato-scroll.com/text/plut-moralia-4-e.txt
Sources and licences: https://plato-scroll.com/attribution.html
Numbers in [brackets] are the edition's reference loci (Stephanus, Bekker, book.line, page...). Superscript numerals refer to the Notes at the end.


## Love stories

[Amat. narr. 1] (771 E) AT Haliartus, in Boeotia, there was a girl of remarkable beauty, named Aristocleia, the daughter of Theophanes. She was wooed by Strato of Orchomenus and Callisthenes of Haliartus. Strato was the richer and was rather the more violently in love with the maiden; for he had seen her in Lebadeia bathing at the fountain called Hercynê in preparation for carrying a basket in a sacred procession in honour of Zeus the King. 772 But Callisthenes had the advantage, for he was a blood-relation of the girl. Theophanes was much perplexed about the matter, for he was afraid of Strato, who excelled nearly all the Boeotians in wealth and in family connexions, and he wished to submit the choice to Trophonius; but Strato had been persuaded by the maiden’s servants that she was more inclined towards him, so he asked that the choice be left to the bride-to be herself. But when Theophanes in the presence of everyone asked the maiden, and she chose Callisthenes, Bit was plain at once that Strato found the slight hard to bear. But he let two days go by and came to Theophanes and Callisthenes asking that the friendship between him and them be preserved, even though he had been deprived of the marriage by some jealous divinity. And they approved of what he said, so that they even invited him to the wedding-feast. But before he came he got ready a crowd of his friends and a considerable number of servants, who were scattered among the others present and were not noticed; but when the girl went, according to the ancestral custom, to the spring called Cissoessa to make the preliminary sacrifice to the nymphs, then his men who were in ambush all rushed out at once and seized her. Strato also had hold of the maiden; and naturally Callisthenes and his supporters in turn took hold of her and held on until, although they did not know it at the time, she died in their hands as they pulled against each other. Callisthenes immediately disappeared, whether by committing suicide or by going away as an exile from Boeotia; at any rate nobody could tell what had happened to him. But Strato slew himself in sight of all upon the body of the maiden.
[Amat. narr. 2] II DA man named Pheidon, who was striving to make himself ruler of the Peloponnesians and wished his own native city of Argos to be the leader of all the other states, plotted first against the Corinthians. He sent and asked of them the thousand young men who were the best in vigour and valour; and they sent the thousand, putting Dexander in command of them. Now Pheidon intended to make an onslaught upon these young men, that Corinth might be weakened and he might have the city in his power, for he considered that it would be the most advantageous bulwark of the whole Peloponnesus, and he confided this matter to some of his friends, Eamong whom was Habron. Now he was a friend of Dexander and told him of the plot, so before the onslaught was made the thousand young men escaped safely to Corinth; but Pheidon tried to discover the betrayer of his plot and searched for him with great care. So Habron was frightened and fled to Corinth with his wife and his servants, settling in Melissus, a village in Corinthian territory. There he begot a son whom he called Melissus from the name of the place. This Melissus had a son named Actaeon, the handsomest and most modest youth of his age, who had many lovers, chief of whom was Archias, of the family of the Heracleidae, in wealth and general influence the most outstanding man in Corinth. Now when he could not gain the boy by persuasion, he determined to carry him off by force. So he got together a crowd of friends and servants, went as in a drunken frolic to the house of Melissus, and tried to take the boy away. But his father and his friends resisted, the neighbours also ran out and pulled against the assailants, 773 and so Actaeon was pulled to pieces and killed; the assailants thereupon went away. But Melissus took his son’s body and exhibited it in the market-place of the Corinthians, demanding the punishment of the men who had done the deed; but the Corinthians merely pitied him and did nothing further. So, being unsuccessful, he went away and waited for the Isthmian festival, when he went up upon the temple of Poseidon, shouted accusations against the Bacchiadae, and reminded the people of his father Habron’s benefactions, whereupon, calling upon the gods to avenge him, he threw himself down from the rocks. Not long afterwards the city was afflicted by drought and pestilence, and when the Corinthians consulted the oracle concerning relief, the god replied that the wrath of Poseidon would not relax until they inflicted punishment for the death of Actaeon. Archias knew of this, for he was himself one of those sent to consult the oracle, and voluntarily refrained from returning to Corinth. Instead he sailed to Sicily and founded Syracuse. There he became the father of two daughters, Ortygia and Syracusa, and was treacherously murdered by Telephus, who had been his beloved and had sailed with him to Sicily in command of a ship.
[Amat. narr. 3] III There was a poor man named Scedasus who lived at Leuctra; that is a village of the country of the Thespians. This man had two daughters, called Hippo and Miletia, or, as some say, Theano and Euxippê. Now Scedasus was a worthy man and friendly to strangers, though he was not very well off. So when two Spartan youths came to his house he received them gladly. They fell in love with the maidens, but were restrained from overboldness by the worthy character of Scedasus, and the next day went away to Delphi, for that was the place for which they were bound. And when they had consulted the god about the matters which concerned them, they went back again towards home, and passing through Boeotia they stopped again at the house of Scedasus. Now he, as it happened, was not at Leuctra; but his daughters, in accordance with their usual custom, received the strangers, who, finding the maidens unprotected, ravished them; and then, seeing that they were exceedingly distressed by the violent wrong they had suffered, they killed them, threw their bodies into a well, and went away. When Scedasus came home, he missed the girls, but found everything that he had left in the house undisturbed, and so he did not know what to make of it all until, because his dog kept whimpering and often running up to him and from him to the well, he guessed the truth, and so drew up the bodies of his daughters. And finding out from his neighbours that on the previous day they had seen going into his house the Lacedaemonians who had been entertained there shortly before, he guessed that they had done the deed, because during their previous visit they had constantly been praising the girls and talking of the happiness of their future husbands.
[Amat. narr. 3b] Scedasus set out for Lacedaemon to see the ephors, and when he was in the territory of Argos night came upon him, so he put up at an inn, and at the same inn was another elderly man, a native of the city of Oreus in the territory of Hestiaea. Scedasus heard him groaning and uttering curses against the Lacedaemonians, so he asked him what harm the Lacedaemonians had done him. Then he proceeded to tell that he was a subject of Sparta and that Aristodemus, who had been sent by the Lacedaemonians to Oreus as governor, had shown himself very lawless and cruel. “For,” said he, “he fell in love with my young son and, when he could not gain him by persuasion, he tried to take him from the palaestra by force. But the teacher of gymnastics interfered, and many young fellows came out to help, so for the time being Aristodemus went away; but the next day he manned a ship of war, seized the boy, sailed from Oreus to the opposite shore, and tried to rape him; then when the boy would not submit, he cut his throat and killed him, after which he went back to Oreus and gave a dinner-party. 774 But as for me,” he said, “I learned of the deed, performed the funeral rites over the body, then went to Sparta and had an audience with the ephors; but they paid no attention to me.” When Scedasus heard this he was disheartened, for he suspected that the Spartans would pay no attention to him either; and he in turn told the stranger of his own misfortune. Then the stranger advised him not even to go to see the ephors, but to turn back to Boeotia and build his daughters’ tomb. Scedasus, however, did not take this advice, but went to Sparta and spoke with the ephors. They paid no attention to him, so he hurried to the kings, and from them he went up to every one of the citizens and told his tale of woe. And when nothing did any good, he ran through the midst of the city stretching up his hands towards the sun, and again he beat upon the ground and summoned up the Erinyes, and finally he put an end to his life.
[Amat. narr. 3c] Later, however, the Lacedaemonians certainly paid the penalty. For when they were rulers of all the Greeks and had placed their garrisons in the cities, Epaminondas the Theban first slaughtered the garrison of the Lacedaemonians in his own city, and when thereupon the Lacedaemonians made war upon the Thebans, the latter met them at Leuctra, thinking it a place of good omen, because at an earlier time they had gained their freedom there, when Amphictyon, having been driven into exile by Sthenelus, came to the city of the Thebans and, finding them tributaries of the Chalcidians, freed them from the tribute by killing Chalcodon, king of the Euboeans. Now it happened that the utter defeat of the Lacedaemonians took place precisely in the vicinity of the tombstone of the daughters of Scedasus. And the story goes that before the battle Pelopidas, one of the generals of the Theban army, was disturbed by some omens which were considered unfavourable and that in his sleep Scedasus came and stood over him and told him to be of good courage, for the Lacedaemonians were coming to Leuctra to pay the penalty to him and his daughters; and he enjoined upon him one day before fighting the Lacedaemonians to make ready a white colt and sacrifice it at the tomb of the maidens. So Pelopidas, while the Lacedaemonians were still in camp at Tegea, sent some men to Leuctra to find out about this tomb, and when he learned about it from the inhabitants of the place, he led out his army with confidence and was victorious.
[Amat. narr. 4] IV Phocus was by birth a Boeotian, for he was from the town of Glisas, and he was the father of Callirhoë, who excelled in beauty and modesty. She was wooed by thirty young men, the most highly esteemed in Boeotia; but Phocus found one reason after another for putting off her marriage, for he was afraid that violence would be done to him; at last, however, he yielded to their demands, but asked to leave the choice to the Pythian oracle. The suitors were incensed by the proposal, rushed upon Phocus, and killed him. In the confusion the maiden got away and fled through the country, but the young men pursued her. She came upon some farmers making a threshing-floor, and found safety with them, for the farmers hid her in the grain, and so her pursuers passed by. But she waited in safety until the festival of the Pamboeotia, when she went to Coroneia, took her seat on the altar of Athena Itonia, and told of the lawless act of the suitors, giving the name and birthplace of each. So the Boeotians pitied the maid and were angry with the young men. When they learned of this, they fled for refuge to Orchomenus, and when the Orchomenians refused to receive them, they forced their way into Hippotae, 775 a village lying on the slope of Mount Helicon between Thisbê and Coroneia. There they were received. Then the Thebans sent and demanded the slayers of Phocus, and when the people of Hippotae refused to deliver them, the Thebans, along with the rest of the Boeotians, took the field under the command of Phoedus, who at that time administered the government of Thebes. They besieged the village, which was well fortified, and when they had overcome the inhabitants by thirst, they took the murderers and stoned them to death and made slaves of the villagers; then they pulled down the walls and the houses and divided the land between the people of Thisbê and of Coroneia. It is said that in the night, before the capture of Hippotae, there was heard many times from Helicon a voice of someone saying “I am here,” and that the thirty suitors recognized the voice as that of Phocus. It is said also that on the day when they were stoned to death the old man’s monument at Glisas ran with saffron; and that as Phoedus, the ruler and general of the Thebans, was returning from the battle, he received the news of the birth of a daughter and, thinking it of good omen, he named her Nicostrata.
[Amat. narr. 5] V Alcippus was a Lacedaemonian by birth; he married Damocrita and became the father of two daughters. Now since he was a most excellent counsellor to the state and conducted affairs to the satisfaction of the Lacedaemonians, he was envied by his political opponents, who misled the ephors by false statements to the effect that Alcippus wished to destroy the constitution, and they thereby brought about his exile. So he departed from Sparta, but when his wife Damocrita, with their daughters, wished to follow her husband, she was prevented from doing so, and moreover his property was confiscated, that the girls might not be provided with dowries. And when even so there were some suitors who wooed the girls on account of their father’s high character, his enemies got a bill passed forbidding anyone to woo the girls, saying that their mother Damocrita had often prayed that her daughters might speedily bear sons who should grow up to be their father’s avengers. Damocrita, being harassed on all sides, waited for a general festival in which married women along with unmarried girls, slaves, and infant children took part, and the wives of those in authority passed the whole night in a great hall by themselves. Then she buckled a sword about her waist, took the girls, and went by night into the sacred place, waiting for the moment when all the women were performing the mysteries in the hall. Then, after the entrances had all been closed, she heaped a great quantity of wood against the doors (this had been prepared by the others for the sacrifice belonging to the festival) and set it on fire. And when the men came running up to save their wives, Damocrita killed her daughters with the sword and then herself over their dead bodies. But the Lacedaemonians, not knowing how to vent their anger, threw the bodies of Damocrita and her daughters out beyond the boundaries; and they say that because the god was offended by this the great earthquake came upon the Lacedaemonians.

## A philosopher ought to converse especially with men in power

[Max. cum princ. 1] 776 1 1 In clasping Sorcanus to your bosom, in prizing, pursuing, welcoming, and cultivating his friendship — a friendship which will prove useful and fruitful to many in private and to many in public life — you are acting like a man who loves what is noble, who is public-spirited and is a friend of mankind, not, as some people say, like one who is merely ambitious for himself. No, on the contrary, the man who is ambitious for himself and afraid of every whisper is just the one who avoids and fears being called a persistent and servile attendant on those in power. For what does a man say who is an attendant upon philosophy and stands in need of it? “Let me change from Pericles or Cato and become Simo the cobbler or Dionysius the schoolmaster, in order that the philosopher may converse with me and sit beside me as Socrates did with Pericles.” And while it is true that Ariston of Chios, when the sophists spoke ill of him for talking with all who wished it, said, “I wish even the beasts could understand words which incite to virtue,” yet as for us, shall we avoid becoming intimate with powerful men and rulers, as if they were wild and savage?
[Max. cum princ. 1b] The teaching of philosophy is not, if I may use the words of Pindar, “a sculptor to carve statues doomed to stand idly on their pedestals and no more”; no, it strives to make everything that it touches active and efficient and alive, it inspires men with impulses which urge to action, with judgements that lead them towards what is useful, with preferences for things that are honourable, with wisdom and greatness of mind joined to gentleness and conservatism, and because they possess these qualities, men of public spirit are more eager to converse with the prominent and powerful. Certainly if a physician is a man of high ideals, he will be better pleased to cure the eye which sees for many and watches over many, and a philosopher will be more eager to attend upon a soul which he sees is solicitous for many and is under obligation to be wise and self-restrained and just in behalf of many. For surely, if he were skilled in discovering and collecting water, as they say Heracles and many of the ancients were, he would not delight in digging the swineherd’s fount of Arethusa in a most distant spot “by the Crow’s Rock,” but in uncovering the unfailing sources of some river for cities and camps and the plantations of kings and sacred groves. So we hear Homer calling Minos “the great god’s oaristes,” which means, according to Plato, “familiar friend and pupil.” For they did not think that pupils of the gods should be plain citizens or stay-at homes or idlers, but kings, from whose good counsel, justice, goodness, and high-mindedness, if those qualities were implanted in them, all who had to do with them would receive benefit and profit. Of the plant eryngium they say that if one goat take it in its mouth, first that goat itself and then the entire herd stands still until the herdsman comes and takes the plant out, such pungency, like a fire which spreads over everything near it and scatters itself abroad, is possessed by the emanations of its potency. Certainly the teachings of the philosopher, if they take hold of one person in private station who enjoys abstention from affairs and circumscribes himself by his bodily comforts, as by a circle drawn with geometrical compasses, 777 do not spread out to others, but merely create calmness and quiet in that one man, then dry up and disappear. But if these teachings take possession of a ruler, a statesman, and a man of action and fill him with love of honour, through one he benefits many, as Anaxagoras did by associating with Pericles, Plato with Dion, and Pythagoras with the chief men of the Italiote Greeks. Cato himself sailed from his army to visit Athenodorus; and Scipio sent for Panaetius when he himself was sent out by the senate
[Max. cum princ. 1c] to view the violence and lawfulness of men,
[Max. cum princ. 1d] as Poseidonius says. Now what should Panaetius have said? “If you were Bato or Polydeuces or some other person in private station who wished to run away from the midst of cities and quietly in some corner solve or quibble over the syllogisms of philosophers, I would gladly welcome you and consort with you; but since you are the son of Aemilius Paulus, who was twice consul, and the grandson of Scipio Africanus who overcame Hannibal the Carthaginian, shall I, therefore, not converse with you?”
[Max. cum princ. 2] 2 1 But the statement that there are two kinds of speech, one residing in the mind, the gift of Hermes the Leader, and the other residing in the utterance, merely an attendant and instrument, is threadbare; we will let it come under the heading
[Max. cum princ. 2b] Yes, this I knew before Theognis’ birth.
[Max. cum princ. 2c] But that would not disturb us, because the aim and end of both the speech in the mind and the speech in the utterance is friendship, towards oneself and towards one’s neighbour respectively; for the former, ending through philosophy in virtue, makes a man harmonious with himself, free from blame from himself, and full of peace and friendliness towards himself.
[Max. cum princ. 2d] Faction is not, nor is ill-starred strife, to be found in his members,
[Max. cum princ. 2e] there is no passion disobedient to reason, no strife of impulse with impulse, no opposition of argument to argument, there is no rough tumult and pleasure on the border-line, as it were, between desire and repentance, but everything is gentle and friendly and makes each man gain the greatest number of benefits and be pleased with himself. But Pindar says that the Muse of oral utterance was “not greedy of gain, nor toilsome” formerly, and I believe she is not so now either, but because of lack of education and of good taste the “common Hermes” has become venal and ready for hire. For it cannot be that, whereas Aphroditê was angry with the daughters of Propoetus because
[Max. cum princ. 2f] First they were to devise for young men a shower of abominations,
[Max. cum princ. 2g] yet Urania, Calliopê, and Clio are pleased with those who pollute speech for money. No, I think the works and gifts of the Muses are more conducive to friendship than are those of Aphroditê. For approbation, which some consider the end and purpose of speech, is admired as the beginning and seed of friendship; but most people rather bestow reputation altogether by goodwill, believing that we praise those only whom we love. But just as Ixion slipped into the cloud when he was pursuing Hera, so these people seize upon a deceptive, showy, and shifting appearance in lieu of friendship. But the man of sense, if he is engaged in active political life, will ask for so much reputation as will inspire confidence and thereby give him power for affairs; for it is neither pleasant nor easy to benefit people if they are unwilling, and confidence makes them willing. For just as light is more a blessing to those who see than to those who are seen, so reputation is more a blessing to those who are aware of it than to those who are not overlooked. But he who has withdrawn from public affairs, who communes with himself and thinks happiness is in quiet and uninterrupted leisure, he, “being chaste, worships afar off” the reputation which is popular and widespread in crowds and theatres, 778 even as Hippolytus worshipped Aphroditê, but even he does not despise reputation among the right-minded and estimable; but wealth, reputation as a leader, or power in his friendships he does not pursue, however neither does he avoid these qualities if they are associated with a temperate character; nor, for that matter, does he pursue those among the youths who are fine-looking and handsome, but those who are teachable and orderly and fond of learning; nor does the beauty of those whom he sees endowed with freshness, charm, and the flower of youth frighten the philosopher or scare him off and drive him away from those who are worthy of his attention. So, then, if the dignity that befits leadership and power are associated with a man of moderation and culture, the philosopher will not hold aloof from making him a friend and cherishing him, nor will he be afraid of being called a courtier and a toady.
[Max. cum princ. 2h] For those of men who too much Cypris shun
Are mad as those who follow her too much;
[Max. cum princ. 2i] and so are those who take that attitude towards friendship with famous men and leaders. Hence, while the philosopher who abstains from public affairs will not avoid such men, yet one who is interested in public life will even go to them with open arms; he will not annoy them against their will, nor will he pitch his camp in their ears with inopportune sophistical disquisitions, but when they wish it, he will be glad to converse and spend his leisure with them and eager to associate with them.
[Max. cum princ. 3] 3 1 The field I sow is twelve days’ journey round;
[Max. cum princ. 3b] Berecynthian land; if this speaker was not merely a lover of agriculture but also a lover of his fellow men, he would find more pleasure in sowing the field which could feed so many men than in sowing that left plot of Antisthenes’ which would hardly have been big enough for Autolycus to wrestle in; but if [he meant]: “I sow all this in order that I may subjugate the whole inhabited world,” I deprecate the sentiment. And yet Epicurus, who places happiness in the deepest quiet, as in a sheltered and landlocked harbour, says that it is not only nobler, but also pleasanter, to confer than to receive benefits.
[Max. cum princ. 3c] For chiefest joy doth gracious kindness give.
[Max. cum princ. 3d] Surely he was wise who gave the Graces the names Aglaïa (Splendour), Euphrosynê (Gladness), and Thalia (Good-cheer); for the delight and joy are greater and purer for him who does the gracious act. And therefore people are often ashamed to receive benefits, but are always delighted to confer them; and they who make those men good upon whom many depend confer benefits upon many; and, on the contrary, the slanderers, backbiters, and flatterers who constantly corrupt rulers or kings or tyrants, are driven away and punished by everyone, as if they were putting deadly poison, not into a single cup, but into the public fountain which, as they see, everyone uses. Therefore, just as people laugh when the flatterers of Callias are ridiculed in comedy, those flatterers of whom Eupolis says
[Max. cum princ. 3e] No fire, no, and no weapon,
Be it of bronze or of iron,
Keeps them from flocking to dinner,
[Max. cum princ. 3f] but the friends and intimates of the tyrant Apollodorus, of Phalaris, and of Dionysius they bastinadoed, tortured, and burned, and made them for ever polluted and accursed, since the former had done harm to one man, but the latter through one, the ruler, to many. So the philosophers who associate with persons in private station make those individuals inoffensive, harmless, and gentle towards themselves, but he who removes evil from the character of a ruler, For directs his mind towards what is right, philosophizes, as it were, in the public interest and corrects the general power by which all are governed. States pay reverence and honour to their priests because they ask blessings from the gods, not for themselves, their friends, and their families alone, but for all the citizens in common; and yet the priests do not make the gods givers of blessings, for they are such by nature; the priests merely invoke them. But philosophers who associate with rulers do make them more just, more moderate, and more eager to do good, so that it is very likely that they are also happier.
[Max. cum princ. 4] 4 1 779 And I think a lyre-maker would be more willing and eager to make a lyre if he knew that the future owner of that lyre was to build the walls of the city of Thebes, as Amphion did, or, like Thales, was to put an end to faction among the Lacedaemonians by the music of his charms and his exhortations; and a carpenter likewise in making a tiller would be more pleased if he knew that it would steer the flagship of Themistocles fighting in defence of Hellas, or that of Pompey when he overcame the pirates. What, then, do you imagine the philosopher thinks about his teaching, when he reflects that the statesman or ruler who accepts it will be a public blessing by dispensing justice, making laws, punishing the wicked, and making the orderly and the good to prosper? And I imagine that a clever shipbuilder, too, would take greater pleasure in making a tiller if he knew that it was to steer the Argo, “the concern of all,” and a carpenter would not be so eager to make a plough or a wagon as the axones on which the laws of Solon were to be engraved. And surely the teachings of philosophers, if they are firmly engraved in the souls of rulers and statesmen and control them, acquire the force of laws; and that is why Plato sailed to Sicily, in the hope that his teachings would produce laws and actions in the government of Dionysius; but he found Dionysius, like a book which is erased and written over, already befouled with stains and incapable of losing the dye of his tyranny, since by length of time it had become deeply fixed and hard to wash out. No, it is while men are still at their best that they should accept the worthy teachings.

## To an uneducated ruler

[Ad princ. iner. 1] (779 D) 1 1 Plato was asked by the Cyrenaeans to compose a set of laws and leave it for them and to give them a well-ordered government; but he refused, saying that it was difficult to make laws for the Cyrenaeans because they were so prosperous.
[Ad princ. iner. 1b] For nothing is so haughty
harsh, and ungovernable
by nature as a man,
when he possesses what he regards as prosperity. And that is why it is difficult to give advice to rulers in matters of government, for they are afraid to accept reason as a ruler over them, lest it curtail the advantage of their power by making them slaves to duty. For they are not familiar with the saying of Theopompus, the King of Sparta who first made the Ephors associates of the Kings; then, when his wife reproached him because he would hand down to his children a less powerful office than that which he had received he said: “Nay, more powerful rather, inasmuch as it is more secure.” For by giving up that which was excessive and absolute in it he avoided both the envy and the danger. And yet Theopompus, by diverting to a different body the vast stream of his royal authority, deprived himself of as much as he gave to others. But when philosophical reason derived from philosophy has been established as the ruler’s coadjutor and guardian, it removes the hazardous element from his power, as a surgeon removes that which threatens a patient’s health and leaves that which is sound.
[Ad princ. iner. 2] 2 1 But most kings and rulers are so foolish as to act like unskilful sculptors, who think their colossal figures look large and imposing if they are modelled with their feet far apart, their muscles tense, and their mouths wide open. 780 For these rulers seem by heaviness of voice, harshness of expression, truculence of manner, and unsociability in their way of living to be imitating the dignity and majesty of the princely station, although in fact they are not at all different from colossal statues which have a heroic and godlike form on the outside, but inside are full of clay, stone, and lead, — except that in the case of the statues the weight of those substances keeps them permanently upright without leaning, whereas uneducated generals and rulers are often rocked and capsized by the ignorance within them; for since the foundation upon which they have built up their lofty power is not laid straight, they lean with it and lose their balance. But just as a rule, if it is made rigid and inflexible, makes other things straight when they are fitted to it and laid alongside it, in like manner the sovereign must first gain command of himself, must regulate his own soul and establish his own character, then make his subjects fit his pattern. For one who is falling cannot hold others up, nor can one who is ignorant teach, nor the uncultivated impart culture, nor the disorderly make order, nor can he rule who is under no rule. But most people foolishly believe that the first advantage of ruling is freedom from being ruled. And indeed the King of the Persians used to think that everyone was a slave except his own wife, whose master he ought to have been most of all.
[Ad princ. iner. 3] 3 1 Who, then, shall rule the ruler? The
Law, the king of all,
Both mortals and immortals,
[Ad princ. iner. 3b] as Pindar says — not law written outside him in books or on wooden tablets or the like, but reason endowed with life within him, always abiding with him and watching over him and never leaving his soul without its leadership. For example, the King of the Persians had one of his chamberlains assigned to the special duty of entering his chamber in the morning and saying to him: “Arise, O King, and consider matters which the great Oromasdes wished you to consider.” But the educated and wise ruler has within him the voice which always thus speaks to him and exhorts him. Indeed Polemo said that love was “the service of the gods for the care and the preservation of the young”; one might more truly say that rulers serve god for the care and preservation of men, in order that of the glorious gifts which the gods give to men they may distribute some and safeguard others.
[Ad princ. iner. 3c] Dost thou behold this lofty, boundless sky
Which holds the earth enwrapped in soft embrace?
[Ad princ. iner. 3d] The sky sends down the beginnings of the appropriate seeds, and the earth causes them to sprout up; some are made to grow by showers and some by winds, and some by the warmth of stars and moon; but it is the sun which adorns all things and mingles in all things what men call the “love charm” which is derived from himself. But these gifts and blessings, so excellent and great, which the gods bestow cannot be rightly enjoyed nor used without law and justice and a ruler. Now justice is the aim and end of law, but law is the work of the ruler, and the ruler is the image of God who orders all things. Such a ruler needs no Pheidias nor Polycleitus nor Myron to model him, but by his virtue he forms himself in the likeness of God and thus creates a statue most delightful of all to behold and most worthy of divinity. Now just as in the heavens God has established as a most beautiful image of himself the sun and the moon, so in states a ruler
[Ad princ. iner. 3e] who in God’s likeness
Righteous decisions upholds,
[Ad princ. iner. 3f] that is to say, one who, possessing God’s wisdom, establishes, as his likeness and luminary, intelligence in place of sceptre or thunderbolt or trident, with which attributes some rulers represent themselves in sculpture and painting, thus causing their folly to arouse hostile feelings, because they claim what they cannot attain. For God visits his wrath upon those who imitate his thunders, lightnings, and sunbeams, 781 but with those who emulate his virtue and make themselves like unto his goodness and mercy he is well pleased and therefore causes them to prosper and gives them a share of his own equity, justice, truth, and gentleness, than which nothing is more divine, — nor fire, nor light, nor the course of the sun, nor the risings and settings of the stars, nor eternity and immortality. For God enjoys felicity, not through the length of his life, but through the ruling quality of his virtue; for this is divine; and excellent also is that part of virtue which submits to rule.
[Ad princ. iner. 4] 4 1 And it is true that Anaxarchus, trying to console Alexander in his agony of mind over his killing of Cleitus, said that the reason why Justice and Right are seated by the side of Zeus is that men may consider every act of a king as righteous and just; but neither correct nor helpful were the means he took in endeavouring to heal the king’s remorse for his sin, by encouraging him to further acts of the same sort. But if a guess about this matter is proper, I should say that Zeus does not have Justice to sit beside him, but is himself Justice and Right and the oldest and most perfect of laws; but the ancients state it in that way in their writings and teachings, to imply that without Justice not even Zeus can rule well. “She is a virgin,” according to Hesiod, uncorrupted, dwelling with reverence, self-restraint, and helpfulness; and therefore kings are called “reverend,” for it is fitting that those be most revered who have least to fear. But the ruler should have more fear of doing than of suffering evil; for the former is the cause of the latter; and that kind of fear on the part of the ruler is humane and not ignoble to be afraid on behalf of his subjects lest they may without his knowledge suffer harm,
[Ad princ. iner. 4b] Just as the dogs keep their watch, toiling hard for the flocks in the sheepfold,
[Ad princ. iner. 4c] When they have heard a ferocious wild beast,
[Ad princ. iner. 4d] not for their own sake but for the sake of those whom they are guarding. Epameinondas, when all the Thebans crowded to a certain festival and gave themselves utterly to drink, went alone and patrolled the armouries and the walls, saying that he was keeping sober and awake that the others might be free to be drunk and asleep. And Cato at Utica issued a proclamation to send all the other survivors of the defeat to the seashore; he saw them aboard ship, prayed that they might have a good voyage, then returned home and killed himself; thereby teaching us in whose behalf the ruler ought to feel fear and what the ruler ought to despise. But Clearchus, tyrant of Pontus, used to crawl into a chest like a snake and sleep there, and Aristodemus of Argos would mount to an upper room entered by a trap-door, then put his bed on the door and sleep in it with his mistress; and the girl’s mother would take the ladder away from below and set it up again in the morning. How do you imagine he must have shuddered at the theatre, the city hall, the senate-chamber, the convivial feast, he who had made his bedchamber a prison cell? For in reality kings fear for their subjects, but tyrants fear their subjects; and therefore they increase their fear as they increase their power, for when they have more subjects they have more men to fear.
[Ad princ. iner. 5] 5 1 For it is neither probable nor fitting that God is, as some philosophers say, mingled with matter, which is altogether passive, and with things, which are subject to countless necessities, chances, and changes. On the contrary, somewhere up above in contact with that nature which, in accordance with the same principles, remains always as it is, established, as Plato says, upon pedestals of holiness, proceeding in accordance with nature in his straight course, he reaches his goal. And as the sun, his most beautiful image, appears in the heavens as his mirrored likeness to those who are able to see him in it, just so he has established in states the light of justice and of knowledge of himself 782 as an image which the blessed and the wise copy with the help of philosophy, modelling themselves after the most beautiful of all things. But nothing implants this disposition in men except the teachings of philosophy, to keep us from having the same experience as Alexander, who, seeing Diogenes at Corinth, admiring him for his natural gifts, and being astonished by his spirit and greatness, said: “If I were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes,” by which he almost said that he was weighed down by his good fortune, glory, and power which kept him from virtue and left him no leisure, and that he envied the cynic’s cloak and wallet because Diogenes was invincible and secure against capture by means of these, not, as he was himself, by means of arms, horses, and pikes. So by being a philosopher he was able to become Diogenes in disposition and yet to remain Alexander in outward fortunes, and to become all the more Diogenes because he was Alexander, since for his great ship of fortune, tossed by high winds and surging sea, he needed heavy ballast and a great pilot.
[Ad princ. iner. 6] 6 1 For in weak and lowly private persons folly is combined with lack of power and, therefore, results in no wrongdoing, just as in bad dreams a feeling of distress disturbs the spirit, and it cannot rouse itself in accordance with its desires; but power when wickedness is added to it brings increased vigour to the passions. For the saying of Dionysius is true; he said, namely, that he enjoyed his power most when he did quickly what he wished. There is indeed great danger that he who can do what he wishes may wish what he ought not to do:
[Ad princ. iner. 6b] Straightway then was the word, and the deed was forthwith accomplished.
[Ad princ. iner. 6c] Wickedness, when by reason of power it possesses rapid speed, forces every passion to emerge, making of anger murder, of love adultery, of covetousness confiscation.
[Ad princ. iner. 6d] Straightway then was the word,
[Ad princ. iner. 6e] and the offender is done away with; suspicion arises, the man who is slandered is put to death. But as the physicists say that the lightning breaks forth later than the thunder, as the flowing of blood is later than the wound, but is seen sooner, since the hearing waits for the sound, whereas the sight goes to meet the light; so in governments punishments come before the accusations and convictions are pronounced before the proofs are given.
[Ad princ. iner. 6f] For now the spirit yields and holds no longer firm,
As yields the anchor’s fluke in sand when waves are high,
[Ad princ. iner. 6g] unless the weight of reason presses upon power and holds it down, and the ruler imitates the sun, which, when it mounts up in the northern sky and reaches its greatest altitude, has the least motion, thus by greater slowness ensuring the safety of its course.
[Ad princ. iner. 7] 7 1 Nor is it possible in positions of power for vices to be concealed. Epileptics, if they go up to a high place and move about, grow dizzy and reel, which makes their disease evident, and just so Fortune by such things as riches, reputations, or offices exalts uneducated and uncultured men a little and then, as soon as they have risen high, gives them a conspicuous fall; or, to use a better simile, just as in a number of vessels you could not tell which is whole and which is defective, but when you pour liquid into them the leak appears, just so corrupt souls cannot contain power, but leak out in acts of desire, anger, imposture, and bad taste. But what is the use of saying these things, when even the slightest shortcomings in men of conspicuous reputation are made the subject of calumny? Too much wine caused slander against Cimon, too much sleep against Scipio, Lucullus was ill spoken of because his dinners were too expensive . . .

## Whether an old man should engage in public affairs

[An seni 1] (783 B) 1 1 We are well aware, Euphanes, that you, who are an outspoken admirer of Pindar, often repeat, as well and convincingly expressed, these lines of his,
[An seni 1b] When contests are before us, an excuse
Casts down our manhood into abysmal gloom.
[An seni 1c] But inasmuch as our shrinking from the contests of political life and our various infirmities furnish innumerable excuses and offer us finally, like “the move from the sacred line” in draughts, old age; and since it is more especially because of this last that these excuses seem to blunt and baffle our ambition and begin to convince us that there is a fitting limit of age, not only to the athlete’s career, but to the statesman’s as well, CI therefore think it my duty to discuss with you the thoughts which I am continually going over in my own mind concerning the activity of old men in public affairs, that neither of us shall desert the long companionship in the journey which we have thus far made together, and neither shall renounce public life, which is, as it were, a familiar friend of our own years, only to change and adopt another which is unfamiliar and for becoming familiar with which and making it our own time does not suffice, but that we shall abide by the choice which we made in the beginning when we fixed the same end and aim for life as for honourable life — unless indeed we were in the short time remaining to us to prove that the long time we have lived was spent in vain and for no honourable purpose.
[An seni 1d] For the fact is that tyranny, as someone said to Dionysius, is not an honourable winding-sheet; no, and in his case its continuance made his unjust monarchy a more complete misfortune. And at a later time, at Corinth, when Diogenes saw the son of Dionysius no longer a tyrant but a private citizen, he very aptly said, “How little you deserve your present fate, Dionysius! For you ought not to be living here with us in freedom and without fear, but you should pass your life to old age over yonder walled up in the royal palace, as your father did.” But a democratic and legal government, by a man who has accustomed himself to be ruled for the public good no less than to rule, gives to his death the fair fame won in life as in very truth an honourable winding-sheet; for this, as Simonides says,
[An seni 1e] last of all descends below the ground,
[An seni 1f] except in the case of those whose love of mankind and of honour dies first, and whose zeal for what is noble fails before their desire for material necessities, as if the active and divine qualities of the soul were less enduring than the passive and physical. And it is not right to say, or to accept when said by others, that the only time when we do not grow weary is when we are making money. On the contrary, we ought even to emend the saying of Thucydides and believe, not only that “the love of honour never grows old,” but that the same is even truer of the spirit of service to the community and the State, which persists to the end even in ants and bees. For no one ever saw a bee that had on account of age become a drone, as some people claim that public men, when they have passed their prime, should sit down in retirement at home and be fed, allowing their worth in action to be extinguished by idleness as iron is destroyed by rust. 784 Cato, for example, used to say that we ought not voluntarily to add to the many evils of its own which belong to old age the disgrace that comes from baseness. And of the many forms of baseness none disgraces an aged man more than idleness, cowardice, and slackness, when he retires from public offices to the domesticity befitting women or to the country where he oversees the harvesters and the women who work as gleaners.
[An seni 1g] But Oedipus, where is he and his riddles famed?
[An seni 1h] For as to beginning public life in old age and not before (as they say that Epimenides slept while a youth and awoke as an aged man after fifty years), and then, after casting off such a long-familiar state of repose, throwing oneself into strife and time-absorbing affairs when one is unaccustomed to them and without practice and is conversant neither with public affairs nor with public men; that might give a fault-finder a chance to quote the Pythia and say, “Too late you have come” seeking for office and public leadership, and you are knocking unseasonably at the door of the praetorium, like some ignorant man who comes by night in festive condition or a stranger exchanging, not your place of residence or your country, but your mode of life for one in which you have had no experience. For the saying of Simonides, “the State teaches a man,” is true for those who still have time to unlearn what they have been taught and to learn a new subject which can hardly be acquired through many struggles and labours, even if it encounters at the proper time a nature capable of bearing toil and misery with ease. Such are the remarks which one may believe are fittingly addressed to a man who begins public life in his old age.
[An seni 2] 2 1 And yet, on the other hand, we see that the mere lads and young men are turned away from public affairs by those who are wise; and the laws which are proclaimed by the heralds in the assemblies bear witness to this, when they call up first to the platform, not the young men like Alcibiades and Pytheas, but men over fifty years of age, and invite them to speak and offer advice. For such men are not incited by lack of the habit of daring or by want of practice to try to score a victory over their political opponents. And Cato, when after eighty years he was defendant in a law-suit, said it was difficult when he had lived with one generation to defend himself before another. In the case of the Caesar who defeated Antony, all agree that his political acts towards the end of his life became much more kingly and more useful to the people. And he himself, when the young men made a disturbance as he was rebuking them severely for their manners and customs, said, “Listen, young men, to an old man to whom old men listened when he was young.” And the government of Pericles gained its greatest power in his old age, which was the time when he persuaded the Athenians to engage in the war; and when they were eager to fight at an unfavourable time against sixty thousand heavy-armed men, he interposed and prevented it; indeed he almost sealed up the arms of the people and the keys of the gates. But what Xenophon has written about Agesilaüs certainly deserves to be quoted word for word: “For what youth” he says, “did not his old age manifestly surpass? For who in the prime of life was so terrible to his enemies as Agesilaüs at the extreme of old age? At whose removal were the enemy more pleased than at that of Agesilaüs, although his end came when he was aged? Who inspired more courage in his allies than Agesilaüs, although he was already near the limit of life? And what young man was more missed by his friends than Agesilaüs, who was aged when he died?”
[An seni 3] 3 1 Time, then, did not prevent those men from doing such great things; and shall we of the present day, who live in luxury in states that are free from tyranny or any war or siege, be such cowards as to shirk unwarlike contests and rivalries which are for the most part terminated justly by law and argument in accordance with justice, confessing that we are inferior, 785 not only to the generals and public men of those days, but to the poets, teachers, and actors as well? Yes, if Simonides in his old age won prizes with his choruses, as the inscription in its last lines declares:
[An seni 3b] But for his skill with the chorus great glory Simonides followed,
Octogenarian child sprung from Leoprepes’ seed.
[An seni 3c] And it is said that Sophocles, when defending himself against the charge of dementia brought by his sons, read aloud the entrance song of the chorus in the Oedipus at Colonus, which begins:
[An seni 3d] Of this region famed for horses
Thou hast, stranger, reached the fairest
Dwellings in the land,
Bright Colonus, where the sweet-voiced
Nightingale most loves to warble
In the verdant groves;
[An seni 3e] Band the song aroused such admiration that he was escorted from the court as if from the theatre, with the applause and shouts of those present. And here is a little epigram of Sophocles, as all agree:
[An seni 3f] Song for Herodotus Sophocles made when the years of his age were
Five in addition to fifty.
[An seni 3g] But Philemon the comic dramatist and Alexis were overtaken by death while they were on the stage acting and being crowned with garlands. And Polus the tragic actor, as Eratosthenes and Philochorus tell us, when he was seventy years old Cacted in eight tragedies in four days shortly before his death.
[An seni 4] 4 1 Is it, then, not disgraceful that the old men of the public platform are found to be less noble than those of the stage, and that they withdraw from the truly sacred contests, put off the political rôle, and assume I do not know what in its stead? For surely after the rôle of a king that of a farmer is a mean one. For when Demosthenes says that the Paralus, being the sacred galley, was unworthily treated when it was used to transport beams, stakes, and cattle for Meidias, will not a public man who gives up such offices as superintendent of public games, Boeotian magistrate, and president of the Amphictyonic council, and is thereafter seen busying himself with measuring flour and olive cakes and with tufts of sheep’s wool — will not he be thought to be bringing upon himself “the old age of a horse,” as the saying is, when nobody forces him to do so? Surely taking up menial work fit only for the market-place after holding public offices is like stripping a freeborn and modest woman of her gown, putting a cook’s apron on her, and keeping her in a tavern; for just so the dignity and greatness of high ability in public life is destroyed when it is turned to household affairs and money-making. But if — the only thing left — they give to self-indulgence and luxury the names of rest and recreation, and urge the statesman quietly to waste away and grow old in them, I do not know which of two disgraceful pictures his life will seem to resemble more closely, that of sailors who desert their ship, when they have not brought it into the harbour but it is still under sail, and devote themselves to sexual indulgence for all time to come, or that of Heracles, as some painters playfully, but with evil influence, represent him in Omphalê’s palace wearing a yellow gown and giving himself up to her Lydian maids to be fanned and have his hair curled. Shall we in like manner strip the statesman of his lion’s skin and make him constantly recline at banquets to the music of harps and flutes? And shall we not be deterred by the words addressed by Pompey the Great to Lucullus? For Lucullus gave himself up after his military activities to baths, banquets, sexual intercourse in the daytime, great listlessness, and the erection of new-fangled buildings and he reproached Pompey for his love of office and of honour as unsuited to his age. Then Pompey said that it was more untimely for an old man to indulge in luxury than to hold office. 786 And once when he was ill and the physician prescribed a thrush (which was hard to get and out of season), and some said that Lucullus had plenty of them in his breeding-place, Pompey refused to send and get one, saying, “Could Pompey, then, not live if Lucullus were not luxurious?”
[An seni 5] 5 1 For granted that nature seeks in every way pleasure and enjoyment, old men are physically incapacitated for all pleasures except a few necessary ones, and not only
Aphroditê with old men is wroth,
[An seni 5b] as Euripides says, but their appetites also for food and drink are for the most part blunted and toothless, so that they can, if I may say so, hardly whet and sharpen them. They ought to prepare for themselves pleasures in the mind, not ignoble and illiberal ones like that of Simonides, who said to those who reproached him for his avarice that, since old age had deprived him of all other pleasures, he was comforting his declining years with the only one left, the pleasure of gain. Public life, on the other hand, possesses pleasures most noble and great, those in fact from which the gods themselves, as we may reasonably suppose, derive their only or their chief enjoyment. These are the pleasures that spring from good deeds and noble actions. For if Nicias the painter took such delight in the labours of his art that he often had to ask his servants whether he had had his bath and his breakfast; and if Archimedes when intent upon his drawing-tablet had to be dragged away by force, stripped and anointed by his servants, and then drew diagrams upon his anointed body; and if Canus the flute-player, with whom you are also acquainted, used to say that people did not know how much greater pleasure he gave to himself than to others when he played, for if they did, those who wished to hear him would receive pay instead of giving it. In view of these examples, do we not perceive how great are the pleasures the virtues provide, for those who practise them, as the result of the noble deeds they do and their works for the good of the community and of mankind; and that too without tickling or enervating them as do the smooth and gentle motions made on the body? Those have a frantic, unsteady titillation mixed with convulsive throbbing, but the pleasures given by noble works, such as those of which the man who rightly serves the State is the author, not like the golden wings of Euripides but like those heavenly Platonic pinions, bear the soul on high as it acquires greatness and lofty spirit mingled with joy.
[An seni 6] 6 1 And recall to your mind stories you have often heard. For Epameinondas, when asked what was the pleasantest thing that had happened to him, replied that it was winning the battle of Leuctra while his father and mother were still living. And Sulla, when he first entered Rome after freeing Italy of its civil wars, did not sleep at all that night, he was so borne aloft in spirit by great joy and gladness as by a blast of wind. This he has written about himself in his memoirs. For granted that, as Xenophon says, there is no sound sweeter than praise, yet there is no sight, reminder, or perception in the world which brings such great pleasure as the contemplation of one’s own acts in offices and positions of State in which one may be said to be in places flooded with light and in view of all the people. Yes, and moreover kindly gratitude, bearing witness to the acts, and praise, competing with gratitude and ushering in deserved goodwill, add, as it were, a light and brilliance to the joy that comes from virtue.
[An seni 6b] And it is a man’s duty not to allow his reputation to become withered in his old age like an athlete’s garland, but by adding constantly something new and fresh to arouse the sense of gratitude for his previous actions and make it better and lasting; just as the artisans who were responsible for keeping the Delian ship in good condition, by inserting and fastening in new timbers to take the place of those which were becoming weak, seemed to keep the vessel from those ancient times everlasting and indestructible. 787 Now the preservation and maintenance of reputation, as of fire, is not difficult and demands little fuel, but no one can without trouble rekindle either of them when it has gone out and grown cold. And just as Lampis the sea captain, when asked how he acquired his wealth, said, “My great wealth easily, but the small beginnings of it slowly and with toil,” so political reputation and power are not easy to attain at first, but when once they have grown great it is easy to augment them and keep them great by taking advantage of casual opportunities.
[An seni 6c] For when a man has once become a friend, he does not require many and great services that he may remain a friend, but constancy shown by small tokens always preserves his goodwill, and so likewise the friendship and confidence of the people do not constantly demand that a man pay for choruses, plead causes, or hold offices; no, they are maintained by his mere readiness to serve and by not failing or growing weary in care and concern for the people. For even wars do not consist entirely of pitched battles, fighting, and sieges, but they admit of occasional sacrifices, social gatherings in between, and abundant leisure for games and foolishness. Why, then, forsooth, is public life feared as inexorable, toilsome, and burdensome, when theatrical exhibitions, festive processions, distributions of food, “choruses and the Muse and Aglaïa,” and constantly the worship of some god, smooth the brows of legislators in every senate and assembly and repay its troubles many times over with pleasure and enjoyment?
[An seni 7] 7 1 Now the greatest evil attendant upon public life, envy, is least likely to beset old age, “for dogs do indeed bark at whom they do not know,” according to Heracleitus, and envy fights against a man as he begins his public career, at the doorway, as it were, of the orator’s platform, and tries to refuse him access, but familiar and accustomed reputation it does not savagely and roughly resent but puts up with mildly. For this reason envy is sometimes likened to smoke, for in the case of those who are beginning their public career it pours out before them in great volume because they are enkindled, but when they burst into full flame it disappears. And whereas men attack other kinds of eminence and themselves lay claim to good character, good birth, and honour, as though they were depriving themselves of so much of these as they grant to others; yet the primacy which comes from time, for which there is the special word presbeion or “the prerogative due to seniority in age,” arouses no jealousy and is freely conceded; for of no honour is it so true that it adorns the giver more than the receiver as of that which is paid to old age. Moreover, not all men expect that the power derived from wealth, eloquence, or wisdom will accrue to them, but no one who takes part in public life is without hope of attaining the reverence and repute to which old age leads. So there is no difference between the pilot who has sailed in great danger against adverse winds and waves, and, after clear weather and fair winds have come, seeks his moorings, and the man who has struggled in the ship of state a long time against the billows of envy, and then, when they have ceased and become smooth, backs water and withdraws from public life, giving up his political affiliations and clubs along with his public activities. For the longer the time has been the greater the number of those whom he has made his friends and fellow-workers, and he cannot take them all out with him, as a trainer leads out his chorus, nor is it fair to leave them in the lurch. But a long public career is, like old trees, hard to pull up, for it has many roots and is interwoven with affairs which cause more troubles and torments to those who withdraw from them than to those who remain in them. And if any remnant of envy or jealousy does continue against old men from their political contests, they should rather extinguish this by power than turn their backs and go away naked and unarmed. For people do not attack them so much because of envy if they maintain the contest as because of contempt if they have given up.
[An seni 8] 8 1 788 Testimony to the point is what Epameinondas the Great said to the Thebans when in winter weather the Arcadians invited them to come into the city and be quartered in their houses. He forbade it, saying “Now they admire you and gaze at you as you do your military exercises and wrestle, but if they see you sitting by the fire and sipping your bean porridge, they will think you are no better than are.” Just so an old man active in word and deed and held in honour is a sight to arouse reverence, but one who spends the day in bed or sits in the corner of the porch chattering and wiping his nose is an object of contempt. And undoubtedly Homer also teaches this to those who hear aright; for Nestor, who went to the war at Troy, was revered and highly honoured, but Peleus and Laërtes, who stayed at home, were put aside and despised. For the habit of prudence does not last so well in those who let themselves become slack, but, being gradually lost and dissipated by inactivity, it always calls for what may be called exercise of the thought, since thought rouses and purifies the power of reason and action;
[An seni 8b] For when in use it gleams like beauteous bronze.
[An seni 8c] For the evil caused by their physical weakness to the public activities of those who step into civil or military office when beyond the usual age is not so great as the advantage they possess in their caution and prudence and in the fact that they do not, borne along sometimes because of past failures and sometimes as the result of vain opinion, dash headlong upon public affairs, dragging the mob along with them in confusion like the storm-tossed sea, but manage gently and moderately the matters which arise. And that is why States when they are in difficulties or in fear yearn for the rule of the elder men; and often they have brought from his field some aged man, not by his request and even contrary to his wish, and have forced him to take the helm, as it were, and steer affairs into safety, and in so doing they pushed aside generals and politicians who were able to shout loud and to speak without pausing for breath and, by Zeus, even men who were able, planting their feet firmly, to fight bravely against the enemy. So, for example, the politicians at Athens grooming Chares, son of Theochares, a powerful man at the height of his physical strength, to be the opponent of Timotheüs and Iphicrates, declared that the general of the Athenians ought to be such as he, but Timotheüs said, “No, by the gods, but such should be the man who is to carry the general’s bedding. The general should be one who sees at the same time ‘that which is before and behind’ and does not let anything that happens disturb his reasoning as to what is for the best.” Sophocles indeed said that he was glad to have escaped, now that he was old, from sexual love, as from a cruel and raging tyrant; but in public life one must escape, not from one tyrant, the love of boys or women, but from many loves which are more insane than that: love of contention, love of fame, the desire to be first and greatest, which is a disease most prolific of envy, jealousy, and discord. Some of these old age does slacken and dull, but others it quenches and cools entirely, not so much by withdrawing a man from the impulse to action as by keeping him from excessive and fiery passions, so as to bring sober and slighted reasoning to bear upon his thoughts.
[An seni 9] 9 1 However, let us grant that the word
Bide still, poor wretch, in thine own bedding wrapped
are and appear to be deterrent when addressed to a man who begins to act young when his hair is grey and that they rebuke the old man who gets up from long continued home-keeping, as from a long illness, and sets out towards the office of general or of civil administrator; 789 but the words which forbid a man who has spent his life in public affairs and contests to go on to the funeral torch and the end of his life, and which call him back and tell him, as it were, to leave the road he has travelled so long and take a new one, — those words are altogether unkind and not at all like those we have quoted. For just as he is perfectly reasonable who tries to dissuade an old man who is garlanded and perfumed in preparation for his wedding, and says to him what was said to Philoctetes,
[An seni 9b] What bride, what virgin in her youth, you wretch,
Would take you? You’re a pretty one to wed!”
[An seni 9c] Bfor old men themselves crack many such jokes on themselves, saying
I’m marrying old, I know — and for my neighbours, too;
[An seni 9d] so he who thinks that a man who has for a long time shared his life and his home blamelessly with his wife ought on account of his age to dismiss her and live alone or take on a paramour in place of his wedded spouse has reached the height of perversity. There is some sense in admonishing in that way and confining to his accustomed inactivity an old man such as Chlidon the farmer or Lampon the ship-captain or one of the philosophers of the Garden, if he comes forward for popular favour; but anyone who buttonholes a Phocion or a Cato or a Pericles and says, “My Athenian (or Roman) friend,
With withered age bedecked for funeral rites,
bring action for divorce from public life, give up your haunting the speakers’ platform and the generals’ office and your cares of State, and hurry away to the country to dwell with agriculture as your handmaid or to devote the rest of your time to some sort of domestic management and keeping accounts,” is urging the statesman to do what is wrong and unseemly.
[An seni 10] 10 1 “What then?” someone may say; “do we not hear a soldier say in a comedy
My white hair grants me henceforth full discharge?”
[An seni 10b] Certainly, my friend, for the servants of Ares should properly be young and in their prime, as practising
war and war’s practices baneful,
Din which even if an old man’s hoary hair is covered by a helmet,
Yet are his limbs by unseen weight oppressed,
[An seni 10c] and though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak; but from the servants of Zeus, god of the Council, the Market-place, and the State, we do not demand deeds of hands and feet, but of counsel, foresight, and speech — not such speech as makes a roar and a clamour among the people, but that which contains good sense, prudent thought, and conservatism; and in these the hoary hair and the wrinkles that people make fun of appear as witnesses to a man’s experience and strengthen him by the aid of persuasiveness and the reputation for character. For youth is meant to obey and old age to rule, and that State is most secure
[An seni 10d] Where old men’s counsels and the young men’s spears
Hold highest rank;
and the lines
First he established a council of old men lofty in spirit
Hard by the vessel of Nestor
[An seni 10e] meet with wonderful approval. And therefore the Pythian Apollo named the aristocracy which was coupled with the kingship at Lacedaemon “Ancients” (Presbygeneas), and Lycurgus named it “Elders” (Gerontes), and the council at Rome is still called the Senate (“body of elders”). And just as the law places diadem and crown upon the head, so nature puts grey hair upon it as an honourable symbol of the high dignity of leadership. And the words geras (“honour,” also “reward”) and gerairein (“venerate”) retain, I believe, a meaning of veneration derived from old men (gerontes), not because they bathe in warm water or sleep in softer beds than other men, but because they hold royal rank in the States in accordance with their wisdom, the proper and perfect fruit of which, as of a late-bearing plant, nature produces after long effort in old age. At any rate when the king of kings prayed to the gods:
[An seni 10f] Would that I had ten such advisers among the Achaeans
[An seni 10g] 790 as Nestor was, not one of the “martial” and “might-breathing Achaeans” found fault with him, but all conceded that, not in civil affairs alone, but in war as well, old age has great weight;
[An seni 10h] For one wise counsel over many hands
Is victor,
[An seni 10i] and one sensible and persuasive expression of opinion accomplishes the greatest and most excellent public measures.
[An seni 11] 11 Certainly the office of king, the most perfect and the greatest of all political offices, has the most cares, labours, and occupations. At any rate Seleucus, they used to tell us, constantly repeated that if people in general knew what a task it was merely to read and write so many letters, they would not even pick up a crown that had been thrown away. And Philip, we are told, when he heard, as he was on the point of encamping in a suitable place, that there was no fodder for the beasts of draught, exclaimed: “O Heracles, what a life is mine, if I must needs live to suit the convenience even of my asses!” There is, then, a time to advise even a king when he has become an old man to lay aside the crown and the purple, to assume a cloak and a crook, and to live in the country, lest it be thought, if he continues to rule when his hair is grey, that he is busying himself with superfluous and unseasonable occupations. But if it is not fitting to say this about an Agesilaüs or a Numa or a Dareius, let us neither remove a Solon from the Council of the Areopagus nor a Cato from the Senate on account of old age, and let us not advise a Pericles to leave the democracy in the lurch. For anyhow it is absurd that a man when he is young should prance about upon the platform and then, after having poured out upon the public all those insane ambitions and impulses, when the age arrives which brings wisdom through experience, should give up public life and desert it like a woman of whom he has had all the use.
[An seni 12] 12 1 Aesop’s fox, we recall, would not let the hedgehog, although he offered to do so, remove the ticks from her: “For if you remove these,” she said, “which are full, other hungry ones will come on”; and the State which always discards the old men must necessarily be filled up with young men who are thirsty for reputation and power, but do not possess a statesmanlike mind. And where should they acquire it, if they are not to be pupils or even spectators of any old man active in public life? Treatises on navigation do not make ship-captains of men who have not often stood upon the stern and been spectators of the struggles against wind and wave and wintry night,
[An seni 12b] When yearning for the twin Tyndaridae
Doth strike the sailor driven o’er the sea;
[An seni 12c] and can a youngster manage a State rightly and persuade an assembly or a senate after reading a book or writing in the Lyceum a school exercise about political science, if he has not stood many a time by the driver’s rein or the pilot’s steering-oar, leaning this way and that with the politicians and generals as they contend with the aid of their experiences and their fortunes, thus amid dangers and troubles acquiring the knowledge they need? No one can assert that. But if for no other reason, old men should engage in affairs of State for the education and instruction of the young. For just as the teachers of letters or of music themselves first play the notes or read to their pupils and thus show them the way, so the statesman, not only by speech or by making suggestions from the outside, but by action in administering the affairs of the community, directs the young man, whose character is moulded and formed by the old man’s actions and words alike. For he who is trained in this way, — not in the wrestling-schools or training-rings of masters of the arts of graceful speech where no danger is, but, we may say, in truly Olympic and Pythian games, —
[An seni 12d] Keeps pace as foal just weaned runs with the mare,
[An seni 12e] to quote Simonides. So Aristeides ran in the footsteps of Cleisthenes and Cimon in those of Aristeides, 791 Phocion followed Chabrias, Cato had Fabius Maximus as his guide, Pompey had Sulla, and Polybius had Philopoemen; for these men, coming when young in contact with older men and then, as it were, sprouting up beside them and growing up with their policies and actions, gained experience and familiarity with public affairs and at the same time reputation and power.
[An seni 13] 13 1 Aeschines the Academic philosopher, when some sophists declared that he pretended to have been a pupil of Carneades although he had not been so, replied, “Oh, but I did listen to Carneades at the time when his speech had given up noisy declamation on account of his old age and had reduced itself to what is useful and of common interest.” But the public activity of old men is not only in speech but also in actions, free from ostentation and desire for popularity, and, therefore, just as they say that the iris, when it has grown old and has blown off its fetid and foul smell, acquires a more fragrant odour, so no opinion or counsel of old men is turbulent, but they are all weighty and composed. Therefore it is also for the sake of the young, as has been said above, that old men ought to engage in affairs of State, in order that, as Plato said in reference to pure wine mixed with water, that an insane god was made reasonable when chastised by another who was sober, so the discretion of old age, when mixed in the people with boiling youth drunk with reputation and ambition, may remove that which is insane and too violent.
[An seni 14] 14 1 But apart from all this, they are mistaken who think that engaging in public affairs is, like going to sea or to a war, something undertaken for an object distinct from itself and ceasing when that object is attained; for engaging in public affairs is not a special service which is ended when the need ends, but is a way of life of a tamed social animal living in an organized society, intended by nature to live throughout its allotted time the life of a citizen and in a manner devoted to honour and the welfare of mankind. Therefore it is fitting that men should be engaged, not merely have ceased to be engaged, in affairs of State, just as it is fitting that they should be, not have ceased to be, truthful, that they should do, not have ceased to do, right, and that they should love, not have ceased to love, their native land and their fellow-citizens. For to these things nature leads, and these words she suggests to those who are not entirely ruined by idleness and effeminacy:
[An seni 14b] Your sire begets you of great worth to men
and
Let us ne’er cease for doing mortals good.
[An seni 15] 15 1 But those who adduce weakness and disability are accusing disease and infirmity rather than old age. For there are many sickly young men and vigorous old men, so that the proper course is to dissuade, not the aged, but the disabled, and to summon into service, not the young, but those who are competent to serve. Aridaeus, for example, was young and Antigonus an old man, but the latter gained possession of almost all Asia, whereas the former, like a mute guardsman on the stage, was the mere name and figure of a king, exposed to the wanton insults of those who happened to have the real power. As, therefore, he is a fool who would demand that a person like Prodicus the sophist or a person like Philetas the poet should take part in the affairs of State, — they who were young, to be sure, but thin, sickly, and for the most part bedridden on account of sickness, — so he is foolish who would hinder from being rulers or generals such old men as were Phocion, the Libyan Masinissa, and the Roman Cato. For Phocion, when the Athenians were rushing into war at an unfavourable time, gave orders that all citizens up to sixty years of age should take their weapons and follow him; and when they were indignant he said: “There is nothing terrible about it, for I shall be with you as general, and I am eighty years old.” And Polybius tells us that Masinissa died at the age of ninety years, leaving a child of his own but four years old, and that a little before his end, on the day after defeating the Carthaginians in a great battle, 792 he was seen in front of his tent eating a dirty piece of bread, and that when some expressed surprise at this he said that he did it [to keep in practice],
[An seni 15b] For when in use it gleams like beauteous bronze;
An unused house through time in ruin falls,
[An seni 15c] as Sophocles says; but we say that this is true of that brilliance and light of the soul, by means of which we reason, remember, and think.
[An seni 16] 16 1 For that reason kings are said to grow better among wars and campaigns than when they live at leisure. Attalus certainly, the brother of Eumenes, because he was completely enfeebled by long inactivity and peace, was actually kept and fattened like a sheep by Philopoemen, one of his courtiers; so that even the Romans used in jest to ask those who came from Asia if the king had any influence with Philopoemen. And it would be impossible to find many abler generals among the Romans than Lucullus, when he combined thought with action; but when he gave himself up to a life of inactivity and to a home-keeping and thought-free existence, he became a wasted skeleton, like sponges in calm seas, and then when he committed his old age to the care and nursing of one of his freedmen named Callisthenes, Cit seemed as if he were being drugged by him with potions and quackeries, until his brother Marcus drove the fellow away and himself managed and tended him like a child the rest of his life, which was not long. Dareius the father of Xerxes used to say that when dangers threatened he excelled himself in wisdom, and Ateas the Scythian said that he considered himself no better than his grooms when he was idle; and Dionysius the Elder, when someone asked if he was at leisure, replied: “May that never happen to me!” For a bow, they say, breaks when too tightly stretched, but a soul when too much relaxed. In fact musicians, if they give up listening to music, and geometricians if they give up solving problems, and arithmeticians if they give up the practice of calculating, impair, as they advance in age, their habits of mind as well as their activities, although the studies which they pursue are not concerned with action but with contemplation; but the mental habit of public men — deliberation, wisdom, and justice, and, besides these, experience, which hits upon the proper moments and words and is the power that creates persuasion — is maintained by constantly speaking, acting, reasoning, and judging; and it would be a crime if, by deserting these activities, it should allow such great and so many virtues to leak out from the soul; for it is reasonable to suppose that love of humanity, public spirit, and graciousness would waste away, none of which ought to have any end or limit.
[An seni 17] 17 1 Certainly if you had Tithonus as your father, who was immortal but always needed much care on account of old age, I do not believe you would avoid or grow weary of attending to him, speaking to him, and helping him on the ground that you had performed those duties for a long time; and your fatherland or, as the Cretans call it, your mother country, which has earlier and greater rights than your parents, Fis long lived, to be sure, but by no means ageless or self-sufficient; on the contrary, since it always needs much consideration and assistance and anxious thought, it draws the statesman to itself and holds him,
[An seni 17b] Grasping him fast by the cloak, and restrains him though hastening onward.
[An seni 17c] Now surely you know that I have been serving the Pythian Apollo for many Pythiads, but you would not say: “Plutarch, you have done enough sacrificing, marching in processions, and dancing in choruses, and now that you are older it is time to put off the garland and to desert the oracle on account of your age.” And so do not imagine that you yourself, being a leader and interpreter of the sacred rites of civic life, ought to give up the worship of Zeus of the State and of the Forum, rites to which you have for a long time been consecrated.
[An seni 18] 18 1 793 But let us now, if you please, leave the argument which tries to withdraw the aged man from civic activities and turn to the examination and discussion of the question how we may assign to old age only what is appropriate without imposing upon it any burdensome struggle, since political activity has many parts fitting and suitable for men of such years. For just as, if it were fitting for us to continue singing to the end, we ought, since there are many underlying tones and modes of the voice, which musical people call harmonies, we ought, I say, when we have grown old, not to attempt that which is high pitched and intense, but that which is easy and also possesses the fitting ethical quality; just so, since it is more natural for human beings to act and speak to the end than for swans to sing, we must not give up activity as if it were a lyre too tightly strung, but we should relax the activity and adapt it to those public services which are light and moderate and attuned to old men. For we do not let our bodies be entirely without motion and exercise when we are unable to wield the mattock or use jumping-weights or throw the discus or fight in armour as we used to do, but by swinging and walking, and in some instances by light ball-playing and by conversation, old men accelerate their breathing and revive the body’s heat. Let us, then, neither allow ourselves to be entirely frozen and chilled by inaction nor, on the other hand, by again burdening ourselves with every office and engaging in every kind of public activity, force our old age, convicted of its weakness, to descend to words like these:
[An seni 18b] O my right hand, thou yearn’st to seize the spear,
But weakness brings thy yearning all to naught.
[An seni 18c] For even a man at the height of his powers is not commended if he takes upon himself, in a word, all public activities at once and is unwilling to leave, Das the Stoics say of Zeus, anything to anyone else, intruding and mixing himself in everything through insatiable desire for reputation or through envy of those who obtain any share whatsoever of honour and power in the State. But for a very aged man that love of office which invariably offers itself as a candidate at every election, that busy restlessness which lies in wait for every opportunity offered by court of justice or council of State, and that ambition which snatches at every ambassadorship and at every precedence in legal matters, are, even if you eliminate the discredit attached to them, toilsome and miserable. For to do these things even with the goodwill of others is too burdensome for advanced age, but, in fact, the result is the very opposite; for such old men are hated by the young, who feel that they do not allow them opportunities for public activity and do not permit them to come before the public, and by people in general their love of precedence and of office is held in no less disrepute than is other old men’s love of wealth and pleasure.
[An seni 19] 19 1 And just as Alexander, wishing not to work Bucephalus too hard when he was old, used to ride other horses before the battle in reviewing the phalanx and drawing it up in line, and then, after giving the watchword and mounting him, immediately charged the enemy, and fought the battle to its end; so the statesman, if he is sensible, will curb himself when he has grown old, will keep away from unnecessary activities and allow the State to employ men in their prime for lesser matters, but in important affairs will himself take part vigorously. For athletes keep their bodies untouched by necessary tasks and in full force for useless toils, but we, on the contrary, letting petty and worthless matters go, will save ourselves for things that are seriously worth while. For perhaps, as Homer says, “to a young man everything is becoming,” and people accept and love him, calling the one who does many things a friend of the common folk and hard-working, 794 and the one who does brilliant and splendid things noble and high-minded; and under some conditions even contentiousness and rashness have a certain timeliness and grace becoming to men of that age. But the old man in public life who undertakes subordinate services, such as the farming of taxes and the supervision of harbours and of the market-place, and who moreover works his way into diplomatic missions and trips abroad to visit commanders and potentates, in which there is nothing indispensable or dignified, but which are merely flattery to curry favour, seems to me, my friend, a pitiable and unenviable object, and to some people, perhaps, a burdensome and vulgar one.
[An seni 20] 20 1 For it is not seasonable for an aged man even to be occupied in public offices, except in those which possess some grandeur and dignity, such as that which you are now administering at Athens, the presidency of the Senate of the Areopagus, and, by Zeus, the honour of membership in the Amphictyonic Council, which your native State bestowed upon you for life and which entails “a pleasant labour and untoilsome toil.” But even these offices aged men ought not to seek; they should exercise them though trying to avoid them, not asking for them but asking to be excused from them, as men who do not take office to themselves, but give themselves to office. For it is not, as the Emperor Tiberius said, Ca disgrace for a man over sixty years of age to hold out his hand to the physician; but rather is it a disgrace to hold out the hand to the people asking for a ballot or a viva voce vote; for this is ignoble and mean, whereas the contrary possesses a certain dignity and honour, when an aged man’s country chooses him, calls him, and waits for him, and he comes down amid honour and friendly applause to welcome and accept a distinction which is truly revered and respected.
[An seni 21] 21 1 And in somewhat the same way a man who has grown old ought to treat speech-making in the assembly; he should not be constantly jumping up on the platform, nor always, like a cock, crowing in opposition to what is said; nor should he, by getting involved in controversy, loose the curb of reverence for him in the young men’s minds and instil into them the practice and custom of disobedience and unwillingness to listen to him; but he should sometimes both slacken the reins and allow them to throw up their heads boldly to oppose his opinion and to show their spirit, without even being present or interfering except when the matter at stake is important for the common safety or for honour and decorum. But in such cases he ought, even when no one calls him, to run at a speed beyond his strength, letting himself be led by attendants who support him or having himself carried in a litter, as we are told that Appius Claudius did in Rome; for after the Romans had been defeated by Pyrrhus in a great battle, when he heard that the senate was admitting proposals for a truce and peace, he found that intolerable, and although he had lost the sight of both his eyes, had himself carried through the Forum to the Senate-house. He went in, took his stand in the midst of the senate, and said that hitherto he had been grieved by the loss of his eyes, but now he could pray not even to have ears to hear them discussing and doing things so disgraceful and ignoble. And thereupon, partly by rebuking them, partly by instructing and inciting them, he persuaded them to rush to arms forthwith and fight it out with Pyrrhus for the rule of Italy. And Solon, when it became clear that the popular leadership of Peisistratus was a contrivance to make him tyrant, since no one dared to oppose or prevent it, brought out his own arms, stacked them in front of his house, and called upon the citizens to come to the aid of their country; then, when Peisistratus sent and asked him what gave him confidence to do this, he replied, “My age.”
[An seni 22] 22 1 However, matters of such urgent necessity do kindle and arouse aged men whose fire is quite extinct, provided they merely have breath; yet in other matters the aged man will sometimes, as has been said, act fittingly by declining mean and petty offices 795 which bring more trouble to those who administer them than profit and advantage to those for whom they are administered; and sometimes by waiting for the citizens to call for him, long for him, and send for him at his house, he will, when he comes, be received with greater confidence by those who begged for his presence. And for the most part he will, even when present, be silent and let younger men speak, acting as a kind of umpire at the contest of political ambition; and if the contest passes the bounds of moderation, by administering a mild and kindly rebuke, he will endeavour to do away with contention, opprobrious language, and anger, will correct and instruct without fault-finding him who errs in his opinions, but will fearlessly praise him who is right; and he will voluntarily suffer defeat and will often give up success Bin persuading the people to his will in order that the young may grow in power and courage, and for some of them he will supply what is lacking with kindly words, as Nestor said,
[An seni 22b] No one of all the Achaeans will blame the words thou hast spoken,
Nor will oppose them in speech; and yet thou hast reached no conclusion.
[An seni 22c] Truly thou art a young man, and thou mightest e’en be my own offspring.
[An seni 23] 23 1 But more statesmanlike than this it is, not merely to avoid, when rebuking them openly and in public, any biting speech which violently represses and humiliates them, but rather in kindly spirit to suggest and inculcate in private to those who have natural ability for public affairs advantageous words and policies, urging them on towards that which is noble, adding brilliancy to their minds, and, after the manner of riding-teachers, enabling them at first to mount the populace when it is tractable and gentle; then, if the young man fails in any way, not letting him be discouraged, but setting him on his feet and encouraging him, as Aristeides raised up and encouraged Cimon and Mnesiphilus did the like for Themistocles when they were at first disliked and decried in the city as being rash and unrestrained. And there is also a story that when Demosthenes had met with a reverse in the assembly and was disheartened thereby, Dan aged man who had formerly heard Pericles speak touched him with his hand and told him that he resembled that great man in natural ability and, therefore, had been unjust in condemning himself. And so also when Timotheüs was hissed for being new-fangled and was said to be committing sacrilege upon music, Euripides told him to be of good courage, for in a little while the theatres would be at his feet.
[An seni 24] 24 1 And in general, just as at Rome the Vestal Virgins have a definite time allotted them, first for learning, then for performing the traditional rites, and thirdly and lastly for teaching them, and as at Ephesus they call each one of the servants of Artemis first a novice, then a priestess, and thirdly an ex priestess, so the perfect statesman engages in public affairs, first while still a learner and a neophyte and finally as a teacher and initiator. For although it is impossible for the overseer of other athletes to engage in contests himself, yet he who trains a young man in affairs of the community and political struggles and prepares him for the service of his country
[An seni 24b] Speaker of speeches to be and also a doer of actions,
[An seni 24c] is useful to the State in no small or mean degree, but helps towards that for which Lycurgus first and especially exerted himself when he accustomed the young always to obey every old man as if he were a lawgiver. For what had Lysander in mind when he said that men grow old most nobly in Lacedaemon? Was it because there the older men are more than elsewhere allowed to live in idleness and to lend money or sit together and throw dice or get together betimes for drinking-parties? You could not say that. No, it was because all men of advanced age hold more or less the position of magistrates, fatherly counsellors, or instructors, and not only oversee public affairs, 796 but also make it their business to learn all details about the gymnasia, the sports, and the daily lives of the young men, and, therefore, they are feared by those who do wrong but revered and desired by the good; for the young men always cultivate and follow them, since they enhance and encourage the decorum and innate nobility of the young without arousing their envy.
[An seni 25] 25 1 For the emotion of envy is not fitting for any time of life, but nevertheless it has among young people plenty of fine names, being called “competition,” “zeal,” and “ambition”; but in old men it is totally unseasonable, uncultured, and ignoble. Therefore the aged statesman, being far beyond the feeling of envy, should not, as envious old tree trunks clearly do, try to destroy and prevent the sprouting growth of the plants which spring up beside them and grow under them, but he should receive kindly those who claim his attention and attach themselves to him; he should offer himself to direct, guide, and support them, not only with good instructions and advice, but also by giving up to them public offices which bring honour and reputation, or certain public services which will do no harm to the people, but will be pleasing to it, and will make them popular. But as for such things as arouse opposition and are difficult and, like certain medicines, smart and hurt at first but produce an excellent and profitable result afterwards, he should not force young men into these and subject them to popular outcries while they are still unaccustomed to the inconsiderate mob; but he should himself assume the unpopularity arising from advantageous measures, for in this way he will make the young more well-disposed towards him and more eager in performing other services.
[An seni 26] 26 1 But above all things we must remind them that statesmanship consists, not only in holding office, being ambassador, vociferating in the assembly, and ranting round the speakers’ platform proposing laws and making motions. Most people think all this is part of statesmanship, just as they think of course that those are philosophers who sit in a chair and converse and prepare their lectures over their books; but the continuous practice of statesmanship and philosophy, which is every day alike seen in acts and deeds, they fail to perceive. For, as Dicaearchus used to remark, those who circulate in the porticoes are said to be “promenading,” but those who walk into the country or to see a friend are not. Now being a statesman is like being a philosopher. Socrates at any rate was a philosopher, although he did not set out benches or seat himself in an armchair or observe a fixed hour for conversing or promenading with his pupils, but jested with them, when it so happened, and drank with them, served in the army or lounged in the market-place with some of them, and finally was imprisoned and drank the poison. He was the first to show that life at all times and in all parts, in all experiences and activities, universally admits philosophy. So this is what we must understand concerning statesmanship also: that foolish men, even when they are generals or secretaries or public orators, do not act as statesmen, but court the mob, deliver harangues, arouse factions, or under compulsion perform public services; but that the man who is really public-spirited and who loves mankind and the State and is careful of the public welfare and is truly statesmanlike, that man, although he never puts on a uniform, is always acting as a statesman by urging those on who have power, guiding those who need guidance, assisting those who are deliberating, reforming those who act wrongly, encouraging those who are right-minded, making it plain that he is not just casually interested in public affairs and that he goes to the assembly or the council, not for the sake of getting the first seat when there is something serious in prospect or he is summoned, but that when he goes there he goes not merely for amusement as if to see or hear a performance, 797 and that even when he is not there in person he is present in thought and through inquiry, thus approving of some of the proceedings and disapproving of others.
[An seni 27] 27 1 For not even Aristeides was often ruler of the Athenians, nor Cato of the Romans, but they spent their whole lives in active service to their native States. And Epameinondas as general gained many great successes, but one deed of his equal to any of them is recorded, which he performed in Thessaly when he was neither general nor magistrate. The generals had led the phalanx into difficult ground and were in confusion B(for the enemy were pressing them hard with missile weapons), when he was called out from his place among the infantry; and first by encouraging the army he put an end to confusion and fear, then, after arranging the broken phalanx and putting it in order, he easily led it out and drew it up to face the enemy, so that they changed front and withdrew. And when King Agis, in Arcadia, was already leading against the enemy his army drawn up for battle, one of the elder Spartiates called out to him that he was planning to cure evil with evil, pointing out that his present unseasonable eagerness was an attempt to atone for his culpable retreat from Argos, as Thucydides says. And when Agis heard this, he took the advice and retreated. For Menecrates a chair was placed every day by the door of the house of government, and often the ephors rose up from their session and went to him for information and advice on the most important matters; for he was considered to be a wise man and an intelligent one to be consulted. And therefore, after his physical strength had become utterly exhausted and he had to spend most of the day in bed, when the ephors sent for him to come to the market-place, he got up and set out to walk, but proceeded slowly and with difficulty; then, meeting some boys on the way, he asked them if they knew of anything stronger than the necessity of obeying one’s master, and they replied, “Not being able to.” Accounting this as the limit of his service, he turned round and went home. For a man’s zeal ought not to fail before his strength, but when it is deserted by strength, it should not be forced. Certainly Scipio, both as general and as statesman, always made use of Gaius Laelius as his adviser, so that some people even said that Scipio was the actor, but Gaius the author, of his deeds. And Cicero himself confesses that the noblest and greatest of the plans through which as consul he restored his country to safety were devised with the help of the philosopher Publius Nigidius.
[An seni 28] 28 1 There are, then, many kinds of political activity by which old men may readily benefit the commonwealth by giving of their best, namely reason, judgement, frankness, and “sapience profound,” as poets say; for not only do our hands or our feet or the strength of our body constitute a possession and a part of the State, but first of all our soul and the beauties of the soul — justice, moderation, and wisdom. And since these acquire their proper quality late and slowly, it is absurd that house, farm, and other property or possessions should derive all the benefit from aged men but that they should be no longer of use to their country in general and their fellow-citizens by reason of their age, for age does not so much diminish our power to perform inferior services as it increases our power for leading and governing. And that is the reason why they make the older Hermae without hands or feet, but with their private parts stiff, indicating figuratively that there is no need whatsoever of old men who are active by their body’s use, if they keep their mind, as it should be, active and fertile.

## Precepts of statecraft

[Praec. ger. reip. 1] 798 1 1 If, Menemachus, it is suitable to apply to anything at all the saying
No one of all the Achaeans finds fault with the words thou hast uttered,
Nor will oppose them in speech; and yet thou hast reached no conclusion,
[Praec. ger. reip. 1b] Bit may be applied to those philosophers who urge people to take lessons from them, but give no real instruction or advice; for they are like those who trim the lamps, but fail to pour in oil. Therefore, seeing that the desire has been aroused in you a
[Praec. ger. reip. 1c] Speaker of speeches to be, and also a doer of actions
[Praec. ger. reip. 1d] in your native State, as befits your noble birth, since you have not time to gain an understanding of a philosopher’s life in the open among affairs of State and public conflicts or to be a spectator of examples worked out in deed, not merely in word, and since you ask for some precepts of statecraft, I think it is not at all fitting that I should refuse, and I pray that the result may be worthy of your zeal and of my goodwill; and, as you requested, I have made use of a rather large variety of examples.
[Praec. ger. reip. 2] 2 1 First, then, at the base of political activity there must be, as a firm and strong foundation, a choice of policy arising from judgement and reason, not from mere impulse due to empty opinion or contentiousness or lack of other activities. For just as those who have no useful occupation at home spend most of their time in the market-place, even if there is nothing they need there, just so some men, because they have no business of their own that is worth serious attention, throw themselves into public affairs, treating political activity as a pastime, and many who have become engaged in public affairs by chance and have had enough of them are no longer able to retire from them without difficulty; they are in the same predicament as persons who have gone aboard a vessel to be rocked a bit and then have been driven out into the open sea; they turn their gaze outside, seasick and much disturbed, but obliged to stay where they are and endure their present plight.
[Praec. ger. reip. 2b] Over the bright calm sea
The fair-faced loves went past them to the mad
Outrage of the ship’s oars that plough the deep.
[Praec. ger. reip. 2c] These men cast the greatest discredit upon public life by regretting their course and being unhappy when, after hoping for glory, they have fallen into disgrace or, after expecting to be feared by others on account of their power, they are drawn into affairs which involve dangers and popular disorders. But the man who has entered upon public life from conviction and reasoning, as the activity most befitting him and most honourable, is not frightened by any of these things, nor is his conviction changed. For neither is it right to enter upon public life as a gainful trade, as Stratocles and Dromocleides and their set used to invite each other to come to the golden harvest (for so they called the orators’ platform in jest); nor ought we to enter upon it as if we were suddenly seized by an onset of strong emotion, as Gaius Gracchus did, who, when his brother’s misfortunes were still fresh, withdrew so far as possible from public affairs and then, inflamed by anger because certain persons insulted and reviled him, rushed into public life. And although he was quickly satiated with public affairs and fame, yet when he tried to stop and wished for a change and a quiet life, 799 he found that his power was too great to be laid down but before he could lay it down he perished. And those who make themselves up for political competition or the race for glory, as actors do for the stage, must necessarily regret their action, since they must either serve those whom they think they should rule or offend those whom they wish to please. On the contrary, I believe that those who, like men who fall into a well, stumble into public life by mere chance and unexpectedly must be cast into confusion and regret their course, whereas those who enter into it quietly, as the result of preparation and reflection, will be moderate in their conduct of affairs and will not be discomposed by anything, inasmuch as they have honour itself and nothing else as the purpose of their actions.
[Praec. ger. reip. 3] 3 1 So, after thus determining their choice in their own minds and making it invariable and unchangeable, statesmen must apply themselves to the understanding of the character of the citizens, which shows itself as in the highest degree a compound of all their individual characters and is powerful. For any attempt on the part of the statesman to produce by himself at the very outset a change of character and nature in the people will not easily succeed, nor is it safe, but it is a matter that requires a long space of time and great power. But just a wine is at first controlled by the character of the drinker but gradually, as it warms his whole body and becomes mingled therewith, itself forms the drinker’s character and changes him, just so the statesman, until he has by his reputation and by public confidence in him built up his leadership, must accommodate himself to the people’s character as he finds it and make that the object of his efforts, knowing by what things the people is naturally pleased and led.
[Praec. ger. reip. 3b] For example, the Athenian populace is easily moved to anger, easily turned to pity, more willing to suspect quickly than to be informed at leisure; as they are readier to help humble persons of no reputation, so they welcome and especially esteem facetious and amusing speeches; while they take most delight in those who praise them, they are least inclined to be angry with those who make fun of them; they are terrible even to their chief magistrates, then kindly even to their enemies. Quite different is the character of the Carthaginian people; it is bitter, sullen, subservient to their magistrates, harsh to their subjects, most abject when afraid, most savage when enraged, stubborn in adhering to its decisions, disagreeable and hard in its attitude towards playfulness and urbanity. Never would these people, if a Cleon had asked them to postpone the meeting of the assembly on the ground that he had made sacrifice and had guests to entertain, have adjourned the meeting amid laughter and the clapping of hands; nor would they, when a quail escaped from Alcibiades’ cloak while he was speaking, have joined eagerly in hunting it down and then have given it back to him; no, they would have put them both to death for their insolence and their flippancy, seeing that they banished Hanno on the charge of aspiring to be tyrant, because he used a lion on his campaigns to carry his luggage!
[Praec. ger. reip. 3c] And I do not believe that the Thebans either, if they had obtained control of their enemies’ letters, would have refrained from reading them, as the Athenians, when they captured Philip’s mail-carriers with a letter addressed to Olympias, refrained from breaking the seal and making known an affectionate private message of an absent husband to his wife. Nor, on the other hand, do I believe that the Athenians would have borne with good temper the contemptuous pride of Epameinondas, when he refused to reply to the accusation against him but rose from his seat and went out from the theatre through the assembly to the gymnasium. And I think, too, that the Spartans would have been far from enduring the insolence and buffoonery of Stratocles, who persuaded the Athenians to make sacrifices on the ground that they had won a victory, and then, after a true report of their defeat had been received, when they were angry with him, 800 asked the people what wrong he had done them seeing that, thanks to him, they had been happy for three days.
[Praec. ger. reip. 3d] Now court flatterers, like bird-catchers, by imitating the voices of kings and assimilating themselves to them, insinuate themselves deeply into their good graces and decoy them by deceit; but for the statesman it is fitting, not to imitate the character of his people, but to understand it and to employ for each type those means by which it can be brought under his control. For ignorance of their characters leads to no less serious mistakes and failures in free States than in the friendships of kings.
[Praec. ger. reip. 4] 4 1 So, then, the statesman who already has attained to power and has won the people’s confidence should try to train the character of the citizens, leading them gently towards that which is better and treating them with mildness; for it is a difficult task to change the multitude. But do you yourself, since you are henceforth to live as on an open stage, educate your character and put it in order; and if it is not easy wholly to banish evil from the soul, at any rate remove and repress those faults which are most flourishing and conspicuous. For you know the story that Themistocles, when he was thinking of entering upon public life, withdrew from drinking-parties and carousals; he was wakeful at night, was sober and deeply thoughtful, explaining to his friends that Miltiades’ trophy would not let him sleep. And Pericles also changed his personal habits of life, so that he walked slowly, spoke gently, always showed a composed countenance, kept his hand under his cloak, and trod only one path — that which led to the assembly and the senate.
[Praec. ger. reip. 4b] For a populace is not a simple and easy thing for any chance person to subject to that control which is salutary; but one must be satisfied if the multitude accept authority without shying, like a suspicious and capricious beast, at face or voice. Since, then, the statesman must not treat even these matters carelessly, ought he to neglect the things which affect his life and character, that they may be clear of blame and ill report of every kind? For not only are men in public life held responsible for their public words and actions, but people busy themselves with all their concerns: dinner, love affair, marriage, amusement, and every serious interest. What need is there, for instance, to speak of Alcibiades, who, though he was most active of all the citizens in public affairs and was undefeated as general, was ruined by his audacious and dissolute habits in private life, and, because of his extravagance and lack of restraint, deprived the State of the benefit of his other good qualities?
[Praec. ger. reip. 4c] Why, the Athenians blamed Cimon for wine-drinking, and the Romans, having nothing else to say, blamed Scipio for sleeping; and the enemies of Pompey the Great, observing that he scratched his head with one finger, reviled him for it. For, just as a mole or a wart on the face is more unpleasant than brand-marks, mutilations, or scars on other parts of the body, so small faults appear great when observed in the lives of leaders and statesmen on account of the opinion which the majority has of governing and public office, regarding it as a great thing which ought to be clean of all eccentricities and errors. With good reason, therefore, did Livius Drusus the tribune gain in reputation because, when many parts of his house were exposed to the view of his neighbours and an artisan promised to turn them the other way and change their position for only five talents, Drusus replied, “Take ten and make the whole house open to view, that all the citizens may see how I live.” For he was a man of temper and well-ordered life.
[Praec. ger. reip. 4d] And perhaps he had no need of that exposure to the public view; for the people see through 801 the characters, counsels, acts, and lives of public men, even those that seem to be very thickly cloaked; they love and admire one man and dislike and despise another quite as much for his private as for his public practices.
[Praec. ger. reip. 4e] “But,” you say, “do not States put in office men who live licentiously and wantonly?” They do, and pregnant women often long for stones, and seasick persons for salt pickles and the like, which then a little later they spew out and detest. So the people of democracies, because of the luxury of their own lives or through sheer perversity, or for lack of better leaders, make use of those who happen to turn up, though they loathe and despise them, then take pleasure in hearing such things said about them as the comic poet Plato puts into the mouth of the People itself:
[Praec. ger. reip. 4f] Take, take my hand as quickly as you can;
I’m going to choose Agyrrhius general;
[Praec. ger. reip. 4g] and again, when he makes the People ask for a basin and a feather in order to vomit and then say,
[Praec. ger. reip. 4h] Beside my platform Mantias takes his stand,
And
It feeds foul Cephalus, most hateful pest.
[Praec. ger. reip. 4i] And the Roman people, when Carbo promised something and confirmed his promise with an oath and a curse, unanimously took a counter-oath that it did not trust him. And at Lacedaemon, when a dissolute man named Demosthenes made a desirable motion, the people rejected it, but the ephors chose by lot one of the elders and told him to make that same motion, in order that it might be made acceptable to the people, thus pouring, as it were, from a dirty vessel into a clean one. So great is the importance, in a free State, of confidence or lack of confidence in a man’s character.
[Praec. ger. reip. 5] 5 1 However, we should not on this account neglect the charm and power of eloquence and ascribe everything to virtue, but, considering oratory to be, not the creator of persuasion but certainly its co worker, we should correct Menander’s line,
[Praec. ger. reip. 5b] The speaker’s nature, not his speech, persuades,
[Praec. ger. reip. 5c] for both his nature and his speech do so; unless, indeed, one is to affirm that just as the helmsman, not the tiller, steers the ship, and the rider, not the rein, turns the horse, so political virtue, employing, not speech, but the speaker’s character as tiller or rein, sways a State, laying hold of it and directing it, as it were, from the stern, which is, in fact, as Plato says, the easiest way of turning an animal about. For those great and, as Homer calls them, “Zeus-descended” kings pad themselves out with purple robes and sceptres and guards and divine oracles, and although they enslaved the multitude by their grandeur, as if they were superior beings, they wished nevertheless to be “speakers of words” and they did not neglect the charm of speech,
[Praec. ger. reip. 5d] Nor the assemblies in which men make themselves greatly distinguished,
and they worshipped not only Zeus of the Council, Ares Enyalius, and Athena of War, but they invoked also Calliopê,
who accompanies revered monarchs,
[Praec. ger. reip. 5e] softening by persuasion and overcoming by charms the fierce and violent spirit of the people. How, then, is it possible that a private person of ordinary costume and mien who wishes to lead a State may gain power and rule the multitude unless he possesses persuasion and attractive speech? Now the pilots of ships employ others to give orders to the rowers, but the statesman needs to have in himself the mind that steers and also in himself the speech that gives orders, that he may not require some other man’s voice and be obliged to say, as Iphicrates did when defeated through the eloquence of Aristophon’s orators, “My opponents’ actor is better, but superior my play,” and may not often need these lines of Euripides,
[Praec. ger. reip. 5f] Oh that the seed of wretched men were mute,
802 and
Ah, would that deeds of men possessed a voice,
That clever speakers might become as naught;
[Praec. ger. reip. 5g] for these sayings ought perhaps to be granted as a refuge to Alcamenes, Nesiotes, Ictinus, and all artisans and craftsmen if they take an oath that they are not speakers; as once at Athens, when two architects were being questioned with a view to a public work, one of them, a wheedling and elegant speaker, moved the people by declaiming a prepared speech about the construction of it, but the other, who was a better architect but lacked the power of speech, came forward and said: “Men of Athens, what he has said, I will do.” For, as Sophocles says, only those are servants of the goddess of artistry who “on the anvil with a heavy hammer” and with blows work the yielding and innate material of their art. But the spokesman for Athena of the City and Themis of Counsel,
[Praec. ger. reip. 5h] She who dismisses assemblies of men and who also convenes them,
[Praec. ger. reip. 5i] employing speech as his only instrument, moulding and adapting some things and softening and smoothing off those which are hindrances to his work, such as would be knots in wood or flaws in iron, is an ornament to the city. For this reason the government in Pericles’ time was “in name” as Thucydides says, “a democracy, but in fact the rule of the foremost man,” because of his power of speech. For Cimon also was a good man, as were Ephialtes and Thucydides, but when the last named was asked by Archidamus King of the Spartans whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler, he replied, “Nobody can tell; for whenever I throw him in wrestling, he says he was not thrown and wins by persuading the onlookers.” And this brought not only reputation to Pericles but safety to the State; for while it was swayed by him it preserved its existing prosperity and refrained from foreign entanglements. But Nicias, whose policy was the same, but who lacked such power of persuasion and tried to rein in the people with speech as easy as a snaffle, could not restrain or master it, but against his will went off to Sicily on its back and together with it came a cropper. The wolf, they say, cannot be held by the ears; but one must lead a people or a State chiefly by the ears, not, as some do who have no practice in speaking and seek uncultured and inartistic holds upon the people, pulling them by the belly by means of banquets or gifts of money or arranging ballet-dances or gladiatorial shows, by which they lead the common people or rather curry favour with them. For leadership of a people is leadership of those who are persuaded by speech; but enticing the mob by such means as have just been mentioned is exactly like catching and herding irrational beasts.
[Praec. ger. reip. 6] 6 1 The speech of the statesman, however, must not be juvenile and theatrical, as if he were making a speech for show and weaving a garland of delicate and flowery words; on the other hand it must not, as Pytheas said of the speech of Demosthenes, smell of the lamp and elaborate literary labour, with sharp arguments and with periods precisely measured by rule and compass. No, just as musicians demand that the touch upon the strings exhibit feeling, not mere technique, so the speech of the statesman, counsellor, and ruler must not exhibit shrewdness or subtlety, and it must not be to his credit to speak fluently or artistically or distributively, but his speech must be full of unaffected character, true high-mindedness, a father’s frankness, foresight, and thoughtful concern for others. His speech must also have, in a good cause, a charm that pleases and a winning persuasiveness; 803 in addition to nobility of purpose it must possess grace arising from stately diction and appropriate and persuasive thoughts. And political oratory, much more than that used in a court of law, admits maxims, historical and mythical tales, and metaphors, by means of which those who employ them sparingly and at the proper moment move their audiences exceedingly; as did he who said “Do not make Hellas one-eyed,” and Demades when he said he was “governing the wreck of the State,” and Archilochus saying
[Praec. ger. reip. 6b] Nor let the stone of Tantalus
Hang o’er the head of this our isle,
[Praec. ger. reip. 6c] and Pericles when he bade the Athenians to remove “the eyesore of the Peiraeus,” and Phocion when he said with reference to the victory of Leosthenes that the furlong race of the war was good, but he was fearful about the long-distance race. And in general, loftiness and grandeur of style are more fitting for political speech; examples are the Philippics and among the speeches in Thucydides that of the ephor Sthenelaïdas, that of King Archidamus at Plataea, and that of Pericles after the pestilence. But as for the rhetorical efforts and grand periods of Ephorus, Theopompus, and Anaximenes, which they deliver after they have armed and drawn up the armies, it can be said of them,
[Praec. ger. reip. 6d] None talks so foolishly when near the steel.
[Praec. ger. reip. 7] 7 1 It is true, however, that derision and ridicule are sometimes proper parts of the statesman’s speech if employed, not as insults or buffoonery, but for needful reproof and disparagement. That sort of thing is most laudable in rejoinders and replies; for when employed of set purpose and without provocation, it makes the speaker appear to be a clown and carries with it a suspicion of malice, such as was attached to the ridicule in the speeches of Cicero, Cato the Elder, and Aristotle’s pupil Euxitheüs, all of whom frequently employed ridicule without previous provocation. But for one who employs it in self-defence the occasion makes it pardonable and at the same time pleasing, as when Demosthenes, in reply to a man who was suspected of being a thief and who mocked him for writing at night, said, “I am aware that I offend you by keeping a light burning,” and to Demades who shouted, “Demosthenes would correct me— ‘the sow correcting Athena,’ “ he replied, “Yes, your Athena was caught in adultery last year!” Witty too was Xenaenetus’s rejoinder to the citizens who reviled him for running away when he was general, “Yes, to keep you company, my dears.” But in jesting one must guard against going too far and against offending one’s hearers by jesting at the wrong moment or making the speaker appear ignoble and mean-spirited, as Democrates did; for he went up into the assembly and said that he, like the State, had little strength but much bluster, and at the time of the disaster at Chaeroneia he came forward among the people and said, “I wish the State had not met with so great a misfortune as to make you listen even to me as adviser,” for this remark showed him to be mean-spirited, the other to be crazy, and neither is becoming to a statesman. But in Phocion conciseness of speech was admired. At any rate Polyeuctus declared that Demosthenes was the greatest orator, but Phocion the cleverest in speaking, because his speech contained the most meaning in the fewest words. And Demosthenes though he despised the other orators, used to say when Phocion rose to speak, “The cleaver of my speeches is getting up.”
[Praec. ger. reip. 8] 8 1 Most of all, then, try to employ in addressing the people well-considered, not empty, speech, and to use precaution, knowing that even the great Pericles used to pray before making a public speech that no single utterance foreign to the matter in hand might occur to him. But nevertheless the orator must always keep his speech nimble and in good practice for making apt rejoinders; 804 for occasions arise quickly and often bring with them in public affairs sudden developments. That is why Demosthenes was inferior to many, as they say, because he drew back and hesitated when the occasion called for the opposite course. And Theophrastus tells us that Alcibiades, because he planned, not only to say the right thing, but to say it in the right way, often while actually speaking would search for words and arrange them into sentences, thereby causing hesitation and failure. But the man who is so moved by the events which take place and the opportunities which offer themselves that he springs to his feet is the one who most thrills the crowd, attracts it, and carries it with him. So it was, for example, with Leo of Byzantium; he once came to address the Athenians when they were in political discord, and when they laughed at him because he was a little man, he said, “What if you should see my wife, who hardly comes up to my knee?” Then when they laughed louder, “And yet, “ he said, “little as we are, when we quarrel with each other, the city of Byzantium is not big enough to hold us.” So also when Pytheas the orator was speaking in opposition to the granting of honours to Alexander and someone said to him, “Do you, at your age, dare to speak on such important matters?” he replied: “And yet Alexander is younger than I, and you are voting to make him a god.”
[Praec. ger. reip. 9] 9 1 And the statesman must bring to the struggle of statecraft — a struggle which is not unimportant, but calls for all one’s fighting power — speech which is severely trained in firmness of voice and strength of lungs, that he may not be frequently so weary and burnt out as to be defeated by some
[Praec. ger. reip. 9b] Rapacious brawler with a torrent’s voice.
[Praec. ger. reip. 9c] Cato, when he had no hope of winning his cause by persuasion because the popular assembly or the senate was gained over beforehand by favours and interests, used to get up and speak the whole day, thus destroying his opponents’ opportunity. On the subject, then, of the preparation of one’s speech and the way to use it these remarks are enough for one who has the ability to go on and discover the conclusions to be drawn from them.
[Praec. ger. reip. 10] 10 1 There are two entrances to public life and two paths leading to it: one the quick and brilliant road to reputation, by no means without risk, the other more prosaic and slower, but safer. For some men launch out at once into political life with some conspicuous, great, and daring action, like men who launch a vessel from a promontory that juts out into the sea; they think Pindar is right in saying
[Praec. ger. reip. 10b] To a work’s beginning we needs must set
A front that shines afar,
[Praec. ger. reip. 10c] for the masses are more ready to accept the beginner because they are so palled and surfeited with those to whom they are accustomed, just as spectators at a show are glad to accept a new performer; and authority and power that has a brilliant and rapid growth takes envy’s breath away. For, as Ariston says, fire does not cause smoke, nor reputation envy, if it blazes up quickly at the start, but those who grow great gradually and slowly are attacked one from one side, another from another; hence many men before coming to full bloom as public speakers have withered away. But if, as is said of Ladas,
[Praec. ger. reip. 10d] The noise o’ the barrier’s fall was in his ears
[Praec. ger. reip. 10e] even when he has been crowned for his brilliant success on an embassy, for a notable triumph, or for achievement as a general, in such instances neither those who envy a man nor those who despise him have so much power as before. In this way Aratus arrived at fame, beginning his public life with the destruction of the tyrant Nicocles; so Alcibiades, by making the Mantinean alliance against the Lacedaemonians. Pompey demanded a triumph although he had not yet been admitted to the senate, and when Sulla voted against it, he said, “More worship the rising than the setting sun”; and Sulla, when he heard this, withdrew his opposition. And take the case of Cornelius Scipio; it was not because of any chance beginning that the Roman people suddenly and contrary to law appointed him consul when he was a candidate for the aedileship, 805 but rather because they admired his victorious single combat in Iberia when he was a mere youth, and his deeds a little later at Carthage as military tribune, about which Cato the Elder exclaimed
[Praec. ger. reip. 10f] He and he only has sense, the rest are mere flickering shadows.
[Praec. ger. reip. 10g] Nowadays, then, when the affairs of the cities no longer include leadership in wars, nor the overthrowing of tyrannies, nor acts of alliances, what opening for a conspicuous and brilliant public career could a young man find? There remain the public lawsuits and embassies to the emperor, which demand a man of ardent temperament and one who possesses both courage and intellect. But there are many excellent lines of endeavour that are neglected in our cities which a man may take up, and also many practices resulting from evil custom, that have insinuated themselves to the shame or injury of the city, which a man may remove, and thus turn them to account for himself. Indeed in past times a just verdict gained in a great suit, or good faith in acting as advocate for a weak client against a powerful opponent, or boldness of speech in behalf of the right against a wicked ruler, has opened to some men a glorious entrance into public life. And not a few also have grown great through the enemies they have made by attacking men whose position made them enviable or caused them to be feared; for when such a man is overthrown his power passes at once, and with better reputation, to the man who overcame him. For attacking, through motives of envy, a good man who, on account of his virtue, is leader of the state, as Pericles was attacked by Simmias, Themistocles by Alcmeon, Pompey by Clodius, and Epameinondas by Menecleides the orator, is neither conducive to a good reputation nor advantageous in any other way; for when the people have committed a wrong against a good man and then (which happens quickly) repent of their anger, they think the easiest way to excuse themselves for this offence is the most just, namely, to destroy the man who was the author of it and persuaded them to commit it. On the other hand, to revolt against a bad man who by shameless audacity and cunning has made the city subject to himself, such as Cleon and Cleophon were at Athens, and to pull him down and humble him provides a glorious entrance upon the stage of public life. And I am not ignorant of the fact that some men by curtailing the power of an oppressive and oligarchical senate, as Ephialtes did at Athens and Phormio at Elis, have gained at the same time both power and glory; but to one who is just entering upon public life there is a great risk in this. Therefore Solon made a better beginning, when the State was divided into three factions called the Diacrians (“hill-folk”), the Pedieans (“plainsfolk”), and the Paralians (“coastfolk”); for he entangled himself with none of them, but acted for all in common and said and did everything to bring about concord among them, so that he was chosen lawgiver to reconcile their differences and in this way established his rule. So many, then, and of such kinds are the more conspicuous ways of entering upon a public career.
[Praec. ger. reip. 11] 11 But the safe and leisurely way has been chosen by many famous men — Aristeides, Phocion, Pammenes the Theban, Lucullus at Rome, Cato, the Lacedaemonian Agesilaüs. For just as ivy rises by twining itself about a strong tree, so each of these men, by attaching himself while still young to an older man and while still obscure to a man of reputation, being gradually raised up under the shelter of his power and growing great with him, fixed himself firmly and rooted himself in the affairs of State. For Aristeides was made great by Cleisthenes, Phocion by Chabrias, Lucullus by Sulla, Cato by Maximus, Epameinondas aided Pammenes, and Lysander Agesilaüs. But Agesilaüs through untimely ambition and jealousy of Lysander’s reputation insulted and quickly cast aside the guide of his actions; but the others in noble and statesmanlike fashion cherished their teachers until the end and joined in honouring them, 806 enhancing in turn with their own radiance, and illuminating, like the heavenly bodies that face the sun, that which caused themselves to shine. Certainly Scipio’s detractors said that he was the actor, but his friend Laelius the real author of his deeds; Laelius, however, was not puffed up by any of those sayings but continued always eagerly to exalt Scipio’s virtue and renown. And Pompey’s friend Afranius, even though he was of humble station, nevertheless expected to be elected consul, but when Pompey favoured other candidates, he relinquished his ambition, saying that gaining the consulship would be to him not so much glorious as painful and troublesome, if it were against Pompey’s will and without his co operation; and so after waiting only one year he both gained the office and retained the friendship. Those who are thus led to renown by the hand of others gain favour with many, and at the same time, if anything unpleasant happens, are less disliked; and that is why Philip advised Alexander to gain friends as long as he could while another man was king by having pleasant intercourse with others and maintaining friendly relations with them.
[Praec. ger. reip. 12] 12 1 But anyone who is entering upon a public career should choose as his leader a man who is not merely of established reputation and powerful, but one who is all this on account of real worth. For just as not every tree will accept and support the grape-vine which entwines about it, but some trees stifle and ruin its growth, so in States, the men who are not lovers of what is noble, but merely lovers of honours and of office, do not afford young men opportunities for public activities, but through envy repress them and, to speak figuratively, wither them up by depriving them of glory, their natural nourishment. So Marius, after having achieved many successes in Libya and again in Gaul with the help of Sulla, ceased to employ him and cast him off, being angered by his growth in power, but using the incident of the seal as a pretext. For Sulla, when Marius was general and he was quaestor in Libya, was sent by Marius to Bocchus and took Jugurtha prisoner; being a young man who had just had his first taste of glory, he did not bear his good fortune with moderation, but had a seal engraved with a representation of his deed — Jugurtha surrendering to him — and wore it. Marius threw this up against him and cast him off. And Sulla, transferring his allegiance to Catulus and Metellus, worthy men and opposed to Marius, quickly drove Marius out and broke his power in the civil war after he had almost overthrown Rome. Sulla, however, exalted Pompey from the time of his youth, rising up and uncovering his head when he came near; and also by giving the other young men opportunities for acts of leadership and even by urging some on against their will, he filled his armies with ambition and eagerness; and he gained power over them all by wishing to be, not the only great man, but first and greatest among many great ones. Such, then, are the men to whom young statesmen should attach themselves and cling closely, not snatching glory away from them, like Aesop’s wren who was carried up on the eagle’s shoulders, then suddenly flew out and got ahead of him, but receiving it from them in goodwill and friendship, knowing that no one can ever command well who has not first learned rightly to obey, as Plato says.
[Praec. ger. reip. 13] 13 1 Next after this comes the decision to be made concerning friends, and here we approve neither the idea of Themistocles nor that of Cleon. For Cleon, when he first decided to take up political life, brought his friends together and renounced his friendship with them as something which often weakens and perverts the right and just choice of policy in political life. But he would have done better if he had cast out from his soul avarice and love of strife 807 and had cleansed himself of envy and malice; for the State needs, not men who have no friends or comrades, but good and self-controlled men. As it was, he drove away his friends,
[Praec. ger. reip. 13b] But a hundred heads of cursed flatterers circling fawned
[Praec. ger. reip. 13c] about him, as the comic poets say; and being rough and harsh to the better classes he in turn subjected himself to the multitude in order to win its favour,
[Praec. ger. reip. 13d] Its old age tending, dosing it with pay,
[Praec. ger. reip. 13e] and making the basest and most unsound element of the people his associates against the best. But Themistocles on the other hand, when someone said that he would govern well if he showed himself equally impartial to all, replied: “May I never take my seat on such a throne that my friends shall not have more from me than those who are not my friends!” He also was wrong; for he put the government under pledge to his friendship, subordinating the affairs of the community and the public to private favours and interests. And yet when Simonides asked for something that was not just, he said to him: “Neither is he a good poet who sings contrary to metre, nor is he an equitable ruler who grants favours contrary to law.” For truly it is an outrageous and abominable thing if a pilot selects sailors and a ship-captain selects a pilot
[Praec. ger. reip. 13f] Well knowing how at the stern to hold steady the tiller and also
How to stretch taut the yard ropes when rises the onrushing tempest,
[Praec. ger. reip. 13g] and an architect chooses subordinates and handicraftsmen who will not spoil his work but will co operate to perfect it, whereas the statesman, who is, as Pindar says, the best of craftsmen and the maker of lawfulness and justice, does not immediately choose friends whose convictions are like his own, who will aid him and share his enthusiasm for what is noble, but rather those who are always wrongfully and by violent means trying to divert him to various other uses. Such a statesman will be found to be no better than a builder or a carpenter who through ignorance and error makes use of such squares and rulers and levels as are sure to make his work crooked. For friends are the living and thinking tools of the statesman, and he ought not to slip with them when they go wrong, but he must be on the watch that they do not err even through ignorance. In fact, it was this that disgraced Solon and brought him into disrepute among the citizens; for when he made up his mind to lighten debts and to introduce the Seisachtheia E(that was the nickname for the cancellation of debts), he told his friends about it, and they did a very wrong thing; they secretly borrowed a great deal of money before the law was punished, and a little later, after its publication, they were found to have bought splendid houses and much land with the money they had borrowed, and Solon, who was wronged, was accused of sharing in their wrongdoing. Agesilaüs, too, showed himself very weak and poor-spirited in dealing with his friends’ solicitations and, like Pegasus in Euripides’ drama,
[Praec. ger. reip. 13h] Crouched down and yielded more if more he wished,
[Praec. ger. reip. 13i] and by too great eagerness in aiding them when in misfortunes he made himself seem like them in wrongdoing; for example, when Phoebidas was on trial for seizing the Cadmeia without orders, he got him off by saying that such things were bound to happen of their own accord; and when Sphodrias was being tried for an illegal and frightful act (for he had invaded Attica when the Athenians were friends and allies), he brought about his acquittal, being softened by the amorous pleadings of his son. And a note of his to a certain ruler is quoted as follows: 808”If Nicias is innocent, let him go; if he is guilty, let him go for my sake; anyway, let him go.” But Phocion did not even appear in support of his son-in law Charicles when he was accused in connexion with the Harpalus affair; he merely said: “I made you my son-in law for nothing but what is right” and went away. And Timoleon of Corinth, when he was unable either by instruction or by entreaty to make his brother give up his tyranny, joined with those who destroyed him. For a statesman ought, by stopping short of being a party to perjury, not to be a “friend as far as the altar,” as Pericles once said, but only so far as conforms to any law, equity, or advantage the neglect of which leads to great public injury, as did the failure to punish Sphodrias and Phoebidas, for they did a great deal to make Sparta enter into the Leuctrian war. For the principles that govern a statesman’s conduct do not force him to act with severity against the moderate errors of his friends; on the contrary, they make it possible for him, after he has once made the chief public interests safe, out of his abundant resources to assist his friends, take his stand beside them, and help them out of their troubles. And there are also favours which arouse no ill-will, such as aiding a friend to gain an office, putting into his hands some honourable administrative function or some friendly foreign mission, for example one which includes honours to a ruler or negotiations with a State concerning friendship and concord; and if some public activity be laborious, but conspicuous and important, the statesman can first appoint himself to the post and then choose his friend as assistant, just as Diomedes did:
[Praec. ger. reip. 13j] So if you tell me myself to choose another as comrade,
How in that case could I e’er be forgetful of godlike Odysseus?
[Praec. ger. reip. 13k] And Odysseus again fittingly returns the compliment:
Now these horses, old sir, these new ones, of which thou inquirest,
Thracian they are, but their master was slain by the brave Diomedes.
[Praec. ger. reip. 13l] Slain and beside him his comrades, twelve comrades and all of the noblest.
[Praec. ger. reip. 13m] For such concession to one’s friends adorns those who give praise no less than those who receive it; but self-conceit, says Plato, dwells with loneliness. Then, besides, a man ought to ascribe to his friends a share in his own good and kindly acts of favour; he should tell those who have been benefited to praise and show them affection as the originators and advisers of the favours. But base and absurd requests he should reject, not harshly but gently, informing the askers by way of consolation that the requests are not in accord with their own excellence and reputation. Epameinondas exemplifies this most admirably: after refusing to let the pedlar out of prison at Pelopidas’s request and then letting him out a little later when his mistress asked it, he said, “Favours of that sort, Pelopidas, are fit for courtesans to receive, but not for generals.” But Cato acted harshly and arbitrarily when he was quaestor, and Catulus the censor, one of his most intimate friends, asked for the acquittal of a man who was being tried, by saying: “It is a disgrace that you, whose duty it is to train us young men to honourable conduct, have to be thrown out by our servants.” For he might, while refusing the favour in fact, have avoided harshness and bitterness of speech, by producing the impression that the offensive quality of his action was not due to his own will, but was forced upon him by law and justice. There are also in public life ways which are not dishonourable of helping friends who need money to acquire it; as, for example, when after the battle Themistocles saw a corpse wearing a golden bracelet and necklace, he himself passed it by, but turned to his friend and said, “Take these things, for you are not, as I am, Themistocles.” 809 For the administration of affairs frequently gives the man in public life this sort of chance to help his friends; for not every man is a Menemachus. and over to one friend a case at law which will bring in a good fee as advocate in a just cause, to another introduce a rich man who needs legal oversight and protection, and help another to get some profitable contract or lease. Epameinondas even told a friend to go to a certain rich man and ask for a talent, saying that it was he who bade him give it; and when the man who had been asked for it came and asked him the reason, he replied: “Because this man is a good man and poor, but you are rich since you have appropriated much of the State’s wealth.” And Xenophon says that Agesilaüs delighted in enriching his friends, he being himself above money.
[Praec. ger. reip. 14] 14 1 But since, to quote Simonides, “all larks must grow a crest,” and every public career bears its crop of enmities and disagreements, the public man must give especial consideration to these matters. So most people commend Themistocles and Aristeides who, whenever they went on an embassy or in command of an army, laid down their private enmity at the frontier, then took it up again later. And some people are also immensely pleased by the conduct of Cretinas of Magnesia. He was a political opponent of Hermeias, a man who was not powerful but was of ambitious spirit and brilliant mind, and when the Mithridatic war broke out, seeing that the State was in danger, he told Hermeias to take over the command and manage affairs, while he himself withdrew; or, if Hermeias wished him to be general, then Hermeias should remove himself, that they might not by ambitious strife with one another destroy the State. The challenge pleased Hermeias, and saying that Cretinas was more versed in war than himself, he went away with his wife and children. And as he was departing Cretinas escorted him, first giving him out of his own means such things as were more useful to exiles than to people besieged in a city, after which by his excellent military leadership he saved the State unexpectedly when it was on the brink of destruction. For if it is a noble thing and the mark of an exalted spirit to exclaim
[Praec. ger. reip. 14b] I love my children, but I love my country more,
[Praec. ger. reip. 14c] would it not have been easier for each of them to say, “I hate so-and so and wish to do him harm, but I love my country more”? For to be unwilling to make peace with a personal enemy for the sake of those things for which we ought even to give up a friend is shockingly uncivilized and as low as the beasts. Certainly Phocion and Cato and their like acted much better, for they would allow no personal enmity to have any bearing whatsoever upon political differences, but were stern and inexorable only in public contests against sacrificing what was for the common good; yet in private matters they treated kindly and without anger their political opponents. For the statesman should not regard any fellow-citizen as an enemy, unless some man, such as Aristion, Nabis, or Catiline, should appear who is a pest and a running sore to the State. Those who are in other ways out of harmony he should, like a skilful musician, bring into unison by gently tightening or relaxing the strings of his control, not attacking angrily and insultingly those who err, but making an appeal designed rather to make a moral impression, as Homer does:
[Praec. ger. reip. 14d] Truly, my friend, I did think you surpassed other men in your wisdom;
And
Knowledge thou hast to devise other speech that is better than this was.
[Praec. ger. reip. 14e] But if they say or do anything good, he should not be vexed by their honours, nor should he be sparing of complimentary words for their good actions; for if we act in this way our blame, where it is needed, will be thought justified, and we shall make them dislike evil by exalting virtue and showing through comparison that good actions are more worthy and fitting than the other kind. 810 And I think also that the statesman should give testimony in just causes even for his opponents, should aid them in court against the malicious prosecutors, and should discredit calumnies about them if such accusations are alien to the principles they profess; just as the infamous Nero, a little before he put Thrasea to death, whom he hated and feared intensely, nevertheless when someone accused him of a bad and unjust decision in court, said: “I wish Thrasea were as good a friend to me as he is a most excellent judge.”
[Praec. ger. reip. 14f] And it is not a bad method for confounding persons of a different kind, men who are naturally vicious and prone to evil conduct, to mention to them some enemy of theirs who is of finer character and to say: “He would not have said that or done that.” And some men, too, when they do wrong, should be reminded of their excellent fathers, as Homer says:
[Praec. ger. reip. 14g] Truly not much like his sire is the son who was gotten by Tydeus;
[Praec. ger. reip. 14h] And Appius, when competing with Scipio Africanus in the elections, said: “O Paulus, how you would groan in the lower world if you saw that when your son was standing for the censorship Philonicus the publican acted as his bodyguard!” Such sayings serve at once to rebuke wrongdoers and to add lustre to those who administer the rebuke. And the Nestor of Sophocles, too, made a statesmanlike reply when reviled by Ajax:
[Praec. ger. reip. 14i] I blame thee not; for good thy acts, though ill thy speech.
[Praec. ger. reip. 14j] And Cato, although he had opposed Pompey in the violent measures which he and Caesar applied to the State, when war broke out between them advised handing over the leadership to Pompey, saying: “The men who can bring about great evils can also end them.” For blame which is mingled with praise and contains nothing insulting but merely frankness of speech, and arouses not anger but a pricking of the conscience and repentance, appears both kindly and healing; but abusive speech is not at all fitting for statesmen. Observe the things that were said by Demosthenes against Aeschines and by Aeschines against him and again those which Hypereides wrote against Demades, and ask yourself if a Solon or a Pericles or Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian or Pittacus the Lesbian would have said them. And yet even Demosthenes employs abuse only in his speeches before a court of law; the Philippics are free from all jeering and scurrility.
[Praec. ger. reip. 14k] For such things bring disgrace upon the speakers rather than upon those spoken of, and moreover they bring confusion into the conduct of affairs and they disturb councils and assemblies. Therefore Phocion did well when he stopped speaking and yielded the floor to a man who was reviling him, and then, when the fellow had at last become silent, came forward again saying: “Well, then, about the cavalry and the heavy infantry you have heard already; it remains for me to discuss the light infantry and the targeteers.” But since many men find it hard to endure that sort of thing quietly, and abusive speakers are often, and not without general benefit, made to shut their mouths by the retorts they evoke, let the reply be brief in wording, showing no temper and no extreme rancour, but urbanity mingled with playfulness and grace which somehow or other has a sting in it.
[Praec. ger. reip. 14l] Retorts which turn his own words back upon the speaker are especially good in this way. For just as things which are thrown and return to the thrower seem to do this because they are driven back by some force and firmness of that against which they are thrown, Fso that which is spoken seems through the force and intellect of him who has been abused to turn back upon those who uttered the abuse. For example, the retort of Epameinondas to Callistratus, who reproached the Thebans and the Argives because Oedipus killed his father and Orestes killed his mother: “When we had driven out the doers of those deeds, you took them in,” and that of Antalcidas the Spartan to the Athenian who said “We have often chased you away from the Cephissus,” “Yes, but we have never had to chase you from the Eurotas.” 811 And Phocion also made a witty retort, when, after Demades had screamed “The Athenians will put you to death,” he replied, “Yes, if they are crazy; but you are the one whom they will execute, if they are sane.” And Crassus the orator, when Domitius said to him, “It was you, was it not, who wept when a lamprey died that you kept in a tank?” retorted with the question, “It was you, was it not, who buried three wives without shedding a tear?” Apt replies of this sort, however, are of some use also in life in general.
[Praec. ger. reip. 15] 15 1 There are men who enter upon every kind of public service, as Cato did, claiming that the good citizen ought, so far as in him lies, to omit no trouble or diligence; and they commend Epameinondas because, when through envy and as an insult he had been appointed telmarch by the Thebans, he did not neglect his duties, but saying that not only does the office distinguish the man, but also the man the office, he advanced the telmarchy to a position of great consideration and dignity, though previously it had been nothing but a sort of supervision of the alleys for the removal of dung and the draining off of water in the streets. And no doubt I myself seem ridiculous to visitors in our town when I am seen in public, as I often am, engaged in such matters. But I am helped by the remark of Antisthenes which has been handed down to memory; for when someone expressed surprise, that he himself carried a dried fish through the market-place, he said, “Yes, but it’s for myself”; but I, on the other hand, say to those who criticize me for standing and watching tiles being measured or concrete or stones being delivered, that I attend to these things, not for myself, but for my native place. Yes, for there are many other things in regard to which a man would be petty and sordid who managed them for himself and attended to them for his own sake, but if he does it for the public and for the State’s sake, he is not ignoble, on the contrary his attention to duty and his zeal are all the greater when applied to little things. But there are others who think the conduct of Pericles was more dignified and splendid, one of whom is Critolaüs the Peripatetic, who claims that just as the Salaminia and the Paralus, ships at Athens, were not sent out to sea for every service, but only for necessary and important missions, so the statesman should employ himself for the most momentous and important matters, as does the King of the Universe,
[Praec. ger. reip. 15b] For God great things doth take in hand,
But small things passing by he leaves to chance,
according to Euripides.
[Praec. ger. reip. 15c] Neither do we commend the ambition and contentiousness of Theagenes who, after being victorious, not only in the circuit of festivals, but in many other contests besides, not only in the pancratium, but also in boxing and long-distance running, at last, when at certain commemorative funeral ceremonies he was partaking of the feast to honour the deceased as a hero, and all present had, as was the custom, their several portions set out before them, sprang up and performed a whole pancratium, as if it were wrong for anyone else to be a victor when he was present; for he had collected by such means twelve hundred head-bands, most of which might be regarded as rubbish. Now there is no difference between him and those who strip for every political activity; they soon cause themselves to be criticized by the multitude; they become unpopular and arouse envy when they are successful, but joy when they meet with failure; and that which was admired in them when they began to hold office results at last in mockery and ridicule. Such are the lines:
[Praec. ger. reip. 15d] Metiochus, you see, is general, Metiochus inspects the roads,
Metiochus inspects the bread, and Metiochus inspects the flour,
Metiochus takes care of all things, Metiochus will come to grief.
[Praec. ger. reip. 15e] He was one of Pericles’ followers and seems to have used the power gained through him in such a way as to arouse odium and disgust. For the statesman ought, as they say, to find the people fond of him when he comes to them and to leave a longing for him when he is not there; which Scipio Africanus accomplished 812 by spending much of his time in the country, thereby at one and the same time removing the weight of envy and giving a breathing-space to those who thought they were oppressed by his glory. But Timesias of Clazomenae was in other respects a good man in his service to the State, but by doing everything himself he had aroused rancour and hatred; but of this he was unaware until the following incident took place: — Some boys were knocking a knuckle-bone out of a hole when he was passing by; and some of them said it was sit in the hole, but the boy who had struck at it said: “I’d like to knock the brains out of Timesias as truly as this has been knocked out of the hole.” Timesias, hearing this and understanding that dislike of him had permeated all the people, returned home and told his wife what had happened; and directing her to pack up and follow him, he went immediately away from his house and out from the city. And it appears that Themistocles, when he meet with some treatment from the Athenians, said, “Why, my dear people, are you tired of receiving repeated benefits?”
[Praec. ger. reip. 15f] Now of such sayings some are well said, others are not. For so far as goodwill and solicitude for the common weal are concerned, a statesman should not hold aloof from any part of public affairs, but should pay attention to them all and inform himself about all details; nor should he, as the ship’s gear called sacred is stowed apart, hold himself aloof, waiting for the extreme necessities and fortunes of the State; but perform other duties by means of different instruments operated by different agents, thus giving a turn or a twist to the instruments while they sit apart, and they make use of sailors, look-out men, and boatswains, some of whom they often call to the stern and entrust with the tiller, just so it is fitting that the statesman should yield office to others and should invite them to the orators’ platform in a gracious and kindly manner, and he should not try to administer all the affairs of the State by his own speeches, decrees, and actions, but should have good, trustworthy men and employ each of them for each particular service according to his fitness. So Pericles made use of Menippus for the position of general, humbled the Council of the Areopagus by means of Ephialtes, passed the decree against the Megarians by means of Charinus, and sent Lampon out as founder of Thurii. For, when power seems to be distributed among many, not only does the weight of hatreds and enmities become less troublesome, but there is also greater efficiency in the conduct of affairs. For just as the division of the hand into fingers does not make it weak, but renders it a more skillful instrument for use, so the statesman who gives to others a share in the government Emakes action more effective by co operation. But he who through insatiable greed of fame or power puts the whole burden of the State upon himself and sets himself even to tasks for which he is not fitted by nature or by training (as Cleon set himself to leading armies, Philopoemen to commanding ships, and Hannibal to haranguing the people) — such a man has no excuse when he makes mistakes, but will have to hear Euripides quoted to boot,
[Praec. ger. reip. 15g] A joiner thou, yet didst a task essay
That was no carpentry.
[Praec. ger. reip. 15h] So, being no persuasive speaker, you went on an embassy, or being easy-going you undertook administration, being ignorant of accounting you were treasurer, or when old and feeble you took command of an army. But Pericles divided the power with Cimon so that he should himself be ruler in the city and Cimon should man the ships and wage war against the barbarians; for one of them was more gifted for civic government, the other for war. And Eubulus the Anaphlystian also is commended because, although few men enjoyed so much confidence and power as he, yet he administered none of the Hellenic affairs and did not take the post of general, but applied himself to the finances, increased the revenues, and did the State much good thereby. But Iphicrates was jeered at when he did exercises in speaking at his home in the presence of many hearers; 813 for even if he had been a good speaker, and not, as he was, a poor one, he ought to have been contented with glory in arms and to have left the school to the sophists.
[Praec. ger. reip. 16] 16 1 But since there is in every democracy a spirit of malice and fault-finding directed against men in public life, and they suspect that many desirable measures, if there is no party opposition and no expression of dissent, are done by conspiracy, and this subjects a man’s associations and friends to calumny, statesmen ought not to let any real enmity or disagreement against themselves subsist, as Onomademuse the popular leader of the Chians did when, after his victory in the factional strife, he refused to have all his opponents banished from the city, “that we may not,” he said, “begin to quarrel with our friends when we have altogether got rid of our enemies.” Now that was silly; but when the populace are suspicious about some important and salutary measure, the statesmen when they come to the assembly ought not all to express the same opinion, as if by previous agreement, but two or three of the friends should dissent and quietly speak on the other side, then change in their position as if they had been convinced; for in this way they draw the people along with them, since they appear to be influenced only by the public advantage. In small matters, however, which do not amount to much, Cit is not a bad thing to let one’s friends really disagree, each following his own reasoning, that in matters of the highest importance their agreement upon the best policy may not seem to be prearranged.
[Praec. ger. reip. 17] 17 1 Now the statesman is always by nature ruler of the State, like the leader bee in the hive, and bearing this in mind he ought to keep public matters in his own hands; but offices which are called “authoritative” and are elective he ought not to seek too eagerly or often, for love of office is neither dignified nor popular; nor should he refuse them, if the people offer them and call him to them in accordance with the law, but even if they be too small for a man of his reputation, he should accept them and exercise them with zeal; for it is right that men who are adorned with the highest offices should in turn adorn the lesser, and that statesmen should show moderation, giving up and yielding some part of the weightier offices, such as the generalship at Athens, the prytany at Rhodes, and the Boeotarchy here, and should add to the minor offices dignity and grandeur, that we may not be despised in connexion with the latter, nor envied on account of the former. And when entering upon any office whatsoever, you must not only call to mind those considerations of which Pericles reminded himself when he assumed the cloak of a general: “Take care, Pericles; you are ruling free men, you are ruling Greeks, Athenian citizens,” but you must also say to yourself: “You who rule are a subject, ruling a State controlled by proconsuls, the agents of peace; ‘these are not the spearmen of the plain,’ nor is this ancient Sardis, nor the famed Lydian power.” You should arrange your cloak more carefully and from the office of the generals keep your eyes upon the orators’ platform, and not have great pride or confidence in your crown, since you see the boots of Roman soldiers just above your head. No, you should imitate the actors, who, while putting into the performance their own passion, character, and reputation, yet listen to the prompter and do not go beyond the degree of liberty in rhythms and metres permitted by those in authority over them. For to fail in one’s part in public life brings not mere hissing or catcalls or stamping of feet, but many have experienced
[Praec. ger. reip. 17b] The dread chastiser, axe that cleaves the neck,
[Praec. ger. reip. 17c] as did your countryman Pardalas and his followers when they forgot their proper limitations. And many another, banished to an island, has become, as Solon says,
[Praec. ger. reip. 17d] Pholegandrian or Sicinete,
814 No more Athenian, having changed his home.
[Praec. ger. reip. 17e] Furthermore when we see little children trying playfully to bind their fathers’ shoes on their feet or fit their crowns upon their heads, we only laugh, but the officials in the cities, when they foolishly urge the people to imitate the deeds, ideals, and actions of their ancestors, however unsuitable they may be to the present times and conditions, stir up the common folk and, though what they do is laughable, what is done to them is no laughing matter, unless they are merely treated with utter contempt. Indeed there are many acts of the Greeks of former times by recounting which the statesman can mould and correct the characters of our contemporaries, for example, at Athens by calling to mind, not deeds in war, but such things as the decree of amnesty after the downfall of the Thirty Tyrants, the fining of Phrynichus for presenting in a tragedy the capture of Miletus, their decking their heads with garlands when Cassander refounded Thebes; how, when they heard of the clubbing at Argos, in which the Argives killed fifteen hundred of their own citizens, they decreed that an expiatory sacrifice be carried about in the assembly; and how, when they were searching the houses at the time of Harpalus’s frauds, they passed by only one, that of a newly married man. By emulating acts like these Cit is even now possible to resemble our ancestors, but Marathon, the Eurymedon, Plataea, and all the other examples which make the common folk vainly to swell with pride and kick up their heels, should be left to the schools of the sophists.
[Praec. ger. reip. 18] 18 1 And not only should the statesman show himself and his native State blameless towards our rulers, but he should also have always a friend among the men of high station who have the greatest power as a firm bulwark, so to speak, of his administration; for the Romans themselves are most eager to promote the political interests of their friends; and it is a fine thing also, when we gain advantage from the friendship of great men, to turn it to the welfare of our community, as Polybius and Panaetius, through Scipio’s goodwill towards them, conferred great benefits upon their native States. And Caesar, when he took Alexandria, drove into the city holding Areius by the hand and conversing with him only of all his friends, then said to the Alexandrians, who were expecting the most extreme measures and were begging for mercy, that he pardoned them on account of the greatness of their city and for the sake of its founder Alexander, “and thirdly,” said he, “as a favour to my friend here.” Is there any comparison between such a favour and the procuratorships and governorships of provinces from which many talents may be gained and in pursuit of which most public men grow old haunting the doors of other men’s houses and leaving their own affairs uncared for? Or should we correct Euripides when he chants the sentiment that if a man must spend sleepless nights and haunt another man’s court and subject himself to an intimacy with a great man, it is best to do so for the sake of his native land, but otherwise it is best to welcome and hold fast friendships based on equality and justice?
[Praec. ger. reip. 19] 19 1 However, the statesman, while making his native State readily obedient to its sovereigns, must not further humble it; nor, when the leg has been fettered, go on and subject the neck to the yoke, as some who do, by referring everything, great or small, to the sovereigns, bring the reproach of slavery upon their country, or rather wholly destroy its constitutional government, making it dazed, timid, and powerless in everything. For just as those who have become accustomed neither to dine nor to bathe except by the physician’s orders do not even enjoy that degree of health which nature grants them, so those who invite the sovereign’s decision on every decree, meeting of a council, granting of a privilege, or administrative measure, 815 force their sovereign to be their master more than he desires. And the cause of this is chiefly the greed and contentiousness of the foremost citizens; for either, in cases in which they are injuring their inferior, they force them into exile from the State, or, in matters concerning which they differ among themselves, since they are unwilling to occupy an inferior position among their fellow-citizens, they call in those who are mightier; and as a result senate, popular assembly, courts, and the entire local government lose their authority. But the statesman should soothe the ordinary citizens by granting them equality and the powerful by concessions in return, thus keeping them within the bounds of the local government and solving their difficulties Bas if they were diseases, making for them, as it were, a sort of secret political medicine; he will prefer to be himself defeated among his fellow-citizens rather than to be successful by outraging and destroying the principles of justice in his own city and he will beg everyone else to do likewise, and will teach them how great an evil is contentiousness. But as it is, not only do they not make honourable and gracious compromises with their fellow-citizens and tribesmen at home and with their neighbours and colleagues in office, but they carry their dissensions outside to the doors of professional orators and put them in the hands of lawyers, to the their own great injury and disgrace. For when physicians cannot entirely eradicate diseases, they turn them outwards to the surface of the body; but the statesman, if he cannot keep the State entirely free from troubles, will at any rate try to cure and control whatever disturbs it and causes sedition, keeping it meanwhile hidden within the State, so that it may have as little need as possible of physicians and medicine drawn from outside. For the policy of the statesman should be that which holds fast to security and avoids the tumultuous and mad impulse of empty opinion, as has been said. In his disposition, however, high spirit and
[Praec. ger. reip. 19b] courage must be, full of daring,
Dauntless, and such as inspires all men who for weal of their country
‘Gainst men of hostile intent
[Praec. ger. reip. 19c] and against difficult conditions and times stand firm in resistance and struggle to the end. For he must not create storms himself, and yet he must not desert the State when storms fall upon it; he must not stir up the State and make it reel perilously, but when it is reeling and in danger, he must come to its assistance and employ his frankness of speech as a sacred anchor heaved over in the greatest perils. Such were the troubles which overtook the Pergamenes under Nero and the Rhodians recently under Domitian and the Thessalians earlier under Augustus, when they burned Petraeus alive.
[Praec. ger. reip. 19d] Then slumb’ring thou never wouldst see him,
[Praec. ger. reip. 19e] nor cowering in fear, the man who is really a statesman, nor would you see how throwing blame upon others and putting himself out of danger, but you will see him serving on embassies, sailing the seas and saying first not only
[Praec. ger. reip. 19f] Here we have come, the slayers; avert thou the plague, O Apollo,
but, even though he had no part in the wrongdoing of the people, taking dangers upon himself in their behalf. For this is noble; and besides being noble, one man’s excellence and wisdom by arousing admiration has often mitigated anger which has been aroused against the whole people and has dissipated the threatened terror and bitterness. Something of that sort seems to have happened to the Persian king in the case of Boulis and Sperchis the Spartans, and happened to Pompey in the case of Sthenno, when, as he was going to punish the Mamertines for revolting, Sthenno told him that he would be doing wrong if he should destroy many innocent men for the fault of one; for, he said, it was he himself who had caused the city to revolt by persuading his friends and compelling his enemies. This so affected Pompey that he let the city go unpunished and also treated Sthenno kindly. But Sulla’s guest-friend, practising virtue of the same sort but not having to do with the same sort of man, met with a noble end. 816 For when Sulla, after the capture of Praeneste, was going to slaughter all the rest of the citizens but was letting that one man go on account of his guest-friendship, he declared that he would not be indebted for his life to the slayer of his fatherland, and then mingled with his fellow-citizens and was cut down with them. However, we must pray to be spared such crises and must hope for better things.
[Praec. ger. reip. 20] 20 1 And deeming every public office to be something great and sacred, we must also pay the highest honour to one who holds an office; but the honour of an office resides in concord and friendship with one’s colleagues much more than in crowns and a purple-bordered robe. But those who consider that serving together in a campaign or in the school for young citizens is the beginning of friendship, but regard joint service in the generalship or other office as the cause of enmity, have failed to avoid one of the three evils; for either they regard their colleagues as their equals and are themselves factious, or they envy them as their superiors, or despise them as their inferiors. But a man ought to conciliate his superior, add prestige to his inferior, honour his equal, and be affable and friendly to all, considering that they have been made
[Praec. ger. reip. 20b] Friends, not of festive board,
nor of tankard,
nor of fireside’s cheer,
but all alike by vote of the people, and that they bear goodwill toward one another as a heritage, so to speak, from their fatherland. At any rate Scipio was criticized in Rome because, when he entertained his friends at the dedication of the temple of Hercules, he did not include his colleague Mummius; for even if in general the two men did not consider themselves friends, on such occasions they usually thought it proper to show honour and friendliness to each other on account of their office. Inasmuch, therefore, as the omission of so slight an act of courtesy brought a reputation for haughtiness to Scipio, a man in other respects admirable, how can anyone be considered honourable and fair-minded who detracts from the dignity of a colleague in office, or maliciously flouts him by actions which reveal ambitious rivalry, or is so self-willed that he arrogates and annexes to himself everything, in short, at the expense of his colleague? I recollect that when I was still a young man I was sent with another as envoy to the proconsul; the other man was somehow left behind. I alone met the proconsul and accomplished the business. Now when I came back and was to make the report of our mission, my father left his seat and told me in private not to say “I went,” but “we went,” not “I said,” but “we said,” and in all other ways to associate my colleague in a joint report. For that sort of thing is not only honourable and kind, but it also takes the sting out of any envy of our reputation. And therefore great men ascribe to God and to Fortune a share in their successes, as Timoleon, who put down the tyrannies in Sicily, founded a sanctuary of Automatia (Chance); and Python, when he was admired and honoured by the Athenians for slaying Cotys, said “God did this, borrowing from me the hand that did the deed.” And Theopompus, King of the Lacedaemonians, replied to the man who said that Sparta was preserved because the kings were fitted to rule, “No, it is rather because the people are fitted to obey.”
[Praec. ger. reip. 21] 21 1 Now both of these arise from each other. Most people say and believe that it is the business of political teaching to cause men to be good subjects; for, they say, the subject class is in every State larger than the ruling class; and each official rules but a short time, whereas he is ruled all the time, if he is a citizen of a democracy; so that it is a most excellent and useful thing to learn to obey those in authority, even if they happen to be deficient in power and reputation. For it is absurd that in a tragedy the chief actor, even though he is a Theodorus or a Polus, often makes his entrance after a hireling who takes third-class parts and addresses in humble fashion, just because the latter wears the diadem and sceptre, 817 but that in real affairs and in government the rich and famous man belittles and despises the official who is plebeian and poor, thereby using his own high standing to insult and destroy that of the State, instead of enhancing it rather and adding to the office the esteem and power derived from himself. So at Sparta the kings gave precedence to the ephors, and if any other Spartan was summoned, he did not walk slowly in obeying the summons, but by running eagerly at full speed through the market-place they exhibited to their fellow-citizens their spirit of obedience, rejoicing in paying honour to their rulers. They did not behave like some uncultured and unmannerly persons who, as if swaggering in the excess of their own power, abuse the umpires at the games, revile the choregi at the Dionysiac festival, and jeer at generals and gymnasiarchs, not knowing and not understanding that it is often more glorious to pay honour than to receive it. For to a man who has great power in the State greater distinction accrues through serving in the bodyguard and the escort of an official than through being so served and escorted by him, or rather the latter brings him dislike and envy, but the former brings true reputation, that which comes from goodwill; and by being seen sometimes at the official’s door, by greeting him first, and by putting him in the middle place in walking a man adds lustre to the State without taking anything from himself.
[Praec. ger. reip. 22] 22 1 And it is also a service to the people sometimes to endure the evil speech and anger of a man in office, repeating to oneself either the words of Diomedes:
[Praec. ger. reip. 22b] For unto him will accrue mighty glory,
[Praec. ger. reip. 22c] or the saying of Demosthenes, that now he is not only Demosthenes, but also one of the thesmothetae, or a choregus, or the wearer of a crown. We should, therefore, put off our requital to the right time; for then either we shall attack him after his term of office is ended or in the delay our gain will be the cessation of anger.
[Praec. ger. reip. 23] 23 1 One should, however, always \L& with every official in zeal, forethought for the common good, and wisdom; if they are worthy men, by voluntarily suggesting and pointing out the things to be done and allowing them to make use of well-considered ideas and to be held in high esteem because they are benefactors of the community. But if there is in them any reluctance, delay, or ill-will as to putting such suggestions into effect, then a man ought to come forward of himself and address the people, and he should not neglect or slight the public interests on the ground that because someone else is in office it is not proper for him to meddle and mix in the administration of affairs. For the law always gives the first rank in the government to him who does what is right and recognizes what is advantageous. “Now there was,” says he, “in the army a man named Xenophon, neither a general nor a captain,” but by perceiving what was needed and daring to do it he put himself in command and saved the Greeks. And of Philopoemen’s deeds the most brilliant is this, that when Nabis had taken Messenê, and the general of the Achaeans was so cowardly that he would not go to the assistance of the place, he himself with the most eager patriots set out and took the city without any decree of the council. Certainly it is well to make innovations, not for the sake of small or casual matters, but in cases of necessity, as Philopoemen did, or for glorious causes, as Epameinondas did when contrary to the law he added four months to the Boeotarchy, in which time he invaded Laconia and carried out his measures at Messenê; so that if any accusation or blame be brought against us on this account we may have necessity as our defence against the charge, or the greatness and glory of the action as a consolation for the risk.
[Praec. ger. reip. 24] 24 1 A saying of Jason, monarch of the Thessalians, is recorded, which he always used to repeat whenever he was taking violent and annoying measures against individuals: 818 “It is inevitable that those should act unjustly in small matters who wish to act justly in great matters.” That is recognized at once as the saying of a despot; but this is a more statesmanlike precept: “Win the favour of the people by giving way in small things in order that in greater matters you may oppose them stubbornly and thus prevent them from committing errors.” For a man who is always very exact and strenuous about everything, not giving way or yielding at all, but always harsh and inexorable, gets the people into the habit of opposing him and being out of temper with him;
[Praec. ger. reip. 24b] But he should let the sheet
Run out a bit before the waves’ great force,
[Praec. ger. reip. 24c] Bsometimes by giving way and playing graciously with them himself, as at sacrifices, public games, and spectacles in the theatre, and sometimes by pretending not to see or hear their errors, just as we treat the errors of the young people in a family, in order that the force of his rebukes and outspoken criticism — like that of a medicine — may not become exhausted or stale, but may in matters of greater importance, retaining its full strength and credit, take a stronger hold upon the people and sting them into obedience. Alexander, for example, when he heard that his sister had had intercourse with a handsome young man, did not burst into a rage, but merely remarked that she also ought to be allowed to get some enjoyment out of her royal station. In making such concessions he did not act rightly or in a manner worthy of himself; for the weakening of a throne and outrageous conduct should not be regarded as mere enjoyment. But to the people the statesman will, so far as is possible, permit no outrageous conduct towards the citizens, no confiscation of others’ property, nor distribution of public funds, but by persuasion, arguments, and threats he will oppose to the bitter end desires of that sort, by nourishing and increasing which Cleon and his partisans produced in the State, as Plato says, a swarm of drones with stings. But if the people, taking an ancestral festival or the worship of some god as a pretext, are bent upon some public spectacle or a slight distribution of funds, or a gift for the general good or some lavish shows prompted by private ambition, for such purposes let them reap the benefit both of their generosity and of their prosperity. Why, among the public acts of Pericles and of Demetrius are many of that sort, and Cimon beautified the market-place by planting plane-trees and laying out walks. And Cato, seeing that the people was being greatly stirred up by Caesar in the affair of Catiline and was dangerously inclined towards a revolution, persuaded the senate to vote a dole to the poor, and the giving of this halted the disturbance and ended the uprising. For just as a physician, after drawing off a great deal of infected blood, Esupplies a little harmless nourishment, so the statesman, after doing away with something big which was discreditable or harmful, appeases the spirit of discontent and fault-finding by some slight and kindly act of favour.
[Praec. ger. reip. 25] 25 1 It is also expedient to divert the people’s interest to other useful things, as Demades did when he had the revenues of the State in his charge; for when the people were eager to send out triremes to aid those who were in revolt against Alexander, and were urging him to furnish funds, “You have,” he said, “funds available, for I have made preparations for the Pitcher Festival so that each of you is to receive a half-mina, but if you had rather apply the funds to this other purpose, use your own money for the festival.” And in this way, since they gave up the expedition in order not to lose the distribution of money, he removed any ground of complaint on Alexander’s part against the people of Athens. For there are many unprofitable measures which the statesman cannot avert by direct means, but he must use some sort of roundabout and circuitous methods, 819 such as Phocion employed when ordered at an inopportune time to invade Boeotia. He immediately issued a proclamation calling all those from the age of military service up to sixty years to join the ranks, and when the older men made a violent protest, he said: “What is there terrible about it? For I, your general, who am eighty years old, shall be with you.” So in this way we should prevent inopportune embassies by listing among the envoys many who are not qualified to go, and useless construction by calling for contributions, and improper lawsuits and missions abroad by ordering the parties to appear in court together and together to go abroad on the missions. And those who propose such measures and incite the people to adopt them should be the first to be haled into court and made to take the responsibility for putting them into effect; for so they will either draw back and appear to be themselves nullifying the measure or they will stick to it and share its unpleasant features.
[Praec. ger. reip. 26] 26 1 When, however, something important and useful but requiring much conflict and serious effort is to be accomplished, then try to select from among your friends those who are most powerful, or from among the most powerful those who are easiest to get along; for they are least likely to act against you and most likely to work with you, since they possess wisdom without contentiousness. And, moreover, you should know your own nature and choose for any purpose for which you are naturally less fitted than others, men who are more able rather than men like yourself, as Diomedes chose to go with him on the scouting expedition the man of prudence and passed over the men of courage. For actions are thus more equally balanced, and contention does not arise among men whose ambitions proceed from different virtues and abilities. So, if you are not a good speaker, take an orator as your assistant in a lawsuit or your colleague in an embassy, as Pelopidas took Epameinondas; and if, like Callicratidas, you are too lofty of speech and not persuasive in addressing the masses, choose a man who is winning in his speech and conciliatory; and if you are physically weak and incapable of hard work, choose a man who is fond of labour and strong, as Nicias chose Lamachus. For on this principle Geryon would have been enviable for having many legs, arms, and eyes, if he had directed them all by one mind. But statesmen, by uniting for one purpose not only men’s persons and funds, but also their fortunes, abilities, and virtues, if they are in agreement, can gain greater reputation in connexion with the same action than by other means, not behaving like the Argonauts, who left Heracles behind and then were forced to work through the women’s quarters and use magic and drugs to save themselves and steal the golden fleece.
[Praec. ger. reip. 26b] When entering some sanctuaries men leave their gold outside; but iron, one may say, they do not at all carry into any sanctuary. And since the orators’ platform is a sanctuary common to Zeus the Counsellor and the Protector of Cities, to Themis and to Justice, do you strip off all love of wealth and of money, as you would iron full of rust and a disease of the soul, cast them straightway at the beginning into the market-place of hucksters and money-lenders,
[Praec. ger. reip. 26c] and turning your back depart from them,
[Praec. ger. reip. 26d] believing that a man who makes money out of public funds is stealing from sanctuaries, from tombs, from his friends, through treason and by false testimony, that he is an untrustworthy adviser, a perjured judge, a venal magistrate, in brief not free from any kind of iniquity. And therefore there is no need of saying much about these evils.
[Praec. ger. reip. 27] 27 1 But ambition, although it is a more pretentious word than “covetousness,” is no less pernicious in the State; for there is more daring in it; since it is innate, not in slothful and abject spirits, but in the most vigorous and impetuous, and the surge which comes from the masses, raising it on the crest of the wave and sweeping it along by shouts of praise, 820 often makes it unrestrained and unmanageable. Therefore, just as Plato said that young people should be told from childhood that it is not proper for them to wear gold on their persons or to possess it, since they have a gold of their own mingled in their souls, — a figurative reference, I believe, to the virtue derived by descent, which permeates their natures, — so let us moderate our ambition, saying that we have in ourselves honour, a gold uncorrupted, undefiled, and unpolluted by envy and fault-finding, which increases along with reasoning and the contemplation of our acts and public measures.
[Praec. ger. reip. 27b] Therefore we have no need of honours painted, modelled, or cast in bronze, in which even that which is admired is really the work of another; for the person who receives praise is not the man for whom the “trumpeter” or the “doryphorus,” for example, was made, but the man by whom it was made. Cato, Rome then beginning to be full of portrait statues, refused to let one be made of himself, saying, “I prefer to have people ask why there is not a statue of me rather than why there is one.” Such honours do indeed arouse envy, and the people think that they are themselves under obligations to men who have not received them, but that those who have received them are oppressors of the people, as men who demand payment for their services. Therefore, just as a man who has sailed past the Syrtis and is then capsized at the channel has done nothing so very great or glorious, so the man who has watched over the treasury and the public revenue, but is then found wanting in the presidency or the prytany, is indeed dashed against a lofty promontory, but gets a ducking all the same.
[Praec. ger. reip. 27c] No, that man is the best who wants no such things and even avoids and refuses them when offered. But if it is not easy to reject some favour or some kindly sentiment of the people, when it is so inclined, for men engaged in a political struggle for which the prize is not money or gifts, but which is a truly sacred contest worthy of a crown, a mere inscription suffices, a tablet, a decree, or a green branch such as Epimenides received from the Acropolis after purifying the city. And Anaxagoras, giving up the honours which had been granted him, requested that on the day of his death the children be allowed to play and be free from their lessons. And to the seven Persians who killed the magi the privilege was granted that they and their descendants should wear their headdress tilted forward over the forehead; for they made this, so it appears, their secret sign when they undertook their act.
[Praec. ger. reip. 27d] And there is something that indicates public spirit, too, about the honour received by Pittacus; for, when he was told to take as much as he wished of the land which he had gained for the citizens, he took only as much as he could throw a javelin over. And the Roman Cocles received as much as he — and he was lame — could plough around in one day. For the honour should not be payment for the action, but a symbol, that it may last for a long time, as those just mentioned have lasted. But of all the three hundred statues of Demetrius of Phalerum not one acquired rust or dirt; they were all destroyed while he was still living; and those of Demades were melted down into chamber-pots. Things like that have happened to many honours, they having become offensive, not only because the recipient was worthless, but also because the gift bestowed was too great. And therefore the best and surest way to ensure the duration of honours is to reduce their cost but those which are great and top-heavy and weighty are, like ill-proportioned statues, quickly overturned.
[Praec. ger. reip. 28] 28 1 And I now give the name “honours” to those which the multitude, to quote Empedocles,
[Praec. ger. reip. 28b] Do not call as is right; and I, too, myself follow custom.
[Praec. ger. reip. 28c] For the statesman will not despise the true honour and favour founded upon the goodwill and disposition of those who remember his actions, 821 nor will he disdain reputation and avoid “pleasing his neighbours,” as Democritus demanded. For not even the greeting of dogs nor the affection of horses is to be spurned by huntsmen and horse-trainers, but it is both advantageous and pleasant to instil into animals which are brought up with us and live with us such a disposition towards us as was exhibited by the dog of Lysimachus and as the poet tells us that Achilles’ horses felt towards Patroclus. And I believe even bees would come off better if they would only welcome and placate their keepers and attendants instead of stinging them and making them angry. But as it is, people punish bees with smoke and lead unruly horses and runaway dogs by force of bits and dog-collars; but nothing makes a man willingly tractable and gentle to another man except trust in his goodwill and belief in his nobility and justice. And therefore Demosthenes is right in declaring that the greatest safeguard States possess against tyrants is distrust; for that part of the soul with which we trust is most easily taken captive. Therefore just as Cassandra’s prophetic power was useless to the citizens because she was held in no esteem, “For God,” she says,
[Praec. ger. reip. 28d] “has made me prophesy in vain,
And those who suffer or have suffered woes
Have called me ‘wise’; but ere they suffer, ‘mad,’ “
[Praec. ger. reip. 28e] so the trust which the citizens reposed in Archytas and their goodwill towards Battus was, on account of their reputation, of great advantage to those who made use of them. The first and most important advantage inherent in the reputation of statesmen is this: the trust in them which affords them an entrance into public affairs; and the second is that the goodwill of the multitude is a weapon of defence for the good against the slanderous and wicked,
[Praec. ger. reip. 28f] as when a mother
Wards off a fly from her child when he lieth asleep in sweet slumber,
[Praec. ger. reip. 28g] keeping off envy and in the matter of power making the low-born equal to the nobles, the poor to the rich, and the private citizen to the office-holders; and in short, when truth and virtue are added to it, such goodwill is a steady fair wind wafting a man into political office. Now consider the contrary disposition and learn of it by examples. For the men of Italy violated the daughters and the wife of Dionysius, killed them, and then burned their bodies and scattered the ashes from a boat over the sea. But when a certain man named Menander, who had been a good king of the Bactrians, died in camp, the cities celebrated his funeral as usual in other respects, but in respect to his remains they put forth rival claims and only with difficulty came to terms, agreeing that they should divide the ashes equally and go away and should erect monuments to him in all their cities. But, on the other hand, the Agrigentines, when they had got rid of Phalaris, decreed that no one should wear a grey cloak; for the tyrant’s servants had worn grey garments. But the Persians, because Cyrus was hook-nosed, Feven to this day love hook-nosed men and consider them the most handsome.
[Praec. ger. reip. 29] 29 1 So of all kinds of love that which is engendered in states and peoples for an individual because of his virtue is at once the strongest and the most divine; but those falsely named and falsely attested honours which are derived from giving theatrical performances, making distributions of money, or offering gladiatorial shows, are like harlots’ flatteries, since the masses always smile upon him who gives to them and does them favours, granting him an ephemeral and uncertain reputation. And so he who first said that the people with ruined by the first man who bought his favour was well aware that the multitude loses its strength when it succumbs to bribe-taking; 822 but those also who give such bribes should bear in mind that they are destroying themselves when they purchase reputation by great expenditures, thus making the multitude strong and bold in the thought that they have power to give and take away something important.
[Praec. ger. reip. 30] 30 1 We ought not, however, on this account to be niggardly as to the customary public contributions, if we are in prosperous circumstances; since the masses are more hostile to a rich man who does not give them a share of his private possessions than to a poor man who steals from the public funds, for they think the former’s conduct is due to arrogance and contempt of them, but the latter’s to necessity. First, then, let the gifts be made without bargaining for anything; for so they surprise and overcome the recipients more completely; and secondly they should be given on some occasion which offers a good and excellent pretext, one which is connected with the worship of a god and leads the people to piety; for at the same time there springs up in the minds of the masses a strong disposition to believe that the deity is great and majestic, when they see the men whom they themselves honour and regard as great so liberally and zealously vying with each other in honouring the divinity. Therefore, just as Plato withheld the Lydian and the Ionian musical modes from the education of the young, because the one arouses that part of the soul which is inclined towards mourning and grief and the other strengthens that part which readily slips into pleasures and grows wanton, so you must, if possible, remove from the State all those free exhibitions which excite and nourish the murderous and brutal or the scurrilous and licentious spirit, or if you cannot do that, avoid them and oppose the multitude when they demand them. But always make the objects of your expenditures useful and moderate, having as their purpose either what is good or what is necessary, or at any rate what is pleasant and agreeable without anything harmful or outrageous in it.
[Praec. ger. reip. 31] 31 1 But if your property is moderate and in relation to your needs strictly circumscribed “as by centre and radius,” it is neither ignoble nor humiliating at all to confess your poverty and to withdraw from among those who have the means for public expenditures, instead of borrowing money and making yourself at once a pitiful and a ridiculous object in the matter of your public contributions; for men are plainly seen to lack resources when they keep annoying their friends or truckling to money-lenders; so that it is not reputation or power, but rather shame and contempt, which they acquire by such expenditures. And therefore it is always desirable in connexion with such things to remember Lamachus and Phocion; for the latter, when the Athenians at a sacrifice called upon him to contribute and repeatedly raised a clamour, said, “I should be ashamed if I gave you a contribution and did not pay Callicles here what I owe him,” pointing to his money-lender. And Lamachus always, when he was general, entered in his accounts money for shoes and a cloak for himself. And when Hermon tried to avoid office on the plea of poverty, the Thessalians voted to give him a flask of wine monthly and a measure of meal every four days. So it is not ignoble to confess poverty, and poor men, if by reason of their virtue they enjoy freedom of speech and public confidence, have no less influence in their cities than those who give public entertainments and exhibitions. The statesman must, then, do his best to control himself in such matters and not go down into the plain on foot to fight with cavalry; if he is poor, he must not produce foot-races, theatrical shows, and banquets in competition with the rich for reputation and power, but he should vie with those who try always to lead the State on the strength of virtue and wisdom, combined with reason, 823 for in such are found not only nobility and dignity but also the power to win and attract the people, a thing “more desirable than gold coins of Croesus.” For the good man is neither presumptuous nor offensive, and the prudent man is not over-blunt in his speech, nor does he
[Praec. ger. reip. 31b] Walk with a mien his townsmen bitter find,
[Praec. ger. reip. 31c] but in the first place he is affable and generally accessible and approachable for all, keeping his house always unlocked as a harbour of refuge for those in need, and showing his solicitude and friendliness, not only by acts of service, but also by sharing the griefs of those who fail and the joys of those who succeed; and he is in no way disagreeable or offensive by reason of the number of the servants who attend him at the bath or by appropriating seats at the theatre, nor is he conspicuous for invidious exhibitions of luxury and extravagance; but he is on an equal level with others in his clothing and daily life, in the bringing up of his children and as regards the servants who wait upon his wife, as one who wishes to live like the masses and be friendly with them. And, moreover, he shows himself a kindly counsellor, an advocate who accepts no fee, and a kind-hearted conciliator when husbands are at variance with their wives or friends with one another. He spends no small part of the day engaged in the public business on the orators’ platform of the senate nor the assembly, and thenceforth all the rest of his life he
[Praec. ger. reip. 31d] Draws to himself as north-east wind draws clouds
[Praec. ger. reip. 31e] services and commissions from every quarter. But since he is always devoting his thoughts to the public weal and regards public office as his life and his work, not, like most people, as an interruption to leisure and a compulsory expense, — by all these and similar qualities he turns and attracts the people towards himself, for they see that the flatteries and enticements of others are spurious and counterfeit when compared with his care and forethought. The flatterers of Demetrius would not address the other monarchs as kings, but called Seleucus “Ruler of Elephants” and Lysimachus “Guardian of the Treasure” and Ptolemy “Admiral of the Fleet” and Agathocles “Lord of the Isles”; but the multitude, even if at first they reject the good and wise man, afterwards, when they have become acquainted with his truthfulness and his character, consider him alone a statesmanlike, public-spirited man and a ruler, whereas they consider and call the others, one a provider of choruses, one a giver of banquets, and one a director of athletics. Then, just as at banquets, though Callias or Alcibiades pay the bill, it is Socrates to whom they listen, and Socrates on whom all eyes are turned, Eso in States in which the conditions are sound Ismenias makes contributions, Lichas gives dinners, and Niceratus provides choruses, but it is Epameinondas, Aristeides, and Lysander who are the rulers, public men, and generals. So, observing these things, we must not be humiliated or overwhelmed by the reputation with the masses gained from theatres, kitchens, and assembly-halls, remembering that it lasts but a short time and ends the minute the gladiatorial and dramatic shows are over, since there is nothing honourable or dignified in it.
[Praec. ger. reip. 32] 32 1 Now those who are skilled in tending and keeping bees think that the hive which hums loudest and is most full of noise is thriving and in good condition; but he to whom God has given the care of the rational and political swarm will judge of its happiness chiefly by the quietness and tranquillity of the people; he will accept and imitate to the best of his ability the other precepts of Solon, but will wonder in great perplexity why that great man prescribed that in case of factional disorder whoever joined neither faction should be deprived of civic rights.k 824 For in a body afflicted with disease the beginning of a change to health does not come from the diseased parts, but it comes when the condition in the healthy parts gains strength and drives out that which is character to nature; and in a people afflicted with faction, if it is not dangerous and destructive but is destined to cease sometime, there must be a strong, permanent, and permeating admixture of sanity and soundness; for to this element there flows from the men of understanding that which is akin to it, and then it permeates the part which is diseased; but States which have fallen into complete disorder are utterly ruined unless they meet with some external necessity and chastisement and are thus forcibly compelled by their misfortunes to be reasonable. Yet certainly it is not fitting in time of disorder to sit without feeling or grief, singing the praises of your own impassiveness and of the inactive and blessed life, and rejoicing in the follies of others; on the contrary, at such times you should by all means put on the buskin of Theramenes, conversing with both parties and joining neither; for you will appear to be, not an outsider by not joining in wrongdoing, but a common partisan of all by coming to their aid; and your not sharing in their misfortunes will not arouse envy, if it is plain that you sympathize with all alike. But the best thing is to see to it in advance that factional discord shall never arise among them and to regard this as the greatest and noblest function of what may be called the art of statesmanship. For observe that of the greatest blessings which States can enjoy, — peace, liberty, plenty, abundance of men, and concord, — so far as peace is concerned the peoples have no need of statesmanship at present; for all war, both Greek and foreign, has been banished from among us and has disappeared; and of liberty the peoples have as great a share as our rulers grant them, and perhaps more would not be better for them; but bounteous productiveness of the soil, kindly tempering of the seasons, that wives may bear “children like to their sires,” and that the offspring may live in safety — these things the wise man will ask the gods in his prayers to grant his fellow-citizens.
[Praec. ger. reip. 32b] There remains, then, for the statesman, of those activities which fall within his province, only this — and it is the equal of any of the other blessings: — always to instil concord and friendship in those who dwell together with him and to remove strifes, discords, and all enmity. He will talk, as in the case of quarrels among friends, first with the persons who think they are the more aggrieved, and will appear to share their feeling of wrong and anger, then he will try in this way to mollify them and teach them that those who let wrongs go unheeded are superior to those who are quarrelsome and try to compel and overcome others, Enot only in reasonableness and character, but also in wisdom and greatness of spirit, and that by yielding in a small thing they gain their point in the best and most important matters. Then he will instruct his people both individually and collectively and will call attention to the weak condition of Greek affairs, in which it is best for wise men to accept one advantage — a life of harmony and quiet — since fortune has left us no prize open for competition. For what dominion, what glory is there for those who are victorious? What sort of power is it which a small edict of a proconsul may annul or transfer to another man and which, even if it last, has nothing in it seriously worth while? But just as a conflagration does not often begin in sacred or public spaces, but some lamp left neglected in a house or some burnt rubbish causes a great flame and works public destruction, 825 so disorder in a State is not always kindled by contentions about public matters, but frequently differences arising from private affairs and offences pass thence into public life and throw the whole State into confusion. Therefore it behoves the statesman above all things to remedy or prevent these, that some of them may not arise at all and some may be quickly ended and others may not grow great and extend to public interests, but may remain merely among the persons who are at odds with one another. He should do this by noticing himself and pointing out to others that private troubles become the causes of public ones and small troubles of great ones, if they are overlooked and do not Bin the beginning receive treatment or soothing counsel.
[Praec. ger. reip. 32c] For example, at Delphi the greatest insurrection is said to have been caused by Crates, whose daughter was to be married to Orsilaüs, the son of Phalis; but then, when at the betrothal the mixing-bowl broke in the middle of its own accord, Orsilaüs regarded that as an omen, left his bride, and went away with his father. But Crates a little later, secretly putting a sacred object of gold into their possession while they were sacrificing, caused Orsilaüs and his brother to be hurled over the precipice without trial and later slew some of their friends and relatives when they were suppliants in the sanctuary of Athena-before-the Temple. But after many such things had taken place the Delphians put Crates and his fellow-partisans to death, and with their property, which had been declared accursed, they built the lower temples. And at Syracuse there were two young men, intimate friends, one of whom, being entrusted with his friend’s beloved for safe-keeping, seduced him while the other was away; then the latter, as if to repay outrage with outrage, committed adultery with the offender’s wife. Thereupon one of the elder men came forward in the senate and moved that both be banished before the State reap the result and be infected with enmity through them. His motion, however, was not carried, and from this beginning disorder arose Dwhich caused great distress and overthrew the most excellent government. And indeed you yourself also no doubt have excellent examples at home in the enmity of Pardalas and Tyrrhenus, which came near to destroying Sardis by involving the State in rebellion and war as the result of petty private matters.
[Praec. ger. reip. 32d] Therefore the statesman should not despise such offences as may, like diseases in a person, spread quickly, but he should take hold of them, suppress them, and cure them. For by attention, as Cato says, the great is made small and the small is reduced to nothing. And for this there is no more persuasive device Ethan for the statesman to show himself in his private differences mild and conciliatory, persisting without anger in his original reasons for disagreement, and treating no one with contentiousness, anger, or any other passion which injects harshness and bitterness into unavoidable disputes. For we put soft gloves on the hands of those who compete in the boxing-school, that the contest may not have a fatal result, its blows being soft and not painful; and in law-suits against one’s fellow-citizens it is better to treat the causes of disagreement pure and simple in one’s pleading, and not, by sharpening and poisoning matters, Fas if they were darts or arrows, with bad words, malice, and threats, to make them incurable, great, and of public importance. For a man who proceeds in this way towards those with whom he himself has to do will find that others also yield to him; and rivalries affecting public interests, if private enmities are done away with, become of slight importance and do no serious or incurable harm.

## On monarchy, democracy and oligarchy

[De unius 1] (826 A) 1 1 Now as I was myself bringing before this company as a court of judgement the talk that I presented to you yesterday, BI thought I heard, while wide awake, not in a dream, Political Wisdom saying:
[De unius 1b] Golden foundation is wrought for canticles sacred,
[De unius 1c] so the speech, which exhorts and encourages you to enter political life has been laid as a basis. “Come, let us now build walls,” building upon the exhortation the teaching which is due. And it is due to anyone who has received the exhortation and the impulse to engage in public affairs that he next hear and receive precepts of statecraft by the use of which he will, so far as is humanly possible, Cbe of service to the people and at the same time manage his own affairs with safety and rightful honour. But as a step towards that which follows and a consequence of that which has been said, we must consider what is the best form of government. For just as there are numerous modes of life for a man, so the government (politeia) is the life of a people, and therefore it is essential for us to take the best form of it; for of all forms the statesman will choose the best or, if he cannot obtain that, then the one of all the rest which is most like it.
[De unius 2] 2 1 Now the word politeia (citizenship) is defined also as “having a share of the rights in a State,” as we say the Megarians voted Alexander the politeia (citizenship); and when he made fun of their eagerness, they told him that up to that time they had conferred citizenship upon Heracles only and now upon himself. Then Alexander was astonished and accepted the gift, thinking that its rarity gave it value. But the life of a statesman, a man who is occupied in public affairs, is also called politeia (statecraft); as, for example, we commend the politeia (statecraft) of Pericles and of Bias, but condemn that of Hyperbolus and Cleon. And some people even call a single brilliant act for the public benefit a politeia (politic act), such, for example, as a gift of money, the ending of a war, the introduction of a bill in parliament; and accordingly we say nowadays that so and so has performed a politeia if he happens to have put through some needed public measure.
[De unius 3] 3 1 Besides all these, politeia is defined as an order and constitution of a State, which directs its affairs; and accordingly they say that there are three politeiae (forms of government), monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy, a comparison of which is given by Herodotus in his third book. They appear to be the most typical forms; for the others, as happens in musical scales when the strings of the primary notes are relaxed or tightened, turn out to be errors and corruptions through deficiency or excess. Of these forms of government, which have achieved the widest and greatest power in their periods of dominion, the Persians received as their lot royalty absolute and irresponsible, the Spartans oligarchy aristocratic and uncontrolled, the Athenians democracy self-governing and undiluted. When these forms are not hit exactly, their perversions and exaggerations are what are called 1 tyranny, 2 the predominance of great families, 3 or mob-rule: that is, 1 when royalty breeds violence and irresponsible action; 827 2 oligarchy, arrogance and presumptuousness; 3 democracy breeds anarchy, equality, excess, and all of them folly.
[De unius 4] 4 1 So, just as a real musician will make use of every instrument harmoniously, adapting it skilfully and striking each one with regard to its natural tunefulness, and yet, following Plato’s advice, will give up guitars, banjoes, psalteries with their many sounds, harps and string triangles and prefer the lyre and the cithara; Bin the same way the real statesman will manage successfully the oligarchy that Lycurgus established at Sparta, adapting to himself the colleagues who have equal power and honour and quietly forcing them to do his will; he will also get on well in a democracy with its many sounds and strings by loosening the strings in some matters of government and tightening them in others, relaxing at the proper time and then again holding fast mightily, knowing how to resist the masses and to hold his ground against them. But if he were given the choice among governments, like so many tools, he would follow Plato’s advice and choose no other than monarchy, the only one which is able to sustain that top note of virtue, high in the highest sense, and never let it be tuned down under compulsion or expediency. For the other forms of government in a certain sense, although controlled by the statesman, control him, and although carried along by him, carry him along, since he has no firmly established strength to oppose those from whom his strength is derived, but is often compelled to exclaim in the words of Aeschylus which Demetrius the City-stormer employed against Fortune after he had lost his hegemony,
[De unius 4b] Thou fanst my flame, methinks thou burnst me up.

## That we ought not to borrow

[De vit. aer. al. 1] 827 1 PLATO in the Laws forbids people to take any water from a neighbour’s land unless they have dug on their own land down to a layer of potter’s clay, as it is called, and found that the place will not produce a flow of water; for the potter’s clay, being by nature oily and solid, holds back the water that reaches it and does not let it through; but, he says, those shall have a share of others’ water who cannot get any of their own, for the law gives relief to those in want. Ought there not, then, to be a law about money also, that people shall not borrow from others for resort to other people’s springs who have not first examined their resources at home and brought together, as from little trickles, what is useful and necessary to themselves? But now, because of their luxury and effeminacy or their extravagance, they make no use of what is their own, though they possess it, but take from others at a high rate of interest, though they have no need of doing so. There is strong evidence of this: loans are not made to people in need, but to those who wish to acquire some superfluity for themselves. And a man produces a witness and a surety to aver that, since the man has property, he deserves credit, whereas, since he has it, he ought not to be borrowing.
[De vit. aer. al. 2] 2 1 Why do you pay court to the banker or broker? 828 Borrow of your own table; you have drinking-cups, silver dishes, bonbonnières. Pawn these for your needs. Beautiful Aulis or Tenedos will adorn their table in their stead with pottery that is cleaner than the silver ware; it does not have the heavy, disagreeable smell of interest defiling every day like rust the surface of your extravagance, nor will it keep reminding you of the first of the month and the new moon, which, though really the holiest day of the month, the money-lenders have made accursed and detested. For as to those who, instead of selling their belongings, give them as security, not even the God of Property could save them. They are ashamed to accept a price, but not ashamed to pay interest on what is their own. And yet the great Pericles made the ornaments of the Goddess, which weighed forty talents of refined gold, so that they could be taken off, “in order,” he said, “that we may use it for the expenses of the war, and then pay back an equal amount.” And so let us likewise, when we are, as it were, besieged by our needs, refuse to admit the garrison of a money-lender, our enemy, or to allow our property to be sold into slavery. No, let us preserve our liberty by taking off what is useless from our table, our bed, our vehicles, and our daily expenses, intending to pay it back if we are fortunate.
[De vit. aer. al. 3] 3 1 Now the Roman women gave their ornaments as an offering to Pythian Apollo and from them made the golden bowl which was sent to Delphi; and the women of Carthage shore their heads and gave their hair to make ropes for the tension of machines and instruments in defence of their native city. But we, ashamed to be independent, enslave ourselves by mortgages and notes, when we ought to limit and restrict ourselves to actual necessities and from the proceeds of the breaking up or the sale of useless superfluities to found a sanctuary of Liberty for ourselves, our children, and our wives. The goddess Artemis at Ephesus grants to debtors when they take refuge in her sanctuary protection and safety from their debts, but the protecting and inviolable sanctuary of Frugality is everywhere wide open to sensible men, offering them a joyous and honourable expanse of plentiful leisure. For just as the Pythian prophetess in the time of Persian wars told the Athenians that the God offered them a wooden wall, and they, giving up their land, their city, their possessions, and their houses, took refuge in their ships for the sake of liberty, so to us God offers a wooden table, a pottery dish, and a coarse cloak if we wish to live as free men.
[De vit. aer. al. 3b] Do not abide the attack of the horsemen,
[De vit. aer. al. 3c] nor of yoked chariots adorned with horn or silver, which rapid interest overtakes and outruns. No, make use of any chance donkey or nag and flee from your enemy and tyrant, the money-lender, who does not, like the Persian, demand earth and water, but attacks your liberty and brings suit against your honour. If you will not pay him, he duns you; if you have funds, he won’t accept payment; if you sell, he beats down the price; if you will not sell, he forces you to do so; if you sue him, he meets you in court; if you take your oath, he orders you to do so; if you go to his door, he shuts it in your face; if you stay at home, he installs himself there and keeps knocking at your door.
[De vit. aer. al. 4] 4 1 For what good did Solon do the Athenians when he put an end to giving one’s person as security for debt? For debtors are slaves to all the men who ruin them, or rather not to them either (for what would be so terrible in that?), but to outrageous, barbarous, and savage slaves, like those who Plato says stand in Hades as fiery avengers and executioners over those who have been impious in life. 829 For these money-lenders make the market-place a place of the damned for the wretched debtors; like vultures they devour and flay them, “entering into their entrails,” or in other instances they stand over them and inflict on them the tortures of Tantalus by preventing them from tasting their own produce which they reap and harvest. And as Dareius sent Datis and Artaphernes against Athens with chains and fetters in their hands for their captives, in similar fashion these men, bringing against Greece jars full of signatures and notes as fetters, march against and through the cities, bnot, like Triptolemus, sowing beneficent grain, but planting roots of debts, roots productive of much toil and much interest and hard to escape from, which, as they sprout and shoot up round about, press down and strangle the cities. They say that hares at one and the same time give birth to one litter, suckle another, and conceive again; but the loans of these barbarous rascals give birth to interest before conception; for while they are giving they immediately demand payment, while they lay money down they take it up, and they lend what they receive for money lent.
[De vit. aer. al. 5] 5 1 There is a saying among the Messenians,
Pylos there is before Pylos, and Pylos, a third, there is also,
but as to the money-lenders we may say
Int’rest there is before int’rest, and int’rest a third there is also.
[De vit. aer. al. 5b] And then they make a laughing-stock forsooth of the scientists, who say that nothing arises out of nothing; for with these men interest arises out of that which has as yet no being or existence. And they think it is a disgrace to be a tax-collector, which the law allows; for they themselves lend money contrary to law, collecting taxes from their debtors, or rather, if the truth be told, cheating them in the act of lending; for he who receives less than the face value of his note is cheated. And yet the Persians regard lying as the second among wrong-doings and being in debt as the first; for lying is often practised by debtors; but money-lenders lie more than debtors and cheat in their ledgers, when they write that they give so-and so much to so-and so, though they really give less; and the cause of their lie is avarice, not necessity or want, but insatiable greed, which in the end brings neither enjoyment nor profit to them and ruin to those whom they wrong. For they do not till the fields which they take from their debtors, nor do they live in their houses after evicting them, nor do they eat at their tables or wear their clothes, but they ruin one man first, then hunt a second, using the other as bait. For the savage practice spreads like fire, growing by the ruin and destruction of those who fall into it, consuming one after another. And the money-lender who fans and feeds this fire to the ruin of many men gains nothing, except that from time to time he can take his account-books and read how many men he has sold out, how many he has driven from their homes, and, in general, the sources from which his hoard of money, rolling in and piling up, has made such gains.
[De vit. aer. al. 6] 6 1 And do not think that I say this because I have declared war against the money-lenders;
[De vit. aer. al. 6b] Ne’er have they harried my cattle, nor ever made off with my horses;
[De vit. aer. al. 6c] but that I am pointing out to those who are too ready to become borrowers how much disgrace and servility there is in the practice and that borrowing is an act of extreme folly and weakness. Have you money? Do not borrow, for you are not in need. Have you no money? Do not borrow, for you will not be able to pay. Let us look at each of these two alternatives separately. Cato once said to an old man who was behaving wickedly; “Sir, when old age has so many evils of its own, why do you add to them the disgrace of wickedness?” Therefore in your own case do not heap up upon poverty, 830 which has many attendant evils, the perplexities which arise from borrowing and owing, and do not deprive poverty of the only advantage which it possesses over wealth, namely freedom from care; since by doing so you will incur the derision of the proverb,
[De vit. aer. al. 6d] I am unable to carry the goat, put the ox then upon me.
[De vit. aer. al. 6e] Being unable to carry the burden of poverty you put the money-lender upon your back, a burden difficult for even the rich to bear. “How, then, am I to live?” Do you ask this, when you have hands and feet and a voice, when you are a man capable of loving and being loved, of doing favours and being grateful for them? Live by teaching letters, by leading children to school, by being a door-keeper, by working as a sailor or a boatman; none of these is so disgraceful or disagreeable as hearing the order “Pay up.”
[De vit. aer. al. 7] 7 1 The well-known Roman Rutilius went up to Musonius and said, “Musonius, Zeus the Saviour, whom you imitate and emulate, is no borrower”; and Musonius answered with a smile, “He is no lender, either.” For Rutilius, who was himself a lender, was finding fault with Musonius for borrowing. This is an example of the vanity of the Stoics; for why should you bring in Zeus the Saviour, when you can use as examples things that are here before your eyes? Swallows do not borrow, ants do not borrow, creatures upon which nature has bestowed neither hands, reason, nor art; but men, with their superior intellect, support through their ingenuity horses, dogs, partridges, hares, and jackdaws in addition to themselves. Why, then, have you come to the poor opinion of yourself, that you are less persuasive than a jackdaw, more dumb than a partridge, less well-born than a dog, so that you can obtain no help from any human being by waiting on him, entertaining him, guarding him, or fighting for him? Do you not see how many opportunities are offered on land and on the sea?
[De vit. aer. al. 7b] Lo, even Miccylus I beheld,
says Crates,
Carding the wool, and his wife too carding the wool along with him,
Striving in terrible conflict to ‘scape from the onslaught of famine.
[De vit. aer. al. 7c] King Antigonus asked Cleanthes, when he met him in Athens after not seeing him for a while, “Are you still grinding corn, Cleanthes?” d”Yes, Your Majesty,” he replied; “I do it in order not to be a deserter from Zeno’s instruction, nor from philosophy either.” What a great spirit the man had who came from the mill and the kneading-trough, and with the hand which ground the flour and baked the bread wrote about the gods, the moon, the stars, and the sun! But to us such labours seem slavish. And therefore, in order to be free, we contract debts and pay court to men who are ruiners of homes, we act as bodyguard to them, dine them, make them presents, and pay them tribute, not because of our poverty (for no one lends to poor men), but because of our extravagance. For if we were content with the necessaries of life, the race of money-lenders would be as non-existent as that of Centaurs and Gorgons; but luxury produced money-lenders just as it did goldsmiths, silversmiths, perfumers, and dyers in gay colours; for our debts are incurred, not to pay for bread or wine, but for country-seats, slaves, mules, banquet-halls, and tables, and because we give shows to the cities with unrestrained expenditure, contending in fruitless and thankless rivalries. But the man who is once involved remains a debtor all his life, exchanging, like a horse that has once been bridled, one rider for another. And there is no escape to those former pastures and meadows, but they wander like the spirits described by Empedocles, who have been expelled by the gods and thrown out from heaven:
[De vit. aer. al. 7d] Into the waves of the sea they are driv’n by the might of the ether;
Then on the floor of the earth the sea vomits them; earth then ejects them
Into the untiring sun’s rays; and he hurls them to eddying ether.
[De vit. aer. al. 7e] 831 And so “one after another takes over” the borrower, first a usurer or broker of Corinth, then one of Patrae, then an Athenian, until, attacked on all sides by all of them, he is dissolved and chopped up into the small change of interest payments. For just as a man who has fallen into the mire must either get up or stay where he is, but he who turns and rolls over covers his wet and drenched person with more dirt; so in their transfers and changes of loans, by assuming additional interest payments band plastering themselves with them, they weigh themselves down more and more; and they are much like persons ill with cholera, who do not accept treatment, but vomit up the prescribed medicine and then continue constantly to collect more disease. Similarly these borrowers refuse to be purged, and always, at every season of the year, when painfully and with convulsions they cough up the interest while another payment immediately accrues and presses upon them, they suffer a fresh attack of nausea and headache. What they ought to do is to get rid of debts and become healthy and free again.
[De vit. aer. al. 8] 8 1 From now on my words are addressed to those who are more well-to do and accustomed to a softer way of living, those who say “Am I, then, to be without slaves, without hearth and home?”, cas if a sick man who is swollen up with dropsy should say to his physician “Am I, then, to be made thin and empty?” Why not, to make you get well? And so you should do without slaves, that you may not be a slave yourself, and without property, that you may not be the property of another. Hear the tale of the vultures: One of them had an attack of vomiting and said he was spewing out bowels, but the other, who was there, said “What harm is there in that? For you are not spewing out your own bowels, but those of the corpse we tore to pieces a little while ago.” So any man in debt sells, not his own plot of land, nor his own house, but those of his creditor whom by law he has made their owner. d”Not so, by Zeus,” he says; “why, my father left me this field.” Yes, and your father left you your liberty and your civil rights, which you ought to to value more. So, too, he who begat you made your foot and your hand, but when it is mortified, you pay a surgeon for cutting it off. Calypso clothed Odysseus in her garment, “putting fragrant raiment upon him” that breathed of her divine person, as a gift and a memento of her love; but when he was capsized and engulfed by the waves and could hardly keep himself up since the garment had become soaked and heavy, he took it off and threw it from him, then, binding a wimple about his naked breast,
[De vit. aer. al. 8b] Long-shore he swam looking landward,
[De vit. aer. al. 8c] and when he reached safety he had no lack of garment or food. Well, then, is it not a tempest that arises about debtors when the lender after a while comes up to them saying “Pay”?
[De vit. aer. al. 8d] Thus having spoken he gathered the clouds and stirred up the great waters;
East wind and South wind and West with furious blasts raged together,
[De vit. aer. al. 8e] as interest rolled upon interest; and the debtor, overwhelmed, continues to clutch them as they weigh him down, for he cannot swim away and escape; no, he sinks down to the bottom and disappears along with the friends who have endorsed his notes. Crates the Theban, when he was not pressed for payment and did not even owe anything, because he disliked the mere administration of property, its cares and distractions, abandoned an estate valued at eight talents and, donning cloak and wallet, took refuge in philosophy and poverty. Anaxagoras also left his land to be grazed over by sheep. But what need is there of mentioning these men, when Philoxenus the lyric poet, who shared in the allotment of lands in a colony in Sicily, which ensured him a livelihood and a household furnished with abundant resources, when he saw that luxury, indulgence in a life of pleasure, and lack of culture were prevalent there, said, “By the Gods, these good things shall not make me lose myself; I will rather lose them,” and leaving his allotment to others, he sailed away. 832 But people in debt are content to be dunned, mulcted of tribute, enslaved, and cheated; they endure, like Phineus, to feed winged harpies which carry off their food and devour it, buying their grain, not at the proper season, but before it is harvested, and purchasing the oil before the olives have been plucked. And “I have wine,” says the borrower, “at such and such a price,” and he gives its note for its value; but the cluster still hangs clinging on the vine and waiting for the rising of Arcturus.

## Lives of the ten orators

[Vit. X orat. 1.1] 832 1. ANTIPHON, the son of Sophilus, from the deme of Rhamnus, was his father’s pupil; for Sophilus kept a rhetoric school, to which it is reported that Alcibiades himself had recourse in his youth. Having attained to competent measure of knowledge and eloquence, - and that, as some believe, from his own natural ingenuity, - he dedicated his study chiefly to affairs of state. And yet he was for some time conversant in the schools, and had a controversy with Socrates the philosopher about the art of disputing, - not so much for the sake of contention as for the profit of arguing, as Xenophon tells us in his Commentaries of Socrates. At the request of some citizens, he wrote orations by which they defended their suits at law. Some say that he was the first that ever did any thing of this nature. For it is certain there is not one judicial oration extant written by any orator that lived before him, nor by his contemporaries either, as Themistocles, Aristeides, and Pericles; though the times gave them opportunity, and there was need enough of their labour in such business. Not that we are to impute it to their lack of ability that they did nothing in this way, for we may inform ourselves of the contrary from what historians relate of each of them. Besides, if we inspect the most ancient of those known in history who had the same form and method in their pleadings, such as Alcibiades, Critias, Lysias, and Archinous, we shall find that they all followed Antiphon when he was old. For being a man of incomparable sagacity, he was the first that published instructions about oratory; and by reason of his profound learning, he was surnamed Nestor. Caecilius, in a tract which he wrote about him, supposes him to have been Thucydides’ pupil, from what Antiphon delivered in praise of him. He is most accurate in his orations, in invention subtle; and he would frequently baffle his adversary unawares, by a covert sort of pleading; in troublesome and intricate matters he was acute and sharp; and as he was a great admirer of ornamental speaking, he would always adapt his orations to both law and reason.
[Vit. X orat. 1.1b] He was born the time of the Persian war and of Gorgias the rhetorician, being somewhat younger than him. And he lived to see the subversion of the popular government in the commonwealth which was wrought by the four hundred [411 B.C.], in which he himself is thought to have had the chiefest hand, being sometimes commander of two ships, and sometimes general, and having by the many and great victories he obtained gained them many allies, he armed the young men, manned out sixty triremes, and on every occasion went ambassador to Lacedaemon at the time when Eetioneia was fortified. 833 But when those Four Hundred were overthrown, he with Archeptolemus, who was likewise one of the same number, was accused of the conspiracy, condemned, and sentenced to the punishment due to traitors, his body cast out unburied, and all his posterity infamous on record. But there are some who tell us, that he was put to death by the Thirty Tyrants; and among the rest, Lysias, in his oration for Antiphon’s daughter, says the same; for he left a little daughter, whom Callaeschrus claimed for his wife by the law of propinquity. And Theopompus likewise, in his Fifteenth Book of Philippics, tells us the same thing. But this must have been another Antiphon, son of Lysidonides, whom Cratinus mentions in his Pytine as a rascal. But how could he be executed in the time of the Four Hundred, and afterward live to be put to death by the Thirty Tyrants? There is likewise another story of the manner of his death: that when he was old, he sailed to Syracuse, when the tyranny of Dionysius the First was most famous; and being at table, a question was put, what sort of brass was best. When others had answered as they thought most proper, he replied, That is the best brass, of which the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton were made. The tyrant hearing this, and taking it as a tacit exhortation to his subjects to contrive his ruin, he commanded Antiphon to be put to death; and some say that he put him to death for deriding his tragedies.
[Vit. X orat. 1.1c] This orator is reported to have written sixty orations; but Caecilius supposes twenty-five of them to be spurious and none of his. Platon, in his comedy called Peisander, traduces him as a greedy man. He is reported to have composed some of his tragedies alone, and others with Dionysius the tyrant. While he was poetically inclined, he invented an art of curing distress of the mind, as physicians can provide cures of bodily diseases. And having at Corinth built him a little house, in or near the market, he set a notice over the gate, to this effect: that he had a way to cure distress of men’s minds by words; and let him but know the cause of their malady, he would immediately prescribe the remedy, to their comfort. But after some time, thinking that art not worth his while, he betook himself to the study and teaching of oratory. There are some who ascribe the book of Glaucus of Rhegium concerning Poets to him as author. His orations concerning Herodes, against Erasistratus concerning Peacocks, are very much commended, and also that which, when he was accused, he penned for himself against a public indictment, and that against Demosthenes the general for moving an illegal measure. He likewise wrote another speech against Hippocrates the general; who did not appear on the day appointed for his trial, and was condemned in his absence.
[Vit. X orat. 1.1d] Caecilius has recorded the decree of the senate for the judicial trial of Antiphon, passed in the year in which Theopompus was archon of Athens [411 B.C.], the same in which the Four Hundred were overthrown, - in these words:
[Vit. X orat. 1.1e] “Enacted by the senate on the twenty-first day of the prytany. Demonicus of Alopece was clerk; Philostratus of Pallene was president. Andron moved in regard to those men, - Archeptolemus, Onomacles, and Antiphon, whom the generals had declared against, for that they went on an embassy to Lacedaemon, to the great damage of the city of Athens, and departed from the camp in an enemies’ ship, and went through Deceleia by land, - that they should be apprehended and brought before the court for a legal trial. Therefore let the generals, with others of the senate, to the number of ten, whom it shall please the generals to name and choose, look after these men to present them before the court, that they may be present during the proceedings. Then let the Thesmothetes summon the defendants to appear on the morrow, and let them open the proceedings in court at the time at which the summonses shall be returnable. Then let the chosen advocates, with the generals and any others who may have any thing to say, accuse the defendants of treason; and if any one of them shall be found guilty, let sentence be passed upon him as a traitor, according to the law in such case made and provided.”
[Vit. X orat. 1.1f] 834 At the bottom of this decree was subscribed the sentence :-
[Vit. X orat. 1.1g] “Archeptolemus son of Hippodamus, the Agrylian, and Antiphon son of Sophilus, the Rhamnusian, being both present in court, are condemned of treason. And this was to be their punishment: that they should be delivered to the eleven executioners, their goods confiscated, the tenth part of them being first consecrated to Athene; their houses to be levelled with the ground, and in the places where they stood this inscription to be engraved on brass, ‘[The houses] of Archeptolemus and Antiphon, traitors.’ That Archeptolemus and Antiphon should neither of them be buried in Athens, nor anywhere else under that government. And besides all this, that their posterity should be accounted infamous, bastards as well as their lawful descendants; and he too should be held infamous who should adopt any one of their descendants for his son. And that all this should be engraved on a brass tablet, and that tablet should be placed where that stands on which is engraved the decree concerning Phrynichus.”
[Vit. X orat. 2.1] 2. ANDOCIDES, the son of Leogoras, [and grandson of that Andocides] who once made a peace between the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians, from either the Cydathenian or the Thorian deme, of a noble family, and, as Hellanicus tells us, the offspring of Hermes himself, for the race of Heralds belongs to him. On this account he was chosen by the people to go with Glaucon, with twenty sail of ships, to aid the Corcyraeans against the Corinthians [433 B.C.]. But in process of time he was accused of some notorious acts of impiety, as that he was of the number of those who defaced the statues of Hermes and divulged the sacred mysteries of Demeter. And besides, he had been before this time wild and intemperate, and had once been seen in night-time revelry to break one of the statues of Hermes; and when on his trial he refused to bring his slave to examination whom his accusers named, he not only remained under this reproach, but was also on this account very much suspected to be guilty of the second crime too. This later action was laid to his charge soon after the expedition of the navy sent by the Athenians into Sicily [415 B.C.]. For, as Cratippus informs us, when the Corinthians sent the Leontines and Egestians to the Athenians, who hesitated to lend them assistance, they in the night defaced and broke all the statues of Hermes which were erected in the market. To which offence Andocides added another, that of divulging the mysteries of Demeter. He was brought to his trial, but was acquitted on condition he would reveal who were companions with him in the crime. In which affair being very diligent, he found out who they were that had been guilty, and among the rest he accused his own father. He proved all guilty, and caused them all to be put to death except his father, whom he saved, though in prison, by a promise of some eminent service he would do to the commonwealth. Nor did he fail of what he promised; for Leogoras accused many who had acted in several matters against the interest of the commonwealth, and for this was acquitted of his own crime.
[Vit. X orat. 2.1b] Now, though Andocides was very much esteemed of for his skill in the management of the affairs of the commonwealth, yet his inclinations led him rather to traffic by sea; and by this means he contracted friendship with the kings of Cyprus and other great princes. At which time he secretly stole a girl from the city, the daughter of Aristeides, and his own niece, and sent her as a present to the king of Cyprus. But suspecting he should be called in question for it, he again stole her from Cyprus, for which the king of Cyprus took him and locked him up in prison; whence he broke loose, and returned to Athens, just at that time when the four hundred conspirators had usurped the government. By whom being confined, he again escaped when the oligarchic government was broken up. . . . . But when the Thirty Tyrants were uppermost, he withdrew to Elis, 835 and there lived till Thrasybulus and his faction returned into the city [403 B.C.], and then he also repaired thither. And after some time, being sent to Lacedaemon to conciliate a peace, he was again suspected of wrongdoing, and on that suspicion banished.
[Vit. X orat. 2.1c] He himself has given an account of all these transactions, in his orations, which he has left behind him. For some of them contain his defence of himself in regard to the mysteries; others his petition for restoration from exile; there is one extant on Endeixis (or information laid against a criminal); also a defence against Phaeax, and one on the peace. He flourished at the same time as Socrates the philosopher. He was born in the seventy-eighth Olympiad, when Theogenides was archon of Athens [468 B.C.], so that he should seem to be about ten years before Lysias. There is an image of Hermes, called from his name, being given by the tribe Aegeis; and it stood near the house where Andocides dwelt, and was therefore called by his name. This Andocides himself was at the charge of a cyclic chorus for the tribe Aegeis, at the performance of a dithyramb. And having gained a victory, he erected a tripod on a high point opposite to the limestone statue of Silenus. His style in his orations is plain and easy, without the least affectation or any thing of a figurative ornament.
[Vit. X orat. 3.1] 3. LYSIAS was the son of Cephalus, grandson of Lysanias, and great-grandson of Cephalus. His father was by birth a Syracusan; but partly for the love he had to the city, and partly in condescension to the persuasions of Pericles the son of Xanthippus, who entertained him as his friend and guest, he went to live at Athens, being a man of great wealth. Some say that he was banished from Syracuse when the city was under the tyranny of Gelon. Lysias was born at Athens when Philocles, the successor of Phrasicles, was archon [459 B.C.], in the second year of the eightieth Olympiad. At his first coming, he was educated among the most noble of the Athenians. But when the city sent a colony to Sybaris, which was afterwards called Thurii, he went thither with his other brother Polemarchus, his father being now dead (for he had two other brothers, Euthydemus and Brachyllus), that he might receive his portion of his father’s estate.
[Vit. X orat. 3.1b] This was done in the fifteenth year of his age, when Praxiteles was archon [444 B.C.]. There then he stayed, and was brought up under Nicias and Teisias, both Syracusans. And having purchased a house and received his estate, he lived as a citizen for thirty-three years, till the year of Cleocritus [413 B.C.]. In the year following, when Callias was archon [412 B.C.], in the ninety-second Olympiad, the Athenians met with their disasters in Sicily, and others of their allies revolted, and especially the Italians. Lysias, being accused of favouring the Athenians, was banished with three others of his association; and coming to Athens, in the year wherein Callias succeeded Cleocritus [412 B.C.], the city then labouring under the tyranny of the four hundred conspirators, he remained there. But after the fight at Aegospotami, when the Thirty Tyrants had usurped the government, he was banished thence, after he had remained in Athens seven years.
[Vit. X orat. 3.1c] His goods were confiscated; and having likewise lost his brother Polemarchus, he himself escaped by a back door of the house in which he was kept for execution, fled to Megara and there lived. But when the citizens endeavoured to return from Phyle, he also behaved himself very well, and appeared very active in the affair, having, to forward this great enterprise, deposited two thousand drachmas of silver and two hundred shields, and being commissioned with Hermas, he maintained three hundred men in arms, and prevailed with Thrasylaeus the Elean, his old friend and host, to contribute two talents. Upon entering the city, Thrasybulus proposed that, for a consideration of his good service to the public, he should receive the rights of citizenship: this was during the so-called time of anarchy before Eucleides [403 B.C.]. Which proposal being ratified by the people, Archinus objected that it was against the laws, and a decree without authority of the senate. 836 The decree was thereupon declared void, and Lysias lost his citizenship.
[Vit. X orat. 3.1d] He led the remainder of his life in the rank of an Isoteles (or citizen who had no right to vote or hold office), and died at last at Athens, being eighty-three years old, or as some would have it, seventy-six; and others again say, that he lived above eighty years, till after the birth of Demosthenes. It is supposed he was born in the year of Philocles [459 B.C.].
[Vit. X orat. 3.1e] There are four hundred and twenty-five orations which bear his name, of which Dionysius and Caecilius affirm only two hundred and thirty to be genuine, and he is said to have been overcome but twice in all. There is extant also the oration which he made in defence of the forementioned decree against Archinus, who challenged it and thereby prevented Lysias from receiving the citizenship, as also another against the Thirty Tyrants. He was very persuasive, and was always very brief in what he delivered. He would commonly give orations to private persons. There are likewise his textbooks of oratory, his public harangues, his letters, his eulogies, funeral orations, love speeches, and his defence of Socrates, accommodated to the minds of the judges. His style seems plain and easy, though difficult to imitate. Demosthenes, in his oration against Neaera, says that he was in love with one Metaneira, Neaera’s serving-maid, but afterwards married his brother Brachyllus’s daughter. Plato in his Phaedrus makes mention of him, as a most eloquent orator and older than Isocrates. Philiscus, his companion, and Isocrates’s pupil, composed an epigram concerning him, which agrees with what we have urged from Plato; and it is to this effect:
[Vit. X orat. 3.1f] “Calliope’s witty daughter, Phrontis, show If anything of wit or eloquence you have; For ‘tis decreed that you shall bear a son, Lysias by name, to spread the name of him Whose great and generous acts do fill the world, And are received for glorious above. Let him who sings those praises of the dead, Let him, my friend, too, praise our fellowship.”
[Vit. X orat. 3.1g] He likewise wrote two orations for Iphicrates, - one against Harmodius, and another accusing Timotheus of treason, - in both which he was successful. But when Iphicrates made himself responsible for Timotheus’s actions, and would purge himself of the allegation of treason made also against him, Lysias wrote an oration for him to deliver in his defence; upon which he was acquitted, but Timotheus was fined a considerable sum of money. He likewise delivered an oration at the Olympic games, in which he endeavoured to convince the Greeks of how great advantage it would be to them, if they could but unanimously join to pull down the tyrant Dionysius.
[Vit. X orat. 4.1] 4. ISOCRATES was the son of Theodorus, of Erchia, reckoned among the middle class of citizens, and a man who kept servants under him to make flutes, by which he got so much money as enabled him not only to bring up his children after the most genteel manner, but likewise to maintain a choir. For besides Isocrates, he had other sons, Telesippus and Diomnestus, and one daughter. And hence, we may suppose, those two comic poets, Aristophanes and Stratis, took occasion to bring him on the stage. He was born in the eighty-sixth Olympiad, Lysimachus being archon [436 B.C.], about two and twenty years after Lysias, and seven before Plato. When he was a boy, he was as well educated as any of the Athenian children, being under the tuition of Prodicus the Cean, Gorgias the Leontine, Teisias the Syracusan, and Theramenes the rhetorician. And when Theramenes was to be apprehended by the order of the Thirty Tyrants, and fled for protection to the altar of Hestia of the senate, only Isocrates stood by his friend, when all others were struck with terror. For a long time he stood silent; 837 but after some time Theramenes advised him to desist, because, he told him, it would be an aggravation of his grief, if any of his friends should come into trouble through him. And it is said that he made use of certain textbooks of rhetoric composed by Theramenes, when he was slandered in court; which textbooks have since borne Boton’s name.
[Vit. X orat. 4.1b] When Isocrates was come to man’s estate, he meddled with nothing of state affairs, both because he had a very weak voice and because he was something timorous; and besides these two impediments, his estate was much impaired by the loss of a great part of his patrimony in the war with the Lacedaemonians. It is evident that he composed orations for others to use, but delivered only one; that concerning Exchange of Property. Having set up a school, he gave himself much to writing and the study of philosophy, and then he wrote his Panegyrical oration, and others which were used for advice, some of which he delivered himself, and others he gave to others to deliver for him; aiming thereby to persuade the Greeks to the study and practice of such things as were of most immediate concern to them. But his endeavours in that way proving to no purpose, he gave those things over, and opened a school in Chios first, as some will have it, having for a beginning nine pupils; and when they came to him to pay him for their schooling, he weeping said, “Now I see plainly that I am sold to my pupils.” He admitted all into his acquaintance who desired it.
[Vit. X orat. 4.1c] He was the first that made a separation between contentious pleas and political arguments, to which latter he rather addicted himself. He instituted a form of magistracy in Chios, much the same as that at Athens. No schoolmaster ever got so much; so that he maintained a trireme at his own charge. He had more than a hundred pupils, and among others Timotheus the son of Conon was one, with whom he visited many cities, and composed the letters which Timotheus sent to the Athenians; who for his pains gave him a talent out of that which he got at Samos [365 B.C.]. Likewise Theopompus of Chios, Ephorus of Cyme, Asclepiades who composed arguments for tragedies, and Theodectes of Phaselis, who afterwards wrote tragedies, were all Isocrates’ pupils. The last of these had a monument in the way to the shrine of Cyamites, as we go to Eleusis by the Sacred Way, of which now remains only ruins.
[Vit. X orat. 4.1d] There also he set up with his own the statues of other famous poets, of all which only Homerus’ is to be seen. Leodamas also the Athenian, and Lacritus who gave laws to the Athenians, were both his pupils; and some say, Hypereides and Isaeus too. They add likewise, that Demosthenes also was very desirous to learn of him, and because he could not give the full rate, which was a thousand drachmas, he offered him two hundred, the fifth part, if he would teach him but the fifth part of his art in proportion: to whom Isocrates answered, We do not use, Demosthenes, to impart our skill by halves, but as men sell good fish whole, or altogether, so if you have a desire to learn, we will teach you our full art, and not a piece of it. He died in the year when Charondas was archon [338 B.C.], when, being at Hippocrates’s public exercise, he received the news of the slaughter at Chaeroneia; for he was the cause of his own death by a four days’ fast, which he then made, pronouncing just at his departure the three verses which begin three tragedies of Euripides:
[Vit. X orat. 4.1e] “Danaus, father of the fifty sisters, - Pelops, son of Tantalus, in quest of Pisa, - Cadmus, in time past, going from Sidon.”
[Vit. X orat. 4.1f] He lived ninety-eight years, or, as some say, a hundred, not being able to behold Greece the fourth time brought into slavery. The year (or, as some say, four years) before he died, he wrote his Panathenaic oration. He laboured upon his Panegyric oration ten years, or, as some tell us, fifteen, which he is supposed to have borrowed out of Gorgias the Leontine and Lysias. His oration concerning Exchange of Property he wrote when he was eighty-two years old, and those to Philippus a little before his death. 838 When he was old, he adopted Aphareus, the youngest of the three sons of Plathane, the daughter of Hippias the orator. He was very rich, both in respect of the great sums of money he exacted of his pupils, and besides that, received at one time twenty talents from Nicocles, king of Cyprus, for an oration which he dedicated to him. By reason of his riches he suffered the envy of others, and was three times named to maintain a trireme; which he evaded twice by the assistance of his son and a counterfeit sickness, but the third time he undertook it, though the expense proved very great. A father telling him that he had allowed his son no other companion than one slave, Isocrates replied, Go your way then, for one slave you shall have two. He strove for the prize which Aretemisia dedicated to the honour and memory of her husband Mausolus; but that oration is lost. He wrote also another oration in praise of Helen, and one called Areopagiticus. Some say that he died when he had fasted nine days, - some again, at four days’ end, - and his death took its date from the funeral solemnities of those that lost their Lives at Chaeroneia. His son Aphareus likewise wrote several orations.
[Vit. X orat. 4.1g] He lies buried with all his family near Cynosarges, on the left hand of the hill. There are interred Isocrates and his father Theodorus, his mother and her sister Anaco, his adoptive son Aphareus, Socrates the son of Anaco, Theodorus his brother, bearing his father’s name, his grandsons, the sons of his adopted Aphareus, and his wife Plathane, the mother of Aphareus. On these tombs were erected six tables, which are now demolished. And upon the tomb of Isocrates himself was placed a column thirty cubits high, and on that a mermaid of seven cubits, which was an emblem of his eloquence; of which nothing now remains. There was also near it a tablet, having poets and his schoolmasters on it; and among the rest, Gorgias inspecting a celestial globe, and Isocrates standing by him. There is likewise a statue of his of bronze in Eleusis; dedicated by Timotheus the son of Conon, before the entry of the porch, with this inscription:
[Vit. X orat. 4.1h] “To the fame and honour of Isocrates, This statue’s sacred to the Goddesses: The gift of Timotheus.”
[Vit. X orat. 4.1i] This statue was made by Leochares. There are sixty orations which bear his name; of which, if we credit Dionysius, only twenty-five are genuine; but according to Caecilius, twenty-eight; and the rest are accounted spurious. He was an utter stranger to ostentation, insomuch that, when there came at one time three persons to hear him declaim, he admitted but two of them, desiring the third to come the next day, for that two at once were to him as a full theatre. He used to tell his pupils that he taught his art for ten minas; but he would give any man ten thousand, that could teach him to be bold and give him a good utterance. And being once asked how he, who was not very eloquent himself, could make others so, he answered, Just as a whetstone cannot cut, yet it will sharpen knives for that purpose. Some say that he wrote textbooks of oratory; others are of opinion that he had no method of teaching, but only exercise. He would never ask any thing of a free-born citizen. He used to enjoin his pupils being present at public assemblies to repeat to him what was there delivered. He conceived no little sorrow for the death of Socrates, insomuch that the next day he put himself in mourning. Being asked what was the use and force of rhetoric, he answered, To make great matters small, and small great. At a feast with Nicocreon, the tyrant of Cyprus, being desired by some of the company to declaim upon some theme, he made answer, that it was not the time for him to speak what he knew, and he knew nothing that was fitted to that time. Happening once to see Sophocles the tragedian amorously following a comely boy, he said to him, It will become you, Sophocles, 839 to restrain not only your hands, but your eyes. When Ephorus of Cyme left his school before he had arrived at any good proficiency, his father Demophilus sent him again with a second sum of money in his hand; at which Isocrates jokingly called him Diphorus, that is, twice bringing his fee. However, he took a great deal of pains and care with him, and went so far as to put him in the way of writing history.
[Vit. X orat. 4.1j] He was wantonly given; and used to keep a mattress alongside his bed, and his pillow was commonly made moist with saffron. He never married while he was young; but in his old age he kept a mistress, whose name was Lagisce, and by her he had a daughter, who died in the twelfth year of her age, before she was married. He afterwards married Plathane, the wife of Hippias the rhetorician, who had three sons, the youngest of which, Aphareus by name, he adopted for his own, as we said before. This Aphareus erected a bronze statue to him near the temple of Zeus, as may be seen from the inscription:
[Vit. X orat. 4.1k] “In veneration of the mighty Zeus, His noble parents, and the Gods above, Aphareus this statue here has set, The statue of Isocrates his father.”
[Vit. X orat. 4.1l] He is said to have run a race on a swift horse, when he was but a boy; for he is to be seen in this posture in a statue on the Acropolis, in the ball-court of the Arrhephoroi. There were but two suits commenced against him in his whole life. One of these was Megacleides, who challenged him to exchange of property; at the trial of which he could not be personally present, by reason of sickness; but sending Aphareus, he nevertheless won his case. The other suit was commenced against him by Lysimachus, who would have him come to an exchange or be at the charge of maintaining a trireme for the commonwealth. In this case he was defeated, and forced to perform the service. There was likewise a painting of him in the Pompeium.
[Vit. X orat. 4.1m] Aphareus also wrote a few orations, both judicial and deliberative; as also tragedies to the number of thirty-seven, of which two are contested. He began to make his works public in the year of Lysistratus [369 B.C.], and continued it to the year of Sosigenes [342 B.C.], that is, twenty eight years. In these years he exhibited dramas six times at the city Dionysiac festivals, and twice went away with the prize through the director Dionysius; he also gained two other victories at the Lenaean festival through other directors.
[Vit. X orat. 4.1n] There were to be seen in the Acropolis the statues of the mother of Isocrates, of Theodorus, and of Anaco his mother’s sister. That of the mother is placed just by the image of Health, the inscription being changed; that of Anaco is no longer there. [Anaco] had two sons, Alexander by Coenes, and Lysicles by Lysias.
[Vit. X orat. 5.1] 5. ISAEUS was born in Chalcis. When he came to Athens, he read Lysias’s works, whom he imitated so well, both in his style and in his skill in managing causes, that he who was not very well acquainted with their manner of writing could not tell which of the two was author of many of their orations. He flourished after the Peloponnesian war, as we may conjecture from his orations, and was in repute till the reign of Philippus. He taught Demosthenes - not at his school, but privately - who gave him ten thousand drachmas, by which business he became very famous. Some say that he composed orations for Demosthenes, which he delivered in opposition to his guardians. He left behind him sixty-four orations, of which fifty are his own; as likewise a personal textbook of rhetoric. He was the first that used to speak or write figuratively, and that addicted himself to civil matters; which Demosthenes chiefly followed. Theopompus the comedian makes mention of him in his Theseus.
[Vit. X orat. 6.1] 840 6. AESCHINES was the son of Atrometus - who, being banished by the Thirty Tyrants, was thereby a means of restoring the commonwealth to the government of the people - and of his wife Glaucothea; by birth a Cothocidian. He was neither nobly born nor rich; but in his youth, being strong and well set, he addicted himself to all sorts of bodily exercises; and afterwards, having a very clear voice, he took to playing of tragedies, and if we may credit Demosthenes, he was a petty clerk, and also served Aristodemus as a player of third parts at the Dionysiac festivals, in his times of leisure rehearsing the ancient tragedies. When he was but a boy, he was assisting to his father in teaching little children their letters, and when he was grown up, he listed himself a private soldier. Some think he was brought up under Socrates and Plato; but Caecilius will have it that Leodamas was his master. Being concerned in the affairs of the commonwealth, he openly acted in opposition to Demosthenes and his faction; and was employed in several embassies, and especially in one to Philippus, to treat about articles of peace [346 B.C.]. For which Demosthenes accused him for being the cause of the overthrow and ruin of the Phocians, and the inflamer of war; which part he would have him thought to have acted when the Amphictyons chose him one of their deputies to the Amphissians who were building up the harbour [of Crissa]. Upon which the Amphictyons put themselves under Philippus’ protection, who, being assisted by Aeschines, took the affair in hand, and soon conquered all Phocis. But Aeschines, notwithstanding all that Demosthenes could do, being favoured by Eubulus the son of Spintharus, a Probalisian, who pleaded on his behalf, carried his cause by thirty voices, and so was cleared. Though some tell us, that there were orations prepared by the orators, but the news of the defeat at Chaeroneia put a stop to the present proceedings, and so the suit lapsed.
[Vit. X orat. 6.1b] Some time after this, Philippus being dead, and his son Alexander marching into Asia, Aeschines impeached Ctesiphon for acting against the laws, in passing a decree in favour of Demosthenes. But he had less than one-fifth of the votes of the jury on his side, and was forced to go in exile to Rhodes, because he would not pay his fine of a thousand drachmas. Others say, that he incurred disfranchisement also, because he would not depart the city, and that he went to Alexander at Ephesus. But upon the death of Alexander [323 B.C.], when a tumult had been excited, he went to Rhodes, and there opened a school and taught. And once, when he declaimed the oration which he had formerly made against Ctesiphon, to please the Rhodians, he did it with such grace, that they wondered how he could fail of carrying his cause if he pleaded so well for himself. But you would not wonder, said he, that I was defeated, if you had heard Demosthenes pleading against me. He left a school behind him at Rhodes, which was later called the Rhodian school. Thence he sailed to Samos, and died there soon afterwards. He had a very good voice, as both Demosthenes and Demochares testified of him.
[Vit. X orat. 6.1c] Four orations bear his name, one of which was against Timarchus, another concerning a false embassy, and a third against Ctesiphon, which three are really his own; but the fourth, called Deliaca, is none of his; for though he was named to plead the cause of the temple at Delos, yet Demosthenes tells us that Hypereides was chosen in his stead. He says himself, that he had two brothers, Aphobetus and Philochares. He was the first that brought the Athenians the news of the victory obtained at Tamynae, for which he was crowned for the second time. Some report that Aeschines was never any man’s pupil, but having passed his time chiefly in the administration of justice, he raised himself from the office of clerk to that of orator. His first public appearance was in a speech against Philippus; with which the people being pleased, he was immediately chosen to go ambassador to the Arcadians; and when he came there, he excited the Ten Thousand against Philippus. He indicted Timarchus for profligacy; who, fearing the issue, deserted his cause and hanged himself, 841 as Demosthenes somewhere informs us. Being employed with Ctesiphon and Demosthenes in an embassy to Philippus to treat of peace, he appeared the most accomplished of the three. Another time also he was one of ten men sent in embassy to conclude a peace; and being afterwards called to answer for it, he was acquitted, as we said.
[Vit. X orat. 7.1] 7. LYCURGUS was the son of Lycophron, and grandson of that Lycurgus whom the Thirty Tyrants put to death, at the prompting of Aristodemus of Bate, who, also being treasurer of the Greeks, was banished in the time of the popular government. He was from the Butadian deme, and belonged to the family of the Eteobutades. He received his first instruction in philosophy from Plato the philosopher. But afterwards, making himself a pupil to Isocrates the orator, he employed his study about affairs of the commonwealth. And to his care was committed the disposal and management of the city funds, and so he executed the office of treasurer-general for the space of twelve years; in which time there went through his hands fourteen thousand talents, or (as some will have it) eighteen thousand six hundred and fifty. It was the orator Stratocles that procured him this appointment. At first he was chosen in his own name; but afterwards he nominated one of his friends to the office, while he himself performed the duties; for there was a law just passed, that no man should be chosen treasurer for above the term of four years. But Lycurgus plied his business closely, both summer and winter, in the administration of public affairs. And being entrusted to make provision of all necessaries for the wars, he reformed many abuses that were crept into the commonwealth. He built four hundred triremes for the use of the state, and prepared and fitted a place for public exercises in Lyceium, and planted trees before it; he likewise built a wrestling-court, and being made surveyor of the theatre of Dionysus, he finished this building. He was likewise of so great repute among all sorts, that he was entrusted with two hundred and fifty talents of private citizens. He adorned and beautified the city with gold and silver vessels of state, and golden images of victory. He likewise finished many things that were as yet imperfect, as the dockyards and the arsenal. He built a wall also about the spacious Panathenaic race-course, and made level a piece of uneven ground, given by one Deinias to Lycurgus for the use of the city.
[Vit. X orat. 7.1b] The keeping of the city was committed wholly to his care, and power to apprehend malefactors, of whom he cleared the city utterly; so that some sophists were wont to say, that Lycurgus did not dip his pen in ink, but in blood. And therefore it was, that when Alexander demanded him of the people, they would not deliver him up. When Philippus made the second war upon the Athenians, he was employed with Demosthenes and Polyeuctus in an embassy to the Peloponnese and other cities. He was always in great repute and esteem with the Athenians, and looked upon as a man of such justice and integrity, that in the courts of law his good word was at all times prevalent on the behalf of those persons for whom he undertook to speak. He was the author of several laws; one of which was, that there should be certain comedies played at the Chytrian festival, and whoever of the poets or players should come off victor, he should thereby be invested with the freedom of the city, which before was not lawful; and so he revived a tradition which for want of encouragement had for some time before been out of use. Another of his laws was, that the city should erect statues to the memory of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and that their tragedies, being fairly written out, should be preserved in the public depository, and that the public clerks should read these copies as the plays were acted, that nothing might be changed by the players; and that otherwise it should be unlawful to act them. A third law proposed by him was, 842 that no Athenian, nor any person inhabiting in Athens, should be permitted to buy a captive, who was once free, to be a slave, without the consent of his former master. Further, that in the Peiraeus there should be at least three circular dances played to Poseidon; and that to the victor in the first should be given not less than ten minas; in the second, eight; in the third, six. Also, that no woman should go to Eleusis in a carriage, lest the poor should appear more despicable than the rich, and so be dejected and cast down; and that whoever should ride in a carriage contrary to this law should be fined six thousand drachmas. And when even his own wife was found to be in the violation of the law, he paid to the informers a whole talent; for which being afterwards called in question by the people: See therefore, said he, I am called to answer for giving, and not for receiving money.
[Vit. X orat. 7.1c] As he was walking one day in the streets, he saw an tax-collector lay hands on Xenocrates the philosopher, and lead him away to prison, because he had not paid the tax due from strangers. Lycurgus with his staff struck the tax-collector on the head for his unmannerly roughness toward a person of that character, and freeing Xenocrates, cast the other into prison in his stead. And not many days after, Xenocrates meeting with the children of Lycurgus said: I have returned thanks unto your father right speedily, my good children, for his friendship towards me, for I hear his kindness commended by all people where I go. He made likewise several decrees, in which he made use of the help of an Olynthian named Euclides, one very expert in such matters. Though he was rich enough, yet he was used to wear the same coat every day, both summer and winter; but he wore shoes only when he was compelled to do it. Because he was not adept at speaking extempore, he used to practice and study day and night. And in order that he might not at any time oversleep himself and so lose time from his study, he used to cover himself on his bed only with a sheepskin with the wool on, and to lay a hard bolster under his head. When someone reproached him for paying rhetoricians when he worked on his orations, he answered, that, if a man would promise to make his sons better, he would give him not only a thousand drachmas, but half what he was worth. He took the liberty of speaking boldly upon all occasions, by reason of his greatness; as when once the Athenians interrupted him in his speaking, he cried out, O Corcyraean whip, how many talents art thou worth? And another time, when some would rank Alexander among the Gods, What manner of God, said he, must he be, when all that go out of his temple had need to be dipped in water to purify themselves?
[Vit. X orat. 7.1d] After his death Menesaechmus accused his sons according to an indictment drawn by Thracycles, and they were delivered to the eleven executioners of Justice. But Demosthenes, being in exile, wrote to the Athenians, to let them know that they were wrongfully accused, and that therefore they did not well to hear their accusers; upon which they recanted what they had done, and set them at liberty again, - Democles, who was Theophrastus’ pupil, likewise pleading in their defence. Lycurgus and some of his posterity were buried publicly, at or near the temple of Athene Paeonia, where their monuments stand in the garden of Melanthius the philosopher, on which are inscriptions to Lycurgus and his children, which are yet extant. The greatest thing he did while he lived was to increase the public revenue wholly from sixty talents, as he found it, to twelve hundred. When he found he must die, he was by his own appointment carried into the temple of the Mother of the Gods, and into the senate-house, being willing before his death to give an account of his administration. And no man daring to accuse him of any thing except Menesaechmus, he cleared himself of those false accusations, and was carried home again, where shortly afterwards he ended his life. He was always accounted honest; his orations were commended for the eloquence they carried in them; and though he was often accused, yet he never was defeated in any suit.
[Vit. X orat. 7.1e] He had three children by Callisto, the daughter of Abron, and sister of Callias, Abron’s son, by descent a Batesian, - I mean, of him who, when Chaerondas was archon [338 B.C.], was paymaster to the army. 843 Deinarchus speaks of this relationship in his oration against Pastius. He left behind him three sons, Abron, Lycurgus, and Lycophron; of which, Abron and Lycurgus died without issue, though the first, Abron, did for some time act very acceptably and worthily in affairs of the commonwealth. Lycophron marrying Callistomacha, the daughter of Philippus of Aexone, had a daughter Callisto, who married Cleombrotus the son of Deinocrates the Acharnian, to whom she bare Lycophron, who, being adopted by his grandfather, died without issue. He being dead, Socrates married Callisto, of whom he had his son Symmachus. To him was born Aristonymus; to Aristonymus, Charmides, who was the father of Philippe. Of her and Lysander came Medeius, who also was an interpreter, one of the Eumolpids. He married Timothea, the daughter of Glaucus, and they had three children, Laodameia and Medeius, who were priests of Poseidon Erechtheus, and also Philippe a daughter, who was afterward priestess of Athene; for before, she was married to Diocles of Melite, to whom she bare a son named Diocles, who commanded the hoplite soldiers. He married Hediste, the daughter of Abron, and they had two children, Philippides and Nicostrata, whom Themistocles the torch-bearer, son of Theophrastus, married, and by her had Theophrastus and Diocles; and he likewise controlled the priesthood of Poseidon Erechtheus.
[Vit. X orat. 7.1f] It is said that he penned fifteen orations. He was often crowned by the people, and had statues dedicated to him. His image in brass was set up in Cerameicus by order of the public, in the year of Anaxicrates [307 B.C.]; in whose time also it was ordered that he and his eldest son should be provided for with maintenance in the Prytaneium; but he being dead, Lycophron his eldest son applied for that privilege. This Lycurgus also was used frequently to plead on religious matters; and accused Autolycus the Areopagite, Lysicles the general, Demades the son of Demeas, Menesaechmus, and many others, all whom he caused to be condemned as guilty. Diphilus also was called in question by him, for impairing and diminishing the props of the metal mines, and unjustly making himself rich therefrom; and he caused him to be condemned to die, according to the provision made by the laws in that case. He gave out of his own funds fifty drachmas to every citizen, the sum total of which donation amounted to one hundred and sixty talents; but some say he gave a mina of silver to each. He likewise accused Aristogeiton, Leocrates, and Autolycus for cowardice. He was called the Ibis :-
[Vit. X orat. 7.1g] “The ibis to Lycurgus, to Chaerephon the bat.”
[Vit. X orat. 7.1h] His ancestors derived their pedigree from Erechtheus, the son of the Gaea and of Hephaestus; but he was nearest to Lycomedes and Lycurgus, whom the people honoured with public solemnities. There is a succession of those members of the family who were priests of Poseidon, in a complete table placed in the Erechtheium, painted by Ismenias the Chalcidian; in the same place stood wooden images of Lycurgus, and of his sons, Abron, Lycurgus, and Lycophron; made by Timarchus and Cephisodotus, the sons of Praxiteles. His son Abron dedicated the table; and coming to the priesthood by right of succession, he resigned to his brother Lycophron, and hence he is painted as giving a trident. But Lycurgus had made a record of all his actions, and hung it on a tablet before the wrestling-court built by himself, that all might read that would; and no man could accuse him of any misappropriation. He likewise proposed to the people to crown Neoptolemus, the son of Anticles, and to dedicate statues to him, because he had promised and undertaken to cover the altar of Apollo in the market with gold, 844 according to the order of the oracle. He decreed honours likewise to Diotimus, the son of Diopeithes of Euonymus, in the year when Ctesicles was archon [334 B.C.].
[Vit. X orat. 8.1] 844 8. DEMOSTHENES, the son of Demosthenes by Cleobule, the daughter of Gylon, was from the deme of Paeania. He was left an orphan by his father, when he was but seven years old, together with a sister of the age of five. Being kept by his mother during his childhood, he went to school to Isocrates, say some; but most are of the opinion that he was pupil to Isaeus the Chalcidian, who lived in Athens and was Isocrates’ pupil. He imitated Thucydides and Plato, and some affirm that he more especially attended the school of Plato. Hegesias of Magnesia writes, that he entreated his master’s leave to go to hear Callistratus of Aphidna, the son of Empaedus, a noble orator, and sometime commander of a troop of horse, who had dedicated an altar to Hermes Agoraeos, and was to make an oration to the people. And when he heard him, he became a lover of oratory, and so long as he continued at Athens, remained his disciple.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1b] But Callistratus was soon banished to Thrace, and when Demosthenes arrived at maturity, he joined with Isocrates and Plato. After this, he took Isaeus into his house, and for the space of four years laboured very hard in imitation of his orations. Though Ctesibius in his book of philosophy affirms that, by the help of Callias of Syracuse, he got the orations of Zoilus of Amphipolis, and by the assistance of Charicles of Carystus those also of Alcidamas, and devoted himself to the imitation of them. When he came to age, in the year of Timocrates [364 B.C.], he called his tutors and guardians to account for their maladministration, in not allowing him what was fitting and requisite out of his estate. And these tutors or guardians were three, Aphobus, Therippides, and Demophon (or Demeas), the last of whom, being his uncle, he charged more severely than the other two. He accused each of them for a penalty of ten talents, and convicted them, but did not exact of them what the law had given him, releasing some for money, and others for favour.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1c] When Aristophon, by reason of his age, could not hold the office any longer, he was chosen choregus, or overseer of the dances. During the execution of which office, Meidias of Anagyrus struck him as he was acting as choregus in the theatre, and he sued him upon it, but let fall his suit upon Meidias’s paying him three thousand drachmas.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1d] It is reported of him that, while he was a youth, he confined himself to a den or cave, and there studied his orations, and shaved half of his head that he might not be tempted to divert himself from it; and that he lay upon a very narrow bed, that he might awake and rise the sooner. And for that he could not very well pronounce the letter R, he accustomed himself very much to that, that he might master it if possible; and likewise because he made an unseemly motion of his shoulder when he spoke at any time, he remedied that by a spit (or, as some say, a sword) stuck in the ceiling just over his shoulder, that the fear of being pricked with it might break him of that indecent gesture. They report of him further that, when he could declaim pretty well, he had a sort of mirror made as big as himself, and used always in declaiming to look in that, to the end that he might see and correct what was amiss. He used likewise at some certain times to go down to the shore at Phalerum, to the end that, being accustomed to the surges and noise of the waves, he might not be daunted by the clamours of the people, when he should at any time declaim in public. And being naturally short-winded, he gave Neoptolemus a player ten thousand drachmas to teach him to pronounce long sentences in one breath.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1e] Afterwards, betaking himself to the affairs of the commonwealth, and finding the people divided into two different factions, one in favour of Philippus, and the other standing for the liberty of the people, he took part with them that opposed Philippus, and always persuaded the citizens to help those who were in danger and trouble by Philippus’ oppression; taking for his companions in council Hypereides, Nausicles, Polyeuctus, and Diotimus; 845 and then he drew the Thebans, Euboeans, Corcyraeans, Corinthians, Boeotians, and many more into a league with the Athenians. Being in the assembly one day and his memory failing him, his oration was hissed; which made him return home very heavy and melancholy; and being met by Eunomus the Thriasian, an old man, by him he was comforted and encouraged. But he was chiefly animated by Andronicus the player, who told him that his orations were excellent, but that he wanted something of action, thereupon rehearsing certain places out of his oration which he had delivered in that same assembly. Unto which Demosthenes gave good ear and credit, and he then betook himself to Andronicus. And therefore, when he was afterwards asked what was the first part of oratory, he answered, “Action;” and which was the second, he replied, “Action;” and which was the third, he still answered, “Action.” Another time, declaiming publicly, and using expressions too youthful for one of his years and gravity, he was laughed at, and ridiculed by the comedians, Antiphanes and Timocles, who in derision used to repeat such phrases as these, as uttered by him
[Vit. X orat. 8.1f] “By the earth, by the fountains, by the rivers, by the floods!”
[Vit. X orat. 8.1g] For having sworn thus in presence of the people, he raised a tumult about him. He likewise used to swear by Asclepius, and accented the second syllable through some mistake, and yet afterwards defended it; for this Asclepius, he said, was called hêpios, that is a mild God. This also often caused him to be interrupted. But all these things he reformed in time, being sometime conversant with Eubulides, the Milesian philosopher. Being on a time present at the Olympic games, and hearing Lamachus of Tereina sound the praises of Philippus and of Alexander the Great, his son, and decry the cowardice of the Thebans and Olynthians, he stood up in their defence against him, and from the ancient poets he proclaimed the great and noble achievements of the Thebans and Olynthians; and so elegantly he behaved himself in this affair, that he at once silenced Lamachus, and made him convey himself immediately out of the assembly. And even Philippus himself, when he had heard what harangues he made against him, replied, that if he had heard him, he should have chosen him general in the war against himself. He was used to compare Demosthenes’s orations to soldiers, for the force they carried along with them; but the orations of Isocrates to athletes, because of the theatrical delight that accompanied them.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1h] Being about the age of thirty-seven, reckoning from Dexitheus [385 B.C.] to Callimachus [349 B.C.], - in whose time the Olynthians sent to beg aid of the Athenians against Philippus, who then made war upon them, - he persuaded them to answer the Olynthians’ request; but in the following year, in which Plato died, Philippus overthrew and destroyed the Olynthians. Xenophon also, the pupil of Socrates, had some knowledge of Demosthenes, either at his first rise, or at least when he was most famous and flourishing; for he wrote the History of the Greeks, ending with the battle of Mantineia, in the year of Charicleides [363 B.C.]; our Demosthenes having sometime before overthrown his guardians in a suit he had commenced against them, in the year of Timocrates [364 B.C.]. When Aeschines, being condemned, fled from Athens, Demosthenes hearing of it took horse and rode after him; which Aeschines understanding, and fearing to be apprehended again, he came out to meet Demosthenes, and fell at his feet, covered his face, and begged his mercy; upon which Demosthenes bid him stand up, be assured of his favour, and as a pledge of it, gave him a talent of silver. He advised the people to maintain a company of mercenary soldiers in Thasos, and thither sailed himself as captain of a trireme. Another time, being entrusted to buy corn, he was accused of defrauding the city, but cleared himself of the accusation and was acquitted. When Philippus had seized upon Elateia, Demosthenes with others went to the war of Chaeroneia [338 B.C.], where he is said to have deserted his colours; and flying away, a bramble caught hold of his cloak behind, when turning about in haste, thinking an enemy had overtaken him, he cried out, Save my life, and say what shall be my ransom. On his shield he had engraved for his motto, To Good Fortune. And it was he that made the oration at the funerals of such as died in that battle.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1i] After these things, he bent his whole care and study for the improvement of the city and wall; and being chosen commissioner for repairing the walls, besides what money he expended out of the city funds, 846 he laid out of his own at least a hundred minas. And besides this, he gave ten thousand drachmas to the festival fund; and taking ship, he sailed from coast to coast to collect money of the allies; for which he was often by Demotelus, Aristonicus, and Hypereides crowned with golden crowns, and afterwards by Ctesiphon. Which last decree would have been retracted, Diodotus and Aeschines endeavouring to prove it to be contrary to the laws; but he defended himself so well against their allegations, that he overcame all difficulties, his enemies not having the fifth part of the votes of the jury.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1j] After this, when Alexander the Great made his expedition into Asia, and Harpalus fled to Athens with a great sum of money [324 B.C.], at first he would not let him be entertained; but afterwards, Harpalus disembarked and gave him a thousand darics, so that he was of another mind; and when the Athenians determined to deliver Harpalus up to Antipater, he opposed it, proposing to deposit the money in the Acropolis, still without declaring the amount to the people. Thereupon Harpalus declared that he had brought with him from Asia seven hundred talents, and that this sum had been deposited in the Acropolis; but only three hundred and fifty or a little more could be found, as Philochorus relates. But when Harpalus broke out of the prison wherein he was kept till some person should come from Alexander, and was escaped into Crete, - or, as some will have it, into Taenarum in Laconia, - Demosthenes was accused that he had received from him a sum of money, and that therefore he had not given a true account of the sum delivered to him, nor had impeached the negligence of the keepers. So he was brought to trial by Hypereides, Pytheus, Menesaechmus, Himeraeus, and Patrocles, who prosecuted him so severely as to cause him to be condemned in the court of Areopagus; and being condemned, he went into exile, not being able to pay fivefold; for he was accused of receiving thirty talents. Others say, that he would not run the risk of a trial, but went into banishment before the day came. After this tempest was over, the Athenians sent Polyeuctus to the republic of Arcadia to draw them off from the alliance with the Macedonians. He was unsuccessful, but Demosthenes appeared to second him, where he reasoned so effectively that he easily prevailed. Which procured him so much credit and esteem, that after some time a trireme was dispatched to call him home again. And the Athenians decreed that, whereas he owed the state a fine of thirty talents, he should be excused of the fine if only he built an altar to Zeus the Saviour in the Peiraeus; which decree was first proposed by Demon his near kinsman. This being agreed on, he returned to the administration of affairs in the commonwealth again.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1k] But when Antipater was blocked up in Lamia [323 B.C.], and the Athenians offered sacrifices for the happy news, he happened, being talking with Agesistratus, one of his intimate friends, to say, that his judgement concerning the state of affairs did not jump with other men’s, for that he knew the Greeks were brisk and ready enough to run a short course but not to hold on a long race. When Antipater had taken Pharsalus, and threatened to besiege Athens itself if they refused to deliver up such orators as had declaimed against him, Demosthenes, suspecting himself to be one of the number, left the city, and fled first into Aegina, that he might take sanctuary in the temple of Aeacus; but being afraid to trust himself long there, he went over to Calauria; and when the Athenians had decreed to deliver up those orators, and him especially as one of them, he continued a suppliant in the temple of Poseidon. When Archias came thither, - who, from his office of pursuing fugitives, was called Phygadotheres and was the pupil of Anaximenes the orator, - when he, I say, came to him, and persuaded him to go with him, telling him that no doubt he should be received by Antipater as a friend, he replied: When you played a part in a tragedy, you could not persuade me to believe you the person you represented; no more shall you now persuade me by your counsel. And when Archias endeavoured to force him thence, the townsmen would not suffer it. And Demosthenes told them, that he did not flee to Calauria to save his life, but that he might convince the Macedonians of their violence committed even against the Gods themselves. 847 And with that he called for a writing-table; and if we may credit Demetrius the Magnesian, on that he wrote a distich, which afterwards the Athenians caused to be affixed to his statue; and it was to this purpose:
[Vit. X orat. 8.1l] “Had you, Demosthenes, an outward force Great as your inward magnanimity, Greece should not wear the Macedonian yoke.”
[Vit. X orat. 8.1m] This statue, made by Polyeuctus, is placed near the cloister where the altar of the twelve Gods is erected. Some say this writing was found: “Demosthenes to Antipater, Greeting.” Philochorus tells us that he died by drinking of poison; and Satyrus the historian will have it, that the pen was poisoned with which he wrote his letter, and putting it into his mouth, soon after he tasted it he died. Eratosthenes is of another opinion, that being in continual fear of the Macedonians, he wore a poisoned bracelet on his arms. Others say again, that he died with holding his breath; and others, lastly, say that he carried strong poison in his signet. He lived to the age of seventy, according to those who give the highest number, - of sixty-seven, according to other statements. And he was in public life twenty-two years.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1n] When King Philippus died [336 B.C.], he appeared publicly in a glorious robe or mantle, as rejoicing for his death, though he but just before mourned for his daughter. He assisted the Thebans likewise against Alexander, and animated all the other Greeks. So that when Alexander had conquered Thebes, he demanded Demosthenes of the Athenians, threatening them if they refused to deliver him. When he went against Persia, demanding ships of the Athenians, Demosthenes opposed it, saying, who can assure us that he will not use those ships we should send him against ourselves?
[Vit. X orat. 8.1o] He left behind him two sons by one wife, the daughter of one Heliodorus, a noble citizen. He had but one daughter, who died unmarried, being but a child. A sister too he had, who married Laches of Leuconoe, his kinsman, and to him bore Demochares, who proved inferior to none in his time for eloquence, conduct, and courage. His statue is still standing in the Prytaneium, the first on the right as you approach the altar, clothed with a mantle and girt with a sword, because in this habit he delivered an oration to the people, when Antipater demanded of them their orators.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1p] Afterwards, in due course, the Athenians decreed maintenance to be given to the family of Demosthenes in the Prytaneium, and likewise set up a statue to his memory, when he was dead, in the market, in the year of Gorgias [280 B.C.], which honours were paid him at the request of Demochares his sister’s son. And ten years after, Laches, the son of Demochares of Leuconoe, in the year of Pytharatus [271 B.C.], required the same honour for himself, that his statue should be set up in the market, and that both he and the eldest of his line for the future should have their allowance in the Prytaneium, and the seat of honour at all public shows. These decrees concerning both of them are inscribed, and to be found among the statute laws. The statue of Demochares, of which we have spoken before, was afterwards removed out of the market into the Prytaneium.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1q] There are extant sixty-five orations which are truly his. Some report of him, that he lived a very dissolute and vicious life, appearing often in women’s apparel, and being frequently conversant at masks and revellings, whence he was surnamed Batalus; though others say, that this was a pet name given him by his nurse, and that from this he was called Batalus in derision. Diogenes the Cynic seeing him one day in a tavern, he was very much ashamed, and to shun him, went to withdraw; but Diogenes called after him, and told him, The more you shrink inward, the more you will be in the tavern. The same Diogenes once jeered at him, saying that in his orations he was a Scythian, but in fighting a delicate nice citizen. He was one of them who received gold of Ephialtes, one of the popular orators, who, being sent in an embassy to the king of Persia, took money secretly, and distributed it among the orators of Athens, that they might use their utmost endeavours to kindle and inflame the war against Philippus; 848 and it is said of Demosthenes, that he for his part had at once three thousand darics of the king. He apprehended one Anaxilas of Oreus, who had been his friend, and caused him to be tortured for a spy; and when he would confess nothing, he procured a decree that he should be delivered to the eleven executioners.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1r] When once at a meeting of the Athenians they would not suffer him to speak, he told them he had but a short story to tell them. Upon which all being silent, thus he began: A certain youth, said he, hired an ass in summer time, to go from hence to Megara. About noon, when the sun was very hot, and both he that hired the ass and the owner were desirous of sitting in the shade of the ass, they each thrust the other away, - the owner arguing that he let him only his ass and not the shadow, and the other replying that, since he had hired the ass, all that belonged to him was at his dispose. Having said thus, he seemed to go his way. But the Athenians willing now to hear his story out, called him back, and desired him to proceed. To whom he replied: How comes it to pass that you are so desirous of hearing a story of the shadow of an ass, and refuse to give ear to matters of greater moment? Polus the player boasting to him that he had got a whole talent by playing but two days, he answered, and I have got five talents by being silent but one day. One day his voice failing him when he was declaiming publicly, being hissed, he cried out to the people, saying, You are to judge of players, indeed, by their voice, but of orators by the gravity of their sentences.
[Vit. X orat. 8.1s] Epicles upbraiding him for his premeditating what he was to say, he replied, I should be ashamed to speak what comes uppermost to so great an assembly. They say of him that he never put out his lamp - that is, never ceased polishing his orations - until he was fifty years old. He says of himself, that he drank always fair water. Lysias the orator was acquainted with him; and Isocrates knew him concerned in the management of public affairs till the battle of Chaeroneia; as also some of the Socratic philosophers. [He delivered most of his orations extempore, Nature having well qualified him for it.] The first that proposed the crowning him with a coronet of gold was Aristonicus, the son of Nicophanes, the Anagyrasian; though Diondas prevented it with an affidavit.
[Vit. X orat. 9.1] 9. HYPEREIDES was son of Glaucippus, and grandson of Dionysius, of the borough of Colyttus. He had a son, who bore the same name as his father Glaucippus; the younger Glaucippus was an orator, who wrote many orations, and he had a son named Alphinous. At the same time as Lycurgus, he had been a pupil of the philosopher Plato and of the orator Isocrates. In Athens his concern in the commonwealth was at that time when Alexander threatened Greece, and he vigorously opposed Alexander’s demands made of the Athenians for the generals as well as for triremes. He advised the people not to discharge the garrison of Taenarum, and this he did for the sake of a friend of his, Chares, who was commander of it. At first he used to plead causes for a fee. He was suspected to have received part of the money which Ephialtes brought out of Persia, and was chosen to command a trireme, and was sent to assist the Byzantines, when Philippus was besieging their city. Nevertheless, in the same year he took the charge of defraying the expense of the solemn dances, whereas the rest of the captains were exempt from all such public burdens for that year. He obtained a decree for some honours to be paid to Demosthenes; and when that decree challenged by Diondas, as being contrary to the laws, he, being called in question upon it, cleared himself. He did not continue his friendship with Demosthenes, Lysicles, and Lycurgus to the last; for, Lysicles and Lycurgus being dead, and Demosthenes being accused of having received money of Harpalus, he, among all the rest, was pitched upon, as the only person who was not corrupted with bribery, to draw up his indictment, which he accordingly did. Being once accused at the instance of Aristogeiton of publishing acts contrary to the laws after the battle of Chaeroneia [338 B.C.], - 849 that all foreign inhabitants of Athens should be accounted citizens, that slaves should be made free, that all sacred things, children, and women should be confined to the Peiraeus, - he cleared himself of all and was acquitted. And being blamed by some, who wondered how he could be ignorant of the many laws that were directly repugnant to those decrees, he answered, that the arms of the Macedonians darkened his sight, and it was not he but the battle of Chaeroneia that made that decree. But Philippus, being somewhat frightened, gave leave to carry away their dead out of the field, which before he had denied to the heralds from Lebadeia.
[Vit. X orat. 9.1b] After this, following the defeat at Crannon [322 B.C.], being demanded by Antipater, and the people being resolved to deliver him up, he fled out of the city with others who were under the same condemnation to Aegina; where meeting with Demosthenes, he excused himself for the breach of friendship between them. Going from thence, he was apprehended by Archias, surnamed Phygadotheres, by country a Thurian, formerly an actor, but at that time in the service of Antipater; by this man, I say, he was apprehended, even in the very temple of Poseidon, though he grasped the image of that God in his arms. He was brought before Antipater, who was then at Corinth; where being put upon the rack, he bit out his tongue, because he would not divulge the secrets of his country, and so died, on the ninth day of the month of Pyanepsion. Hermippus tells us that, as he went into Macedonia, his tongue was cut out and his body cast forth unburied; but Alphinous his cousin (or, according to the opinion of others, his grandson, by his son Glaucippus) obtained leave, by means of one Philopeithes a physician, to take up his body, which he burnt, and carried the ashes to Athens to his kinsfolk there, contrary to the edicts both of the Athenians and Macedonians, which not only banished them, but likewise forbade the burial of them anywhere in their own country. Others say, that he was carried to Cleonae with others, and there died, having his tongue cut out, as above; however, his relations and friends took his bones, when his body was burned, and buried them among his ancestors before the gate Hippades, as Heliodorus relates in his Third Book of Monuments. His monument is now altogether unknown and lost, being thrown down with age and long standing.
[Vit. X orat. 9.1c] He is said to have excelled all others in his way of delivering himself in his orations to the people. And there are some who prefer him even to Demosthenes himself. There are seventy-seven orations which bear his name, of which only two and fifty are genuine and truly his. He was much given to sexual indulgence, insomuch that he turned his son out of doors, to entertain that famous courtesan Myrrhina. In Peiraeus he had another, whose name was Aristagora; and at Eleusis, where part of his estate lay, he kept another, Phila, a Theban girl whom he ransomed for twenty minas. His usual walk was in the fish-market.
[Vit. X orat. 9.1d] It is thought that he was accused of impiety with one Phryne, a courtesan likewise, and so was sought after to be apprehended, as he himself seems to intimate in the beginning of an oration; and it is said, that when sentence was just ready to be passed upon her, he produced her in court, opened her clothes before, and revealed her naked breasts, which were so very white, that for her beauty’s sake the judges acquitted her. He at leisure times drew up several declamations against Demosthenes, which were thus discovered: Hypereides being sick, Demosthenes came one day to visit him, and caught him with a book in his hand written against him; at which seeming somewhat displeased, Hypereides told him: This book shall hurt no man that is my friend; but as a curb, it may serve to restrain my enemy from offering me any injury. He obtained a decree for some honours to be paid to Iolas, who gave the poisoned cup to Alexander. He joined with Leosthenes in the Lamian war, and made an admirable oration at the funerals of those who lost their lives therein.
[Vit. X orat. 9.1e] When Philippus was prepared to embark for Euboea, and the Athenians heard the news of it with no little consternation, Hypereides in a very short time, by the voluntary contributions of the citizens, fitted out forty triremes, and was the first that set an example, by sending out two triremes, one for himself and another for his son, at his own charge.
[Vit. X orat. 9.1f] 850 When there was a controversy between the Delians and the Athenians, who should have the pre-eminence in the temple at Delos; Aeschines being chosen on the behalf of the Athenians for their advocate, the Areopagites refused to ratify the choice and elected Hypereides; and his oration is yet extant, and bears the name of the Deliac oration.
[Vit. X orat. 9.1g] He likewise went as ambassador to Rhodes; where meeting other ambassadors from Antipater, who commended their master very highly for his goodness and virtue, We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we have no need of a good master at present.
[Vit. X orat. 9.1h] It is said of him, that he never affected much action in his orations to the people, his chief aim being to lay down the matter plainly, and make the case as obvious to the judges as he could.
[Vit. X orat. 9.1i] He was sent likewise to the Eleans, to plead the cause of the athlete Callippus, who was accused of carrying away the prize at the public games unfairly; in which cause he was successful. But when he opposed the sentence of paying honours to Phocion, obtained by Meidias the son of Meidias the Anagyrasian, he was in that cause defeated. This cause was pleaded on the twenty-fourth day of Gamelion, in the year when (?) Xenius was archon.
[Vit. X orat. 10.1] 10. DEINARCHUS, the son of Socrates or Sostratus, - born, as some think, at Athens, but according to others, at Corinth, - came to Athens very young, and there took up his dwelling, at that time when Alexander made his expedition into Asia. He used to hear Theophrastus, who succeeded Aristotle in his school; and he also frequently attended Demetrius of Phalerum. He betook himself more especially to the affairs of the commonwealth after the death of Antipater [319 B.C.], when some of the orators were killed and others banished. Having contracted friendship with Cassander, he became in a short time vastly rich, by exacting great rates for his orations of those for whom he wrote them. He opposed himself to the greatest and most noble orators of his time, not by being zealous to declaim publicly - for his faculty did not lie that way, - but by composing orations for their adversaries. And when Harpalus had broken out of prison, be wrote several orations, which he gave to their accusers to pronounce against those that were suspected to have taken bribes from him.
[Vit. X orat. 10.1b] Some time after, being accused of a conspiracy with Antipater and Cassander about the matter of Munychia, when it was surprised by Antigonus and Demetrius, who put a garrison into it, in the year of Anaxicrates [307 B.C.], he turned the greatest part of his estate into money, and fled to Chalcis, where he lived in exile about fifteen years, and increased his stock; but afterwards, by the mediation of Theophrastus, he and some other banished persons returned to Athens. Then he took up his abode in the house of one Proxenus, his intimate friend; where, being very aged and also dim-sighted, he lost his money. And because Proxenus refused to make inquiry after the thief, he apprehended him; and this was the first time that ever he appeared in court. That oration against Proxenus is extant; and there are sixty-four that bear his name, whereof some are believed to be Aristogeiton’s. He imitated Hypereides; or, as some incline to judge, rather Demosthenes, because of that vigour and force to move the affections, and the rhetorical ornaments that are evident in his style.
[Vit. X orat. 11.1] DECREES PROPOSED TO THE ATHENIANS :-
[Vit. X orat. 11.1b] 1. Demochares, the son of Laches of Leuconoe, requires that a statue of brass be set up for Demosthenes, the son of Demosthenes the Paeanian, in the market-place, as likewise that maintenance be provided in the Prytaneium for himself and the eldest of his descendants successively, and the chief seat in all public shows; for that he had done many good offices for the Athenians, had on most occasions been a good counsellor, and had spent his own wealth in the service of the state; had expended eight talents for the fitting out and maintenance of one trireme, when they delivered Euboea, another, when Cephisodorus sailed into the Hellespont, 851 and a third, when Chares and Phocion were commissioned by the people to go as generals to Byzantium; that he at his own charge had redeemed many who had been taken prisoners by Philippus at Pydna, Methone, and Olynthus; that himself had maintained a chorus of men, when no provision had been made therefor through the neglect of the tribe Pandionis; that he had furnished many indigent citizens with arms; that being chosen by the people to oversee the city works, he had laid out three talents of his own funds towards the repairing of the walls, besides all that he gave for making two trenches about the Peiraeus; that after the battle of Chaeroneia he deposited one talent for the use of the public, and after that, another to buy corn in time of scarcity and want; that by his beneficence, wholesome counsels and effectual persuasions, he allured the Thebans, Euboeans, Corinthians, Megarians, Achaeans, Locrians, Byzantines, and Messenians to a league with the Athenians; that he raised an army of ten thousand foot and a thousand horse, and contracted plenty to the people and their allies; that being ambassador, he had persuaded the allies to the contribution of above five hundred talents; that in the same quality, by his influence and the free gift of money, he obtained of the Peloponnesians that they should not send aid to Alexander against the Thebans; and in consideration of many other good offices performed by him, either as to his counsels, or his personal administration of affairs in the commonwealth, in which, and in defending the rights and liberties of the people, no man in his time had done more or deserved better; and in regard of his sufferings when the commonwealth was ruined, being banished by the insolence of the oligarchy, and at last dying at Calauria for his good-will to the public, there being soldiers sent from Antipater to apprehend him; and that notwithstanding his being in the hands of his enemies, in so great and imminent danger, his hearty affection to his countrymen was still the same, insomuch that he never to the last offered any unworthy thing to the injury of his people.
[Vit. X orat. 12.1] 2. In the magistracy of Pytharatus [271 B.C.], Laches, the son of Demochares of Leuconoe requires of the Athenian senate that a statue of brass be set up for Demochares, the son of Laches of Leuconoe, in the market-place, and table and diet in the Prytaneium for himself and the eldest of his progeny successively, and the first seat at all public shows; for that he had always been a benefactor and good counsellor to the people, and had done these and the like good offices to the public: he had gone in embassies in his own person; had proposed and carried in bills relating to his embassy; had been chief manager of public matters; had repaired the walls, prepared arms and machines; had fortified the city in the time of the four years’ war, and composed a peace, truce, and alliance with the Boeotians; for which things he was banished by those who overturned and usurped the government; - and being called home again by a decree of the people, in the year of Diocles [288 B.C.], he had reduced the expenses, and spared the public funds; and going in embassy to Lysimachus, he had at one time gained thirty, and at another time a hundred talents of silver, for the use of the public; he had moved the people to send an embassy to Ptolemaeus, by which means the people got fifty talents; he went ambassador to Antipater, and by that got twenty talents, and brought it to Eleusis to the people, - all which measures he persuaded the people to adopt while he himself carried them out; furthermore, he was banished for his love for the commonwealth, and would never take part with usurpers against the popular government; neither did he, after the overthrow of that government, bear any public office in the state; he was the only man, of all that had to do in the public administration of affairs in his time, who never promoted or consented to any other form of government but that of the people; by his prudence and conduct, all the judgements and decrees, the laws, courts, and all things else belonging to the Athenians, were preserved safe and inviolate; and, in a word, he never said or did any thing to the prejudice of the popular government.
[Vit. X orat. 13.1] 3. Lycophron, the son of Lycurgus of Butadae, requires that he may have maintenance in the Prytaneium, according to a donation of the people to Lycurgus. In the year of Anaxicrates [307 B.C.], in the sixth prytany, - which was that of the tribe Antiochis, - 852 Stratocles, the son of Euthydemus of Diomeia, proposed; that, - since Lycurgus, the son of Lycophron of Butadae, had (as it were) an inherited good-will in him towards the people of Athens; and since his ancestors Diomedes and Lycurgus lived in honour and esteem of all people, and when they died were honoured for their virtue so far as to be buried at the public charge in the Cerameicus; and since Lycurgus himself, while he had the management of public affairs, was the author of many good and wholesome laws, and was the city treasurer for twelve years together, during which time there passed through his own hands eighteen thousand and nine hundred talents, besides other great sums of money that he was entrusted with by private citizens for the public good, to the sum of six hundred and fifty talents; in all which concerns he behaved himself so justly, that he was often crowned by the city for his fidelity; besides, being chosen by the people to that purpose, he brought much money into the Acropolis, and provided ornaments, golden images of victory, and vessels of gold and silver for the Goddess Athene, and gold ornaments for a hundred Canephoroe; since, being put in charge of military equipment, he brought into the stores a great number of arms and at least fifty thousand missiles, and set out four hundred triremes, some new built, and others only repaired; since, finding many buildings half finished, as the dock-yards, the arsenal, and the theatre of Dionysus, he completed them; and finished the Panathenaic stadium, and the court for public exercises at the Lyceium, and adorned the city with many fair new buildings; since, when Alexander, having conquered Asia, and assuming the empire of all Greece, demanded Lycurgus as the principal man that confronted and opposed him in his affairs, the people refused to deliver him up, notwithstanding the terror inspired by Alexander; and since, being often called to account for his management of affairs in so free a city, which was wholly governed by the people, he never was found faulty or corrupt in any particular; - that all people, therefore, may know, not only that the people do highly esteem all such as act in defence of their liberties and rights while they live, but likewise that they pay them honours after death, in the name of Good Fortune it is decreed by the people, that such honours be paid to Lycurgus, the son of Lycophron of Butadae, for his justice and magnanimity, as that a statue of brass be erected in memory of him in any part of the market which the laws do not prohibit; as likewise that maintenance be provided in the Prytaneium for every eldest son of his descendants, successively for ever. Also, that all his decrees be ratified, and engraved by the public secretary on tablets of stone, and set up in the Acropolis next to the gifts consecrated to Athene; and that the city treasurer shall deposit fifty drachmas for the engraving of them, out of the money set apart for such uses.

## Comparison between Aristophanes and Menander

[Comp. Ar. et Men. 1] 853 1 1 . . . . In general he much prefers Menander, and in particular he adds what follows:
[Comp. Ar. et Men. 1b] “Coarseness,” he says, “in words, vulgarity and ribaldry are present in Aristophanes, but not at all in Menander; obviously, for the uneducated, ordinary person is captivated by what the former says, but the educated man will be displeased. I refer to antitheses and similar endings and plays on words. For of these Menander does make use with proper consideration and rarely, believing that they should be treated with care, but Aristophanes employs them frequently, inopportunely, and frigidly; for his punning is applauded,” he says, “in
[Comp. Ar. et Men. 1c] because he soused the bankers —
Though they never were that but damn curs,
and
This fellow blows an ill north-east or calumny,
and
Give him a belly-punch in his bowels and guts,
and
By laughter driven I soon shall be in Laughter-town,
and
Whatever shall I do to you, you wretched pot,
When gone the way of pots?
[Comp. Ar. et Men. 1d] and
Since, women, what he does to us are evils wild,
For one who e’en himself in the wild-greens market grew,
and
But look, the moths have eaten up my plumes entire,
and
Lam. I say, bring here my shield’s round orb all Gorgon-faced.
[Comp. Ar. et Men. 1e] Dic. I say, hand me a flat-cake’s orb all faced with cheese,
[Comp. Ar. et Men. 1f] and many things of the same sort. Moreover, in his diction there are tragic, comic, pompous, and prosaic elements, obscurity, vagueness, dignity, and elevation, loquacity and sickening nonsense. And with all these differences and dissimilarities his use of words does not give to each kind its fitting and appropriate use; I mean, for example, to a king his dignity, to an orator his eloquence, to a woman her artlessness, to an ordinary man his prosaic speech, to a market-lounger his vulgarity; but he assigns to his characters as if by lot such words as happen to turn up, and you could not tell whether the speaker is son or father, a rustic or a god, or an old woman or a hero.
[Comp. Ar. et Men. 2] 2 1 “But Menander’s diction is so polished and its ingredients mingled into so consistent a whole that, although it is employed in connexion with many emotions and many types of character and adapts itself to persons of every kind, it nevertheless appears as one and preserves its uniformity in common and familiar words in general use; but if the action should anywhere call for strange and deceptive language and for bluster, he opens, as it were, all the stops of his flute, but then quickly and plausibly clothes them and brings the sound back to its natural quality. And although there have been many noted artisans, no shoemaker ever made the same shoe, no mask-maker the same mask, and no tailor the same cloak, that would be appropriate at the same time for man and woman and youth and old man and domestic slave; but Menander so blended his diction that it comports with every nature, disposition, and age, and he did this although he entered upon his career while still a young man and died at the height of his powers as playwright and poet, when, as Aristotle says, writers make the greatest progress in the matter of diction. If, therefore, we were to compare Menander’s earliest dramas with those of his middle and final periods, we should perceive from them how many qualities he would, had he lived longer, have added to these.
[Comp. Ar. et Men. 3] 3 1 854”Some dramatists write for the common people, and others for the few, but it is not easy to say which of them all is capable of adapting his work to both classes. Now Aristophanes is neither pleasing to the many nor endurable to the thoughtful, but his poetry is like a harlot who has passed her prime and then takes up the rôle of a wife, whose presumption the many cannot endure and whose licentiousness and malice the dignified abominate. But Menander, along with his charm, shows himself above all satisfying. He has made his poetry, of all the beautiful works Greece has produced, the most generally accepted subject in theatres, in discussions, and at banquets, for readings, for instruction, and for dramatic competitions. For he shows, indeed, what the essence and nature of skill in the use of language really are, approaching all subjects with a persuasiveness from which there is no escape, and controlling every sound and meaning which the Greek language affords. For what reason, in fact, is it truly worth while for an educated man to go to the theatre, except to enjoy Menander? And when else are theatres filled with men of learning, if a comic character has been brought upon the stage? And at banquets for whom is it more proper for the festive board to yield its place and for Dionysus to waive his rights? And just as painters, when their eyes are tired, turn to the colours of flowers and grass, Cso to philosophers and men of learning Menander is a rest from their concentrated and intense studies, inviting the mind, as it were, to a meadow flowery, shady, and full of breezes.
[Comp. Ar. et Men. 4] 4 1 “Although the city produced in that whole period many excellent performers of comedy, only Menander’s comedies contain an abundance of salty wit and merriment, which seem like the salt derived from that sea out of which Aphroditê was born. But the witticisms of Aristophanes are bitter and rough and possess a sharpness which wounds and bites. And I do not know wherein his vaunted cleverness resides, whether in his words or his characters. Certainly even whatever he imitates he makes worse; for with him roguishness is not urbane but malicious, rusticity not simple but silly, facetiousness not playful but ridiculous, and love not joyous but licentious. For the fellow seems to have written his poetry, not for any decent person, but the indecent and wanton lines for the licentious, the slanderous and bitter passages for the envious and malicious.”

## On the malice of Herodotus

[De Her. mal. 1] 1 THE STYLE, O Alexander, of Herodotus, as being simple, free, and easily suiting itself to its subject, has deceived many; but more, a persuasion of his dispositions being equally sincere. For it is not only (as Plato says) an extreme injustice, to make a show of being just when one is not so; but it is also the highest malignity, to pretend to simplicity and mildness and be in the meantime really most malicious. Now since he principally exerts his malice against the Boeotians and Corinthians, though without sparing any other, I think myself obliged to defend our ancestors and the truth against this part of his writings, since those who would detect all his other lies and fictions would have need of many books. But, as Sophocles has it, the face of persuasion, is prevalent, especially when delivered in the good language, and such as has power to conceal both the other absurdities and the ill-nature of the writer. King Philip told the Greeks who revolted from him to Titus Quinctius that they had got a more polished, but a longer lasting yoke. So the malice of Herodotus is indeed more polite and delicate than that of Theopompus, yet it pinches closer, and makes a more severe impression, — not unlike to those winds which, blowing secretly through narrow chinks, are sharper than those that are more diffused. Now it seems to me very convenient to delineate, as it were, in the rough draught, those signs and marks that distinguish a malicious narration from a candid and unbiassed one, applying afterwards every point we shall examine to such as appertain to them.
[De Her. mal. 2] 2 First then, whoever in relating a story shall use the odious terms when gentler expressions might do as well, is it not to be esteemed impartial, but an enjoyer of his own fancy, in putting the worst construction on things; as if any one, instead of saying Nicias is too superstitious, should call him fanatic, or should accuse Cleon of presumption and madness rather than of inconsiderateness in speech.
[De Her. mal. 3] 3 Secondly, when a writer, catching hold of a fault which has no reference to his story, shall draw it into the relation of such affairs as need it not, extending his narrative with cicumlocutions, only that he may insert a man’s misfortune, offence, or discommendable action, it is manifest that he delights in speaking evil. Therefore Thucydides would not clearly relate the faults of Cleon, which were very numerous; and as for Hyperbolus the orator, having touched at him in a word and called him an ill man, he let him go. Philistus also passed over all those outrages committed by Dionysius on the barbarians which had no connection with the Grecian affairs. For the excursions and digressions of history are principally allowed for fables and antiquities, and sometimes also for encomiums. But he who makes reproaches and detractions an addition to his discourse seems to incur the tragedian’s curse on the “collector of men’s calamities.”
[De Her. mal. 4] 4 Now the opposite to this is known to every one, as the omitting to relate some good and laudable action, which, though it may seem not to be reprehensible, yet is then done maliciously when the omission happens in a place that is pertinent to the history. For to praise unwillingly is so far from being more civil than to dispraise willingly, that it is perhaps rather more uncivil.
[De Her. mal. 5] 5 The fourth sign of a partial disposition in writing of history I take to be this: When a matter is related in two or more several manners, and the historian shall embrace the worst. Sophisters indeed are permitted, for the obtaining either of profit or reputation, to undertake the defence of the worst cause; for they neither create any firm belief of the matter, nor yet do they deny that they are often pleased in maintaining paradoxes and making incredible things appear probable. But an historian is then just, when he asserts such things as he knows to be true, and of those that are uncertain reports rather the better than the worse. Nay, there are many writers who wholly omit the worse. Thus Ephorus writes of Themistocles, that he was acquainted with the treason of Pausanias and his negotiations with the King’s lieutenants, but that he neither consented to it, nor hearkened to Pausanias’s proffers of making him partaker of his hopes; and Thucydides left the whole matter out of his story, as judging it to be false.
[De Her. mal. 6] 6 Moreover, in things confessed to have been done, but for doing which the cause and intention is unknown, he who casts his conjectures on the worst side is partial and malicious. Thus do the comedians, who affirm the Peloponnesian war to have been kindled by Pericles for the love of Aspasia or the sake of Phidias, and not through any desire of honor, or ambition of pulling down the Peloponnesian pride and giving place in nothing to the Lacedaemonians. For those who suppose a bad cause for laudable works and commendable actions, endeavoring by calumnies to insinuate sinister suspicions of the actor when they cannot openly discommend the act, — as they that impute the killing of Alexander the tyrant by Theba not to any magnanimity or hatred of vice, but to a certain feminine jealousy and passion, and those that say Cato slew himself for fear Caesar should put him to a more shameful death, — such as these are manifestly in the highest degree envious and malicious.
[De Her. mal. 7] 7 An historical narration is also more or less guilty of malice, according as it relates the manner of the action; as if one should be said to have performed an exploit rather by money than bravery, as some affirm of Philip; or else easily and without any labor, as it is said of Alexander; or else not by prudence, but by Fortune, as the enemies of Timotheus painted cities falling into his nets as he lay sleeping. For they undoubtedly diminish the greatness and beauty of the actions, who deny the performer of them to have done them generously, industriously, virtuously, and by themselves.
[De Her. mal. 8] 8 Moreover, those who will directly speak ill of any one incur the reproach of moroseness, rashness, and madness, unless they keep within measure. But they who send forth calumnies obliquely, as if they were shooting arrows out of corners, and then stepping back think to conceal themselves by saying they do not believe what they most earnestly desire to have believed, whilst they disclaim all malice, condemn themselves also of farther disingenuity.
[De Her. mal. 9] 9 Next to these are they who with their reproaches intermix some praises, as did Aristoxenus, who, having termed Socrates unlearned, ignorant, and libidinous, added, Yet was he free from injustice. For, as they who flatter artificially and craftily sometimes mingle light reprehensions with their many and great praises, joining this liberty of speech as a sauce to their flattery; so malice, that it may gain belief to its accusations, adds also praise.
[De Her. mal. 10] 10 We might here also reckon up more notes; but these are sufficient to let us understand the nature and manners of Herodotus.
[De Her. mal. 11] 11 First therefore, — beginning, as the proverb is, with Vesta, — whereas all the Grecians affirm Io, daughter to Inachus, to have been worshipped with divine honor by the barbarians, and by her glory to have left her name to many seas and principal ports, and to have given a source and original to most noble and royal families; this famous author says of her, that she gave herself to certain Phoenician merchants, having been not unwillingly deflowered by a mariner, and fearing lest she should be found by her friends to be with child (Herodotus, i, 5). And he belies the Phoenicians as having delivered these things of her, and says that the Persian stories testify of her being carried away by the Phoenicians with other women (Herodotus, i, 1). Presently after, he gives sentence on the bravest and greatest exploits of Greece, saying that the Trojan war was foolishly undertaken for an ill woman. For it is manifest, says he, that had they not been willing they had never been ravished (Herodotus, i, 4). Let us then say, that the gods also acted foolishly, in inflicting their indignation on the Spartans for abusing the daughters of Scedasus the Leuctrian, and in punishing Ajax for the violation of Cassandra. For it is manifest, if we believe Herodotus, that if they had not been willing they had never been defiled. And yet he himself said that Aristomenes was taken alive by the Spartans; and the same afterwards happened to Philopoemen, general of the Achaeans; and the Carthaginians took Regulus, the consul of the Romans; than whom there are not easily to be found more valiant and warlike men. Nor is it to be wondered, since even leopards and tigers are taken alive by men. But Herodotus blames the poor women that have been abused by violence, and patronizes their ravishers.
[De Her. mal. 12] 12 Nay, he is so favorable to the barbarians, that, acquitting Busiris of those human sacrifices and that slaughter of his guests for which he is accused, and attributing by his testimony to the Egyptians much religion and justice, he endeavors to cast that abominable wickedness and those impious murders on the Grecians. For in his Second Book he says, that Menelaus, having received Helen from Proteus and having been honored by him with many presents, showed himself a most unjust and wicked man; for wanting a favorable wind to set sail, he found out an impious device, and having taken two of the inhabitants’ boys, consulted their entrails; for which villany being hated and persecuted, he fled with his ships directly into Libya (Herodotus, ii, 45). From what Egyptian this story proceeds, I know not. For, on the contrary, many honors are even at this day given by the Egyptians to Helen and Menelaus.
[De Her. mal. 13] 13 The same Herodotus, that he may still be like himself, says that the Persians learned the defiling of the male sex from the Greeks (Herodotus, i, 135). And yet how could the Greeks have taught this impurity to the Persians, amongst whom, as is confessed by many, boys had been castrated before ever they arrived in the Grecian seas? He writes also, that the Greeks were instructed by the Egyptians in their pomps, solemn festivals, and worship of the twelve gods; that Melampus also learned of the Egyptians the name of Dionysus (or Bacchus) and taught it the other Greeks; that the mysteries likewise and rites of Ceres were brought out of Egypt by the daughters of Danaus; and that the Egyptians were wont to beat themselves and make great lamentation, but yet he himself refused to tell the names of their deities, but concealed them in silence. As to Hercules and Bacchus, whom the Egyptians named gods, and the Greeks very aged men, he nowhere has such scruples and hesitation; although he places also the Egyptian Hercules amongst the gods of the second rank, and Bacchus amongst those of the third, as having had some beginning of their being and not being eternal, and yet he pronounces those to be gods; but to the gods Bacchus and Hercules, as having been mortal and being now demi-gods, he thinks we ought to perform anniversary solemnities, but not to sacrifice to them as to gods. The same also he said of Pan, overthrowing the most venerable and purest sacrifices of the Greeks by the proud vanities and mythologies of the Egyptians. (For the passages referred to in this chapter, see Herodotus, ii, 48, 51, 145, 146, 171.)
[De Her. mal. 14] 14 Nor is this impious enough; but moreover, deriving the pedigree of Hercules from Perseus, he says that Perseus was an Assyrian, as the Persians affirm. “But the leaders,” says he, “of the Dorians may appear to be descended in a right line from the Egyptians, reckoning their ancestors from before Danae and Acrisius.” (Herodotus, vi. 53, 54). Here he has wholly passed by Epaphus, Io, Iasus, and Argus, being ambitious not only to make the other Herculeses Egyptians and Phoenicians but to carry this also, whom himself declares to have been the third, out of Greece to the barbarians. But of the ancient learned writers, neither Homer, nor Hesiod, nor Archilochus, nor Pisander, nor Stesichorus, nor Alcman, nor Pindar, makes any mention of the Egyptian or the Phoenician Hercules, but all acknowledge this our own Boeotian and Argive Hercules.
[De Her. mal. 15] 15 Now of the seven sages, whom he calls Sophisters, he affirms Thales to have been a barbarian, descended of the Phoenicians (Herodotus, i, 170). Speaking ill also of the gods under the person of Solon, he has these words: “Thou, O Croesus, askest me concerning human affairs, who know that every one of the deities envious and tumultuous.” (Herodotus, i, 32) Thus attributing to Solon what himself thinks of the gods, he joins malice to blasphemy.
[De Her. mal. 15b] Having made use also of Pittacus in some trivial matters, not worth the mentioning, he has passed over the greatest and gallantest action that was ever done by him. For when the Athenians and Mitylenaeans were at war about Sigaeum, Phrynon, the Athenian general, challenging whoever would come forth to a single combat, Pittacus advanced to meet him, and catching him in a net, slew that stout and giant-like man; for which when the Mitylaenans offered him great presents, darting his javelin as far as he could out of his hand, he desired only so much ground as he should reach with that throw; and the place is to this day called Pittacium. Now what does Herodotus, when he comes to this? Instead of Pittacus’s valiant act, he tells us the fight of Alcaeus the poet, who throwing away his arms ran out of the battle; by thus not writing of honorable deeds and not passing over such as are dishonorable, he offers his testimony to those who say, that from one and the same malice proceed both envy and a rejoicing at other men’s harms (Herodotus v. 95).
[De Her. mal. 16] 16 After this, he accuses of treason the Alcmaeonidae who showed themselves generous men, and delivered their country from tyranny (Herodotus, i, 61). He says, that they received Pisistratus after his banishment and got him called home, on condition he should marry the daughter of Megacles; but the damsel saying to her mother, Do you see, mother, how I am known by Pisistratus contrary to nature? The Alcmaeonidae were so offended at this villany, that they expelled the tyrant.
[De Her. mal. 17] 17 Now that the Lacedaemonians might have no less share of his malice than the Athenians, behold how he bespatters Othryadas, the man most admired and honored by them. “He only,” says Herodotus, “remaining alive of the three hundred, and ashamed to return to Sparta, his companions being lost, slew himself on the spot at Thyreae.” (Herodotus, i, 82). For having before said the victory was doubtful on both sides, he here, by making Othryadas ashamed, witnesses that the Lacedaemonians were vanquished. For it was shameful for him to survive, if conquered; but glorious, if conqueror.
[De Her. mal. 18] 18 I pass by now, that having, represented Croesus as foolish, vainglorious, and ridiculous in all things, he makes him, when a prisoner, to have taught and instructed Cyrus, who seems to have excelled all other kings in prudence, virtue, and magnanimity (Herodotus, i, 155, 156, 207, and 208). Having testified of the same Croesus nothing else that was commendable but his honoring the gods with many and great oblations, he shows that very act of his to have been the most impious of all. For he says, that he and his brother Pantoleon contended for the kingdom while their father was yet alive; and that Croesus, having obtained the crown, caused a companion and familiar friend of Pantoleon’s to be torn in pieces in a fulling-mill, and sent presents to the gods from his property (Herodotus, i, 92). Of Deioces also, the Median, who by virtue and justice obtained the government, he says that he got it not by real but pretended justice (Herodotus, i, 96).
[De Her. mal. 19] 19 But I let pass the barbarian examples, since he has offered us plenty enough in the Grecian affairs. He says, that the Athenians and many other Ionians were so ashamed of that name that they wholly refused to be called Ionians; and that those who esteemed themselves the noblest among them, and who had come forth from the very Prytaneum of Athens, begat children on barbarian wives whose parents, husbands, and former children they had slain; that the women had therefore made a law among themselves, confirmed it by oath, and delivered it to be kept by their daughters, never to eat with their husbands, nor to call any of them by his name; and that the present Milesians are descended from these women. Having afterwards added that those are true Ionians who celebrate the feast called Apaturia; they all, says he, keep it except the Ephesians and Colophonians (Herodotus, i, 143–148). In this manner does he deprive these two states of their nobility.
[De Her. mal. 20] 20 He says moreover, that the Cumaeans and Mitylenaeans agreed with Cyrus to deliver up to him for a price Pactyas, who had revolted from him. I know not indeed, says he, for how much; since it is not certain what it was. Bravo! — not to know what it was, and yet to cast such an infamy on a Grecian city, without an assured knowledge! He says farther, that the Chians took Pactyas, who was brought to them out of the temple of Minerva Poliuchus (or Guardianess of the city), and delivered him up, having received the city Atarneus for their recompense. And yet Charon the Lampsacenian, a more ancient writer, relating this matter concerning Pactyas, charges neither the Mitylenaeans nor the Chians with any such action. These are his very words: “Pactyas, hearing that the Persian army drew near, fled first to Mitylene, then to Chios, and there fell into the hands of Cyrus.” (See Herodotus, i, 157 etc.)
[De Her. mal. 21] 21 Our author in his Third Book, relating the expedition of the Lacedaemonians against the tyrant Polycrates, affirms, that the Samians think and say that the Spartans, to recompense them for their former assistance against the Messenians, both brought back the Samians that were banished, and made war on the tyrant; but that the Lacedaemonians deny this, and say, they undertook this design not to help or deliver the Samians, but to punish them for having taken away a cup sent by them to Croesus, and besides, a breastplate sent them by Amasis (Herodotus, iii, 47, 48). And yet we know that there was not at that time any city so desirous of honor, or such an enemy to tyrants, as Sparta. For what breastplate or cup was the cause of their driving the Cypselidae out of Corinth and Ambracia, Lygdamis out of Naxos, the children of Pisistratus out of Athens, Aeschines out of Sicyon, Symmachus out of Thasus, Aulis out of Phocis, and Aristogenes out of Miletus; and of their overturning the domineering powers of Thessaly, pulling down Aristomedes and Angelus by the help of King Leotychides? — which facts are elsewhere more largely described. Now, if Herodotus says true, they were in the highest degree guilty both of malice and folly, when, denying a most honorable and most just cause of their expedition, they confessed that in remembrance of a former injury, and too highly valuing an inconsiderable matter, they invaded a miserable and afflicted people.
[De Her. mal. 22] 22 Now perhaps he gave the Lacedaemonians this stroke, as directly falling under his pen; but the city of Corinth, which was wholly out of the course of his story, he has brought in-going out of his way (as they say) to fasten upon it — and has bespattered it with a most filthy crime and most shameful calumny. “The Corinthians,” says he, “studiously helped this expedition of the Lacedaemonians to Samos, as having themselves also been formerly affronted by the Samians.” The matter was this. Periander tyrant of Corinth sent three hundred boys, sons to the principal men of Corcyra, to King Alyattes, to be gelt. These, going ashore in the island of Samos, were by the Samians taught to sit as suppliants in the temple of Diana, where they preserved them, setting before them for their food sesame mingled with honey. This our author calls an affront put by the Samians on the Corinthians, who therefore instigated the Lacedaemonians against them, to wit, because the Samians had saved three hundred children of the Greeks from being unmanned.
[De Her. mal. 22b] By attributing this villany to the Corinthians, he makes the city more wicked than the tyrant. He indeed was revenging himself on those of Corcyra who had slain his son; but what had the Corinthians suffered, that they should punish the Samians for putting an obstacle to so great a cruelty and wickedness? — and this, after three generations, reviving the memory of an old quarrel for the sake of that tyranny, which they found so grievous and intolerable that they are still endlessly abolishing all the monuments and marks of it, though long since extinct. Such then was the injury done by the Samians to the Corinthians. Now what a kind of punishment was it the Corinthians would have inflicted on them? Had they been indeed angry with the Samians, they should not have incited the Lacedaemonians, but rather diverted them from their war against Polycrates, that the Samians might not by the tyrant’s overthrow recover liberty, and be freed from their slavery.
[De Her. mal. 22c] But (what is most to be observed) why were the Corinthians so offended with the Samians, that desired indeed but were not able to save the Corcyraeans children, and yet were not displeased with the Cnidians, who both preserved them and restored them to their friends? Nor indeed have the Corcyraeans any great esteem for the Samians on this account; but of the Cnidians they preserve a grateful recollection, having granted them several honors and privileges, and made decrees in their favor. For these, sailing to Samos, drove away Periander’s guards from the temple, and taking the children aboard their ships, carried them safe to Corcyra; as it is recorded by Antenor the Cretan, and by Dionysius the Chalcidian in his foundations. Now that the Spartans undertook not this war on any design of punishing the Samians, but to save them by delivering them from the tyrant, we have the testimony of the Samians themselves.
[De Her. mal. 22d] For they affirm that there is in Samos a monument erected at the public charge, and honors there done to Archias a Spartan, who fell fighting valiantly in that quarrel; for which cause also his posterity still keep a familiar and friendly correspondence with the Samians, as Herodotus himself witnesses. (See Herodotus, iii. 48.)
[De Her. mal. 23] 23 In his Fifth Book, he says, that Clisthenes, one of the best and noblest men in Athens, persuaded the priestess Pythia to be a false prophetess, and always to exhort the Lacedaemonians to free Athens from the tyrants; calumniating this most excellent and just action by the imputation of so great a wickedness and imposture, and taking from Apollo the credit of that true and good prophecy, beseeming even Themis herself, who is also said to have joined with him. He says farther, that Isagoras prostituted his wife to Cleomenes, who came to her (Herodotus, v. 63, 70). Then, as his manner is, to gain credit by mixing some praises with his reproaches, he says: Isagoras the son of Tisander was of a noble family, but I cannot tell the original of it; his kinsmen, however, sacrifice to the Carian Jupiter (Herodotus, v. 66). O this pleasant and cunning scoffer of a writer, who thus disgracefully sends Isagoras to the Carians, as it were to the ravens. As for Aristogiton, he puts him not forth at the back door, but thrusts him directly out of the gate into Phoenicia, saying that he had his original from the Gephyraeans, and that the Gephyraeans were not, as some think, Euboeans or Eretrians, but Phoenicians, as himself has heard by report (Herodotus, v. 58). And since he cannot altogether take from the Lacedaemonians the glory of having delivered the Athenians from the tyrants, he endeavors to cloud and disgrace that most honorable act by as foul a passion. For he says, they presently repented of it, as not having done well, in that they had been persuaded by spurious and deceitful oracles to drive the tyrants, who were their allies and had promised to put Athens into their hands, out of their country, and had restored the city to an ungrateful people. He adds, that they were about to send for Hippias from Sigeum, and bring him back to Athens; but that they were opposed by the Corinthians, Sosicles telling them how much the city of Corinth had suffered under the tyranny of Cypselus and Periander (Herodotus, v. 90, 91). And yet there was no outrage of Periander’s more abominable and cruel than his sending the three hundred children to be emasculated, for the delivering and saying of whom from that contumely the Corinthians, he says, were angry and bore a grudge against the Samians, as having put an affront upon them. With so much repugnance and contradiction is that malice of his discourse filled, which on every occasion insinuates itself into his narrations.
[De Her. mal. 24] 24 After this, relating the action of Sardis, he, as much as in him lies, diminishes and discredits the matter; being so audacious as to call the ships which the Athenians sent to the assistance of the Ionians, who had revolted from the King the beginning of evils, because they endeavored to deliver so many and so great Grecian cities from the barbarians (Herodotus, v. 97). As to the Eretrians, making mention of them only by the way, he passes over in silence a great, gallant, and memorable action of theirs. For when all Ionia was in a confusion and uproar, and the King’s fleet drew nigh, they, going forth to meet him, overcame in a sea-fight the Cyprians in the Pamphylian Sea. Then turning back and leaving their ships at Ephesus, they invaded Sardis and besieged Artaphernes, who was fled into the castle, that so they might raise the siege of Miletus. And this indeed they effected, causing the enemies to break up their camp and remove thence in a wonderful fright, and then seeing themselves in danger to be oppressed by a multitude, retired. This not only others, but Lysanias of Mallus also in his history of Eretria relates, thinking it convenient, if for no other reason, yet after the taking and destruction of the city, to add this valiant and heroic act. But this writer of ours says, they were defeated, and pursued even to their ships by the barbarians; though Charon the Lampsacenian has no such thing, but writes thus, word for word: “The Athenians set forth with twenty galleys to the assistance of the Ionians, and going to Sardis, took all thereabouts, except the King’s wall; which having done, they returned to Miletus.”
[De Her. mal. 25] 25 In his Sixth Book, our author, discoursing of the Plataeans, — how they gave themselves to the Lacedaemonians, who exhorted them rather to have recourse to the Athenians, who were nearer to them and no bad defenders, — adds, not as a matter of suspicion or opinion, but as a thing certainly known by him, that the Lacedaemonians gave the Plataeans this advice, not so much for any goodwill, as through a desire to find work for the Athenians by engaging them with the Boeotians (Herodotus, vi. 108). If then Herodotus is not malicious, the Lacedaemonians must have been both fraudulent and spiteful; and the Athenians fools, in suffering themselves to be thus imposed on; and the Plataeans were brought into play, not for any good-will or respect, but as an occasion of war.
[De Her. mal. 26] 26 He is farther manifestly convinced of belying the Lacedaemonians, when he says that, whilst they expected the full moon, they failed of giving their assistance to the Athenians at Marathon. For they not only made a thousand other excursions and fights at the beginning of the month, without staying for the full moon; but wanted so little of being present at this very battle, which was fought the sixth day of the month Boedromion, that at their coming they found the dead still lying in the field. And yet he has written thus of the full moon: “It was impossible for them to do these things at that present, being unwilling to break the law; for it was the ninth of the month, and they said, they could not go forth on the ninth day, the orb of the moon being not yet full. And therefore they stayed for the full moon” (Herodotus, vi. 106). But thou, O Herodotus, transferest the full moon from the middle to the beginning of the month, and at the same time confoundest the heavens, days, and all things; and yet thou dost claim to be the historian of Greece!
[De Her. mal. 26b] And professing to write more particularly and carefully of the affairs of Athens, thou dost not so much as say a word of that solemn procession which the Athenians even at this day send to Agrae, celebrating a feast of thanksgiving to Hecate for their victory. But this helps Herodotus to refel the crime with which he is charged, of having flattered the Athenians for a great sum of money he received of them. For if he had rehearsed these things to them, they would not have omitted or neglected to remark that Philippides, when on the ninth he summoned the Lacedaemonians to the fight, must have come from it himself, since (as Herodotus says) he went in two days from Athens to Sparta; unless the Athenians sent for their allies to the fight after their enemies were overcome. Indeed Diyllus the Athenian, none of the most contemptible as an historian, says, that he received from Athens a present of ten talents, Anytus proposing the decree. Moreover Herodotus, as many say, has in relating the fight at Marathon derogated from the credit of it, by the number he sets down of the slain. For it is said that the Athenians made a vow to sacrifice so many kids to Diana Agrotera, as they should kill barbarians; but that after the fight, the number of the dead appearing infinite, they appeased the goddess by making a decree to immolate five hundred to her every year.
[De Her. mal. 27] 27 But letting this pass, let us see what was done after the fight. “The barbarians,” say he, “retiring back with the rest of their ships, and taking the Eretrian slaves out of the island, where they had left them, doubled the point of Sunium, desiring to prevent the Athenians before they could gain the city. The Athenians suspected this to have been done by a plot of the Alcmaeonidae, who by agreement showed a shield to the Persians when they were got into their ships. They therefore doubled the cape of Sunium.” (Herodotus, vi. 115, 121–124) Let us in this place take no notice of his calling the Eretrians slaves, who showed as much courage and gallantry in this war as any other of the Grecians, and suffered things unworthy their virtue. Nor let us insist much on the calumny with which he defames the Alcmaeonidae, some of whom were both the greatest families and noblest men of the city.
[De Her. mal. 27b] But the greatness of the victory itself is overthrown, and the end of that so celebrated action comes to nothing, nor does it seem to have been a fight or any great exploit, but only a light skirmish with the barbarians, as the envious and ill-willers affirm, if they did not after the battle fly away, cutting their cables and giving themselves to the wind, to carry them as far as might be from the Attic coast, but having a shield lifted up to them as a signal of treason, made straight with their fleet for Athens, in hope to surprise it, and having at leisure doubled the point of Sunium, were discovered above the port Phalerum, so that the chief and most illustrious men, despairing to save the city would have betrayed it. For a little after, acquitting the Alcmaeonidae, he charges others with the treason. “For the shield indeed was shown, nor can it be denied,” says he, as if he had seen it himself.
[De Her. mal. 27c] But this could no way be, since the Athenians obtained a solid victory; and if it had been done, it could not have been seen by the barbarians, flying in a hurry amidst wounds and arrows into their ships, and leaving every one the place with all possible speed. But when he again pretends to excuse the Alcmaeonidae of those crimes which he first of all men objected against them, and speaks thus: “I cannot credit the report that the Alcmaeonidae by agreement would ever have lifted up a shield to the Persians, and have brought the Athenians under the power of the barbarians and Hippias”; it reminds me of a certain proverbial saving, — Stay and be caught, crab, and I’ll let you go. For why art thou so eager to catch him, if thou wilt let him go when he is caught? Thus you first accuse, then apologize; and you write calumnies against illustrious men, which again you refute.
[De Her. mal. 27d] And you discredit yourself; for you heard no one else but yourself say that the Alcmaeonidae lifted up a shield to the vanquished and flying barbarians. And in those very things which you allege for the Alcmaeonidae, you show yourself a sycophant. For if, as here you write, the Alcmaeonidae were more or no less enemies to tyrants than Callias, the son of Phaenippus and father of Hipponicus, where will you place their conspiracy, of which you write in your First Book, that assisting Pisistratus they brought him back from exile to the tyranny and did not drive him away till he was accused of unnaturally abusing his wife? Such then are the repugnances of these things; and by his intermixing the praises of Callias, the son of Phaenippus, amidst the crimes and suspicions of the Alcmaeonidae, and joining to him his son Hipponicus, who was (as Herodotus himself says) one of the richest men in Athens, he confesses that he brought in Callias not for any necessity of the story, but to ingratiate himself and gain favor with Hipponicus.
[De Her. mal. 28] 28 Now, whereas all know that the Argives denied not to enter into the common league of the Grecians, though they thought not fit to follow and be under the command of the Lacedaemonians, who were their mortal enemies, and that this was no otherways, our author subjoins a most malicious cause for it, writing thus: “When they saw they were comprised by the Greeks, knowing that the Lacedaemonians would not admit them into a share of the command, they requested it, that they might have a pretence to lie still.” “And of this,” he says, “the Argive ambassadors afterwards put Artaxerxes in mind, when they attended him at Susa, and the King said, he esteemed no city more his friend than Argos.” Then adding, as his manner is, to cover the matter, he says: “Of these things I know nothing certainly; but this I know, that all men have faults, and that the worst things were not done by the Argives; but I must tell such things as are reported, though I am not bound to believe them all; and let this be understood of all my narrations. For it is farther said that the Argives, when they were not able to sustain the war against the Lacedaemonians, called the Persians into Greece, willing to suffer anything rather than the present trouble.” (Herodotus, vii. 148–152) Therefore, as himself reports the Ethiopian to have said of the ointment and purple, “Deceitful are the beauties, deceitful the garments of the Persians,” (Herodotus, iii, 22.) may not any one say also of him, Deceitful are the phrases, deceitful the figures of Herodotus’s speeches; as being perplexed, unsound, and full of ambiguities? For as painters set off and render more eminent the luminous part of their pictures by adding shadows, so he by his denials extends his calumnies, and by his dubious speeches makes his suspicions take deeper impression. If the Argives joined not with the other Greeks, but stood out through an emulation of the Lacedaemonians command and valor, it cannot be denied but that they acted in a manner not beseeming their nobility and descent from Hercules. For it had been more honorable for the Argives under the leadership of Siphnians and Cythnians to have defended the Grecian liberty, than contending with the Spartans for superiority to have avoided so many and such signal combats. And if it was they who brought the Persians into Greece, because their war against the Lacedaemonians succeeded ill, how came it to pass, that they did not at the coming of Xerxes openly join themselves to the Medes? Or if they would not fight under the King, why did they not, being left at home, make incursions into Laconia or again attempt Thyreae or by some other way disturb and infest the Lacedaemonians? For they might have greatly damaged the Grecians, by hindering the Spartans from going with so great an army to Plataea.
[De Her. mal. 29] 29 But in this place indeed he has highly magnified the Athenians and pronounced them the saviours of Greece, doing herein rightly and justly, if he had not intermixed many reproaches with their praises. But now, when he says (Herodotus, vii. 139) that (but for the Athenians) the Lacedaemonians would have been betrayed by the other Greeks, and then, being left alone and having performed great exploits, they would have died generously; or else, having before seen that the Greeks were favoring the Medes, they would have made terms with Xerxes; it is manifest, he speaks not these things to the commendation of the Athenians, but he praises the Athenians that he may speak ill of all the rest. For how can any one now be angry with him for so bitterly and intemperately upbraiding the Thebans and Phocians at every turn, when he charges even those who exposed themselves to all perils for Greece with a treason which was never acted, but which (as he thinks) might have been. Nay, of the Lacedaemonians themselves, he makes it doubtful whether they might have fallen in the battle or have yielded to the enemy, minimizing the proofs of their valor which were shown at Thermopylae; — and these indeed were small!
[De Her. mal. 30] 30 After this, when he declares the shipwreck that befell the King’s fleet, and how, an infinite mass of wealth being cast away, Aminocles the Magnesian, son of Cresines, was greatly enriched by it, having gotten an immense quantity of gold and silver; he could not so much as let this pass without snarling at it. “For this man,” say she, “who had till then been none of the most fortunate, by wrecks became exceeding rich; for the misfortune he had in killing his son much afflicted his mind” (Herodotus, vii. 190). This indeed is manifest to every one, that he brought this golden treasure and this wealth cast up by the sea into his history, that he might make way for the inserting Aminocles’s killing his son.
[De Her. mal. 31] 31 Now Aristophanes the Boeotian wrote, that Herodotus demanded money of the Thebans but received none and that going about to discourse and reason with the young men, he was prohibited by the magistrates through their clownishness and hatred of learning; of which there is no other argument. But Herodotus bears witness to Aristophanes, whilst he charges the Thebans with some things falsely, with others ignorantly, and with others as hating them and having a quarrel with them. For he affirms that the Thessalians at first upon necessity inclined to the Persians, (Herodotus, vii. 172) in which he says the truth; and prophesying of the other Grecians that they would betray the Lacedaemonians, he added, that they would not do it willingly, but upon necessity, one city being taken after another. But he does not allow the Thebans the same plea of necessity, although they sent to Tempe five hundred men under the command of Mnamias, and to Thermopylae as many as Leonidas desired, who also alone with the Thespians stood by him, the rest leaving him after he was surrounded. But when the barbarian, having possessed himself of the avenues, was got into their confines, and Demaratus the Spartan, favoring in right of hospitality Attaginus, the chief of the oligarchy, had so wrought that he became the King’s friend and familiar, whilst the other Greeks were in their ships, and none came on by land; then at last being forsaken did they accept conditions of peace, to which they were compelled by great necessity. For they had neither the sea and ships at hand, as had the Athenians; nor did they dwell far off, as the Spartans, who inhabited the most remote parts of Greece; but were not above a day and half’s journey from the Persian army, whom they had already with the Spartans and Thespians alone resisted at the entrance of the straits, and were defeated.
[De Her. mal. 31b] But this writer is so equitable, that having said, “The Lacedaemonians, being alone and deserted by their allies, would perhaps have made a composition with Xerxes,” he yet blames the Thebans, who were forced to the same act by the same necessity. But when he could not wholly obliterate this most great and glorious act of the Thebans, yet went he about to deface it with a most vile imputation and suspicion, writing thus: “The confederates who had been sent returned back, obeying the commands of Leonidas; there remained only with the Lacedaemonians the Thespians and the Thebans: of these, the Thebans stayed against their wills, for Leonidas retained them as hostages; but the Thespians most willingly, as they said they would never depart from Leonidas and those that were with him” (Herodotus, vii. 222). Does he not here manifestly discover himself to have a peculiar pique and hatred against the Thebans, by the impulse of which he not only falsely and unjustly calumniated the city, but did not so much as take care to render his contradiction probable, or to conceal, at least from a few men, his being conscious of having knowingly contradicted himself?
[De Her. mal. 31c] For having before said that Leonidas, perceiving his confederates not to be in good heart nor prepared to undergo danger, wished them to depart, he a little after adds that the Thebans were against their wills detained by him; whereas, if he had believed them inclined to the Persians, he should have driven them away though they had been willing to tarry. For if he thought that those who were not brisk would be useless, to what purpose was it to mix among his soldiers those that were suspected? Nor was the king of the Spartans and general of all Greece so senseless as to think that four hundred armed Thebans could be detained as hostages by his three hundred, especially the enemy being both in his front and rear. For though at first he might have taken them along with him as hostages; it is certainly probable that at last, having no regard for him, they would have gone away from him, and that Leonidas would have more feared his being encompassed by them than by the enemy.
[De Her. mal. 31d] Furthermore, would not Leonidas have been ridiculous, to have sent away the other Greeks, as if by staying they should soon after have died, and to have detained the Thebans, that being himself about to die, he might keep them for the Greeks? For if he had indeed carried them along with him for hostages, or rather for slaves, he should not have kept them with those that were at the point of perishing, but have delivered them to the Greeks that went away. There remained but one cause that might be alleged for Leonidas’s unwillingness to let them go, to wit, that they might die with him; and this our historian himself has taken away, writing thus of Leonidas’s ambition: “Leonidas, considering these things, and desirous that this glory might redound to the Spartans alone, sent away his confederates rather for this than because they differed in their opinions.” (Herodotus, vii. 220) For it had certainly been the height of folly to keep his enemies against their wills, to be partakers of that glory from which he drove away his confederates.
[De Her. mal. 31e] But it is manifest from the effects, that Leonidas suspected not the Thebans of insincerity, but esteemed them to be his steadfast friends. For he marched with his army into Thebes, and at his request obtained that which was never granted to any other, to sleep within the temple of Hercules; and the next morning he related to the Thebans the vision that had appeared to him. For he imagined that he saw the most illustrious and greatest cities of Greece irregularly tossed and floating up and down on a very stormy and tempestuous sea; that Thebes, being carried above all the rest, was lifted up on high to heaven, and suddenly after disappeared. And this indeed had a resemblance of those things which long after befell that city.
[De Her. mal. 32] 32 Now Herodotus, in his narration of that fight, hath obscured also the bravest act of Leonidas, saying that they all fell in the straits near the hill (Herodotus, vii. 225). But the affair was otherwise managed. For when they perceived by night that they were encompassed by the barbarians, they marched straight to the enemies’ camp, and got very near the King’s pavilion, with a resolution to kill him and leave their lives about him. They came then to his tent, killing or putting to flight all they met; but when Xerxes was not found there, seeking him in that vast camp and wandering about, they were at last with much difficulty slain by the barbarians, who surrounded them on every side. What other acts and sayings of the Spartans Herodotus has omitted, we will write in the Life of Leonidas; yet that hinders not but we may here set down also some few. Before Leonidas went forth to that war, the Spartans exhibited to him funeral spectacles, at which the fathers and mothers of those that went along with him were spectators. Leonidas himself, when one said to him, You lead very few with you to the battle, answered, There are many to die there. When his wife, at his departure, asked him what commands he had for her; he, turning to her, said, I command you to marry a good man, and bring him good children. After he was enclosed by the enemy at Thermopylae, desiring to save two that were related to him, he gave one of them a letter and sent him away; but he rejected it, saying angrily, I followed you as a soldier, not as a postman. The other he commanded to go on a message to the magistrates of Sparta; but he, answering, that is a messenger’s business, took his shield, and stood up in his rank. Who would not have blamed another that should have omitted these things? But he who has collected and recorded the fart of Amasis, the coming of the thief’s asses, and the giving of bottles, and many such like things, cannot seem to have omitted these gallant acts and these remarkable sayings by negligence and oversight, but as bearing ill-will and being unjust to some.
[De Her. mal. 33] 33 He says that the Thebans, being at the first with the Greeks, fought compelled by necessity. (Herodotus, vii. 233) For belike not only Xerxes, but Leonidas also, had whipsters following his camp, by whom the Thebans were scourged and forced against their wills to fight. And what more ruthless libeller could there be than Herodotus, when he says that they fought upon necessity, who might have gone away and fled, and that they inclined to the Persians, whereas not one came in to help them. After this, he writes that, the rest making to the hill, the Thebans separated themselves from them, lifted up their hands to the barbarian, and coming near, cried with a most true voice, that they had favored the Persians, had given earth and water to the King, that now being forced by necessity they were come to Thermopylae, and that they were innocent of the King’s wound.
[De Her. mal. 33b] Having said these things, they obtained quarter; for they had the Thessalians for witnesses of all they said. Behold, how amidst the barbarians, exclamations, tumults of all sorts, flights and pursuits, their apology was heard, the witnesses examined; and the Thessalians, in the midst of those that were slain and trodden under foot, all being done in a very narrow passage, patronized the Thebans, to wit, because the Thebans had but a little before driven away them, who were possessed of all Greece as far as, Thespiae, having conquered them in a battle, and slain their leader Lattamyas! For thus at that time stood matters between the Boeotians and the Thessalians, without any friendship or good-will. But yet how did the Thebans escape, the Thessalians helping them with their testimonies? Some of them, says he, were slain by the barbarians; many of them were by command of Xerxes marked with the royal mark, beginning with their leader Leontiades (Herodotus, vii. 233).
[De Her. mal. 33c] Now the captain of the Thebans at Thermopylae was not Leontiades, but Anaxander, as both Aristophanes, out of the Commentaries of the Magistrates, and Nicander the Colophonian have taught us. Nor did any man before Herodotus know that the Thebans were stigmatized by Xerxes; for otherwise this would have been an excellent plea for them against his calumny, and this city might well have gloried in these marks, that Xerxes had punished Leonidas and Leontiades as his greatest enemies, having outraged the body of the one when he was dead, and caused the other to be tormented whilst living. But as to a writer who makes the barbarian’s cruelty against Leonidas when dead a sign that he hated him most of all men when living, (Herodotus, vii. 238) and yet says that the Thebans, though favoring the Persians, were stigmatized by them at Thermopylae, and having been thus stigmatized, again cheerfully took their parts at Plataea, it seems to me that such a man — like that Hippoclides (See Herodotus, vi. 126–130) who gesticulating with his limbs by standing on his head on a table — would dance away the truth and say, It makes no difference to Herodotus.
[De Her. mal. 34] 34 In the Eighth Book our author says, that the Greeks being frighted designed to fly from Artemisium into Greece, and that, being requested by the Euboeans to stay a little till they could dispose of their wives and families, they regarded them not, till such time as Themistocles, having taken money of them, divided it between Eurybiades and Adimantus, the captain of the Corinthians, and that then they stayed and had a sea-fight with the barbarians (Herodotus, viii. 4.) Yet Pindar, who was not a citizen of any of the confederate cities, but of one that was suspected to take part with the Medians, having made mention of Artemisium, brake forth into this exclamation: “This is the place where the sons of the Athenians laid the glorious foundation of liberty.” But Herodotus, by whom, as some will have it, Greece is honored, makes that victory a work of bribery and theft, saying that the Greeks, deceived by their captains, who had to that end taken money, fought against their wills. Nor does he here put an end to his malice. All men in a manner confess that, although the Greeks got the better at sea, they nevertheless abandoned Artemisium to the barbarians after they had received the news of the overthrow at Thermopylae. For it was to no purpose for them to stay there and keep the sea, the war being already within Thermopylae, and Xerxes having possessed himself of the avenues. But Herodotus makes the Greeks contriving to fly before they heard anything of Leonidas’s death. For thus he says: “But they having been ill-treated, and especially the Athenians, half of whose ships were sorely shattered, consulted to take their flight into Greece” (Herodotus, viii, 18). But let him be permitted so to name (or rather reproach) this retreat of theirs before the fight; but having before called it a flight, he both now styles it a flight, and will again a little after term it a flight; so bitterly does he adhere to this word “flight.” “Presently after this,” says he, “there came to the barbarians in the pinnace a man of Hestiaea, who acquainted them with the flight of the Grecians from Artemisium. They, because the thing seemed incredible, kept the messenger in custody, and sent forth some light galleys to discover the truth” (Herodotus, viii, 23). But what is this you say? That they fled as conquered, whom the enemies after the fight could not believe to have fled, as having got much the better? Is then this a fellow fit to be believed when he writes of any man or city, who in one word deprives Greece of the victory, throws down the trophy, and pronounces the inscriptions they had set up to Diana Proseoa (EASTWARD-FACING) to be nothing but pride and vain boasting? The tenor of the inscription was as follows: —
[De Her. mal. 34b] When Athens youth had in a naval fight All Asia’s forces on this sea o’erthrown, And all the Persian army put to flight, Than which a greater scare was ever known, To show how much Diana they respected, This trophy to her honor they erected.
[De Her. mal. 34c] Moreover, not having described any order of the Greeks, nor told us what place every city of theirs held during the sea-fight, he says that in this retreat, which he calls their flight, the Corinthians sailed first and the Athenians last. (Herodotus, viii, 21.)
[De Her. mal. 35] 35 He indeed ought not to have too much insulted over the Greeks that took part with the Persians, who, being by others thought a Thurian, reckons himself among the Halicarnassians, who, being Dorians by descent, went with their wives and children to the war against the Greeks. But he is so far from giving first an account of the straits they were in who revolted to the Persians, that, having related how the Thessalians sent to the Phocians, who were their mortal enemies, and promised to preserve their country free from all damage if they might receive from them a reward of fifty talents, he writ thus of the Phocians: “For the Phocians were the only people in these quarters who inclined not to the Persians, and that, as far as I upon due consideration can find, for no other reason but because they hated the Thessalians; for if the Thessalians had been affected to the Grecian affairs, I suppose the Phocians would have joined themselves to the Persians.” And yet, a little after he would say that thirteen cities of the Phocians were burned by the barbarians, their country laid waste, and the temple which was in Abae set on fire, and all of both sexes put to the sword, except those that by flight escaped to Parnassus (Herodotus, viii, 30–33 Compare ix. 17).
[De Her. mal. 35b] Nevertheless, he puts those who suffered all extremities rather than lose their honesty in the same rank with those who most affectionately sided with the Persians. And when he could not blame the Phocians actions, writing at his desk invented false causes and got up suspicions against them, and bids us judge them not by what they did, but by what they would have done if the Thessalians had not taken the same side, as if they had been prevented from treason because they found the place already occupied by others! Now if any one, going about to excuse the revolt of the Thessalians to the Persians, should say that they would not have done it but for the hatred they bare the Phocians, — whom when they saw joined to the Greeks, they against their inclinations followed the party of the Persians, — would not such a one be thought most shamefully to flatter, and for the sake of others to pervert the truth, by reigning good causes for evil actions?
[De Her. mal. 35c] Indeed, I think, he would. Why then would not he be thought openly to calumniate, who says that the Phocians chose the best, not for the love of virtue, but because they saw the Thessalians on the contrary side? For neither does he refer this device to other authors, as he is elsewhere wont to do, but says that himself found it out by conjecture. He should therefore have produced certain arguments, by which he was persuaded that they, who did things like the best, followed the same counsels with the worst. For what he alleges of their hatreds is ridiculous. For neither did the difference between the Aeginetans and the Athenians, nor that between the Chalcidians and the Eretrians, nor yet that between the Corinthians and the Megarians, hinder them from fighting together for Greece. Nor did the Macedonians, their most bitter enemies, turn the Thessalians from their friendship with the barbarians, by joining the Persian party themselves.
[De Her. mal. 35d] For the common danger did so bury their private grudges, that banishing their other passions, they applied their minds either to honesty for the sake of virtue, or to profit through the impulse of necessity. And indeed, after that necessity which compelled them to obey the Persians was over, they returned again to the Greeks, as Lacrates the Spartan has openly testified of them. And Herodotus, as constrained to it, in his relation of the affairs at Plataea, confessed that the Phocians took part with the Greeks (Herodotus, ix. 31).
[De Her. mal. 36] 36 Neither ought it to seem strange to any, if he thus bitterly inveighs against the unfortunate; since he reckons amongst enemies and traitors those who were present at the engagement, and together with the other Greeks hazarded their safety. For the Naxians, says he, sent three ships to the assistance of the barbarians; but Democritus, one of their captains, persuaded the others to take the party of the Greeks (Herodotus, viii, 46). So unable he is to praise without dispraising, that if he commends one man he must condemn a whole city or people. But in this there give testimony against him, of the more ancient writers Hellanicus, and of the later Ephorus, one of which says that the Naxians came with six ships to aid the Greeks, and the other with five. And Herodotus convinces himself of having feigned these things. For the writers of the Naxian annals say, that they had before beaten back Megabates, who came to their island with two hundred ships, and after that had put to flight the general Datis who had set their city on fire. Now if, as Herodotus has elsewhere said, the barbarians burned their city so that the men were glad to save themselves by flying into the mountains, had they not just cause rather to send aid to the destroyers of their country than to help the protectors of the common liberty? But that he framed this lie not so much to honor Democritus, as to cast infamy on the Naxians, is manifest from his omitting and wholly passing over in silence the valiant acts then performed by Democritus, of which Simonides gives us an account in this epigram: —
[De Her. mal. 36b] When as the Greeks at sea the Medes did meet, And had near Salamis a naval fight, Democritus as third led up the fleet, Charging the enemy with all his might; He took five of their ships, and did another, Which they had taken from the Greeks, recover.
[De Her. mal. 37] 37 But why should any one be angry with him about the Naxians? If we have, as some say, antipodes inhabiting the other hemisphere, I believe that they also have heard of Themistocles and his counsel, which he gave to the Greeks, to fight a naval battle before Salamis, on which, the barbarian being overcome, he built in Melite a temple to Diana the Counsellor. This gentle writer, endeavoring, as much as in him lies, to deprive Themistocles of the glory of this, and transfer it to another, writes thus word for word: “Whilst things were thus, Mnesiphilus, an Athenian, asked Themistocles, as he was going aboard his ship, what had been resolved on in council. And being answered, that it was decreed the ships should be brought back to Isthmus, and a battle fought at sea before Peloponnesus; he said, If then they remove the navy from Salamis, you will no longer be fighting for one country for they will return every one to his own city. Wherefore, if there be any way left, go and endeavor to break this resolution; and, if it be possible, persuade Eurybiades to change his mind and stay here.” Then adding that this advice pleased Themistocles, who, without making any reply, went straight to Eurybiades, he has these very expressions: “And sitting by him he related what he had heard from Mnesiphilus, feigning as if it came from himself, and adding other things” (Herodotus, viii, 57 — 58). You see how he accuses Themistocles of disingenuity in arrogating to himself the counsel of Mnesiphilus.
[De Her. mal. 38] 38 And deriding the Greeks still further, he says, that Themistocles, who was called another Ulysses for his wisdom, was so blind that he could not foresee what was fit to be done; but that Artemisia, who was of the same city with Herodotus, without being taught by any one, but by her own consideration, said thus to Xerxes: “The Greeks will not long be able to hold out against you, but you will put them to flight, and they will retire to their own cities; nor is it probable, if you march your army by land to Peloponnesus, that they will sit still, or take care to fight at sea for the Athenians. But if you make haste to give them a naval battle, I fear lest your fleets receiving damage may prove also very prejudicial to your land-forces” (Herodotus, viii, 68). Certainly Herodotus wanted nothing but verses to make Artemisia another Sibyl, so exactly prophesying of things to come. Therefore Xerxes also delivered his sons to her to be carried to Ephesus for he had (it seems) forgot to bring women with him from Susa, if indeed the children wanted a train of female attendants.
[De Her. mal. 39] 39 But it is not our design to search into the lies of Herodotus; we only make inquiry into those which he invented to detract from the glory of others. He says: “It is reported by the Athenians that Adimantus, captain of the Corinthians, when the enemies were now ready to join battle, was struck with such fear and astonishment that he fled; not thrusting his ship backward by the stern, or leisurely retreating through those that were engaged, but openly hoisting up his sails, and turning the heads of all his vessels. And about the farther part of the Salaminian coast, he was met by a pinnace, out of which one spake thus to him: Thou indeed, Adimantus, fliest, having betrayed the Grecians; yet they overcome, and according to their desires have the better of their enemies” (Herodotus, viii. 94.). This pinnace was certainly let down from heaven. For what should hinder him from erecting a tragical machine, who by his boasting excelled the tragedians in all other things? Adimantus then crediting him (he adds) “returned to the fleet, when the business was already done.” “This report,” says he, “is believed by the Athenians; but the Corinthians deny it, and say, they were the first at the sea-fight, for which they have the testimony of all the other Greeks.” Such is this man in many other places. He spreads different calumnies and accusations of different men, that he may not fail of making some one appear altogether wicked. And it has succeeded well with him in this place; for if the calumny is believed, the Corinthians — if it is not, the Athenians — are rendered infamous. But in reality the Athenians did not belie the Corinthians, but he hath belied them both. Certainly Thucydides, bringing in an Athenian ambassador contesting with a Corinthian at Sparta, and gloriously boasting of many things about the Persian war and the sea-fight at Salamis, charges not the Corinthians with any crime of treachery or leaving their station. Nor was it likely the Athenians should object any such thing against Corinth, when they saw her engraven in the third place after the Lacedaemonians and themselves on those spoils which, being taken from the barbarians, were consecrated to the gods. And in Salamis they had permitted them to bury the dead near the city, as being men who had behaved themselves gallantly, and to write over them this elegy: —
[De Her. mal. 39b] Well-watered Corinth, stranger, was our home; Salamis, Ajax’s isle, is now our grave; Here Medes and Persians and Phoenician ships We fought and routed, sacred Greece to save.
[De Her. mal. 39c] And their honorary sepulchre at the Isthmus has on it this epitaph: —
[De Her. mal. 39d] When Greece upon the point of danger stood, We fell, defending her with our life-blood.
[De Her. mal. 39e] Moreover, on the offerings of Diodorus, one of the Corinthian sea-captains, reserved in the temple of Latona, there is this inscription: —
[De Her. mal. 39f] Diodorus’s seamen to Latona sent These arms, of hostile Medes the monument
[De Her. mal. 39g] And as for Adimantus himself, against whom Herodotus frequently inveighs, — saying, that he was the only captain who went about to fly from Artemisium, and would not stay the fight, — behold in how great honor he is: —
[De Her. mal. 39h] Here Adimantus rests: the same was he,Whose counsels won for Greece the crown of liberty.
[De Her. mal. 39i] For neither is it probable, that such honor would have been shown to a coward and a traitor after his decease; nor would he have dared to give his daughters the names of Nausinica, Acrothinius, and Alexibia, and his son that of Aristeas, if he had not performed some illustrious and memorable action in that fight. Nor is it credible that Herodotus was ignorant of that which could not be unknown even to the meanest Carian, that the Corinthian women alone made that glorious and divine prayer, by which they besought the Goddess Venus to inspire their husbands with a love of fighting against the barbarians. For it was a thing divulged abroad, concerning which Simonides made an epigram to be inscribed on the brazen image set up in that temple of Venus which is said to have been founded by Medea, when she desired the goddess, as some affirm, to deliver her from loving her husband Jason, or, as others say, to free him from loving Thetis. The tenor of the epigram follows: —
[De Her. mal. 39j] For those who, fighting on their country’s side, Opposed th’ imperial Mede’s advancing tide, We, votaresses, to Cythera pray’d;Th’ indulgent power vouchsafed her timely aid, And kept the citadel of Hellas free From rude assaults of Persia’s archery.
[De Her. mal. 39k] These things he should rather have written and recorded, than have inserted Aminocles’s killing of his son.
[De Her. mal. 40] 40 After he had abundantly satisfied himself with the accusations brought against Themistocles, — of whom he says that, unknown to the other captains, he incessantly robbed and spoiled the islands, — (Herodotus, viii, 112) he at length openly takes away the crown of victory from the Athenians, and sets it on the head of the Aeginetans, writing thus: “The Greeks having sent the first-fruits of their spoils to Delphi, asked in general of the god, whether he had a sufficient part of the booty and were contented with it. He answered, that he had enough of all the other Greeks, but not of the Aeginetans for he expected a donary of them, as having won the greatest honor in the battle at Salamis.” (Herodotus, viii, 122) See here how he attributes not his fictions to the Scythians, to the Persians, or to the Egyptians, as Aesop did his to the ravens and apes; but using the very person of the Pythian Apollo, he takes from Athens the chief honor of the battle at Salamis. And the second place in honor being given to Themistocles at the Isthmus by all the other captains, — every one of which attributed to himself the first degree of valor, but give the next to Themistocles, — and the judgment not coming to a determination, when he should have reprehended the ambition of the captains, he said, that all the Greeks weighed anchor from thence through envy, not being willing to give the chief honor of the victory to Themistocles (Herodotus, viii, 123 — 124).
[De Her. mal. 41] 41 In his ninth and last book, having nothing left to vent his malice on but the Lacedaemonians and their glorious action against the barbarians at Plataea, he writes, that the Spartans at first feared lest the Athenians should suffer themselves to be persuaded by Mardonius to forsake the other Greeks; but that now, the Isthmus being fortified, they, supposing all to be safe at Peloponnesus, slighted the rest, feasting and making merry at home, and deluding and delaying the Athenian ambassadors. (Herodotus, ix. 8. See also viii. 141.) How then did there go forth from Sparta to Plataea a thousand and five men, having every one of them with him seven Helots? Or how came it that, exposing themselves to so many dangers, they vanquished and overthrew so many thousand barbarians? Hear now his probable cause of it. “It happened,” says he, “that there was then at Sparta a certain stranger of Tegea, named Chileus, who had some friends amongst the Ephori, between whom and him there was mutual hospitality. He then persuaded them to send forth the army, telling them that the fortification on the Isthmus, by which they had fenced in Peloponnesus, would be of no avail if the Athenians joined themselves with Mardonius” (Herodotus, ix. 9). This counsel then drew Pausanias with his army to Plataea; but if any private business had kept that Chileus at Tegea, Greece had never been victorious.
[De Her. mal. 42] 42 Again, not knowing what to do with the Athenians, he tosses to and fro that city, sometimes extolling it, and sometimes debasing it. He says that, contending for the second place with the Tegeatans they made mention of the Heraclidae, alleged their acts against the Amazons, and the sepulchres of the Peloponnesians that died under the walls of Cadmea, and at last brought down their discourse to the battle of Marathon, saying, however, that they would be satisfied with the command of the left wing. (Herodotus, ix. 26, 27) A little after, he says, Pausanias and the Spartans yielded them the first place, desiring them to fight in the right wing against the Persians and give them the left, who excused themselves as not skilled in fighting against the barbarians. (Herodotus, ix. 46) Now it is a ridiculous thing, to be unwilling to fight against an enemy unless one has been used to him. But he says farther, that the other Greeks being led by their captains to encamp in another place, as soon as they were moved, the horse fled with joy towards Plataea, and in their flight came as far as Juno’s temple. (Herodotus, ix. 52) In which place indeed he charges them all in general with disobedience, cowardice, and treason. At last he says, that only the Lacedaemonians and the Tegeates fought with the barbarians, and the Athenians with the Thebans; equally defrauding all the other cities of their part in the honor of the victory, whilst he affirms that none of them joined in the fight, but that all of them, sitting still hard by in their arms, betrayed and forsook those who fought for them; that the Phliasians and Megarians indeed, when they heard Pausanias had got the better, came in later, and falling on the Theban horse, were all cut off; that the Corinthians were not at the battle, and that after the victory, by hastening on over the hills, they escaped the Theban cavalry. (See the account of the battle of Plataea, Herodotus, ix, 59–70) For the Thebans, after the barbarians were overthrown, going before with their horse, affectionately assisted them in their flight; to return them thanks (forsooth) for the marks they had stigmatized them with at Thermopylae! Now what rank the Corinthians had in the fight at Plataea against the barbarians, and how they performed their duty, you may hear from Simonides in these verses:
[De Her. mal. 42b] I’ th’ midst were men, in warlike feats excelling, Who Ephyre full of springs, inhabited, And who in Corinth, Glaucus’ city, dwelling, Great praise by their great valor merited; Of which they to perpetuate the fame, To th’ gods of well-wrought gold did offerings frame.
[De Her. mal. 42c] For he wrote not these things, as one that taught at Corinth or that made verses in honor of the city, but only as recording these actions in elegiac verses. But Herodotus, whilst he desires to prevent that objection by which those might convince him of lying who should ask, Whence then are so many mounts, tombs, and monuments of the dead, at which the Plataeans, even to this day, celebrate funeral solemnities in the presence of the Greeks? — has charged, unless I am mistaken, a fouler crime than that of treason on their posterity. For these are his words: “As for the other sepulchres that are seen in Plataea, I have heard that their successors, being ashamed of their progenitors’ absence from this battle, erected every man a monument for posterity’s sake” (Herodotus, ix. 85). Of this treacherous deserting the battle Herodotus was the only man that ever heard. For if any Greeks withdrew themselves from the battle, they must have deceived Pausanias, Aristides, the Lacedaemonians, and the Athenians. Neither yet did the Athenians exclude the Aeginetans who were their adversaries from the inscription, nor convince the Corinthians of having fled from Salamis before the victory, Greece bearing witness to the contrary. Indeed Cleadas, a Plataean, ten years after the Persian war, to gratify, as Herodotus says, the Aeginetans, erected a mount bearing their name. Now came it then to pass that the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, who were so jealous of each other that they were presently after the war ready to go together by the ears about the setting up a trophy, did not yet repel those Greeks who fled in a fear from the battle from having a share in the honor of those that behaved themselves valiantly, but inscribed their names on the trophies and colossuses, and granted them part of the spoils? Lastly they set up an altar, on which was engraven this epigram:
[De Her. mal. 42d] The Greeks, by valor having put to flight The Persians and preserved their country’s right, Erected here this altar which you see, To Jove, preserver of their liberty.
[De Her. mal. 42e] Did Cleadas, O Herodotus, or some other, write this also, to oblige the cities by flattery? What need had they then to employ fruitless labor in digging up the earth, to make tombs and erect monuments for posterity’s sake, when they saw their glory consecrated in the most illustrious and greatest donaries? Pausanias, indeed, when he was aspiring to the tyranny, set up this inscription in Delphi: —
[De Her. mal. 42f] Pausanias, of Greeks the general When he the Medes in fight had overthrown, Offered to Phoebus a memorial Of victory, this monumental stone.
[De Her. mal. 42g] In which he gave the glory to the Greeks, whose general he professed himself to be. Yet the Greeks not enduring but utterly misliking it, the Lacedaemonians, sending to Delphi, caused this to be cut out, and the names of the cities, as it was fit, to be engraven instead of it. Now how is it possible that the Greeks should have been offended that there was no mention made of them in the inscription, if they had been conscious to themselves of deserting the fight? or that the Lacedaemonians would have erased the name of their leader and general, to insert deserters and such as withdrew themselves from the common danger? For it would have been a great indignity, that Sophanes, Aeimnestus, and all the rest who showed their valor in that fight, should calmly suffer even the Cythnians and Melians to be inscribed on the trophies; and that Herodotus, attributing that fight only to three cities, should raze all the rest out of those and other sacred monuments and donaries.
[De Her. mal. 43] 43 There having been then four fights with the barbarians; he says, that the Greeks fled from Artemisium; that, whilst their king and general exposed himself to danger at Thermopylae, the Lacedaemonians sat negligent at home, celebrating the Olympian and Carnean feasts; and discoursing of the action at Salamis, he uses more words about Artemisia than he does in his whole narrative of the naval battle. Lastly, he says, that the Greeks sat still at Plataea, knowing no more of the fight, till it was over, than if it had been a skirmish between mice and frogs (like that which Pigres, Artemisia’s fellow countryman, merrily and scoffingly related in a poem), and it had been agreed to fight silently, lest they should be heard by others; and that the Lacedaemonians excelled not the barbarians in valor, but only got the better, as fighting against naked and unarmed men. To wit, when Xerxes himself was present, the barbarians were with much difficulty compelled by scourges to fight with the Greeks; but at Plataea, having taken other resolutions, as Herodotus says, “they were no way inferior in courage and strength; but their garments being without armor was prejudicial to them, since being naked they fought against a completely armed enemy.” What then is there left great and memorable to the Grecians of those fights, if the Lacedaemonians fought with unarmed men, and the other Greeks, though present, were ignorant of the battle; if empty monuments are set up everywhere, and tripods and altars full of lying inscriptions are placed before the gods; if, lastly, Herodotus only knows the truth, and all others that give any account of the Greeks have been deceived by the fame of those glorious actions, as the effect of an admirable prowess? But he is an acute writer, his style is pleasant, there is a certain grace, force, and elegancy in his narrations; and he has, like a musician, elaborated his discourse, though not knowingly, still clearly and elegantly. These things delight, please, and affect all men. But as in roses we must beware of the venomous flies called cantharides; so must we take heed of the calumnies and envy lying hid under smooth and well-couched phrases and expressions, lest we imprudently entertain absurd and false opinions of the most excellent and greatest cities and men of Greece.

## On the opinions of the philosophers


## Book I.

It being our determination to discourse of Natural Philosophy, we judge it necessary, in the first place and chiefly, to divide the body of philosophy into its proper members, so that we may know what is that which is called philosophy, and what part of it is physical, or the explanation of natural things. The Stoics affirm that wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine; that philosophy is the pursuit of that art which is convenient to this knowledge; that virtue is the sole and sovereign art which is thus convenient; and this distributes itself into three general parts — natural, moral, and logical. By which just reason (they say) philosophy is tripartite; of which one natural, the other moral, the third logical. The natural when our inquiries are concerning the world and all things contained in it; the ethical is the employment of our minds in those things which concern the manners of man’s life; the logical (which they also call dialectical) regulates our conversation with others in speaking. Aristotle, Theophrastus, and after them almost all the Peripatetics give the same division of philosophy. It is absolutely requisite that the complete person he contemplator of things which have a being, and the practiser of those thing which are decent; and this easily appears by the following instances. If the question be proposed, whether the sun, which is so conspicuous to us, be informed of a soul or inanimate, he that makes this disquisition is the thinking man; for he proceeds no farther than to consider the nature of that thing which is proposed. Likewise, if the question be propounded, whether the world be infinite, or whether beyond the system of this world there is any real being, all these things are the objects about which the understanding of man is conversant. But if these be the questions, — what measures must be taken to compose the well-ordered life of man, what are the best methods to govern and educate children, or what are the exact rules whereby sovereigns may command and establish laws, — all these queries are proposed for the sole end of action, and the man skilled therein is the moral and practical man.
Chapter I.
What is Nature?
Since we have undertaken to make a diligent search into Nature, I cannot but conclude it necessary to declare what Nature is. It is very absurd to attempt a discourse of the essence of natural things, and not to understand what is the power and sphere of Nature. If Aristotle be credited, Nature is the principle of motion and rest, in that thing in which it exists as a principle and not by accident. For all things that are conspicuous to our eyes, which are neither fortuitous nor necessary, nor have a divine original, nor acknowledge any such like cause, are called natural and enjoy their proper nature. Of this sort are earth, fire, water, air, plants, animals; to these may be added all things produced from them, such as showers, hail, thunders, hurricanes, and winds. All these confess they had a beginning, none of these were from eternity, but had something as the origin of them; and likewise animals and plants have a principle whence they are produced. But Nature, which in all these things hath the priority, is not only the principle of motion but of repose; whatsoever enjoys the principle of motion, the same has a possibility to find a dissolution. Therefore on this account it is that Nature is the principle of motion and rest.
Chapter II.
What is the Difference Between a Principle and an Element?
The followers of Aristotle and Plato conclude that elements are discriminated from principles. Thales the Milesian supposeth that a principle and the elements are one and the same thing, but it is evident that they vastly differ one from another. For the elements are things compounded; but we do pronounce that principles admit not of a composition, nor are the effects of any other being. Those which we call elements are earth, water, air, and fire. But we call those principles which have nothing prior to them out of which they are produced; for otherwise not these themselves, but rather those things whereof they are produced, would be the principles. Now there are some things which have a pre-existence to earth and water, from which they are begotten; to wit, matter, which is without form or shape; then form, which we call [Greek omitted] (actuality); and lastly, privation. Thales therefore is most in error, by affirming that water is both an element and a principle.
Chapter III.
What are Principles?
Thales the Milesian doth affirm that water is the principle from whence all things in the universe spring. This person appears to be the first of philosophers; from him the Ionic sect took its denomination, for there are many families and successions amongst philosophers. After he had professed philosophy in Egypt, when he was very old, he returned to Miletus. He pronounced, that all things had their original from water, and into water all things are resolved. His first ground was, that whatsoever was the prolific seed of all animals was a principle, and that is moist; so that it is probable that all things receive their original from humidity. His second reason was, that all plants are nourished and fructified by that thing which is moist, of which being deprived they wither away. Thirdly, that that fire of which the sun and stars are made is nourished by watery exhalations, — yea, and the world itself; which moved Homer to sing that the generation of it was from water: —
The ocean isOf all things the kind genesis.(Iliad, xiv. 246.)
Anaximander, who himself was a Milesian, assigns the principle of all things to the Infinite, from whence all things flow, and into the same are corrupted; hence it is that infinite worlds are framed, and those dissolve again into that whence they have their origin. And thus he farther proceeds, For what other reason is there of an Infinite but this, that there may be nothing deficient as to the generation or subsistence of what is in Nature? There is his error, that he doth not acquaint us what this Infinite is, whether it be air, or water, or earth, or any other such like body. Besides he is mistaken, in that, giving us the material cause, he is silent as to the efficient cause of beings; for this thing which he makes his Infinite can be nothing but matter; but operation cannot come about in the sphere of matter, except an efficient cause be annexed. Anaximenes his fellow-citizen pronounceth, that air is the principle of all beings; from it all receive their original, and into it all return. He affirms that our soul is nothing but air; it is that which constitutes and preserves; the whole world is invested with spirit and air. For spirit and air are synonymous. This person is in this deficient, in that he concludes that of pure air, which is a simple body and is made of one only form, all animals are composed. It is not possible to think that a single principle should be the matter of all things, from whence they receive their subsistence; besides this there must be an operating cause. Silver (for example) is not of itself sufficient to frame a drinking cup; an operator also is required, which is the silversmith. The like may be applied to vessels made of wood, brass, or any other material.
Anaxagoras the Clazomenian asserted Homoeomeries (or parts similar or homogeneous) to be the original cause of all beings; it seemed to him impossible that anything could arise of nothing or be dissolved into nothing. Let us therefore instance in nourishment, which appears simple and uniform, such as bread which we owe to Ceres and water which we drink. Of this very nutriment, our hair, our veins, our arteries, nerves, bones, and all our other parts are nourished. These things thus being performed, it must be granted that the nourishment which is received by us contains all those things by which these of us are produced. In it there are those particles which are producers of blood, bones, nerves, and all other parts; these particles (he thought) reason discovers for us. For it is not necessary that we should reduce all things under the objects of sense; for bread and water are fitted to the senses, yet in them there are those particles latent which are discoverable only by reason. It being therefore plain that there are particles in the nourishment similar to what is produced by it, he terms these homogeneous parts, averring that they are the principles of beings. Matter is according to him these similar parts, and the efficient cause is a Mind, which orders all things that have an existence. Thus he begins his discourse: “All things were confused one among another; but Mind divided and brought them to order.” In this he is to be commended, that he yokes together matter and an intellectual agent.
Archelaus the son of Apollodorus, the Athenian, pronounceth, that the principles of all things have their origin from an infinite air rarefied or condensed. Air rarefied is fire, condensed is water.
These philosophers, the followers of Thales, succeeding one another, made up that sect which takes to itself the denomination of the Ionic.
Pythagoras the Samian, the son of Mnesarchus, from another origin deduces the principles of all things; it was he who first called philosophy by its name. He thought the first principles to be numbers, and those symmetries in them which he styles harmonies; and the composition of both he terms elements, called geometrical. Again, he places unity and the indefinite binary number amongst the principles. One of these principles ends in an efficient and forming cause, which is Mind, and that is God; the other to the passive and material part, and that is the visible world. Moreover, the nature of number (he saith) consists in the ten; for all people, whether Grecians or barbarians, reckon from one to ten, and thence return to one again. Farther he avers the virtue of ten consists in the quaternion; the reason whereof is this, — if any person start from one, and add numbers so as to take in the quaternary, he shall complete the number ten; if he passes the four, he shall go beyond the ten; for one, two, three, and four being added up together make ten. The nature of numbers, therefore, if we regard the units, abideth in the ten; but if we regard its power, in the four. Therefore the Pythagoreans say that their most sacred oath is by that god who delivered to them the quaternary.
By th’ founder of the sacred number four, Eternal Nature’s font and source, they swore.
Of this number the soul of man is composed; for mind, knowledge, opinion, and sense are the four that complete the soul, from which all sciences, all arts, all rational faculties derive themselves. For what our mind perceives, it perceives after the manner of a thing that is one, the soul itself being a unity; as for instance, a multitude of persons are not the object of our sense nor are comprehended by us, for they are infinite; our understanding gives the general concept of A MAN, in which all individuals agree. The number of individuals is infinite; the generic or specific nature of all being is a unit, or to be apprehended as one only thing; from this one conception we give the genuine measures of all existence, and therefore we affirm that a certain class of beings are rational and discoursive. But when we come to give the nature of a horse, it is that animal which neighs; and this being common to all horses, it is manifest that the understanding, which hath such like conceptions, is in its nature unity. It follows that the number called the infinite binary must be science; in every demonstration or belief belonging to science, and in every syllogism, we draw that conclusion which is in dispute from those propositions which are by all granted, by which means another proposition is obtained from the premises. The comprehension of these we call knowledge; for which reason science is the binary number. But opinion is the ternary; for that rationally follows from comprehension. The objects of opinion are many things, and the ternary number denotes a multitude, as “Thrice happy Grecians”; for which reason Pythagoras admits the ternary. This sect of philosophers is called the Italic, by reason Pythagoras started his school in Italy; his hatred of the tyranny of Polycrates enforced him to abandon his native country Samos. Heraclitus and Hippasus of Metapontum suppose that fire gives the origination to all beings, that they all flow from fire, and in fire they all conclude; for of fire when first quenched the world was constituted. The first part of the world, being most condensed and contracted within itself, made the earth; but part of that earth being loosened and made thin by fire, water was produced; afterwards this water being exhaled and rarefied into vapors became air; after all this the world itself, and all other corporeal beings, shall be dissolved by fire in the universal conflagration. By them therefore it appears that fire is what gives beginning to all things, and is that in which all things receive their period.
Epicurus the son of Neocles, the Athenian, his philosophical sentiments being the same with those of Democritus, affirms that the principles of all being are bodies which are only perceptible by reason; they admit not of a vacuity, nor of any original, but being of a self-existence are eternal and incorruptible; they are not liable to any diminution, they are indestructible, nor is it possible for them to receive any transformation of parts, or admit of any alterations; of these reason is only the discoverer; they are in a perpetual motion in vacuity, and by means of the empty space; for the vacuum itself is infinite, and the bodies that move in it are infinite. Those bodies acknowledge these three accidents, figure, magnitude, and gravity. Democritus acknowledged but two, magnitude and figure. Epicurus added the third, to wit, gravity; for he pronounced that it is necessary that bodies receive their motion from that impression which springs from gravity, otherwise they could not be moved. The figures of atoms cannot be incomprehensible, but they are not infinite. These figures are neither hooked nor trident-shaped nor ring-shaped, such figures as these being exposed to collision; but the atoms are impassible, impenetrable; they have indeed figures of their own, which are conceived only by reason. It is called an atom, by reason not of its smallness but of its indivisibility; in it no vacuity, no passible affection is to be found. And that there is an atom is perfectly clear; for there are elements which have a perpetual duration, and there are animals which admit of a vacuity, and there is a unity.
Empedocles the Agrigentine, the son of Meton, affirms that there are four elements, fire, air, earth, and water, and two powers which bear the greatest command in nature, concord and discord, of which one is the union, the other the division of beings. Thus he sings,
Hear first the four roots of all created things: — Bright shining Jove, Juno that beareth life, Pluto beneath the earth, and Nestis who Doth with her tears water the human fount.
By Jupiter he understands fire and ether, by Juno that gives life he means the air, by Pluto the earth, by Nestis and the spring of all mortals (as it were) seed and water.
Socrates the son of Sophroniscus, and Plato son of Ariston, both natives of Athens, entertain the same opinion concerning the universe; for they suppose three principles, God, matter, and the idea. God is the universal understanding; matter is that which is the first substratum, accommodated for the generation and corruption of beings; the idea is an incorporeal essence, existing in the cogitations and apprehensions of God; for God is the soul and mind of the world.
Aristotle the son of Nichomachus, the Stagirite, constitutes three principles; Entelecheia (which is the same with form), matter, and privation. He acknowledges four elements, and adds a certain fifth body, which is ethereal and not obnoxious to mutation.
Zeno son of Mnaseas, the native of Citium, avers these to be principles, God and matter, the first of which is the efficient cause, the other the passible and receptive. Four more elements he likewise confesses.
Chapter IV.
How Was This World Composed in that Order and After that Manner it is?
The world being broken and confused, after this manner it was reduced into figure and composure as now it is. The insectible bodies or atoms, by a wild and fortuitous motion, without any governing power, incessantly and swiftly were hurried one amongst another, many bodies being jumbled together; upon this account they have a diversity in the figures and magnitude. These therefore being so jumbled together, those bodies which were the greatest and heaviest sank into the lowest place; they that were of a lesser magnitude, being round, smooth, and slippery, these meeting with those heavier bodies were easily broken into pieces, and were carried into higher places. But when that force whereby these variously particles figured particles fought with and struck one another, and forced the lighter upwards, did cease, and there was no farther power left to drive them into superior regions, yet they were wholly hindered from descending downwards, and were compelled to reside in those places capable to receive them; and these were the heavenly spaces, unto which a multitude of these small bodies were hurled, and these being thus shivered fell into coherence and mutual embraces, and by this means the heaven was produced. Then a various and great multitude of atoms enjoying the same nature, as it is before asserted, being hurried aloft, did form the stars. The multitude of these exhaled bodies, having struck and broke the air in shivers, forced a passage through it; this being turned into wind invested the stars, as it moved, and whirled them about, by which means to this present time that circulary motion which these stars have in the heavens is maintained. Much after the same manner the earth was made; for by those little particles whose gravity made them to reside in the lower places the earth was formed. The heaven, fire, and air were constituted of those particles which were carried aloft. But a great deal of matter remaining in the earth, this being condensed by the driving of the winds and the air from the stars, every little part and form of it was compressed, which created the element of water; but this being fluidly disposed did run into those places which were hollow, and these places were those that were capable to receive and protect it; or the water, subsisting by itself, did make the lower places hollow. After this manner the principal parts of the world were constituted.
Chapter V.
Whether the Universe is One Single Thing.
The Stoics pronounce that the world is one thing, and this they say is the universe and is corporeal.
But Empedocles’s opinion is, that the world is one; yet by no means the system of this world must be styled the universe, but that it is a small part of it, and the remainder is inactive matter.
What to Plato seems the truest he thus declares, that there is one world, and that world is the universe; and this he endeavors to evince by three arguments. First, that the world could not be complete and perfect, if it did not within itself include all beings. Secondly, nor could it give the true resemblance of its original and exemplar, if it were not the one only begotten thing. Thirdly, it could not be incorruptible, if there were any being out of its compass to whose power it might be obnoxious. But to Plato it may be thus returned. First, that the world is not complete and perfect, nor doth it contain all things within itself. And if man is a perfect being, yet he doth not encompass all things. Secondly, that there are many exemplars and originals of statues, houses, and pictures. Thirdly, how is the world perfect, if anything beyond it is possible to be moved about it? But the world is not incorruptible, nor can it be so conceived, because it had an original. To Metrodorus it seems absurd, that in a large field one only stalk should grow, and in an infinite space one only world exist; and that this universe is infinite is manifest by this, that there is an infinity of causes. Now if this world be finite and the causes producing it infinite, it follows that the worlds likewise be infinite; for where all causes concur, there the effects also must appear, let the causes be what they will, either atoms or elements.
Chapter VI.
Whence Did Men Obtain the Knowledge of the Existence and Essence of a Deity?
The Stoics thus define the essence of a god. It is a spirit intellectual and fiery, which acknowledges no shape, but is continually changed into what it pleases, and assimilates itself to all things. The knowledge of this deity they first received from the pulchritude of those things which so visibly appeared to us; for they concluded that nothing beauteous could casually or fortuitously be formed, but that it was framed from the art of a great understanding that produced the world. That the world is very resplendent is made perspicuous from the figure, the color, the magnitude of it, and likewise from the wonderful variety of those stars which adorn this world. The world is spherical; the orbicular hath the pre-eminence above all other figures, for being round itself it hath its parts like itself. (On this account, according to Plato, the understanding, which is the most sacred part of man, is in the head.) The color of it is most beauteous; for it is painted with blue; which, though little blacker than purple, yet hath such a shining quality, that by reason of the vehement efficacy of its color it cuts through such a space of air; whence it is that at so great a distance the heavens are to be contemplated. And in this very greatness of the world the beauty of it appears. View all things: that which contains the rest carries a beauty with it, as an animal or a tree. Also things which are visible to us accomplish the beauty of the world. The oblique circle called the Zodiac in heaven is with different images painted and distinguished: —
There’s Cancer, Leo, Virgo, and the Claws; Scorpio, Arcitenens, and Capricorn; Amphora, Pisces, then the Ram, and Bull; The lovely pair of Brothers next succeed.(From Aratus.)
There are a thousand others that give us the suitable reflections of the beauty of the world. Thus Euripides: —
The starry splendor of the skies, The beautiful and varied work of that wise Creator, Time.
From this the knowledge of a god is conveyed to man; that the sun, the moon, and the rest of the stars, being carried under the earth, rise again in their proper color, magnitude, place, and times. Therefore they who by tradition delivered to us the knowledge and veneration of the gods did it by these three manner of ways: — first, from Nature; secondly, from fables; thirdly, from the testimony supplied by the laws of commonwealths. Philosophers taught the natural way; poets, the fabulous; and the political way is to be had from the constitutions of each commonwealth. All sorts of this learning are distinguished into these seven parts. The first is from things that are conspicuous, and the observation of those bodies which are in places superior to us. To men the heavenly bodies that are so visible did give the knowledge of the deity; when they contemplated that they are the causes of so great an harmony, that they regulate day and night, winter and summer, by their rising and setting, and likewise considered those things which by their influences in the earth do receive a being and do likewise fructify. It was manifest to men that the Heaven was the father of those things, and the Earth the mother; that the Heaven was the father is clear, since from the heavens there is the pouring down of waters, which have their spermatic faculty; the Earth the mother, because she receives them and brings forth. Likewise men considering that the stars are running (Greek omitted) in a perpetual motion, that the sun and moon give us the stimulus to view and contemplate (Greek omitted), they call them all gods (Greek omitted). In the second and third place, they thus distinguished the deities into those which are beneficial and those that are injurious to mankind. Those which are beneficial they call Jupiter, Juno, Mercury, Ceres; those who are mischievous the Dirae, Furies, and Mars. These, which threaten dangers and violence, men endeavor to appease and conciliate by sacred rites. The fourth and the fifth order of gods they assign to things and passions; to passions, Love, Venus, and Desire; the deities that preside over things, Hope, Justice, and Eunomia.
The sixth order of deities are the ones made by the poets; Hesiod, willing to find out a father for those gods that acknowledge an original, invented their progenitors, —
Hyperion, Coeus, and Iapetus, With Creius:(Hesiod, “Theogony,” 134.)
upon which account this is called the fabulous. The seventh rank of the deities added to the rest are those which, by their beneficence to mankind, were honored with a divine worship, though they were born of mortal race; of this sort were Hercules, Castor and Pollux, and Bacchus. These are reputed to be of a human species; for of all beings that which is divine is most excellent, and man amongst all animals is adorned with the greatest beauty, is also the best, being adorned by virtue above the rest because of the gift of intellect: therefore it was thought that those who were admirable for excellence should resemble that which is the best and most beautiful.
Chapter VII.
What is God?
Some of the philosophers, such as Diagoras the Melian, Theodorus the Cyrenean, and Euemerus the Tegeatan, did deny unanimously that there were any gods; and Callimachus the Cyrenean discovered his mind concerning Euemerus in these Iambic verses, thus writing: —
To th’ ante-mural temple flock apace, Where he that long ago composed of brass Great Jupiter, Thrasonic old bald pate, Now scribbles impious books, — a boastful ass!
meaning books which prove there are no gods. Euripides the tragedian durst not openly declare his sentiment; the court of Areopagus terrified him. Yet he sufficiently manifested his thoughts by this method. He presented in his tragedy Sisyphus, the first and great patron of this opinion, and introduced himself as one agreeing with him: —
Disorder in those days did domineer, And brutal power kept the world in fear.
Afterwards by the sanction of laws wickedness was suppressed; but by reason that laws could prohibit only public villanies, yet could not hinder many persons from acting secret impieties, some wise persons gave this advice, that we ought to blind truth with lying disguises, and persuade men that there is a God: —
There’s an eternal God does hear and see And understand every impiety; Though it in dark recess or thought committed be.
But this poetical fable ought to be rejected, he thought, along with Callimachus, who thus saith: —
If you believe a God, it must be meant That you conceive this God omnipotent.
But God cannot do everything; for, if it were so, then a God could make snow black, and the fire cold, and him that is in a posture of sitting to be upright, and so on the contrary. The brave-speaking Plato pronounceth that God formed the world after his own image; but this smells rank of the old dotages, old comic writers would say; for how did God, casting his eye upon himself, frame this universe? Or how can God be spherical, and be inferior to man?
Anaxagoras avers that bodies did consist from all eternity, but the divine intellect did reduce them into their proper orders, and effected the origination of all beings. But Plato did not suppose that the primary bodies had their consistence and repose, but that they were moved confusedly and in disorder; but God, knowing that order was better than confusion, did digest them into the best methods. Both these were equally peccant; for both suppose God to be the great moderator of human affairs and for that cause to have formed this present world; when it is apparent that an immortal and blessed being, replenished with all his glorious excellencies, and not at all obnoxious to any sort of evil, but being wholly occupied with his own felicity and immortality, would not employ himself with the concerns of men; for certainly miserable is the being which, like a laborer or artificer, is molested by the troubles and cares which the forming and governing of this world must give him. Add to this, that the God whom these men profess was either not at all existing before this present world (when bodies were either reposed or in a disordered motion), or that at that time God did either sleep, or else was in a constant watchfulness, or that he did neither of these. Now neither the first nor the second can be entertained, because they suppose God to be eternal; if God from eternity was in a continual sleep, he was in an eternal death, — and what is death but an eternal sleep? — but no sleep can affect a deity, for the immortality of God and alliance to death are vastly different. But if God was in a continual vigilance, either there was something wanting to make him happy, or else his beatitude was perfectly complete; but according to neither of these can God be said to be blessed; not according to the first, for if there be any deficiency there is no perfect bliss; not according to the second, for, if there be nothing wanting to the felicity of God, it must be a needless enterprise for him to busy himself in human affairs. And how can it be supposed that God administers by his own providence human concerns, when to vain and trifling persons prosperous things happen, to great and high adverse? Agamemnon was both
A virtuous prince, for warlike acts renowned,(“Iliad,” iii. 179.)
and by an adulterer and adulteress was vanquished and perfidiously slain. Hercules, after he had freed the life of man from many things that were pernicious to it, perished by the witchcraft and poison of Deianira.
Thales said that the intelligence of the world was God.
Anaximander concluded that the stars were heavenly deities.
Democritus said that God, being a globe of fire, is the intelligence and the soul of the world.
Pythagoras says that, of his principles, unity is God; and the good, which is indeed the nature of a unity, is mind itself; but the binary number, which is infinite, is a daemon, and evil, — about which the multitude of material beings and this visible world are related.
Socrates and Plato agree that God is that which is one, hath its original from its own self, is of a singular subsistence, is one only being perfectly good; all these various names signifying goodness do all centre in mind; hence God is to be understood as that mind and intellect, which is a separate idea, that is to say, pure and unmixed of all matter, and not mingled with anything subject to passions.
Aristotle’s sentiment is, that God hath his residence in superior regions, and hath placed his throne in the sphere of the universe, and is a separate idea; which sphere is an ethereal body, which is by him styled the fifth essence or quintessence. For there is a division of the universe into spheres, which are contiguous by their nature but appear to reason to be separated; and he concludes that each of the spheres is an animal, composed of a body and soul; the body of them is ethereal, moved orbicularly, the soul is the rational form, which is unmoved, and yet is the cause that the sphere is in motion.
The Stoics affirm that God is a thing more common and obvious, and is a mechanic fire which every way spreads itself to produce the world; it contains in itself all seminal virtues, and by this means all things by a fatal necessity were produced. This spirit, passing through the whole world, received different names from the mutations in the matter through which it ran in its journey. God therefore is the world, the stars, the earth, and (highest of all) the mind in the heavens. In the judgment of Epicurus all the gods are anthropomorphites, or have the shape of men; but they are perceptible only by reason, for their nature admits of no other manner of being apprehended, their parts being so small and fine that they give no corporeal representations. The same Epicurus asserts that there are four other natural beings which are immortal: of this sort are atoms, the vacuum, the infinite, and the similar parts; and these last are called Homoeomeries and likewise elements.
Chapter VIII.
Of Those that are Called Geniuses and Heroes
Having treated of the essence of the deities in a just order, it follows that we discourse of daemons and heroes. Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics do conclude that daemons are essences endowed with souls; that the heroes are the souls separated from their bodies, some are good, some are bad; the good are those whose souls are good, the evil those whose souls are wicked. All this is rejected by Epicurus.
Chapter IX.
Of Matter.
Matter is that first being which is substrate for generation, corruption, and all other alterations.
The disciples of Thales and Pythagoras, with the Stoics, are of opinion that matter is changeable, mutable, convertible, and sliding through all things.
The followers of Democritus aver that the vacuum, the atom, and the incorporeal substance are the first beings, and not obnoxious to passions.
Aristotle and Plato affirm that matter is of that species which is corporeal, void of any form, species, figure, and quality, but apt to receive all forms, that she may be the nurse, the mother, and origin of all other beings. But they that do say that water, earth, air, and fire are matter do likewise say that matter cannot be without form, but conclude it is a body; but they that say that individual particles and atoms are matter do say that matter is without form.
Chapter X.
Of Ideas.
An idea is a being incorporeal, not subsisting by itself, but gives figure unto shapeless matter, and becomes the cause of its phenomena.
Socrates and Plato conjecture that these ideas are beings separate from matter, subsisting in the understanding and imagination of the deity, that is, of mind.
Aristotle accepted forms and ideas; but he doth not believe them separated from matter, or patterns of the things God has made.
Those Stoics, that are of the school of Zeno, profess that ideas are nothing else but the conceptions of our own mind.
Chapter XI.
Of Causes.
A cause is that by which anything is produced, or by which anything is effected.
Plato gives this triple division of causes, — the material, the efficient, and the final cause; the principal cause he judges to be the efficient, which is the mind and intellect.
Pythagoras and Aristotle judge the first causes are incorporeal beings, but those that are causes by accident or participation become corporeal substances; by this means the world is corporeal.
The Stoics grant that all causes are corporeal, inasmuch as they are physical.
Chapter XII.
Of Bodies.
A body is that being which hath these three dimensions, breadth, depth, and length; — or a bulk which makes a sensible resistance; — or whatsoever of its own nature possesseth a place.
Plato saith that it is neither heavy nor light in its own nature, when it exists in its own place; but being in the place where another should be, then it has an inclination by which it tends to gravity or levity.
Aristotle saith that, if we simply consider things in their own nature, the earth only is to be judged heavy, and fire light; but air and water are on occasions heavy and at other times light.
The Stoics think that of the four elements two are light, fire and air; two ponderous, earth and water; that which is naturally light doth by its own nature, not by any inclination, recede from its own centre; but that which is heavy doth by its own nature tend to its centre; for the centre is not a heavy thing in itself.
Epicurus thinks that bodies are not limited; but the first bodies, which are simple bodies, and all those composed of them, all acknowledge gravity; that all atoms are moved, some perpendicularly, some obliquely; some are carried aloft either by immediate impulse or with vibrations.
Chapter XIII.
Of Those Things that are Least in Nature.
Empedocles, before the four elements, introduceth the most minute bodies which resemble elements; but they did exist before the elements, having similar parts and orbicular.
Heraclitus brings in the smallest fragments, and those indivisible.
Chapter XIV.
Of Figures.
A figure is the exterior appearance, the circumscription, and the boundary of a body.
The Pythagoreans say that the bodies of the four elements are spherical, fire being in the supremest place only excepted, whose figure is conical.
Chapter XV.
Of Colors.
Color is the visible quality of a body.
The Pythagoreans called color the external appearance of a body. Empedocles, that which is consentaneous to the passages of the eye. Plato, that they are fires emitted from bodies, which have parts harmonious for the sight. Zeno the Stoic, that colors are the first figurations of matter. The Pythagoreans, that colors are of four sorts, white and black, red and pale; and they derive the variety of colors from the mixtures of the elements, and that seen in animals also from the variety of food and the air.
Chapter XVI.
Of the Division of Bodies.
The disciples of Thales and Pythagoras grant that all bodies are passible and divisible into infinity. Others hold that atoms and indivisible parts are there fixed, and admit not of a division into infinity. Aristotle, that all bodies are potentially but not actually divisible into infinity.
Chapter XVII.
How Bodies are Mixed and Contemperated One with Another.
The ancient philosophers held that the mixture of elements proceeded from the alteration of qualities; but the disciples of Anaxagoras and Democritus say it is done by apposition. Empedocles composes the elements of still minuter bulks, those which are the most minute and may be termed the element of elements. Plato assigns three bodies (but he will not allow these to be elements, nor properly so called), air, fire, and water, which are mutable into one another; but the earth is mutable into none of these.
Chapter XVIII.
Of a Vacuum.
All the natural philosophers from Thales to Plato rejected a vacuum. Empedocles says that there is nothing of a vacuity in Nature, nor anything superabundant. Leucippus, Democritus, Demetrius, Metrodorus, Epicurus, that the atoms are in number infinite; and that a vacuum is infinite in magnitude. The Stoics, that within the compass of the world there is no vacuum, but beyond it the vacuum is infinite. Aristotle, that the vacuum beyond the world is so great that the heaven has liberty to breathe into it, for the heaven is fiery.
Chapter XIX.
Of Place.
Plato, to define place, calls it that thing which in its own bosom receives forms and ideas; by which metaphor he denotes matter, being (as it were) a nurse or receptacle of beings. Aristotle, that it is the ultimate superficies of the circumambient body, contiguous to that which it doth encompass.
Chapter XX.
Of Space.
The Stoics and Epicureans make a place, a vacuum, and space to differ. A vacuum is that which is void of anything that may be called a body; place is that which is possessed by a body; a space that which is partly filled with a body, as a cask with wine.
Chapter XXI.
Of Time.
In the sense of Pythagoras, time is that sphere which encompasses the world. Plato says that it is a movable image of eternity, or the interval of the world’s motion.
Eratosthenes, that it is the solar motion.
Chapter XXII.
Of the Substance and Nature of Time.
Plato says that the heavenly motion is time. Most of the Stoics that motion is time. Most philosophers think that time had no commencement; Plato, that time had only in intelligence a beginning.
Chapter XXIII.
Of Motion.
Plato and Pythagoras say that motion is a difference and alteration in matter. Aristotle, that it is the actual operation of that which may be moved. Democritus, that there is but one sort of motion, and it is that which is vibratory. Epicurus, that there are two species of motion, one perpendicular, and the other oblique. Herophilus, that one species of motion is obvious only to reason, the other to sense. Heraclitus utterly denies that there is anything of quiet or repose in nature; for that is the state of the dead; one sort of motion is eternal, which he assigns to beings eternal, the other perishable, to those things which are perishable.
Chapter XXIV.
Of Generation and Corruption.
Parmenides Melissus, and Zeno deny that there are any such things as generation and corruption, for they suppose that the universe is unmovable. Empedocles, Epicurus, and other philosophers that combine in this, that the world is framed of small corporeal particles meeting together, affirm that corruption and generation are not so properly to be accepted; but there are conjunctions and separations, which do not consist in any distinction according to their qualities, but are made according to quantity by coalition or disjunction. Pythagoras, and all those who take for granted that matter is subject to mutation, say that generation and corruption are to be accepted in their proper sense, and that they are accomplished by the alteration, mutation, and dissolution of elements.
Chapter XXV.
Of Necessity.
Thales says that necessity is omnipotent, and that it exerciseth an empire over everything. Pythagoras, that the world is invested by necessity. Parmenides and Democritus, that there is nothing in the world but what is necessary, and that this same necessity is otherwise called fate, justice, providence, and the architect of the world.
Chapter XXVI.
Of the Nature of Necessity.
But Plato distinguisheth and refers some things to Providence, others to necessity. Empedocles makes the nature of necessity to be that cause which employs principles and elements. Democritus makes it to be a resistance, impulse, and force of matter. Plato sometimes says that necessity is matter; at other times, that it is the habitude or respect of the efficient cause towards matter.
Chapter XXVII.
Of Destiny or Fate.
Heraclitus, who attributes all things to fate, makes necessity to be the same thing with it. Plato admits of a necessity in the minds and the acts of men, but yet he introduceth a cause which flows from ourselves. The Stoics, in this agreeing with Plato, say that necessity is a cause invincible and violent; that fate is the ordered complication of causes, in which there is an intexture of those things which proceed from our own determination, so that certain things are to be attributed to fate, others not.
Chapter XXVIII.
Of the Nature of Fate.
According to Heraclitus, the essence of fate is a certain reason which penetrates the substance of all being; and this is an ethereal body, containing in itself that seminal faculty which gives an original to every being in the universe. Plato affirms that it is the eternal reason and the eternal law of the nature of the world. Chrysippus, that it is a spiritual faculty, which in due order doth manage and rule the universe. Again, in his book styled the “Definitions,” that fate is the reason of the world, or that it is that law whereby Providence rules and administers everything that is in the world; or it is that reason by which all things have been, all things are, and all things will be produced. The Stoics say that it is a chain of causes, that is, it is an order and connection of causes which cannot be resisted. Posidonius, that it is a being the third in degree from Jupiter; the first of beings is Jupiter, the second Nature, and the third Fate.
Chapter XXIX.
Of Fortune.
Plato says, that it is an accidental cause and a casual consequence in things which proceed from the election and counsel of men. Aristotle, that it is an accidental cause in those things done by an impulse for a certain end; and this cause is uncertain and unstable: there is a great deal of difference betwixt that which flows from chance and that which falls out by Fortune; for that which is fortuitous allows also chance, and belongs to things practical; but what is by chance cannot be also by Fortune, for it belongs to things without action: Fortune, moreover, pertains to rational beings, but chance to rational and irrational beings alike, and even to inanimate things. Epicurus, that it is a cause not always consistent, but various as to persons, times, and manners. Anaxagoras and the Stoics, that it is that cause which human reason cannot comprehend; for there are some things which proceed from necessity, some things from Fate, some from choice and free-will, some from Fortune, some from chance.
Chapter XXX.
Of Nature.
Empedocles affirms that Nature is nothing else but the mixture and separation of the elements; for thus he writes in the first book of his natural philosophy: —
Nature gives neither life nor death, Mutation makes us die or breathe. The elements first are mixed, then each Do part: this Nature is in mortal speech.
Anaxagoras is of the same opinion, that Nature is coalition and separation, that is, generation and corruption.

## Book II.

Having finished my dissertation concerning principles and elements and those things which chiefly appertain to them, I will turn my pen to discourse of those things which are produced by them, and will take my beginning from the world, which contains and encompasseth all beings.
Chapter I.
Of the World.
Pythagoras was the first philosopher that called the world [Greek omitted], from the order and beauty of it; for so that word signifies. Thales and his followers say the world is one. Democritus, Epicurus, and their scholar Metrodorus affirm that there are infinite worlds in an infinite space, for that infinite vacuum in its whole extent contains them. Empedocles, that the circle which the sun makes in its motion circumscribes the world, and that circle is the utmost bound of the world. Seleucus, that the world knows no limits. Diogenes, that the universe is infinite, but this world is finite. The Stoics make a difference between that which is called the universe, and that which is called the whole world; — the universe is the infinite space considered with the vacuum, the vacuity being removed gives the right conception of the world; so that the universe and the world are not the same thing.
Chapter II.
Of the Figure of the World.
The Stoics say that the figure of the world is spherical, others that it is conical, others oval. Epicurus, that the figure of the world may be globular, or that it may admit of other shapes.
Chapter III.
Whether the World be an Animal.
Democritus, Epicurus, and those philosophers who introduced atoms and a vacuum, affirm that the world is not an animal, nor governed by any wise Providence, but that it is managed by a nature which is void of reason. All the other philosophers affirm that the world is informed with a soul, and governed by reason and Providence. Aristotle is excepted, who is somewhat different; he is of opinion, that the whole world is not acted by a soul in every part of it, nor hath it any sensitive, rational, or intellectual faculties, nor is it directed by reason and Providence in every part of it; of all which the heavenly bodies are made partakers, for the circumambient spheres are animated and are living beings; but those things which are about the earth are void of those endowments; and though those terrestrial bodies are of an orderly disposition, yet that is casual and not primogenial.
Chapter IV.
Whether the World is Eternal and Incorruptible.
Pythagoras [and Plato], agreeing with the Stoics, affirm that the world was framed by God, and being corporeal is obvious to the senses, and in its own nature is obnoxious to destruction; but it shall never perish, it being preserved by the providence of God. Epicurus, that the world had a beginning, and so shall have an end, as plants and animals have. Xenophanes, that the world never had a beginning, is eternal and incorruptible. Aristotle, that the part of the world which is sublunary is subject to change, and there terrestrial beings find a decay.
Chapter V.
Whence Does the World Receive its Nutriment?
Aristotle says that, if the world be nourished, it will likewise be dissolved; but it requires no aliment, and will therefore be eternal. Plato, that this very world prepares for itself a nutriment, by the alteration of those things which are corruptible in it. Philolaus affirms that a destruction happens to the world in two ways; either by fire failing from heaven, or by the sublunary water being poured down through the whirling of the air; and the exhalations proceeding from thence are aliment of the world.
Chapter VI.
From what Element God Did Begin to Raise the Fabric of the World.
The natural philosophers pronounce that the forming of this world took its original from the earth, it being its centre, for the centre is the principal part of the globe. Pythagoras, from the fire and the fifth element. Empedocles determines, that the first and principal element distinct from the rest was the aether, then fire, after that the earth, which earth being strongly compacted by the force of a potent revolution, water springs from it, the exhalations of which water produce the air; the heaven took its origin from the aether, and fire gave a being to the sun; those things nearest to the earth are condensed from the remainders. Plato, that the visible world was framed after the exemplar of the intellectual world; the soul of the visible world was first produced, then the corporeal figure, first that which proceeded from fire and earth, then that which came from air and water. Pythagoras, that the world was formed of five solid figures which are called mathematical; the earth was produced by the cube, the fire by the pyramid, the air by the octahedron, the water by the icosahedron, and the globe of the universe by the dodecahedron. In all these Plato hath the same sentiments with Pythagoras.
Chapter VII.
In what Form and Order the World Was Composed.
Parmenides maintains that there are small coronets alternately twisted one within another, some made up of a thin, others of a condensed, matter; and there are others between mixed mutually together of light and of darkness, and around them all there is a solid substance, which like a firm wall surrounds these coronets. Leucippus and Democritus cover the world round about, as with a garment and membrane. Epicurus says that that which abounds some worlds is thin, and that which limits others is gross and condensed; and of these spheres some are in motion, others are fixed. Plato, that fire takes the first place in the world, the second the aether, after that the air, under that the water; the last place the earth possesseth: sometimes he puts the aether and the fire in the same place. Aristotle gives the first place to the aether, as that which is impassible, it being a kind of a fifth body after which he placeth those that are passible, fire, air, and water, and last of all the earth. To those bodies that are accounted celestial he assigns a motion that is circular, but to those that are seated under them, if they be light bodies, an ascending, if heavy, a descending motion. Empedocles, that the places of the elements are not always fixed and determined, but they all succeed one another in their respective stations.
Chapter VIII.
What is the Cause of the World’s Inclination.
Diogenes and Anaxagoras state that, after the world was composed and had produced living creatures, the world out of its own propensity made an inclination toward the south. Perhaps this may be attributed to a wise Providence (they affirm), that thereby some parts of the world may be habitable, others uninhabitable, according as the various climates are affected with a rigorous cold, or a scorching heat, or a just temperament of cold and heat. Empedocles, that the air yielding to the impetuous force of the solar rays, the poles received an inclination; whereby the northern parts were exalted and the southern depressed, by which means the whole world received its inclination.
Chapter IX.
Of that Thing which is Beyond the World, and Whether it be a Vacuum or Not.
Pythagoras and his followers say that beyond the world there is a vacuum, into which and out of which the world hath its respiration. The Stoics, that there is a vacuum into which infinite space by a conflagration shall be dissolved. Posidonius, not an infinite vacuum, but as much as suffices for the dissolution of the world; and this he asserts in his first book concerning the Vacuum. Aristotle affirms, that a vacuum does not exist. Plato concludes that neither within nor without the world there is any vacuum.
Chapter X.
What Parts of the World are on the Right Hand, and what on the Left.
Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle declare that the eastern parts of the world, from whence motion commences, are of the right, those of the western are of the left hand of the world. Empedocles, that those that are of the right hand face the summer solstice, those of the left the winter solstice.
Chapter XI.
Of Heaven, what is its Nature and Essence.
Anaximenes affirms that the circumference of heaven makes the limit of the earth’s revolution. Empedocles, that the heaven is a solid substance, and hath the form and hardness of crystal, it being composed of the air compacted by fire, and that in both hemispheres it invests the elements of air and fire. Aristotle, that it is formed by the fifth body, and by the mixture of extreme heat and cold.
Chapter XII
Into How Many Circles is the Heaven Distinguished; Or, of the Division of Heaven.
Thales, Pythagoras, and the followers of Pythagoras do distribute the universal globe of heaven into five circles, which they denominate zones; one of which is called the arctic circle, which is always conspicuous to us, another is the summer tropic, another is the solstice, another is the winter tropic, another is the antarctic circle, which is always out of sight. The circle called the zodiac is placed under the three that are in the midst, and is oblique, gently touching them all. Likewise, they are all divided in right angles by the meridian, which goes from pole to pole. It is supposed that Pythagoras made the first discovery of the obliquity of the zodiac, but one Oenopides of Chios challenges to himself the invention of it.
Chapter XIII.
What is the Essence of the Stars, and How They are Composed.
Thales affirms that they are globes of earth set on fire. Empedocles, that they are fiery bodies arising from that fire which the aether embraced within itself, and did shatter in pieces when the elements were first separated one from another. Anaxagoras, that the circumambient aether is of a fiery substance, which, by a vehement force in its whirling about, did tear stones from the earth, and by its own power set them on fire, and establish them as stars in the heavens. Diogenes thinks they resemble pumice stones, and that they are the breathings of the world; again he supposeth that there are some invisible stones, which fall sometimes from heaven upon the earth, and are there quenched; as it happened at Aegos-potami, where a stony star resembling fire did fall. Empedocles, that the fixed stars fastened to the crystal, but the planets are loosened. Plato, that the stars for the most part are of a fiery nature, but they are made partakers of another element, with they are mixed after the resemblance of glue. Zenophanes, that they are composed of inflamed clouds, which in the daytime are quenched, and in the night are kindled again. The like we see in coals; for the rising and setting of the stars is nothing else but the quenching and kindling of them. Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans, that every star is a world in an infinite aether, and encompasseth air, earth, and aether; this opinion is current among the disciples of Orpheus, for they suppose that each of the stars does make a world. Epicurus condemns none of these opinions, for he embraces anything that is possible.
Chapter XIV.
Of what Figure the Stars are.
The Stoics say that the stars are of a circular form, like as the sun, the moon, and the world. Cleanthes, that they are of a conical figure. Anaximenes, that they are fastened as nails in the crystalline firmament; some others, that they are fiery plates of gold, resembling pictures.
Chapter XV.
Of the Order and Place of the Stars.
Xenocrates says that the stars are moved in one and the same superficies. The other Stoics say that they are moved in various superficies, some being superior, others inferior. Democritus, that the fixed stars are in the highest place; after those the planets; after these the sun, Venus, and the moon, in order. Plato, that the first after the fixed stars that makes its appearance is Phaenon, the star of Saturn; the second Phaeton, the star of Jupiter; the third the fiery, which is the star of Mars; the fourth the morning star, which is the star of Venus; the fifth the shining star, and that is the star of Mercury; in the sixth place is the sun, in the seventh the moon. Plato and some of the mathematicians conspire in the same opinion; others place the sun as the centre of the planets. Anaximander, Metrodorus of Chios, and Crates assign to the sun the superior place, after him the moon, after them the fixed stars and planets.
Chapter XVI.
Of the Motion and Circulation of the Stars.
Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Cleanthes say that all the stars have their motion from east to west. Alcmaeon and the mathematicians, that the planets have a contrary motion to the fixed stars, and in opposition to them are carried from the west to the east. Anaximander, that they are carried by those circles and spheres on which they are placed. Anaximenes, that they are turned under and about the earth. Plato and the mathematicians, that the sun, Venus, and Mercury hold equal measures in their motions.
Chapter XVII.
Whence do the Stars Receive Their Light?
Metrodorus says that all the fixed stars derive their light from the sun. Heraclitus and the Stoics, that earthly exhalations are those by which the stars are nourished. Aristotle, that the heavenly bodies require no nutriment, for they being eternal cannot be obnoxious to corruption. Plato and the Stoics, that the whole world and the stars are fed by the same things.
Chapter XVIII.
What are Those Stars which are Called the Dioscuri, the Twins, or Castor and Pollux?
Xenophanes says that those which appear as stars in the tops of ships are little clouds brilliant by their peculiar motion. Metrodorus, that the eyes of frighted and astonished people emit those lights which are called the Twins.
Chapter XIX.
How Stars Prognosticate, and what is the Cause of Winter and Summer.
Plato says that the summer and winter indications proceed from the rising and setting of the stars, that is, from the rising and setting of the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars. Anaximenes, that the rest in this are not at all concerned, but that it is wholly performed by the sun. Eudoxus and Aratus assign it in common to all the stars, for thus Aratus says: —
Thund’ring Jove stars in heaven hath fixed, And them in such beauteous order mixed, Which yearly future things predict.
Chapter XX.
Of the Essence of the Sun.
Anaximander says, that the sun is a circle eight and twenty times bigger than the earth, and has a circumference very much like that of a chariot-wheel, which is hollow and full of fire; the fire of which appears to us through its mouth, as by an aperture in a pipe; and this is the sun. Xenophanes, that the sun is constituted of small bodies of fire compacted together and raised from a moist exhalation, which condensed make the body of the sun; or that it is a cloud enfired. The Stoics, that it is an intelligent flame proceeding from the sea. Plato, that it is composed of abundance of fire. Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Metrodorus, that it is an enfired stone, or a burning body. Aristotle, that it is a sphere formed out of the fifth body. Philolaus the Pythagorean, that the sun shines as crystal, which receives its splendor from the fire of the world and so reflecteth its light upon us; so that first, the body of fire which is celestial is in the sun; and secondly, the fiery reflection that comes from it, in the form of a mirror; and lastly, the rays spread upon us by way of reflection from that mirror; and this last we call the sun, which is (as it were) an image of an image. Empedocles, that there are two suns; the one the prototype, which is a fire placed in the other hemisphere, which it totally fills, and is always ordered in a direct opposition to the reflection of its own light; and the sun which is visible to us, formed by the reflection of that splendor in the other hemisphere (which is filled with air mixed with heat), the light reflected from the circular sun in the opposite hemisphere falling upon the crystalline sun; and this reflection is borne round with the motion of the fiery sun. To give briefly the full sense, the sun is nothing else but the light and brightness of that fire which encompasseth the earth. Epicurus, that it is an earthy bulk well compacted, with ores like a pumice-stone or a sponge, kindled by fire.
Chapter XXI.
Of the Magnitude of the Sun.
Anaximander says, that the sun itself in greatness is equal to the earth, but that the circle from whence it receives its respiration and in which it is moved is seven and twenty times larger than the earth. Anaxagoras, that it is far greater than Peloponnesus. Heraclitus, that it is no broader than a man’s foot. Epicurus, that he equally embraceth all the foresaid opinions, — that the sun may be of magnitude as it appears, or it may be somewhat greater or somewhat less.
Chapter XXII.
What is the Figure or Shape of the Sun.
Anaximenes affirms that in its dilatation it resembles a leaf. Heraclitus, that it hath the shape of a boat, and is somewhat crooked. The Stoics, that it is spherical, and it is of the same figure with the world and the stars. Epicurus, that the recited dogmas may be defended.
Chapter XXIII.
Of the Turning and Returning of the Stars, or the Summer and Winter Solstice.
Anaximenes believes that the stars are forced by a condensed and resisting air. Anaxagoras, by the repelling force of the northern air, which is violently pushed on by the sun, and thus rendered more condensed and powerful. Empedocles, that the sun is hindered from a continual direct course by its spherical vehicle and by the two circular tropics. Diogenes, that the sun, when it comes to its utmost declination, is extinguished, a rigorous cold damping the heat. The Stoics, that the sun maintains its course only through that space in which its sustenance is seated, let it be the ocean or the earth; by the exhalations proceeding from these it is nourished. Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle, that the sun receives a transverse motion from the obliquity of the zodiac, which is guarded by the tropics; all these the globe clearly manifests.
Chapter XXIV.
Of the Eclipse of the Sun.
Thales was the first who affirmed that the eclipse of the sun was caused by the moon’s running in a perpendicular line between it and the world; for the moon in its own nature is terrestrial. And by mirrors it is made perspicuous that, when the sun is eclipsed, the moon is in a direct line below it. Anaximander, that the sun is eclipsed when the fiery mouth of it is stopped and hindered from respiration. Heraclitus, that it is after the manner of the turning of a boat, when the concave seems uppermost to our sight, and the convex nethermost. Xenophanes, that the sun is eclipsed when it is extinguished; and that a new sun is created and rises in the east. He gives a farther account of an eclipse of the sun which remained for a whole month, and again of an eclipse which changed the day into night. Some declare that the cause of an eclipse is the invisible concourse of condensed clouds which cover the orb of the sun. Aristarchus placeth the sun amongst the fixed stars, and believeth that the earth [the moon?] is moved about the sun, and that by its inclination and vergency it intercepts its light and shadows its orb. Xenophanes, that there are many suns and many moons, according as the earth is distinguished by climates, circles, and zones. At some certain times the orb of the sun, falling upon some part of the world which is untenanted, wanders in a vacuum and becomes eclipsed. The same person affirms that the sun proceeding in its motion in the infinite space, appears to us to move orbicularly, taking that representation from its infinite distance from us.
Chapter XXV.
Of the Essence of the Moon.
Anaximander affirms that the circle of the moon is nineteen times bigger than the earth, and resembles the sun, its orb being full of fire; and it suffers an eclipse when the wheel makes a revolution, — which he describes by the divers turnings of a chariot-wheel, in the midst of it there being a hollow nave replenished with fire, which hath but one way of expiration. Xenophanes, that it is a condensed cloud. The Stoics, that it is mixed of fire and air. Plato, that it is a body of the greatest part fiery. Anaxagoras and Democritus, that it is a solid, condensed, and fiery body, in which there are flat countries, mountains, and valleys. Heraclitus, that it is an earth covered with a bright cloud. Pythagoras, that the body of the moon was of a nature resembling a mirror.
Chapter XXVI.
Of the Size of the Moon.
The Stoics declare, that in magnitude it exceeds the earth, just as the sun itself doth. Parmenides, that it is equal to the sun, from whom it receives its light.
Chapter XXVII.
Of the Figure of the Moon.
The Stoics believe that it is of the same figure with the sun, spherical. Empedocles, that the figure of it resembles a quoit. Heraclitus, a boat. Others, a cylinder.
Chapter XXVIII.
From Whence is it that the Moon Receives Her Light?
Anaximander thinks that she gives light to herself, but it is very slender and faint. Antiphon, that the moon shines by its own proper light; but when it absconds itself, the solar beams darting on it obscure it. Thus it naturally happens, that a more vehement light puts out a weaker; the same is seen in other stars. Thales and his followers, that the moon borrows all her light of the sun. Heraclitus, that the sun and moon are after the same manner affected; in their configurations both are shaped like boats, and are made conspicuous to us by receiving their light from moist exhalations. The sun appears to us more refulgent, by reason it is moved in a clearer and purer air; the moon appears more duskish, it being carried in an air more troubled and gross.
Chapter XXIX.
Of the Eclipse of the Moon.
Anaximenes believes that the mouth of the wheel, about which the moon is turned, being stopped is the cause of an eclipse. Berasus, that it proceeds from the turning of the dark side of the lunar orb towards us. Heraclitus, that it is performed just after the manner of a boat turned upside downwards. Some of the Pythagoreans say, that the splendor arises from the earth, its obstruction from the Antichthon (or counter-earth). Some of the later philosophers, that there is such a distribution of the lunar flame, that it gradually and in a just order burns until it be full moon; in like manner, that this fire decays by degrees, until its conjunction with the sun totally extinguisheth it. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and all the mathematicians agree, that the obscurity with which the moon is every month affected ariseth from a conjunction with the sun, by whose more resplendent beams she is darkened; and the moon is then eclipsed when she falls upon the shadow of the earth, the earth interposing between the sun and moon, or (to speak more properly) the earth intercepting the light of the moon.
Chapter XXX.
Of the Phases of the Moon, or the Lunar Aspects; or How it Comes to Pass that the Moon Appears to Us Terrestrial.
The Pythagoreans say, that the moon appears to us terraneous, by reason it is inhabited as our earth is, and in it there are animals of a larger size and plants of a rarer beauty than our globe affords; that the animals in their virtue and energy are fifteen degrees superior to ours; that they emit nothing excrementitious; and that the days are fifteen times longer. Anaxagoras, that the reason of the inequality ariseth from the commixture of things earthy and cold; and that fiery and caliginous matter is jumbled together, whereby the moon is said to be a star of a counterfeit aspect. The Stoics, that on account of the diversity of her substance the composition of her body is subject to corruption.
Chapter XXXI.
How Far the Moon is Removed from the Sun.
Empedocles declares, that the distance of the moon from the sun is double her remoteness from the earth. The mathematicians, that her distance from the sun is eighteen times her distance from the earth. Eratosthenes, that the sun is remote from the earth seven hundred and eighteen thousand furlongs.
Chapter XXXII.
Of the Year, and How Many Circulations Make Up the Great Year of Every Planet.
The year of Saturn is completed when he has had his circulation in the space of thirty solar years; of Jupiter in twelve; of Mars in two, of the sun in twelve months; in so many Mercury and Venus, the spaces of their circulation being equal; of the moon in thirty days, in which time her course from her prime to her conjunction is finished. As to the great year, some make it to consist of eight years solar, some of nineteen, others of fifty-nine. Heraclitus, of eighteen thousand. Diogenes, of three hundred and sixty-five such years as Heraclitus assigns. Others there are who lengthen it to seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven years.

## Book III.

In my two precedent treatises having in due order taken a compendious view and given an account of the celestial bodies, and of the moon which stands between them and the terrestrial, I must now convert my pen to discourse in this third book of Meteors, which are beings above the earth and below the moon, and are extended to the site and situation of the earth, which is supposed to be the centre of the sphere of this world; and from thence will I take my beginning.
Chapter I.
Of the Galaxy, or the Milky Way.
It is a cloudy circle, which continually appears in the air, and by reason of the whiteness of its colors is called the galaxy, or the milky way. Some of the Pythagoreans say that, when Phaeton set the world on fire, a star falling from its own place in its circular passage through the region caused an inflammation. Others say that originally it was the first course of the sun; others, that it is an image as in a looking-glass, occasioned by the sun’s reflecting its beams towards the heavens, and this appears in the clouds and in the rainbow. Metrodorus, that it is merely the solar course, or the motion of the sun in its own circle. Parmenides, that the mixture of a thick and thin substance gives it a color which resembles milk. Anaxagoras, that the sun moving under the earth and not being able to enlighten every place, the shadow of the earth, being cast upon the part of the heavens, makes the galaxy. Democritus, that it is the splendor which ariseth from the coalition of many small bodies, which, being firmly united amongst themselves, do mutually enlighten one another. Aristotle, that it is the inflammation of dry, copious, and coherent vapor, by which the fiery mane, whose seat is beneath the aether and the planets, is produced. Posidonius, that it is a combination of fire, of finer substance than the stars, but denser than light.
Chapter II.
Of Comets and Shooting Fires, and Those which Resemble Beams.
Some of the Pythagoreans say, that a comet is one of those stars which do not always appear, but after they have run through their determined course, they then rise and are visible to us. Others, that it is the reflection of our sight upon the sun, which gives the resemblance of comets much after the same manner as images are reflected in mirrors. Anaxagoras and Democritus, that two or more stars being in conjunction by their united light make a comet. Aristotle, that it is a fiery coalition of dry exhalations. Strato, that it is the light of the star darting through a thick cloud that hath invested it; this is seen in light shining through lanterns. Heraclides, native of Pontus, that it is a lofty cloud inflamed by a sublime fire. The like causes he assigns to the bearded comet, to those circles that are seen about the sun or stars, or those meteors which resemble pillars or beams, and all others which are of this kind. This way unanimously go all the Peripatetics, holding that these meteors, being formed by the clouds, do differ according to their various configurations. Epigenes, that a comet arises from a rising of spirit or wind, mixed with an earthy substance and set on fire. Boethus, that it is a phantasy presented to us by fiery air. Diogenes, that comets are stars. Anaxagoras, that those styled shooting stars descend from the aether like sparks, and therefore are soon extinguished. Metrodorus, that it is a forcible illapse of the sun upon clouds which makes them to sparkle as fire. Xenophanes, that all such fiery meteors are nothing else but the conglomeration of the enfired clouds, and the flashing motions of them.
Chapter III.
Of Violent Eruption of Fire Out of the Clouds. of Lightning. of Thunder. of Hurricanes. of Whirlwinds.
Anaximander affirms that all these are produced by the wind after this manner: the wind being enclosed by condensed clouds, on account of its minuteness and lightness violently endeavors to make a passage; and in breaking through the cloud gives noise; and the tearing the cloud, because of the blackness of it, gives a resplendent flame. Metrodorus, that when the wind falls upon a cloud whose densing firmly compacts it, by breaking the cloud it causeth a great noise, and by striking and rending the cloud it gives the flame; and in the swiftness of its motion, the sun imparting heat to it, it throws out the bolt. The weak declining of the thunderbolt ends in a violent tempest. Anaxagoras, that when heat and cold meet and are mixed together (that is, ethereal parts with airy), thereby a great noise of thunder is produced, and the color observed against the blackness of the cloud occasions the flashing of fire; the full and great splendor is lightning, the more enlarged and embodied fire becomes a whirlwind, the cloudiness of it gives the hurricane. The Stoics, that thunder is the clashing of clouds one upon another, the flash of lightning is their fiery inflammation; their more rapid splendor is the thunderbolt, the faint and weak the whirlwind. Aristotle, that all these proceed from dry exhalations, which, if they meet with moist vapors, forcing their passage, the breaking of them gives the noise of thunder; they, being very dry, take fire and make lightning; tempests and hurricanes arise from the plenitude of matter which each draw to themselves, the hotter parts attracted make the whirlwinds, the duller the tempests.
Chapter IV.
Of Clouds, Rain, Snow, and Hail.
Anaximenes thinks that the air by being very much condensed clouds are formed; this air being more compacted, rain is compressed through it; when water in its falling down freezeth, then snow is generated; when it is encompassed with a moist air, it is hail. Metrodorus, that a cloud is composed of a watery exhalation carried into a higher place. Epicurus, that they are made of vapors; and that hail and snow are formed in a round figure, being in their long descent pressed upon by the circumambient air.
Chapter V.
Of the Rainbow.
Those things which affect the air in the superior places of it are of two sorts. Some have a real subsistence, such are rain and hail; others not. Those which enjoy not a proper subsistence are only in appearance; of this sort is the rainbow. Thus the continent to us that sail seems to be in motion.
Plato says, that men admiring it feigned that it took origination from one Thaumas, which word signifies admiration. Homer sings: —
Jove paints the rainbow with a purple dye, Alluring man to cast his wandering eye.(Iliad, xvii. 547.)
Others therefore fabled that the bow hath a head like a bull, by which it swallows up rivers.
But what is the cause of the rainbow? It is evident that what apparent things we see come to our eyes in right or in crooked lines, or by refraction: these are incorporeal and to sense obscure, but to reason they are obvious. Those which are seen in right lines are those which we see through the air or horn or transparent stones, for all the parts of these things are very fine and tenuous; but those which appear in crooked lines are in water, the thickness of the water presenting them bended to our sight. This is the reason that oars in themselves straight, when put into the sea, appear to us crooked. The third manner of our seeing is by refraction, and this is perspicuous in mirrors. After this third sort the rainbow is affected. We conceive it is a moist exhalation converted into a cloud, and in a short space it is dissolved into small and moist drops. The sun declining towards the west, it will necessarily follow that the whole bow is seen opposite to the sun; for the eye being directed to those drops receives a refraction, and by this means the bow is formed. The eye doth not consider the figure and form, but the color of these drops; the first of which colors is a shining red, the second a purple, the third is blue and green. Let us consider whether the reason of this red shining color be the splendor of the sun falling upon these small drops, the whole body of light being refracted, by which this bright red color is produced; the second part being troubled and the light languishing in the drops, the color becomes purple (for the purple is the faint red); but the third part, being more and more troubled, is changed into the green color. And this is proved by other effects of Nature; if any one shall put water in his mouth and spit it out so opposite to the sun, that its rays may be refracted on the drops, he shall see the resemblance of a rainbow; the same appears to men that are blear-eyed, when they fix their watery eyes upon a candle. Anaximenes thinks the bow is thus formed; the sun casting its splendor upon a thick, black, and gross cloud, and the rays not being in a capacity to penetrate beyond the superficies. Anaxagoras, that, the solar rays being reflected from a condensed cloud, the sun being placed directly opposite to it forms the bow after the mode of the repercussion of a mirror; after the same manner he assigns the natural cause of the Parhelia or mock-suns, which are often seen in Pontus. Metrodorus, that when the sun casts its splendor through a cloud, the cloud gives itself a blue, and the light a red color.
Chapter VI.
Of Meteors which Resemble Rods, or of Rods.
These rods and the mock-suns are constituted of a double nature, a real subsistence, and a mere appearance; — of a real subsistence, because the clouds are the object of our eyes; of a mere appearance, for their proper color is not seen, but that which is adventitious. The like affections, natural and adventitious, in all such things do happen.
Chapter VII.
Of Winds.
Anaximander believes that wind is a fluid air, the sun putting into motion or melting the moist subtle parts of it. The Stoics, that all winds are a flowing air, and from the diversity of the regions whence they have their origin receive their denomination; as, from darkness and the west the western wind; from the sun and its rising the eastern; from the north the northern, and from the south the southern winds. Metrodorus, that moist vapors heated by the sun are the cause of the impetuousness of violent winds. The Etesian, or those winds which annually commence about the rising of the Little Dog, the air about the northern pole being more compacted, blow violently following the sun when it returns from the summer solstice.
Chapter VIII.
Of Winter and Summer.
Empedocles and the Stoics believe that winter is caused by the thickness of the air prevailing and mounting upwards; and summer by fire, it falling downwards.
This description being given by me of Meteors, or those things that are above us, I must pass to those things which are terrestrial.
Chapter IX.
Of the Earth, what is its Nature and Magnitude.
Thales and his followers say that there is but one earth. Hicetes the Pythagorean, that there are two earths, this and the Antichthon, or the earth opposite to it. The Stoics, that this earth is one, and that finite and limited. Xenophanes, that the earth, being compacted of fire and air, in its lowest parts hath laid a foundation in an infinite depth. Metrodorus, that the earth is mere sediment and dregs of water, as the sun is of the air.
Chapter X.
Of the Figure of the Earth.
Thales, the Stoics, and their followers say that the earth is globular. Anaximander, that it resembles a smooth stony pillar. Anaximenes, that it hath the shape of a table. Leucippus, of a drum. Democritus, that it is like a quoit externally, and hollow in the middle.
Chapter XI.
Of the Site and Position of the Earth.
The disciples of Thales say that the earth is the centre of the universe. Xenophanes, that it is first, being rooted in the infinite space. Philolaus the Pythagorean gives to fire the middle place, and this is the source fire of the universe; the second place to the Antichthon; the third to that earth which we inhabit, which is placed in opposition unto and whirled about the opposite, — which is the reason that those which inhabit that earth cannot be seen by us. Parmenides was the first that confined the habitable world to the two solstitial (or temperate) zones.
Chapter XII.
Of the Inclination of the Earth.
Leucippus affirms that the earth vergeth towards the southern parts, by reason of the thinness and fineness that is in the south; the northern parts are more compacted, they being congealed by a rigorous cold, but those parts of the world that are opposite are enfired. Democritus, because, the southern parts of the air being the weaker, the earth as it enlarges bends towards the south; the northern parts are of an unequal, the southern of an equal temperament; and this is the reason that the earth bends towards those parts where the earth is laden with fruits and its own increase.
Chapter XIII.
Of the Motion of the Earth.
Most of the philosophers say that the earth remains fixed in the same place. Philolaus the Pythagorean, that it is moved about the element of fire, in an oblique circle, after the same manner of motion that the sun and moon have. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean assign a motion to the earth, but not progressive, but after the manner of a wheel being carried on its own axis; thus the earth (they say) turns itself upon its own centre from west to east. Democritus, that when the earth was first formed it had a motion, the parts of it being small and light; but in process of time the parts of it were condensed, so that by its own weight it was poised and fixed.
Chapter XIV.
Into How Many Zones is the Earth Divided?
Pythagoras says that, as the celestial sphere is distributed into five zones, into the same number is the terrestrial; which zones are the arctic and antarctic, the summer and winter tropics (or temperate zones), and the equinoctial; the middle of which zones equally divides the earth and constitutes the torrid zone; but that portion which is in between the summer and winter tropics is habitable, by reason the air is there temperate.
Chapter XV.
Of Earthquakes.
Thales and Democritus assign the cause of earthquakes to water. The Stoics say that it is a moist vapor contained in the earth, making an irruption into the air, that causes the earthquake. Anaximenes, that the dryness and rarity of the earth are the cause of earthquakes, the one of which is produced by extreme drought, the other by immoderate showers. Anaxagoras, that the air endeavoring to make a passage out of the earth, meeting with a thick superficies, is not able to force its way, and so shakes the circumambient earth with a trembling. Aristotle, that a cold vapor encompassing every part of the earth prohibits the evacuation of vapors; for those which are hot, being in themselves light, endeavor to force a passage upwards, by which means the dry exhalations, being left in the earth, use their utmost endeavor to make a passage out, and being wedged in, they suffer various circumvolutions and shake the earth. Metrodorus, that whatsoever is in its own place is incapable of motion, except it be pressed upon or drawn by the operation of another body; the earth being so seated cannot naturally be moved, yet divers parts and places of the earth may move one upon another. Parmenides and Democritus, that the earth being so equally poised hath no sufficient ground why it should incline more to one side than to the other; so that it may be shaken, but cannot be removed. Anaximenes, that the earth by reason of its latitude is borne upon by the air which presseth upon it. Others opine that the earth swims upon the waters, as boards and broad planks, and by that reason is moved. Plato, that motion is by six manner of ways, upwards, downwards, on the right hand and on the left, behind and before; therefore it is not possible that the earth should be moved in any of these modes, for it is altogether seated in the lowest place; it therefore cannot receive a motion, since there is nothing about it so peculiar as to cause it to incline any way; but some parts of it are so rare and thin that they are capable of motion. Epicurus, that the possibility of the earth’s motion ariseth from a thick and aqueous air under the earth, that may, by moving or pushing it, be capable of quaking; or that being so compassed, and having many passages, it is shaken by the wind which is dispersed through the hollow dens of it.
Chapter XVI.
Of the Sea, and How it is Composed, and How it Becomes to the Taste Bitter.
Anaximander affirms that the sea is the remainder of the primogenial humidity, the greatest part of which being dried up by the fire, the influence of the great heat altered its quality. Anaxagoras that in the beginning water did not flow, but was as a standing pool; and that it was burnt by the movement of the sun about it, by which the oily part of the water being exhaled, the residue became salt. Empedocles, that the sea is the sweat of the earth heated by the sun. Antiphon, that the sweat of that which was hot was separated from the rest which were moist; these by seething and boiling became bitter, as happens in all sweats. Metrodorus, that the sea was strained through the earth, and retained some part of its density; the same is observed in all those things which are strained through ashes. The schools of Plato, that the element of water being compacted by the rigor of the air became sweet, but that part which was expired from the earth, being enfired, became of a brackish taste.
Chapter XVII.
Of Tides, or of the Ebbing and Flowing of the Sea.
Aristotle and Heraclides say, they proceed from the sun, which moves and whirls about the winds; and these falling with a violence upon the Atlantic, it is pressed and swells by them, by which means the sea flows; and their impression ceasing, the sea retracts, hence they ebb. Pytheas the Massilian, that the fulness of the moon gives the flow, the wane the ebb. Plato attributes it all to a certain balance of the sea, which by means of a mouth or orifice causes the tide; and by this means the seas do rise and flow alternately. Timaeus believes that those rivers which fall from the mountains of the Celtic Gaul into the Atlantic produce a tide. For upon their entering upon that sea, they violently press upon it, and so cause the flow; but they disemboguing themselves, there is a cessation of the impetuousness, by which means the ebb is produced. Seleucus the mathematician attributes a motion to the earth; and thus he pronounceth that the moon in its circumlation meets and repels the earth in its motion; between these two, the earth and the moon, there is a vehement wind raised and intercepted, which rushes upon the Atlantic Ocean, and gives us a probable argument that it is the cause the sea is troubled and moved.
Chapter XVIII.
Of the Aurea, or a Circle About a Star.
The aurea or circle is thus formed. A thick and dark air intervening between the moon or any other star and our eye, by which means our sight is dilated and reflected, when now our sight falls upon the outward circumference of the orb of that star, there presently seems a circle to appear. This circle thus appearing is called the [Greek omitted] or halo; and there is constantly such a circle seen by us, when such a density of sight happens.

## Book IV.

Having taken a survey of the general parts of the world, I will take a view of the particular members of it.
Chapter I.
Of the Overflowing of the Nile.
Thales conjectures that the Etesian or anniversary northern winds blowing strongly against Egypt heighten the swelling of the Nile, the mouth of that river being obstructed by the force of the sea rushing into it. Euthymenes the Massilian concludes that the Nile is filled by the ocean and that sea which is outward from it, the last being naturally sweet. Anaxagoras, that the snow in Ethiopia which is frozen in winter is melted in summer, and this makes the inundation. Democritus, that the snows which are in the northern climates when the sun enters the summer solstice are dissolved and diffused; from those vapors clouds are compacted, and these are forcibly driven by the Etesian winds into the southern parts and into Egypt, from whence violent showers are poured; and by this means the fens of Egypt are filled with water, and the river Nile hath its inundation. Herodotus the historian, that the waters of the Nile receive from their fountain an equal portion of water in winter and in summer; but in winter the water appears less, because the sun, making its approach nearer to Egypt, draws up the rivers of that country into exhalation. Ephorus the historiographer, that in summer all Egypt seems to be melted and sweats itself into water, to which the thin and sandy soils of Arabia and Lybia contribute. Eudoxus relates that the Egyptian priests affirm that, when it is summer to us who dwell under the northern tropic, it is winter with them that inhabit under the southern tropic; by this means there is a various contrariety and opposition of the seasons in the year, which cause such showers to fall as make the water to overflow the banks of the Nile and diffuse itself throughout all Egypt.
Chapter II.
Of the Soul.
Thales first pronounced that the soul is that being which is in a perpetual motion, or that whose motion proceeds from itself. Pythagoras, that it is a number moving itself; he takes a number to be the same thing with a mind. Plato, that it is an intellectual substance moving itself, and that motion is in a numerical harmony. Aristotle, that it is the first actuality [Greek ommitted] of a natural organical body which has life potentially; and this actuality must be understood to be the same thing with energy or operation. Dicaearchus, that it is the harmony of the four elements. Asclepiades the physician, that it is the concurrent exercitation of the senses.
Chapter III.
Whether the Soul be a Body, and what is the Nature and Essence of It.
All those named by me do affirm that the soul itself is incorporeal, and by its own nature is in a motion, and in its own self is an intelligent substance, and the living actuality of a natural organical body. The followers of Anaxagoras, that it is airy and a body. The Stoics, that it is a hot exhalation. Democritus, that it is a fiery composition of things which are perceptible by reason alone, the same having their forms spherical and without an inflaming faculty; and it is a body. Epicurus, that it is constituted of four qualities, of a fiery quality, of an aerial quality, a pneumatical, and of a fourth quality which hath no name, but it contains the virtue of the sense. Heraclitus, that the soul of the world is the exhalation which proceeds from the moist parts of it; but the soul of animals, arising from exhalations that are exterior and from those that are within them, is homogeneous to it.
Chapter IV.
Of the Parts of the Soul.
Plato and Pythagoras, according to their first account, distribute the soul into two parts, the rational and irrational. By a more accurate and strict account the soul is branched into three parts; they divide the unreasonable part into the concupiscible and the irascible. The Stoics say the soul is constituted of eight parts; five of which are the senses, hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, smelling, the sixth is the faculty of speaking, the seventh of generating, the eighth of commanding; this is the principal of all, by which all the other are guided and ordered in their proper organs, as we see the eight arms of a polypus aptly disposed. Democritus and Epicurus divide the soul into two parts, the one rational, which bath its residence in the breast, and the irrational, which is diffused through the whole structure of the body. Democritus, that the quality of the soul is communicated to everything, yea, to the dead corpses; for they are partakers of heat and some sense, when the most of both is expired out of them.
Chapter V.
What is the Principal Part of the Soul, and in what Part of the Body it Resides.
Plato and Democritus place its residence in the whole head. Strato, in that part of the forehead where the eyebrows are separated. Erasiatratus, in the Epikranis, or membrane which involves the brain. Herophilus, in that sinus of the brain which is the basis of it. Parmenides, in the breast; which opinion is embraced by Epicurus. The Stoics are generally of this opinion, that the seat of the soul is throughout the heart, or in the spirit about it. Diogenes, in the arterial ventricle of the heart, which is also full of vital spirit. Empedocles, in the mass of the blood. There are that say it is in the neck of the heart, others in the pericardium, others in the midriff. Certain of the Neoterics, that the seat of the soul is extended from the head to the diaphragm. Pythagoras, that the animal part of the soul resides in the heart, the intellectual in the head.
Chapter VI.
Of the Motion of the Soul.
Plato believes that the soul is in perpetual motion, but that it is immovable as regards motion from place to place. Aristotle, that the soul is not naturally moved, but its motion is accidental, resembling that which is in the forms of bodies.
Chapter VII.
Of the Soul’s Immortality.
Plato and Pythagoras say that the soul is immortal; when it departs out of the body, it retreats to the soul of the world, which is a being of the same nature with it. The Stoics, when the souls leave the bodies, they are carried to divers places; the souls of the unlearned and ignorant descend to the coagmentation of earthly things, but the learned and vigorous last till the general fire. Epicurus and Democritus, the soul is mortal, and it perisheth with the body. Plato and Pythagoras, that part of the soul of man which is rational is eternal; for though it be not God, yet it is the product of an eternal deity; but that part of the soul which is divested of reason dies.
Chapter VIII.
Of the Senses, and of Those Things which are Objects of the Senses,
The Stoics give this definition of sense: Sense is the Apprehension or comprehension of an object by means of an organ of sensation. There are several ways of expressing what sense is; it is either a habit, a faculty, an operation, or an imagination which apprehends by means of an organ of sense, — and also the eighth principal thing, from whence the senses originate. The instruments of sense are intelligent exhalations, which from the said commanding part extend unto all the organs of the body. Epicurus, that sense is a faculty, and that which is perceived by the sense is the product of it; so that sense hath a double acceptation, — sense which is the faculty, and the thing received by the sense, which is the effect. Plato, that sense is that commerce which the soul and body have with those things that are exterior to them; the power of which is from the soul, the organ by which is from the body; but both of them apprehend external objects by means of the imagination. Leucippus and Democritus, that sense and intelligence arise from external images; so neither of them can operate without the assistance of image falling upon us.
Chapter IX.
Whether what Appears to Our Senses and Imaginations be True or Not.
The Stoics say that what the senses represent is true; what the imagination, is partly false, partly true. Epicurus that every impression of the sense or imagination is true, but of those things that fall under the head of opinion, some are true, some false: sense gives us a false presentation of those things only which are the objects of our understanding; but the imagination gives us a double error, both of things sensible and things intellectual. Empedocles and Heraclides, that the senses act by a just accommodation of the pores in every case; everything that is perceived by the sense being congruously adapted to its proper organ.
Chapter X.
How Many Senses are There?
The Stoics say that there are five senses properly so called, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting. and touching. Aristotle indeed doth not add a sixth sense; but he assigns a common sense, which is the judge of all compounded species; into this each sense casts its proper representation, in which is discovered a transition of one thing into another, like as we see in figure and motion where there is a change of one into another. Democritus, that there are divers species of senses, which appertain to beings destitute of reason, to the gods, and to wise men.
Chapter XI.
How the Actions of the Senses, the Conceptions of Our Minds, and the Habit of Our Reason are Formed.
The Stoics affirm that every man, as soon as he is born, has a principal and commanding part of his soul, which is in him like a sheet of writing-paper, to which he commits all his notions. The first manner of his inscribing is by denoting those notions which flow from the senses. Suppose it be of a thing that is white; when the present sense of it is vanished, there is yet retained the remembrance; when many memorative notions of the same similitude do concur, then he is said to have an experience; for experience is nothing more than the abundance of notions that are of the same form met together. Some of these notions are naturally begotten according to the aforesaid manner, without the assistance of art; the others are produced by discipline, learning, and industry; these only are justly called notions, the others are prenotions. But reason, which gives us the denomination of rational, is completed by prenotions in the first seven years. The conception of the mind is the vision that the intelligence of a rational animal hath received; when that vision falls upon the rational soul, then it is called the conception of the mind, for it hath derived its name from the mind [Greek omitted] from [Greek omitted]. Therefore these visions are not to be found in any other animals; they only are appropriated to gods and to us men. If these we consider generally, they are phantasms; if specifically, they are notions. As pence or staters, if you consider them according to their own value, are simply pence and staters; but if you give them as a price for a naval voyage, they are called not merely pence, etc., but your freight.
Chapter XII.
What is the Difference Between Imagination [Greek Omitted], The Imaginable [GREEK OMITTED], Fancy [GREEK OMITTED], and Phantom [Greek Omitted]?
Chrysippus affirms, these four are different one from another. Imagination is that passion raised in the soul which discovers itself and that which was the efficient of it; to use example, after the eye hath looked upon a thing that is white, the sight of which produceth in the mind a certain impression, this gives us reason to conclude that the object of this impression is white, which affecteth us. So with touching and smelling Phantasy or imagination is denominated from [Greek omitted] which denotes light; for as light discovers itself and all other things which it illuminates, so this imagination discovers itself and that which is the cause of it. The imaginable is the efficient cause of imagination; as anything that is white, or anything that is cold, or everything that may make an impression upon the imagination. Fancy is a vain impulse upon the mind of man, proceeding from nothing which is really conceivable; this is experienced in those that whirl about their idle hand and fight with shadows; for to the imagination there is always some real imaginable thing presented, which is the efficient cause of it; but to the fancy nothing. A phantom is that to which we are brought by such a fanciful and vain attraction; this is to be seen in melancholy and distracted persons. Of this sort was Orestes in the tragedy, pronouncing these words:
Mother, these maids with horror me affright; Oh bring them not, I pray, into my sight! They’re smeared with blood, and cruel, dragon-like, Skipping about with deadly fury strike.
These rave as frantic persons, they see nothing, and yet imagine they see. Thence Electra thus returns to him:
0 wretched man, securely sleep in bed; Nothing thou seest, thy fancy’s vainly led.(Euripides, “Orestes”, 255.)
After the same manner Theoclymenus in Homer.
Chapter XIII.
Of Our Sight, and by what Means We See.
Democritus and Epicurus suppose that sight is caused by the insertion of little images into the visive organ, and by the reception of certain rays which return to the eye after meeting the object. Empedocles supposes that images are mixed with the rays of the eye; these he styles the rays of images. Hipparchus, that the visual rays extend from both the eyes to the superficies of bodies, and give to the sight the apprehension of those same bodies, after the same manner in which the hand touching the extremity of bodies gives the sense of feeling. Plato, that the sight is the splendor of united rays; there is a light which reaches some distance from the eyes into a cognate air, and there is likewise a light shed from bodies, which meets and joins with the fiery visual light in the intermediate air (which is liquid and mutable); and the union of these rays gives the sense of seeing. This is Plato’s corradiancy, or splendor of united rays.
Chapter XIV.
Of Those Images which are Presented to Our Eyes in Mirrors.
Empedocles says that these images are caused by certain effluxes which, meeting together and resting upon the superficies of the mirror, are perfected by that fiery element emitted by the said mirror, which transforms withal the air that surrounds it. Democritus and Epicurus, that the specular appearances are made by the subsistence of the images which flow from our eyes; these fall upon the mirror and remain, while the light returns to the eye. The followers of Pythagoras explain it by the reflection of the sight; for our sight being extended (as it were) to the brass, and meeting with the smooth dense surface thereof it is forced back, and caused to return upon itself: the same takes place in the hand, when it is stretched out and then brought back again to the shoulder. Any one may use these instances to explain the manner of seeing.
Chapter XV.
Whether Darkness Can be Visible to Us.
The Stoics say that darkness is seen by us, for out of our eyes there issues out some light into it; and our eyes do not impose upon us, for they really perceive there is darkness. Chrysippus says that we see darkness by the striking of the intermediate air; for the visual spirits which proceed from the principal part of the soul and reach to the ball of the eye pierce this air, which, after they have made those strokes upon it, extend conically on the surrounding air, where this is homogeneous in quality. For from the eyes those rays are poured forth which are neither black nor cloudy. Upon this. account darkness is visible to us.
Chapter XVI.
Of Hearing.
Empedocles says that hearing is formed by the insidency of the air upon the cochlea, which it is said hangs within the ear as a bell, and is beat upon by the air. Alcmaeon, that the vacuity that is within the ear makes us to have the sense of hearing, for the air forcing a vacuum gives the sound; every inanity affords a ringing. Diogenes the air which exists in the head, being struck upon by the voice gives the hearing. Plato and his followers, the air which exists in the head being struck upon, is reflected to the principal part of the soul, and this causeth the sense of hearing.
Chapter XVII.
Of Smelling.
Alcmaeon believes that the principal part of the soul, residing in the brain, draws to itself odors by respiration. Empedocles, that scents insert themselves into the breathing of the lungs; for, when there is a great difficulty in breathing, odors are not perceived by reason of the sharpness; and this we experience in those who have the defluxion of rheum.
Chapter XVIII.
Of Taste.
Alcmaeon says that a moist warmth in the tongue, joined with the softness of it, gives the difference of taste. Diogenes, that by the softness and sponginess of the tongue, and because the veins of the body are joined in it, tastes are diffused by the tongue; for they are attracted from it to that sense and to the commanding part of the soul, as from a sponge.
Chapter XIX.
Of the Voice.
Plato thus defines a voice, — that it is a breath drawn by the mind through the mouth, and a blow impressed on the air and through the ear, brain, and blood transmitted to the soul. Voice is abusively attributed to irrational and inanimate beings; thus we improperly call the neighing of horses or any other sound by the name of voice. But properly a voice [Greek omitted] is an articulate sound, which illustrates [Greek omitted] the understanding of man. Epicurus says that it is an efflux emitted from things that are vocal, or that give sounds or great noises; this is broken into those fragments which are after the same configuration. Like figures are round figures with round, and irregular and triangular with those of the same kind. These falling upon the ears produce the sense of hearing. This is seen in leaking vessels, and in fullers when they fan or blow their cloths. Democritus, that the air is broken into bodies of similar configuration, and these are rolled up and down with the fragments of the voice; as it is proverbially said, One daw lights with another, or, God always brings like to like. Thus we see upon the seashore, that stones like to one another are found in the same place, in one place the long-shaped, in another the round are seen. So in sieves, things of the same form meet together, but those that are different are divided; as pulse and beans falling from the same sieve are separated one from another. To this it may be objected: How can some fragments of air fill a theatre in which there is an infinite company of persons. The Stoics, that the air is not composed of small fragments, but is a continued body and nowhere admits a vacuum; and being struck with the air, it is infinitely moved in waves and in right circles, until it fill that air which surrounds it; as we see in a fish-pool which we smite by a falling stone cast upon it; yet the air is moved spherically, the water orbicularly. Anaxagoras says a voice is then formed when upon a solid air the breath is incident, which being repercussed is carried to the ears; after the same manner the echo is produced.
Chapter XX.
Whether the Voice is Incorporeal. what is it that the Gives Echo?
Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle declare that the voice is incorporeal; for it is not the air that causes the voice, but the figure which compasseth the air and its superficies having received a stroke, give the voice. But every superficies of itself is incorporeal. It is true that it move with the body but itself it hath no body; as we observe in a staff that is bended, the matter only admits of an inflection, while the superficies doth not. According to the Stoics a voice is corporeal since everything that is an agent or operates is a body; a voice acts and operates, for we hear it and are sensible of it; for it falls and makes an impression on the ear, as a seal of a ring gives its similitude upon the wax. Besides, everything that creates a delight or injury is a body; harmonious music affects with delight, but discord is tiresome. And everything that moved is a body; and the voice moves, and having its illapse upon smooth places is reflected, as when a ball is cast against a wall it rebounds. A voice spoken in the Egyptian pyramids is so broken, that it gives four or five echoes.
Chapter XXI.
By what Means the Soul is Sensible, and what is the Principal and Commanding Part of It.
The Stoics say that the highest part of the soul is the commanding part of it: this is the cause of sense, fancy, consents, and desires; and this we call the rational part. From this principal and commander there are produced seven parts of the soul, which are spread through the body, as the seven arms in a polypus. Of these seven parts, five are assigned to the senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. Sight is a spirit which is extended from the commanding part of the eyes; hearing is that spirit which from the principle reacheth to the ears; smelling a spirit drawn from the principal to the nostrils; tasting a spirit extended from the principle to the tongue; touching is a spirit which from the principal is drawn to the extremity of those bodies which are obnoxious to a sensible touch. Of the rest, the one called the spermatical is a spirit which reacheth from the principal to the generating vessels; the other, which is the vocal and termed the voice, is a spirit extended from the principal to the throat, tongue, and other proper organs of speaking. And this principal part itself hath that place in our spherical head which God hath in the world.
Chapter XXII.
Of Respiration or Breathing.
Empedocles thinks, that the first breath the first animal drew was when the moisture in the embryo was separated, and by that means an entrance was given to the external air into the gaping vessels, the moisture in them being evacuated. After this the natural heat, in a violent force pressing upon the external air for a passage, begets an expiration; but this heat returning to the inward parts, and the air giving way to it, causeth a respiration. The respiration that now is arises when the blood is borne to the exterior surface, and by this movement drives the airy substance through the nostrils; thus in its recess it causeth expiration, but the air being again forced into those places which are emptied of blood, it causeth an inspiration. To explain which, he proposeth the instance of a water-clock, which gives the account of time by the running of water.
Asclepiades supposeth the lungs to be in the manner of a funnel, and the cause of breathing to be the fineness of the inward parts of the breast; for thither the outward air which is more gross hastens, but is forced backward, the breast not being capable either to receive or want it. But there being always some of the more tenuous parts of the air left, so that all of it is not exploded, to that which there remains the more ponderous external air with equal violence is forced; and this he compares to cupping-glasses. All spontaneous breathings are formed by the contracting of the smaller pores of the lungs, and to the closing of the pipe in the neck; for these are at our command.
Herophilus attributes a moving faculty to the nerves, arteries, and muscles, but thinks that the lungs are affected only with a natural desire of enlarging and contracting themselves. Farther, there is the first operation of the lungs by attraction of the outward air, which is drawn in because of the abundance of the external air. Next to this, there is a second natural appetite of the lungs; the breast, pouring in upon itself the breath, and being filled, is no longer able to make an attraction, and throws the superfluity of it upon the lungs, whereby it is then sent forth in expiration; the parts of the body mutually concurring to this function by the alternate participation of fulness and emptiness. So that to lungs pertain four motions — first, when the lungs receive the outward air; secondly, when the outward air thus entertained is transmitted to the breast; thirdly, when the lungs again receive that air which they imparted to the breast; fourthly, when this air then received from the breast is thrown outwards. Of these four processes two are dilatations, one when the lungs attract the air, another when the breast dischargeth itself of it upon the lungs; two are contractions, one when the breast draws into itself the air, the second when it expels this which was insinuated into it. The breast admits only of two motions — of dilatation, when it draws from the lungs the breath, and of contraction, when it returns what it did receive.
Chapter XXIII.
Of the Passions of the Body, and Whether the Soul Hath a Sympathetical Condolency with It.
The Stoics say that all the passions are seated in those parts of the body which are affected, the senses have their residence in the commanding part of the soul. Epicurus, that all the passions and all the senses are in those parts which are affected, but the commanding part is subject to no passion. Strato, that all the passions and senses of the soul are in the rational or commanding part of it, and are not fixed in those places which are affected; for in this place patience takes its residence, and this is apparent in terrible and dolorous things, as also in timorous and valiant individuals.

## Book V.

Chapter I.
Of Divination.
Plato and the Stoics introduce divination as a godlike enthusiasm, the soul itself being of a divine constitution, and this prophetic faculty being inspiration, or an illapse of the divine knowledge into man; and so likewise they account for interpretation by dreams. And these same allow many divisions of the art of divination. Xenophanes and Epicurus utterly refuse any such art of foretelling future contingencies. Pythagoras rejects all manner of divination which is by sacrifices. Aristotle and Dicaearchus admit only these two kinds of it, a fury by a divine inspiration, and dreams; they deny the immortality of the soul, yet they affirm that the mind of man hath a participation of something that is divine.
Chapter II.
Whence Dreams do Arise.
Democritus says that dreams are formed by the illapse of adventitious representations. Strato, that the irrational part of the soul in sleep becoming more sensible is moved by the rational part of it. Herophilus, that dreams which are caused by divine instinct have a necessary cause; but dreams which have their origin from a natural cause arise from the soul’s forming within itself the images of those things which are convenient for it, and which will happen; those dreams which are of a constitution mixed of both these have their origin from the fortuitous appulse of images, as when we see those things which please us; thus it happens many times to those persons who in their sleep imagine they embrace their mistresses.
Chapter III.
Of the Nature of Generative Seed.
Aristotle says, that seed is that thing which contains in itself a power of moving, whereby it is enabled to produce a being like unto that from whence it was emitted. Pythagoras, that seed is the sediment of that which nourisheth us, the froth of the purest blood, of the same nature of the blood and marrow of our bodies. Alcmaeon, that it is part of the brain. Plato, that it is the deflux of the spinal marrow. Epicurus, that it is a fragment torn from the body and soul. Democritus, that it proceeds from all the parts of the body, and chiefly from the principal parts, as the tissues and muscles.
Chapter IV.
Whether the Sperm be a Body.
Leucippus and Zeno say, that it is a body and a fragment of the soul. Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, that the spermatic faculty is incorporeal, as the mind is which moves the body; but the effused matter is corporeal. Strato and Democritus, that the essential power is a body; for it is like spirit.
Chapter V.
Whether Women do Give a Spermatic Emission As Men Do.
Pythagoras, Epicurus, and Democritus say, that women have a seminal projection, but their spermatic vessels are inverted; and it is this that makes them have a venereal appetite. Aristotle and Plato, that they emit a material moisture, as sweat we see produced by exercise and labor; but that moisture has no spermatic power. Hippo, that women have a seminal emission, but not after the mode of men; it contributes nothing to generation, for it falls outside of the matrix; and therefore some women without coition, especially widows, give the seed. They also assert that from men the bones, from women the flesh proceed.
Chapter VI.
How it is that Conceptions are Made.
Aristotle says, that conception takes place when the womb is drawn down by the natural purgation, and the monthly terms attract from the whole mass part of the purest blood, and this is met by the seed of man. On the contrary, there is a failure by the impurity and inflation of the womb, by fear and grief, by the weakness of women, or the decline of strength in men.
Chapter VII.
After what Manner Males and Females are Generated.
Empedocles affirms, that heat and cold give the difference in the generation of males and females. Hence is it, as histories acquaint us, that the first men originated from the earth in the eastern and southern parts, and the first females in the northern parts. Parmenides is of opinion perfectly contrariant. He affirms that men first sprouted out of the northern earth, for their bodies are more dense; women out of the southern, for theirs are more rare and fine. Hippo, that the more compacted and strong sperm, and the more fluid and weak, discriminate the sexes. Anaxagoras and Parmenides, that the seed of the man is naturally cast from his right side into the right side of the womb, or from the left side of the man into the left side of the womb; there is an alteration in this course of nature when females are generated. Cleophanes, whom Aristotle makes mention of, assigns the generation of men to the right testicle, of women to the left. Leucippus gives the reason of it to the alteration or diversity of parts, according to which the man hath a yard, the female the matrix; as to any other reason he is silent. Democritus, that the parts common to both sexes are engendered indifferently; but the peculiar parts by the one that is more powerful. Hippo, that if the spermatic faculty be more effectual, the male, if the nutritive aliment, the female is generated.
Chapter VIII.
By what Means it is that Monstrous Births are Effected.
Empedocles believes that monsters receive their origination from the abundance or defect of seed, or from its division into parts which are superabundant, or from some disturbance in the motion, or else that there is an error by a lapse into an unsuitable receptacle; and thus he presumes he hath given all the causes of monstrous conceptions. Strato, that it comes through addition, subtraction, or transposition of the seed, or the distension or inflation of the matrix. And some physicians say that the matrix suffers distortion, being distended with wind.
Chapter IX.
How it Comes to Pass that a Woman’s Too Frequent Conversation with a Man Hinders Conception.
Diocles the physician says that either no genital sperm is projected, or, if there be, it is in a less quantity than nature requires, or there is no prolific faculty in it; or there is a deficiency of a due proportion of heat, cold, moisture, and dryness; or there is a resolution of the generative parts. The Stoics attribute sterility to the obliquity of the yard, by which means it is not able to ejaculate in a due manner, or to the unproportionable magnitude of the parts, the matrix being so contracted as not to have a capacity to receive. Erasistratus assigns it to the womb’s being more callous or more carneous, thinner or smaller, than nature does require.
Chapter X.
Whence it is that One Birth Gives Two or Three Children.
Empedocles affirms, that the superabundance of sperm and the division of it causes the bringing forth of two or three infants. Asclepiades, that it is performed from the excellent quality of the sperm, after the manner that from the root of one barleycorn two or three stalks do grow; sperm that is of this quality is the most prolific. Erasistratus, that superfetation may happen to women as to irrational creatures; for, if the womb be well purged and very clean, then there can be divers births. The Stoics, that it ariseth from the various receptacles that are in the womb: when the seed illapses into the first and second of them at once, then there are conceptions upon conception; and so two or three infants are born.
Chapter XI.
Whence it is that Children Represent Their Parents and Progenitors.
Empedocles says, that the similitude of children to their parents proceeds from the vigorous prevalency of the generating sperm; the dissimilitude from the evaporation of the natural heat it contains. Parmenides, that when the sperm falls on the right side of the womb, then the infant gives the resemblance of the father; if from the left, it is stamped with the similitude of the mother. The Stoics, that the whole body and soul give the sperm; and hence arise the likenesses in the characters and faces of the children, as a painter in his copy imitates the colors in a picture before him. Women have a concurrent emission of seed; if the feminine seed have the predominancy, the child resembles the mother; if the masculine, the father.
Chapter XII.
How it Comes to Pass that Children Have a Greater Similitude with Strangers Than with Their Parents.
The greatest part of physicians affirm, that this happens casually and fortuitously; for, when the sperm of the man and woman is too much refrigerated, then children carry a dissimilitude to their parents. Empedocles, that a woman’s imagination in conception impresses a shape upon the infant; for women have been enamoured with images and statues, and the children which were born of them gave their similitudes. The Stoics, that the resemblances flow from the sympathy and consent of minds, through the insertion of effluvias and rays, not of images or pictures.
Chapter XIII.
Whence Ariseth Barrenness in Women, and Impotency in Men?
The physicians maintain, that sterility in women can arise from the womb; for if it be after any ways thus affected, there will be a barrenness, — if it be more condensed, or more thin, or more hardened, or more callous, or more carneous; or it may be from languor, or from an atrophy or vicious condition of body; or, lastly, it may arise from a twisted or distorted position. Diocles holds that the sterility in men ariseth from some of these causes, — either that they cannot at all ejaculate any sperm, or if they do, it is less than nature doth require, or else there is no generative faculty in the sperm, or the genital members are flagging; or from the obliquity of the yard. The Stoics attribute the cause of sterility to the contrariant qualities and dispositions of those who lie with one another; but if it chance that these persons are separated, and there happen a conjunction of those who are of a suitable temperament, then there is a commixture according to nature, and by this means an infant is formed.
Chapter XIV.
How it Arises that Mules are Barren.
Alcmaeon says, that the barrenness of the male mules ariseth from the thinness of the genital sperm, that is, the seed is too chill; the female mules are barren, because the womb does not open its mouth (as he expresses it). Empedocles, the matrix of the mule is so small, so depressed, so narrow, so invertedly growing to the belly, that the sperm cannot be regularly ejaculated into it, and if it could, there would be no capacity to receive it. Diocles concurs in this opinion with him; for, saith he, in our anatomical dissection of mules we have seen that their matrices are of such configurations; and it is possible that there may be the same reason why some women are barren.
Chapter XV.
Whether the Infant in the Mother’s Womb be an Animal.
Plato says, that the embryo is an animal; for, being contained in the mother’s womb, motion and aliment are imparted to it. The Stoics say that it is not an animal, but to be accounted part of the mother’s belly; like as we see the fruit of trees is esteemed part of the trees, until it be full ripe; then it falls and ceaseth to belong to the tree; thus it is with the embryo. Empedocles, that the embryo is not an animal, yet whilst it remains in the belly it breathes. The first breath that it draws as an animal is when the infant is newly born; then the child having its moisture separated, the extraneous air making an entrance into the empty places, a respiration is caused in the infant by the empty vessels receiving of it. Diogenes, that infants are nurtured in the matrix inanimate, yet they have a natural heat; but presently, when the infant is cast into the open air, its heat brings air into the lungs, and so it becomes an animal. Herophilus acknowledgeth that a natural, but not an animal motion, and that the nerves are the cause of that motion; that then they become animals, when being first born they suck in something of the air.
Chapter XVI.
How Embryos are Nourished, or How the Infant in the Belly Receives its Aliment.
Democritus and Epicurus say, that the embryos in the womb receive their aliment by the mouth, for we perceive, as soon as ever the infant is born, it applies its mouth to the breast; in the wombs of women (our understanding concludes) there are little dugs, and the embryos have small mouths by which they receive their nutriment. The Stoics, that by the secundines and navel they partake of aliment, and therefore the midwife instantly after their birth ties the navel, and opens the infant’s mouth, that it may receive another sort of aliment. Alcmaeon, that they receive their nourishment from every part of the body; as a sponge sucks in water.
Chapter XVII.
What Part of the Body is First Formed in the Womb.
The Stoics believe that the whole is formed at the same time. Aristotle, as the keel of a ship is first made, so the first part that is formed is the loins. Alcmaeon, the head, for that is the commanding and the principal part of the body. The physicians, the heart, in which are the veins and arteries. Some think the great toe is first formed; others affirm the navel.
Chapter XVIII
Whence is it that Infants Born in the Seventh Month are Born Alive.
Empedocles says, that when the human race took first its original from the earth, the sun was so slow in its motion that then one day in its length was equal to ten months, as now they are; in process of time one day became as long as seven months are; and there is the reason that those infants which are born at the end of seven months or ten months are born alive, the course of nature so disposing that the infant shall be brought to maturity in one day after that night in which it is begotten. Timaeus says, that we count not ten months but nine, by reason that we reckon the first conception from the stoppage of the menstruas; and so it may generally pass for seven months when really there are not seven; for it sometimes occurs that even after conception a woman is purged to some extent. Polybus, Diocles, and the Empirics, acknowledge that the eighth month gives a vital birth to the infant, though the life of it is more faint and languid; many therefore we see born in that month die out of mere weakness. Though we see many born in that month arrive at the state of man, yet (they affirm) if children be born in that month, none wish to rear them.
Aristotle and Hippocrates, that if the womb is full in seven months, then the child falls from the mother and is born alive, but if it falls from her but is not nourished, the navel being weak on account of the weight of the infant, then it doth not thrive; but if the infant continues nine months in the womb, and then comes forth from the woman, it is entire and perfect. Polybus, that a hundred and eighty-two days and a half suffice for the bringing forth of a living child; that is, six months, in which space of time the sun moves from one tropic to the other; and this is called seven months, for the days which are over plus in the sixth are accounted to give the seventh month. Those children which are born in the eighth month cannot live, for, the infant then falling from the womb, the navel, which is the cause of nourishment, is thereby too much wrenched; and is the reason that the infant languishes and hath an atrophy. The astrologers, that eight months are enemies to every birth, seven are friends and kind to it. The signs of the zodiac are then enemies, when they fall upon those stars which are lords of houses; whatever infant is then born will have a life short and unfortunate. Those signs of the zodiac which are malevolent and injurious to generation are those pairs of which the final is reckoned the eighth from the first, as the first and the eighth, the second and the ninth, etc; so is the Ram unsociable with Scorpio, the Bull with Sagittarius, the Twins with the Goat, the Crab with Aquarius, the Lion with Pisces, the Virgin with the Ram. Upon this reason those infants that are born in the seventh or tenth months are like to live, but those in the eighth month will die.
Chapter XIX.
Of the Generation of Animals, How Animals are Begotten, and Whether They are Obnoxious to Corruption.
Those philosophers who entertain the opinion that the world had an original do likewise assert that all animals are generated and corruptible. The followers of Epicurus, who gives an eternity to the world, affirm the generation of animals ariseth from the various permutation of parts mutually among themselves, for they are parts of this world. With them Anaxagoras and Euripides concur:
Nothing dies, Different changes give their various forms.
Anaximander’s opinion is, that the first animals were generated in moisture, and were enclosed in bark on which thorns grew; but in process of time they came upon dry land, and this thorny bark with which they were covered being broken, they lived only for a short space of time. Empedocles says, that the first generation of animals and plants was by no means completed, for the parts were disjoined and would not admit of a union; the second preparation and for their being generated was when their parts were united and appeared in the form of images; the third preparation for generation was when their parts mutually amongst themselves gave a being to one another; the fourth, when there was no longer a mixture of like elements (as earth and water), but a union of animals among themselves, — in some the nourishment being made dense, in others female beauty provoking a desire of spermatic motion. All sorts of animals are discriminated by their proper temperament and constitution; some are carried by a proper appetite and inclination to water, some, which partake of a more fiery quality, to live in the air those that are heavier incline to the earth; but those animals whose parts are of a just temperament are fitted equally for all places.
Chapter XX.
How Many Species of Animals There are, and Whether All Animals Have the Endowments of Sense and Reason.
There is a certain treatise of Aristotle, in which animals are distributed into four kinds, terrestrial, aqueous, fowl, and heavenly; and he calls the stars and the world too animals, yea, and God himself he posits to be an animal gifted with reason and immortal. Democritus and Epicurus consider all animals rational which have their residence in the heavens. Anaxagoras says that animals have only that reason which is operative, but not that which is passive, which is justly styled the interpreter of the mind, and is like the mind itself. Pythagoras and Plato, that the souls of all those who are styled brutes are rational; but by the evil constitution of their bodies, and because they have a want of a discoursive faculty, they do not conduct themselves rationally. This is manifested in apes and dogs, which have inarticulate voice but not speech. Diogenes, that this sort of animals are partakers of intelligence and air, but by reason of the density in some parts of them, and by the superfluity of moisture in others, they neither enjoy understanding nor sense; but they are affected as madmen are, the commanding rational part being defectuous and injured.
Chapter XXI.
What Time is Required to Shape the Parts of Animals in the Womb.
Empedocles believes, that the joints of men begin to be formed from the thirty-sixth day, and their shape is completed in the nine and fortieth. Asclepiades, that male embryos, by reason of a greater natural heat, have their joints begun to be formed in the twenty-sixth day, — many even sooner, — and that they are completed in all their parts on the fiftieth day; the parts of the females are articulated in two months, but by the defect of heat are not consummated till the fourth; but the members of brutes are completed at various times, according to the commixture of the elements of which they consist.
Chapter XXII.
Of what Elements Each of the Members of Us Men is Composed.
Empedocles says, that the fleshy parts of us are constituted by the contemperation of the four elements in us; earth and fire mixed with a double proportion of water make nerves; but when it happens that the nerves are refrigerated where they come in contact with the air, then the nails are made; the bones are produced by two parts of water and the same of air, with four parts of fire and the same of earth, mixed together; sweat and tears flow from liquefaction of bodies.
Chapter XXIII.
What are the Causes of Sleep and Death?
Alcmaeon says, that sleep is caused when the blood retreats to the concourse of the veins, but when the blood diffuses itself then we awake and when there is a total retirement of the blood, then men die. Empedocles, that a moderate cooling of the blood causeth sleep, but a total remotion of heat from blood causeth death. Diogenes, that when all the blood is so diffused as that it fills all the veins, and forces the air contained in them to the back and to the belly that is below it, the breast being thereby more heated, thence sleep arises, but if everything that is airy in the breast forsakes the veins, then death succeeds. Plato and the Stoics, that sleep ariseth from the relaxation of the sensitive spirit, it not receiving such total relaxing as if it fell to the earth, but so that that spirit is carried about the intestine, parts of the eyebrows, in which the principal part has its residence; but when there is a total relaxing of the sensitive spirit, death ensues.
Chapter XXIV.
When and from Whence the Perfection of a Man Commences.
Heraclitus and the Stoics say, that men begin their completeness when the second septenary of years begins, about which time the seminal serum is emitted. Trees first begin their perfection when they give their seeds; till then they are immature, imperfect, and unfruitful. After the same manner a man is completed in the second septenary of years, and is capable of learning what is good and evil, and of discipline therein.
Chapter XXV.
Whether Sleep or Death Appertains to the Soul or Body.
Aristotle’s opinion is, that both the soul and body sleep; and this proceeds from the evaporation in the breast, which doth steam and arise into the head, and from the aliment in the stomach, whose proper heat is cooled in the heart. Death is the perfect refrigeration of all heat in body; but death is only of the body, and not of the soul, for the soul is immortal. Anaxagoras thinks, that sleep makes the operations of the body to cease; it is a corporeal passion and affects not the soul. Death is the separation of the soul from the body. Leucippus, that sleep is only of the body; but when the smaller particles cause excessive evaporation from the soul’s heat, this makes death; but these affections of death and sleep are of the body, not of the soul. Empedocles, that death is nothing else but separation of those fiery parts by which man is composed, and according to this sentiment both body and soul die; but sleep is only a smaller separation of the fiery qualities.
Chapter XXVI.
How Plants Increase.
Plato and Empedocles believe, that plants are animals, and are informed with a soul; of this there are clear arguments, for they have tossing and shaking, and their branches are extended; when the woodmen bend them they yield, but they return to their former straightness and strength again when they are let loose, and even carry up weights that are laid upon them. Aristotle doth grant that they live, but not that they are animals; for animals are affected with appetite, sense, and reason. The Stoics and Epicureans deny that they are informed with a soul; by reason that all sorts of animals have either sense, appetite, or reason; but plants act fortuitously, and not by means of any soul. Empedocles, that the first of all animals were trees, and they sprang from the earth before the sun in its motion enriched the world, and before day and night were distinguished; but by the harmony which is in their constitution they partake of a masculine and feminine nature; and they increase by that heat which is exalted out of the earth, so that they are parts belonging to it, as embryos in the womb are parts of the womb. Fruits in plants are excrescences proceeding from water and fire; but the plants which lack water, when this is dried up by the heat of summer, shed their leaves; whereas they that have plenty thereof keep their leaves on, as the olive, laurel, and palm. The differences of their moisture and juice arise from the difference of particles and various other causes, and they are discriminated by the various particles that feed them. And this is apparent in vines for the excellence of wine flows not from the difference in the vines, but from the soil from whence they receive their nutriment.
Chapter XXVII
Of Nutrition and Growth.
Empedocles believes, that animals are nourished by the remaining in them of that which is proper to their own nature; they are augmented by the application of heat; and the subtraction of either of these makes them to languish and decay. The stature of men in this present age, if compared with the magnitude of those men which were first produced, is only a mere infancy.
Chapter XXVIII.
Whence it is that in Animals There are Appetites and Pleasures.
Empedocles says that the want of those elements which compose animals gives to them appetite, and pleasures spring from humidity. As to the motions of dangers and such like things as perturbations, etc. . . .
Chapter XXIX
What is the Cause of a Fever, or Whether it is an Affection of the Body Annexed to a Primary Passion
Erasistratus gives this definition of a fever: A fever is a quick motion of blood, not produced by our consent, which enters into the vessels, the seat of the vital spirits. This we see in the sea; it is in a serene calm when nothing disturbs it, but is in motion when a violent preternatural wind blows upon it, and then it rageth and is circled with waves. After this manner it is in the body of man; when the blood is in a nimble agitation, then it falls upon those vessels in which the spirits are, and there being in an extraordinary heat, it fires the whole body. The opinion that a fever is an appendix to a preceding affection pleaseth him. Diocles proceeds after this manner: Those things which are internal and latent are manifested by those which externally break forth and appear; and it is clear to us that a fever is annexed to certain outward affections, for example, to wounds, inflaming tumors, inguinary abscesses.
Chapter XXX.
Of Health, Sickness, and Old Age.
Alcmaeon says that the preserver of health is an equal proportion of the qualities of heat, moisture, cold, dryness, bitterness, sweetness, and the other qualities; on the contrary, the prevailing empire of one above the rest is the cause of diseases and author of destruction. The direct cause of disease is the excess of heat or cold, the formal cause is excess or defect, the place is the blood or brain. But health is the harmonious commixture of the elements. Diocles, that sickness for the most part proceeds from the irregular disposition of the elements in the body, for that makes an ill habit or constitution of it. Erasistratus, that sickness is caused by the excess of nourishment, indigestion, and corruptions; on the contrary, health is the moderation of the diet, and the taking that which is convenient and sufficient for us. It is the unanimous opinion of the Stoics that the want of heat brings old age, for (they say) those persons in whom heat more abounds live the longer. Asclepiades, that the Ethiopians soon grow old, and at thirty years of age are ancient men, their bodies being excessively heated and scorched by the sun; in Britain persons live a hundred and twenty years, on account of the coldness of the country, and because the people keep the fiery element within their bodies; the bodies of the Ethiopians are more fine and thin, because they are relaxed by the sun’s heat, while they who live in northern countries are condensed and robust, and by consequence are more long lived.

## Causes of natural phenomena

[Quaest. nat. 1] I. What is the Reason that Sea-water nourishes not Trees?
[Quaest. nat. 1b] Is it not for the same reason that it nourishes not earthly animals? For Plato, Anaxagoras, and Democritus think plants are earthly animals. Nor, though sea-water be aliment to marine plants, as it is to fishes, will it therefore nourish earthly plants, since it can neither penetrate the roots, because of its grossness, nor ascend, by reason of its weight; for this, among many other things, shows sea-water to be heavy and terrene, because it more easily bears up ships and swimmers. Or is it because drought is a great enemy to trees? For sea-water is of a drying faculty; upon which account salt resists putrefaction, and the bodies of such as wash in the sea are presently dry and rough. Or is it because oil is destructive to earthly plants, and kills things anointed with it? But sea-water participates of much fatness; for it burns together with it. Wherefore, when men would quench fire, we forbid them to throw on sea-water. Or is it because sea-water is not fit to drink and bitter (as Aristotle says) through a mixture of burnt earth? For a lye is made by the falling of ashes into sweet water, and the dissolution ejects and corrupts what was good and potable, as in us men fevers convert the humors into bile. As for what woods and plants men talk of growing in the Red Sea, they bear no fruit, but are nourished by rivers casting up much mud; therefore they grow not at any great distance from land, but very near to it.
[Quaest. nat. 2] II. Why do Trees and Seeds thrive better with Rain than with Watering?
[Quaest. nat. 2b] Whether is it because (as Laitus thinks) showers, parting the earth by the violence of their fall, make passages, whereby the water may more easily penetrate to the root? Or cannot this be true; and did Laitus never consider that marsh-plants (as cat’s-tail, pond-weeds, and rushes) neither thrive nor sprout when the rains fall not in their season; but it is true, as Aristotle said, rain-water is new and fresh, that of lakes old and stale? And what if this be rather probable than true? For the waters of fountains and rivers are ever fresh, new always arriving; therefore Heraclitus said well, that no man could go twice into the same river. And yet these very waters nourish worse than rain-water. But water from the heavens is light and aerial, and, being mixed with spirit, is the quicker passed and elevated into the plant, by reason of its tenuity. And for this very reason it makes bubbles when mixed with the air. Or does that nourish most which is soonest altered and overcome by the thing nourished? — for this very thing is concoction. On the contrary, inconcoction is when the aliment is too strong to be affected by the thing nourished. Now thin, simple, and insipid things are the most easily altered, of which number is rain-water, which is bred in the air and wind, and falls pure and sincere. But fountain-water, being assimilated to the earth and places through which it passes, is filled with many qualities which render it less nutritive and slower in alteration to the thing nourished. Moreover, that rain-water is easily alterable is an argument; because it sooner putrefies than either spring or river-water. For concoction seems to be putrefaction, as Empedocles says, —
[Quaest. nat. 2c] •When in vine wood the water putrefies,
•It turns to wine, while under bark it lies.
[Quaest. nat. 2d] Or, which may most readily be assigned for a reason, is it because rain is sweet and mild, when it is presently sent by the wind? For this reason cattle drink it most greedily, and frogs in expectation of it raise their voice, as if they were calling for rain to sweeten the marsh and to be sauce to the water in the pools. For Aratus makes this a sign of approaching rain,
[Quaest. nat. 2e] •When father frogs, to watery snakes sweet food,
•Do croak and sing in mud, a wretched brood.
[Quaest. nat. 3] III. Why do Herdsmen set Salt before Cattle?
[Quaest. nat. 3b] Whether (as many think) to nourish them the more, and fatten them the better? For salt by its acrimony sharpens the appetite, and by opening the passages brings meat more easily to digestion. Therefore Apollonius, Herophilus’s scholar, would not have lean persons, and such as did not thrive, be fed with sweet things and gruel, but ordered them to use pickles and salt things for their food, whose tenuity, serving instead of frication or sifting, might apply the aliment through the passages of the body. Or is it for health’s sake that men give sheep salt to lick, to cut off the redundance of nutriment? For when they are over fat, they grow sick; but salt wastes and melts the fat. And this they observe so well, that they can more easily flay them; for the fat, which agglutinates and fastens the skin, is made thin and weak by the acrimony. The blood also of things that lick salt is attenuated; nor do things within the body stick together when salts are mixed with them. Moreover, consider this, whether the cattle grow more fruitful and more inclined to coition; for bitches do sooner conceive when they are fed with salt victuals, and ships which carry salt are more pestered with mice, by reason of their frequent coition.
[Quaest. nat. 4] IV. Why is the Water of Showers which falls in Thunder and Lightning fitter to Water Seeds? And they are therefore called Thunder-showers.
[Quaest. nat. 4b] Is it because they contain much spirit, by reason of their confusion and mixture with the air? And the spirit moving the humor sends it more upwards. Or is it because heat fighting against cold causes thunder and lightning? Whence it is that it thunders very little in winter, but in spring and autumn very much, because of the inequality of temper; and the heat, concocting the humor, renders it friendly and commodious for plants. Or does it thunder and lighten most in the spring for the aforesaid cause, and do the seeds have greater occasion for the vernal rains before summer? Therefore that country which is best watered with rain in spring, as Sicily is, produces abundance of good fruit.
[Quaest. nat. 5] V. How comes it to pass, that since there be Eight Kinds of Tastes, we find the Salt in no Fruit whatever?
[Quaest. nat. 5b] Indeed, at first the olive is bitter, and the grape acid; one whereof afterward turns fat, and the other vinous. But the harshness in dates and the austere in pomegranates turn sweet. Some pomegranates and apples have only a simple acid taste. The pungent taste is frequent in roots and seeds.
[Quaest. nat. 5c] Is it because a salt taste is never natural, but arises when the rest are corrupt? Therefore such plants and seeds as are nourished receive no nourishment from salt; it serves indeed some instead of sauce, by preventing a surfeit of other nourishment. Or, as men take away saltness and bitingness from the sea-water by distilling, is saltness so abolished in hot things by heat? Or indeed does the taste (as Plato says) arise from water percolated through a plant, and does even sea-water percolated lose its saltness, being terrene and of gross parts? Therefore people that dig near the sea happen upon wells fit to drink. Several also that draw the sea-water into waxen buckets receive it sweet and potable, the salt and earthy matter being strained out. And straining through clay renders sea-water potable, since the clay retains the earthy parts and does not let them pass through. And since things are so, it is very probable either that plants receive no saltness extrinsically, or, if they do, they put it not forth into fruit; for things terrene and consisting of gross parts cannot pass, by reason of the straitness of the passages. Or may saltness be reckoned a sort of bitterness? For so Homer says:
[Quaest. nat. 5d] •Out of his mouth the bitter brine did flow,
•And down his body from his head did go.
[Quaest. nat. 5e] Plato also says that both these tastes have an abstersive and colliquative faculty; but the salt does it less, nor is it rough. And the bitter seems to differ from the salt in abundance of heat, since the salt has also a drying quality.
[Quaest. nat. 6] VI. What is the Reason that, if a Man frequently pass along Dewy Trees, those Limbs that touch the Wood are seized with a Leprosy?
[Quaest. nat. 6b] Whether (as Laitus said) that by the tenuity of the dew the moisture of the skin is fretted away? Or, as smut and mildew fall upon moistened seeds, so, when the green and tender parts on the superficies are fretted and dissolved by the dew, is a certain noxious taint carried and imparted to the most bloodless parts of the body, as the legs and feet, which there eats and frets the superficies? For that by Nature there is a corrosive faculty in dew sufficiently appears, in that it makes fat people lean; and gross women gather it, either with wool or on their clothes, to take down their flesh.
[Quaest. nat. 7] VII. Why in Winter do Ships sail slower in Rivers, but do not so in the Sea?
[Quaest. nat. 7b] Whether, because the river-air, which is at all times heavy and slow, being in winter more condensed by the cold, does more resist sailing? Or is it long of the water rather than the air? For the piercing cold makes the water heavy and thick, as one may perceive in a waterclock; for the water passes more slowly in winter than in summer. Theophrastus talks of a well about Pangaeum in Thrace, how that a vessel filled with the water of it weighs twice as much in winter as it does in summer. Besides, hence it is apparent that the grossness of the water makes ships sail slower, because in winter river-vessels carry greater burthens. For the water, being made more dense and heavy, makes the more renitency; but the heat hinders the sea from being condensed or frozen.
[Quaest. nat. 8] VIII. Why, since all other Liquors upon moving and stirring about grow cold, does the Sea by being tossed in Waves grow hot?
[Quaest. nat. 8b] Whether that motion expels and dissipates the heat of other liquors as a thing adscititious, and the winds do rather excite and increase the innate heat of the sea? Its transparentness is an argument of heat; and so is its not being frozen, though it is terrene and heavy.
[Quaest. nat. 9] IX. Why in Winter is the Sea least salt and bitter to the Taste? For they say that Dionysius the Hydragogue reported this.
[Quaest. nat. 9b] Is it that the bitterness of the sea is not devoid of all sweetness, as receiving so many rivers into it; but, since the sun exhales the sweet and potable water thereof, arising to the top by reason of its levity, and since this is done in summer more than in winter, when it affects the sea more weakly by reason of the debility of its heat, that so in winter a great deal of sweetness is left, which tempers and mitigates its excessive poisonous bitterness? And the same thing befalls potable waters; for in summer they are worse, the sun wasting the lightest and sweetest part of them. And a fresh sweetness returns in winter, of which the sea must needs participate, since it moves, and is carried with the rivers into the sea.
[Quaest. nat. 10] X. Why do Men pour Sea-water upon Wine, and say the Fishermen had an Oracle given them, whereby they were bid to dip Bacchus into the Sea? And why do they that live far from the Sea cast in some Zacynthian Earth toasted?
[Quaest. nat. 10b] Whether that heat is good against cold? Or that it quenches heat, by diluting the wine and destroying its strength? Or that the aqueous and aerial part of wine (which is therefore prone to mutation) is stayed by the throwing in of terrene parts, whose nature it is to constipate and condense? Moreover, salts with the sea-water, attenuating and colliquating whatever is foreign and superfluous, suffer no fetidness or putrefaction to breed. Besides, the gross and terrene parts, being entangled with the heavy and sinking together, make a sediment or lees, and so make the wine fine.
[Quaest. nat. 11] XI. Why are they Sicker that Sail on the Sea than they that Sail in fresh Rivers, even in Calm Weather?
[Quaest. nat. 11b] Of all the senses, smelling causes nauseousness the most, and of all the passions of the mind, fear. For men tremble and shake and bewray themselves upon apprehension of great danger. They that sail in a river are troubled with neither of these. And the smell of sweet and potable water is familiar to all, and the voyage is without danger. On the sea an unusual smell is troublesome; and men are afraid, not knowing what the issue may be. Therefore tranquillity abroad avails not, while an estuating and disturbed mind disorders the body.
[Quaest. nat. 12] XII. Why does pouring Oil on the Sea make it Clear and Calm?
[Quaest. nat. 12b] Is it for that the winds, slipping the smooth oil, have no force, nor cause any waves? This may be probably said in respect of things external; but they say that divers take oil in their mouths, and when they spout it out they have light at the bottom, and it makes the water transparent; so that the slipping of the winds will not hold good here for an argument. Therefore it is to be considered, whether the sea, which is terrene and uneven, is not compacted and made smooth by the dense oil; and so the sea, being compact in itself, leaves passes, and a pellucidity penetrable by the sight. Or whether that the air, which is naturally mixed with the sea, is lucid, but by being troubled grows unequal and shady; and so by the oil’s density, smoothing its inequality, the sea recovers its evenness and pellucidity.
[Quaest. nat. 13] XIII. Why do Fishermen’s Nets rot more in Winter than in Summer, since other things rot more in Summer?
[Quaest. nat. 13b] Is not that the cause which Theophrastus assigns, — that heat (to wit) shuns the cold, and is constrained by it on every side? Hence the waters are hottest in the bottom of the sea. And so it is on land; for springs are hotter in winter, and then lakes and rivers send up most vapors, because the heat is compelled to the bottom by the prevailing cold. Or it may be, nets do not rot at that time more than at another; but being frozen and dried in the cold, since they are therefore the more easily broken by the waves, they are liable to something like putrefaction and rottenness. And they suffer most in the cold (as strained cords are aptest to break in such a season), because then there be most frequent storms at sea. Therefore fishermen guard their nets with certain tinctures, for fear they should break. Otherwise a net, neither tinged nor daubed with any thing, might more easily deceive the fish; since line is of an air color, and is not easily discerned in the sea.
[Quaest. nat. 14] XIV. Why do the Dorians pray for bad making of their hay?
[Quaest. nat. 14b] Is it because hay rained upon is never well made? For the grass is cut down green and not dry, wherefore it putrefies when wet with rain water. But when before harvest it rains upon corn, this is a help to it against the hot south winds; which otherwise would not let the grain fill in the ear, but by their heat would hinder and destroy all coalition, unless by watering the earth there came a moisture to cool and moisten the ear.
[Quaest. nat. 15] XV. Why is a fat and deep Soil fruitful of Wheat, and a lean Soil of Barley?
[Quaest. nat. 15b] Is it because a stronger grain needs more nourishment, and a weaker a light and thin one? Now barley is weaker and laxer than wheat, therefore it affords but little nourishment. And, as a farther testimony to this reason, wheat, that is ripe in three months, grows in dryer ground; because it is juiceless, and stands in need of less nourishment, and therefore is more easily brought to perfection.
[Quaest. nat. 16] XVI. Why do Men say, Sow wheat in Clay and Barley in Dust?
[Quaest. nat. 16b] Is the reason (as we said) because wheat takes up more nourishment; and barley cannot bear so much, but is choked with it? Or does wheat, because it is hard and ligneous, thrive better when it is softened and loosened in a moist soil; and barley at the first in a dry soil, because of its rarity? Or is the one temperament congruous and harmless to wheat, because it is hot; and the other to barley, because it is cold? Or are men afraid to sow wheat in a dry soil, because of the ants, which presently lie in wait for it; but they cannot so easily deal with barley nor carry it away, because it is a larger grain?
[Quaest. nat. 17] XVII. Why do Men use the Hair of Horses rather than of Mares for Fishing- Lines?
[Quaest. nat. 17b] Is it that the males are stronger in those parts, as well as in others, than the females? Or is it that the females spoil the hair of their tails by their staling?
[Quaest. nat. 18] XVIII. Why is the Sight of a Cuttle-fish a Sign of a great Storm?
[Quaest. nat. 18b] Is it because all fishes of the soft kind cannot endure cold, by reason of their nakedness and tenderness? For they are covered neither with shell, skin, or scale, though within they have hard and bony parts. Hence the Greeks call them soft fish. Therefore they easily perceive a storm coming, since they are so soon affected by the cold. When the polypus gets to shore and embraces the rocks, it is a sign the wind is rising; but the cuttle-fish jumps up, to shun the cold and the trouble of the bottom of the sea; for, of all soft fishes, she is the tenderest and soonest hurt.
[Quaest. nat. 19] XIX. Why does the Polypus change Color?
[Quaest. nat. 19b] Whether, as Theophrastus writes, because it is an animal by nature timorous; and therefore, being disturbed, it changes color with its spirit, as some men do, of whom it is said, an ill man ever changes color? But though this may serve as a reason for changing its color, it will not for the imitation of colors. For the polypus does so change its color, that it is of the color of every stone it comes nigh. Hence that of Pindar, Mind the color of the marine beast, and so converse cunningly in all cities; and that of Theognis:
[Quaest. nat. 19c] •Put on a mind like th’ polyp fish, —
•And learn so to dissemble, —
•Which of the rock whereto it sticks
•The color doth resemble.
[Quaest. nat. 19d] And they say, that such as are excellent at craftiness and juggling have this in their eye, — that they may the better cheat them they have to deal withal, — ever to imitate the polypus. Some think the polypus can use her skin as a garment, and can put it on or off at pleasure. But if fear occasions this change in the polypus, is not something else more properly the cause? Let us consider what Empedocles says, that effluvia proceed from all things whatever. For not only animals, plants, the earth and sea, but stones, and even brass and iron, do continually send out many effluvia. For all things corrupt and smell, because there runneth always something from them, and they wear continually; insomuch that it is thought that by these effluvia come all attractions and insultations, some supposing embraces, others blows, some impulses, others circuitions. But especially about the sea rocks, when they are wet and cool by the waves (as is most likely), constantly some small particles are washed off, which do not incorporate with other bodies, but either pass by the smaller passages, or pass through the larger. Now the flesh of the polypus, as one may judge by the eye, is hollow, full of pores, and capable of effluvia. When therefore she is afraid, as her spirit changes she changes herself, and by straitening and contracting her body, she encloses the neighboring effluvia. And, as a good token of this argument, the polypus cannot imitate the color of every thing he comes near, nor the chameleon of any thing that is white; but each of these creatures is assimilated only to those things to whose effluvia it has pores proportionable.
[Quaest. nat. 20] XX. What is the Reason, that the Tears of wild Boars are sweet, and the Tears of the Hart salt and hurtful?
[Quaest. nat. 20b] The reason seems to be the heat and cold of these animals. For the hart is cold, and the boar is very hot and fiery; therefore the one flies from, the other defends himself against, his pursuers. Now when great store of heat comes to the eyes (as Homer says, with horrid bristles, and eyes darting fire), tears are sweet. Some are of Empedocles’s opinion, who thought that tears proceed from the disturbance of the blood, as whey does from the churning of milk; since therefore boar’s blood is harsh and black, and hart’s blood thin and watery, it is consentaneous that the tears, which the one sheds when excited to anger, and the other when dejected with fear, should be of the same nature.
[Quaest. nat. 21] XXI. Why do tame Sows farrow often, some at one time and others at another; and the wild but once a Year, and all of them about the same time at the beginning of summer, whence it is said, —
[Quaest. nat. 21b] The wild sow farrowing, that night falls no rain?
[Quaest. nat. 21c] Is it because of plentiful feeding, as in very truth fulness doth produce wantonness? For abundance of nourishment breeds abundance of seed both in animals and plants. Now wild sows live by their own toil, and that with fear; the tame have always food enough, either by nature or given them. Or may it not be ascribed to their rest and exercise? For the tame do rest and go not far from their keepers; the wild get to the mountains, and run about, by which means they waste the nutriment, and consume it upon the whole body. Therefore either through continual converse, or abundance of seed, or because the females feed in herds with the males, the tame sows call to mind coition and stir up lust, as Empedocles talks of men. But in wild sows, which feed apart, desire is cold and dull for want of love and conversation. Or is it true, what Aristotle says, that Homer called the wild boar χλούνης, because he had but one stone? For most boars spoil their stones (he says) by rubbing them against stumps of trees.
[Quaest. nat. 22] XXII. Why are the Paws of Bears the sweetest and pleasantest Food?
[Quaest. nat. 22b] Because the flesh of those parts of the body which concoct aliment the best is sweetest; and that concocts best which transpires most by motion and exercise. But the bear uses the fore-feet most in going and running, and in managing of things, as it were with hands.
[Quaest. nat. 23] XXIII. Why are the Steps of wild Beasts most difficultly Traced in Spring-time?
Whether the dogs, as Empedocles says, “with noses find the steps of all wild beasts,” and draw in those effluvia which the beasts leave in the ground; but the various smells of plants and flowers lying over the footsteps do in spring-time obscure and confound them, and put the dogs to a loss at winding them? Therefore about Etna in Sicily no man keeps any hunting dogs, because abundance of wild marjoram flourishes and grows there the year round, and the perpetual fragrancy of the place destroys the scent of the wild beasts. There is also a tale, how Proserpine, as she was gathering flowers thereabout, was ravished by Pluto; therefore people, revering that place as an asylum, do not catch any creature that feeds thereabout.
[Quaest. nat. 24] XXIV. Why are the Tracks of Wild Beasts worse Scented about the Full Moon?
[Quaest. nat. 24b] Whether for the foresaid cause? For the full moons bring down the dews; and therefore Alcman calls dew the daughter of Jove and Luna in a verse of his,
[Quaest. nat. 24c] Fed by the dew, bred by the Moon and Jove.
[Quaest. nat. 24d] For dew is a weak and languid rain, and there is but little heat in the moon; which draws water from the earth, as the sun does; but because it cannot raise it on high, it soon lets it fall.
[Quaest. nat. 25] XXV. Why does Frost make Hunting difficult?
[Quaest. nat. 25b] Whether is it because the wild beasts leave off going far abroad by reason of the cold, and so leave but few signs of themselves? Therefore some say, beasts spare the neighboring places, that they may not be sore put to it by going far abroad in winter, but may always have food ready at hand. Or is it because that for hunting the track alone is not sufficient, but there must be scent also? And things gently dissolved and loosened by heat afford a smell, but too violent cold binds up the scent, and will not let it reach the sense. Therefore they say that unguents and wine smell least in winter and cold weather; for the then concrete air keeps the scent in, and suffers it not to disperse.
[Quaest. nat. 26] XXVI. What is the Reason that Brutes, when they ail any thing, seek and pursue Remedies, and are often cured by the use of them?
[Quaest. nat. 26b] Dogs eat grass, to make them vomit bile. Swine seek craw-fish, because the eating of them cures the headache. The tortoise, when he has eaten a viper, feeds on wild marjoram. They say, when a bear has surfeited himself and his stomach grows nauseous, he licks up ants, and by devouring them is cured. These creatures know such things neither by experience nor by chance.
[Quaest. nat. 26c] Whether, as wax draws the bee, and carcasses the vulture afar off by the scent, do craw-fish so draw swine, wild marjoram the tortoise, and ants the bear, by smells and effluvia accommodated to their nature, they being prompted altogether by sense, without any assistance from reason? Or do not the temperaments of the body create appetites in animals, while diseases create these, producing divers acrimonies, sweetnesses, and other unusual and absurd qualities, the humors being altered; as is plain in women with child, who eat stones and earth? Therefore skilful physicians take their prognostic of recovery or death from the appetites of the sick. For Mnesitheus the physician says that, in the beginning of a disease of the lungs, he that craves onions recovers, and he that craves figs dies; because appetites follow the temperament, and the temperament follows diseases. It is therefore probable that beasts, if they fall not into mortal diseases, have such a disposition and temper, that by following their temper they light on their remedies.
[Quaest. nat. 27] XXVII. Why does Must, if the Vessel stand in the Cold, continue long sweet?
[Quaest. nat. 27b] Is it because the changing of the sweet must into wine is concoction, but cold hinders concoction, because this is caused by heat? Or, on the contrary, is the proper taste of the grape sweet, and is it then said to be ripe, when the sweetness is equally diffused all over it; but does cold, not suffering the heat of the grape to exhale, and keeping it in, conserve the sweetness of the grape? And this is the reason that, in a rainy vintage, must ferments but little; for fermentation proceeds from heat, which the cold does check.
[Quaest. nat. 28] XXVIII. Why, of all Wild Beasts, does not the Boar bite the Toil, although both Wolves and Foxes do this?
[Quaest. nat. 28b] Is it because his teeth stand so far within his head, that he cannot well come at the thread? For his lips, by reason of their thickness and largeness, meet close before. Or does he rather rely on his paws and mouth, and with those rend the toil, and with this defend himself against the hunters? His chief refuge is rolling and wallowing; therefore, rather than stand gnawing the toil, he rolls often about, and so clears himself, having no occasion for his teeth.
[Quaest. nat. 29] XXIX. What is the Reason that we admire Hot Waters (i. e.Baths) and not Cold; since it is plain that Cold is as much the cause of one sort as Heat is of the other?
[Quaest. nat. 29b] It is not (as some are of opinion) that heat is a quality, and cold only a privation of that quality, and so that an entity is even less a cause than a non-entity. But we do it because Nature has attributed admiration to what is rare, and she puts men upon enquiry how any thing comes to pass that seldom happens. As Euripides saith,
[Quaest. nat. 29c] •Behold the boundless Heaven on high,
•Bearing the earth in his moist arms, —
[Quaest. nat. 29d] what wonders he brings out by night, and what beauty he shows forth by day! . . . The rainbow and the varied beauty of the clouds by day, and the lights which burst forth by night . . .
[Quaest. nat. 30] XXX. Why are Vines which are rank of leaves, but otherwise fruitless, said τϱαγᾶν?
[Quaest. nat. 30b] Is it because very fat goats (τϱάγοι) are less able to procreate, nay, scarce able to use coition, by reason of their fatness? Seed is the superfluity of the aliment which is allotted to the body: now, when either an animal or a plant is of a very strong constitution and grows fat, it is a sign that all the nourishment is spent within, and that there is little and base excrement, or none at all.
[Quaest. nat. 31] XXXI. Why does the Vine irrigated with Wine die, especially the very Wine made from its own Grapes?
[Quaest. nat. 31b] Is it as baldness happens to great wine-bibbers, the heat of the wine evaporating the moisture? Or, as Empedocles saith, “the putrefied water in the wood becomes wine beneath the bark,” . . . thus, when the vine is outwardly irrigated with wine, it is as fire to the vine, and destroys the nutritive faculty. Or, because wine is obstructive, it gets into the roots, stops the passages, and so hinders any moisture from coming to the plant to make it grow and thrive. Or, it may seem contrary to Nature that that should return into the vine which came out of it; for whatsover moisture comes from plants can neither nourish nor be again a part of the plant.
[Quaest. nat. 32] XXXII. Why doth the Palm alone of all trees bend Upward when a weight is laid thereupon?
[Quaest. nat. 32b] Is it that the fiery and spiritual power which it hath, being once provoked and (as it were) angered, putteth forth itself so much the more, and mounteth upward? Or is it because the weight, forcing the boughs suddenly, oppresseth and keepeth down the airy substance which they have, and driveth all of it inward; but the same afterwards, having resumed strength again, maketh head afresh, and more eagerly withstandeth the weight? Or, lastly, is it that the softer and more tender branches, not able to sustain the violence at first, so soon as the burden resteth quiet, by little and little lift up themselves, and make a show as if they rose up against it?
[Quaest. nat. 33] XXXIII. What is the Reason that Pit-water is less nutritive than either that which ariseth out of Springs or that which falleth down from Heaven?
[Quaest. nat. 33b] Is it because it is more cold, and withal hath less air in it? Or because it containeth much salt from the earth mingled therewith? — now it is well known that salt above all other things causeth leanness. Or because standing still, and not exercised with running and stirring, it getteth a certain malignant quality, which is hurtful to both plants and animals, and is the cause that it is neither well concocted nor able to feed and nourish any thing? Hence it is that all dead waters of pools are unwholesome, for that they cannot digest and despatch those harmful qualities which they borrow of the evil property of the air or of the earth.
[Quaest. nat. 34] XXXIV. Why is the West Wind held commonly to be the Swiftest, according to this Verse of Homer:
[Quaest. nat. 34b] •Let us likewise bestir our feet,
•As fast as Western winds do fleet.
[Quaest. nat. 34c] Is it not because this wind is wont to blow when the sky is very well cleansed, and the air is exceeding clear and without all clouds? — for the thickness and impurity of the air doth not a little impeach and interrupt the course of the winds. Or is it rather because the sun, striking through a cold wind with his beams, is the cause that it passeth the faster away? — for whatsoever of cold is drawn in by the force of the winds, when the same is overcome by heat, as it were its enemy, we must think, is driven and set forward further and with greater celerity.
[Quaest. nat. 35] XXXV. Why cannot Bees abide Smoke?
[Quaest. nat. 35b] Whether is it because the passages of their vital spirits are exceeding strait, and, if it chance that smoke be gotten into them and there kept in and intercepted, it is enough to stop the poor bees’ breath, — yea, and to strangle them quite? Or is not the acrimony and bitterness (think you) of the smoke in cause? — for bees are delighted with sweet things, and in very truth they have no other nourishment; and therefore no marvel if they detest and abhor smoke, as a thing for the bitterness most adverse and contrary unto them. Therefore honey-masters, when they make a smoke for to drive away bees, are wont to burn bitter herbs, as hemlock, centaury, &c.
[Quaest. nat. 36] XXXVI. Why will Bees sooner Sting those who newly before have committed Whoredom?
[Quaest. nat. 36b] Is it not because it is a creature that wonderfully delighteth in purity, cleanliness, and elegancy, and withal hath a marvellous quick sense of smelling? Because therefore such unclean dealings between man and woman are wont to leave behind much filthiness and impurity, the bees both sooner find them out and also conceive the greater hatred against them. Hereupon it is that in Theocritus the shepherd pleasantly sendeth Venus away unto Anchises to be well stung with bees for her adultery:
[Quaest. nat. 36c] •Now to mount Ida, to Anchises go,
•Where mighty oaks and cypresses do grow;
•Where hives and trees with honey sweet abound,
•And both with humming noise of bees resound.
[Quaest. nat. 36d] And Pindar saith: “Thou little creature, who honey-combs dost frame, and with thy sting hast pricked false impure Rhoecus for his lewd villanies.”
[Quaest. nat. 37] XXXVII. Why do Dogs follow after a Stone that is thrown at them and bite it, letting the Man alone who flung it?
[Quaest. nat. 37b] Is it because he can comprehend nothing by imagination nor call a thing to mind, which are gifts and virtues proper to man alone; and therefore, seeing he cannot discern the party that offered him injury, he supposeth that to be his enemy which seemeth in his eye to threaten him, and of it he goes about to be revenged? Or is it that he thinks the stone, while it runs along the ground, to be some wild beast, and according to his nature he intendeth to catch it first; but afterwards, when he seeth himself deceived and put besides his reckoning, he setteth upon the man? Or rather, doth he not hate the man and the stone both alike, but pursueth that only which is next unto him?
[Quaest. nat. 38] XXXVIII. Why at a certain time of the year do all She-wolves Whelp within the compass of twelve days?
[Quaest. nat. 38b] Antipater in his History of Animals affirms, that shewolves exclude forth their young ones about the time that mast trees shed their blossoms, for upon the taste thereof their wombs open; but if there be none of such blooms to be had, then their young die within the body and never come to light. Moreover, he saith, those countries which bring not forth oaks and mast are never troubled nor spoiled with wolves. Some attribute all this to a tale that goes of Latona; who being with child, and finding no abiding place of rest and safety by reason of Juno for the space of twelve days, went to Delos, and, being transmuted by Jupiter into a wolf, obtained at his hands that all wolves for ever after might within that time be delivered of their young.
[Quaest. nat. 39] XXXIX. How cometh it that Water, seeming White aloft, showeth to be Black in the bottom?
[Quaest. nat. 39b] Is it because depth is the mother of darkness, so that it doth dim and mar the sunbeams before they can descend so low as it? As for the uppermost superficies of the water, because it is immediately affected by the sun, it must needs receive the white brightness of the light; the which Empedocles verily approveth in these verses:
[Quaest. nat. 39c] •A river in the bottom seems
•By shade of color black;
•The like is seen in caves and holes,
•By depth, where light they lack.
[Quaest. nat. 39d] Or, since the bottom of the sea and of great rivers is often full of mud, doth it by reflection of the sunbeams represent the like color that the said mud hath? Or is it more probable that the water toward the bottom is not pure and sincere, but corrupted with an earthy quality, — as continually carrying with it somewhat of that by which it runneth and wherewith it is stirred, — and the same settling once to the bottom causeth it to be more troubled and less transparent?

## On the face which appears in the orb of the moon

[De fac. 1] 920 1 . . . These were Sulla’s words. “For it concerns my story and that is its source; but I think that I should first like to learn whether there is any need to put back for a fresh start to those opinions concerning the face of the moon which are current and on the lips of everyone. “What else would you expect us to have done,” I said, “since it was the difficulty in these opinions that drove us from our course upon those others? As people with chronic diseases when they have despaired of ordinary remedies and customary regimens turn to expiations and amulets and dreams, just so in obscure and perplexing speculations, when the ordinary and reputable and customary accounts are not persuasive, it is necessary to try those that are more out of the way and not scorn them but literally to chant over ourselves the charms of the ancients and use every means to bring the truth to test.
[De fac. 2] 2 1 Well, to begin with, you see that it is absurd to call the figure seen in the moon an affection of vision in its feebleness giving way to brilliance, a condition which we call bedazzlement. Anyone who asserts this does not observe that this phenomenon should rather have occurred in relation to the sun, since the sun lights upon us keen and violent (as Empedocles too somewhere not infelicitously renders the difference of the two:
[De fac. 2b] The sun keen-shafted and the gentle moon,
[De fac. 2c] referring in this way to her allurement and cheerfulness and harmlessness), and moreover does not explain why dull and weak eyes discern no distinction of shape in the moon but her orb for them has an even and full light, whereas those of keen and robust vision make out more precisely and distinctly the pattern of facial features and more clearly perceive the variations. In fact the contrary, I think, should have been the case if the image resulted from an affection of the eye when it is overpowered: the weaker the subject affected, the clearer should be the appearance of the image. The unevenness also entirely refutes the hypothesis, for the shadow that one sees is not continuous and confused but is not badly depicted by the words of Agesianax:
[De fac. 2d] She gleams with fire encircled, but within
Bluer than lapis show a maiden’s eye
And dainty brow, a visage manifest.
[De fac. 2e] In truth, the dark patches submerge beneath the bright ones which they encompass and confine them, being confined and curtailed by them in turn; and they are thoroughly intertwined with each other fso as to make the delineation of the figure resemble a painting. This, Aristotle, seemed to be a point not without cogency against your Clearchus also. For the man is yours, since he was an associate of the ancient Aristotle, although he did pervert many doctrines of the School.”
[De fac. 3] 3 1 Apollonides broke in and inquired what the opinion of Clearchus was. “You are the last person,” I said, “who has any right not to know a theory of which geometry is, as it were, the very hearth and home. The man, you see, asserts that what is called the face consists of mirrored likenesses, that is images of the great ocean reflected in the moon, 921 for the visual ray when reflected naturally reaches from many points objects which are not directly visible and the full moon is itself in uniformity and lustre the finest and clearest of all mirrors. Just as you think, then, that the reflection of the visual ray to the sun accounts for the appearance of the rainbow in a cloud where the moisture has become somewhat smooth and condensed, so Clearchus thought bthat the outer ocean is seen in the moon, not in the place where it is but in the place whence the visual ray has been deflected to the ocean and the reflection of the ocean to us. So Agesianax again has somewhere said:
[De fac. 3b] Or swell of ocean surging opposite
Be mirrored in a looking-glass of flame.”
[De fac. 4] 4 1 Apollonides was delighted. “What an original and absolutely novel contrivance the hypothesis is,” he said, “the work of a man of daring and culture; but how did you proceed to bring your counter-argument against it?” “In the first place,” I said, “in that, although the outer ocean is a single thing, a confluent and continuous sea, the dark spots in the moon do not appear as one but having something like isthmuses between them, the brilliance dividing and delimiting the shadow. Hence, since each part is separated and has its own boundary, the layers of light upon shadow, assuming the semblance of height and depth, have produced a very close likeness of eyes and lips. Therefore, one must assume the existence of several outer oceans separated by isthmuses and mainlands, which is absurd and false; or, if the ocean is single, it is not plausible that its reflected image be thus discontinuous. Tell me whether — for in your presence it is safer to put this as a question than as an assertion — whether it is possible, though the inhabited world has length and breadth, that every visual ray when reflected from the moon should in like manner reach the ocean, even the visual rays of those who are sailing in the great ocean itself, yes and who dwell in it as the Britons do, and that too even though the earth, as you say, does not have the relation of centre to the orbit of the moon. Well, this,” I said, “it is your business to consider; but the reflection of vision either in respect to the moon or in general is beyond your province and that of Hipparchus too. Although Hipparchus was industrious, still many find him unsatisfactory in his explanation of the nature of vision itself, which is more likely to involve a sympathetic compound and fusion than any impacts and rebounds such as those of the atoms that Epicurus invented. Moreover, Clearchus, I think, would refuse to assume with us that the moon is a body of weight and solidity instead of an ethereal and luminiferous star as you say; and such a moon ought to shatter and divert the visual ray so that reflection would be out of the question. But if anyone dismisses our objections, we shall ask how it is that the reflection of the ocean exists as a face only in the moon and is seen in none of all the many other stars, although reason requires that all or none of them should affect the visual ray in this fashion. But let us have done with this; and do you,” I said with a glance at Lucius, “recall to me what part of our position was stated first.”
[De fac. 5] 5 1 Whereat Lucius said: “Nay, lest we give the impression of flatly insulting Pharnaces by thus passing over the Stoic opinion unnoticed, do now by all means address some remark to the gentleman who, supposing the moon to be a mixture of air and gentle fire, then says that what appears to be a figure is the result of the blackening of the air as when in a calm water there runs a ripple under the surface.” “You are very nice, Lucius,” I said, “to dress up the absurdity in respectable language. Not so our comrade; but he said what is true, that they blacken the Moon’s eye defiling her with blemishes and bruises, 922 at one and the same time addressing her as Artemis and Athena and making her a mass compounded of murky air and smouldering fire neither kindling nor shining of herself, an indiscriminate kind of body, forever charred and smoking like the thunderbolts that are darkling and by the poets called lurid.
[De fac. 5b] Yet a smouldering fire, such as they suppose that of the moon to be, cannot persist or subsist at all unless it get solid fuel that shelters and at the same time nourishes it; this some philosophers, I believe, see less clearly than do those who say in jest that Hephaestus is said to be lame because fire without wood, like the lame without a stick, makes no progress. If the moon really is fire, whence came so much air in it? For the region that we see revolving above us is the place not of air but of a superior substance, the nature of which is to rarefy all things and set them afire; and, if air did come to be there, why has it not been etherealized by the fire and in this transformation disappeared but instead has been preserved as a housemate of fire this long time, as if nails had fixed it forever to the same spots and riveted it together?
[De fac. 5c] Air is tenuous and without configuration, and so it naturally slips and does not stay in place; and it cannot have become solidified if it is commingled with fire and partakes neither of moisture nor of earth by which all air can be solidified. Moreover, velocity ignites the air in stones and in cold lead, not to speak of the air enclosed in fire that is whirling about with such great speed. Why, they are vexed by Empedocles because he represents the moon to be a hail-like congelation of air encompassed by the sphere of fire; but they themselves say that the moon is a sphere of fire containing air dispersed about it here and there, and a sphere moreover that has neither clefts nor depths and hollows, such as are allowed by those who make it an earthy body, but has the air evidently resting upon its convex surface. That it should so remain is both contrary to reason and impossible to square with what is observed when the moon is full.
[De fac. 5d] On that assumption there should have been no distinction of dark and shadowy air; but all the air should become dark when occulted, or when the moon is caught by the sun it should all shine out with an even light. For with us too, while the air in the depths and hollows of the earth, wherever the sun’s rays do not penetrate, remains shadowy and unlit, that which suffuses the earth outside takes on brilliance and a luminous colour. The reason is that air, because of its subtility, is delicately attuned to every quality and influence; and, especially if it touches light or, to use your phrase, merely is tangent to it, it is altered through and through and entirely illuminated. So this same point seems right handsomely to re-enforce those who pack the air on the moon into depths of some kind and chasms, even as it utterly refutes you who make her globe an unintelligible mixture or compound of air and fire, — for it is not possible that a shadow remain upon the surface when the sun casts his light upon all of the moon that is within the compass of our vision.”
[De fac. 6] 6 1 Even while I was still speaking Pharnaces spoke: “Here we are faced again with that stock manoeuvre of the Academy: on each occasion that they engage in discourse with others they will not offer any accounting of their own assertions but must keep their interlocutors on the defensive lest they become the prosecutors. Well, me you will not to day entice into defending the Stoics against your charges until I have called you people to account for turning the universe upside down.” Thereupon Lucius laughed and said: 923”Oh sir, just don’t bring suit against us for impiety as Cleanthes thought that the Greeks ought to lay an action for impiety against Aristarchus the Samian on the ground that he was disturbing the hearth of the universe because he sought to save the phenomena by assuming that the heaven is at rest while the earth is revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time is rotating about its own axis. We express no opinion of our own now; but those who suppose that the moon is earth, why do they, my dear sir, turn things upside down any more than you do who station the earth here suspended in the air? Yet the earth is a great deal larger than the moon according to the mathematicians who during the occurrence of eclipses and the transits of the moon through the shadow calculate her magnitude by the length of time that she is obscured. For the shadow of the earth grows smaller the further it extends, because the body that cast the light is larger than the earth; and that the upper part of the shadow itself is taper and narrow was recognized, as they say, even by Homer, who called night ‘nimble’ because of the ‘sharpness’ of the shadow. Yet captured by this part in eclipses the moon barely escapes from it in a space thrice her own magnitude. Consider then how many times as large as the moon the earth is, if the earth casts a shadow which at its narrowest is thrice as broad as the moon. All the same, you fear for the moon lest it fall; whereas concerning the earth perhaps Aeschylus has persuaded you that Atlas
[De fac. 6b] Stands, staying on his back the prop of earth
And sky no tender burden to embrace.
[De fac. 6c] Or, while under the moon there stretches air unsubstantial and incapable of supporting a solid mass, the earth, as Pindar says, is encompassed by ‘steel-shod pillars’; and therefore Pharnaces is himself without any fear that the earth may fall but is sorry for the Ethiopians or Taprobanians, who are situated under the circuit of the moon, lest such a great weight fall upon them. Yet the moon is saved from falling by its very motion and the rapidity of its revolution, just as missiles placed in slings are kept from falling by being whirled around in a circle. For each thing is governed by its natural motion unless it be diverted by something else. That is why the moon is not governed by its weight: the weight has its influence frustrated by the rotatory motion. Nay, there would be more reason perhaps to wonder if she were absolutely unmoved and stationary like the earth. As it is, while the moon has good cause for not moving in this direction, the influence of weight alone might reasonably move the earth, since it has no part in any other motion; and the earth is heavier than the moon not merely in proportion to its greater size but still more, inasmuch as the moon has, of course, become light through the action of heat and fire. In short, your own statements seem to make the moon, if it is fire, stand in greater need of earth, that is of matter to serve it as a foundation, as something to which to adhere, as something to lend it coherence, and as something that can be ignited by it, for it is impossible to imagine fire being maintained without fuel, but you people say that earth does abide without root or foundation.” “Certainly it does,” said Pharnaces, “in occupying the proper and natural place that belongs to it, the middle, for this is the place about which all weights in their natural inclination press against one another and towards which they move and converge from every direction, whereas all the upper space, even if it receive something earthy which has been forcibly hurled up into it, straightway extrudes it into our region or rather lets it go where its proper inclination causes it naturally to descend.”
[De fac. 7] 7 1 At this — for I wished Lucius to have time to collect his thoughts — I called to Theon. “Which of the tragic poets was it, Theon,” I asked, “who said that physicians
[De fac. 7b] With bitter drugs the bitter bile purge?”
[De fac. 7c] Theon replied that it was Sophocles. “Yes,” I said, “and we have of necessity to allow them this procedure; but to philosophers one should not listen if they desire to repulse paradoxes with paradoxes and in struggling against opinions that are amazing fabricate others that are more amazing and outlandish, as these people do in introducing their ‘motion to the centre.’ What paradox is not involved in this doctrine? Not the one that the earth is a sphere although it contains such great depths and heights and irregularities? Not that people live on the opposite hemisphere clinging to the earth like wood-worms or geckos turned bottomside up? — and that we ourselves in standing remain not at right angles to the earth but at an oblique angle, leaning from the perpendicular like drunken men? Not that incandescent masses of forty tons falling through the depth of the earth stop when they arrive at the centre, though nothing encounter or support them; and, if in their downward motion the impetus should carry them past the centre, they swing back again and return of themselves? Not that pieces of meteors burnt out on either side of the earth do not move downwards continually but falling upon the surface of the earth force their way into it from the outside and conceal themselves about the centre? Not that a turbulent stream of water, if in flowing downwards should reach the middle point, which they themselves call incorporeal, stops suspended or moves round about it, oscillating in an incessant and perpetual see-saw? Some of these a man could not even mistakenly force himself to conceive as possible. For this amounts to ‘upside down’ and ‘all things topsy-turvy,’ everything as far as the centre being ‘down’ and everything under the centre in turn being ‘up.’ The result is that, if a man should so coalesce with the earth that its centre is at his navel, the same person at the same time has his head up and his feet up too. Moreover, if he dig through the further side, his bottom in emerging is up, and the man digging himself ‘up’ is pulling himself ‘down’ from ‘above’; and, if someone should then be imagined to have gone in the opposite direction to this man, the feet of both of them at the same time turn out to be ‘up’ and are so called.
[De fac. 8] 8 1 Nevertheless, though of tall tales of such a kind and number they have shouldered and lugged in — not a wallet-full, by heaven, but some juggler’s pack and hotchpotch, still they say that others are playing the buffoon by placing the moon, though it is earth, on high and not where the centre is. Yet if all heavy body converges to the same point and is compressed in all its parts upon its own centre, it is no more as centre of the sum of things than as a whole that the earth would appropriate to herself the heavy bodies that are parts of herself; and the downward tendency of falling bodies proves not that the earth is in the centre of the cosmos but that those bodies which when thrust away from the earth fall back to her again have some affinity and cohesion with her. For as the sun attracts to itself the parts of which it consists so the earth too accepts as her own the stone that has properly a downward tendency, and consequently every such thing ultimately unites and coheres with her. If there is a body, however, that was not originally allotted to the earth or detached from it but has somewhat independently a constitution and nature of its own, as those men would say of the moon, what is to hinder it from being permanently separate in its own place, compressed and bound together by its own parts? For it has not been proved that the earth is the centre of the sum of things, and the way in which things in our region press together and concentrate upon the earth suggests how in all probability things in that region converge upon the moon and remain there. The man who drives together into a single region all earthy and heavy things and makes them part of a single body — I do not see for what reason he does not apply the same compulsion to light objects in their turn but allows so many separate concentrations of fire and, since he does not collect all the stars together, clearly does not think that there must also be a body common to all things that are fiery and have an upward tendency.
[De fac. 9] 9 1 Now,” said I, “my dear Apollonides, you mathematicians say that the sun is an immense distance from the upper circumference and that above the sun Venus and Mercury and the other planets revolved lower than the fixed stars and at great intervals from one another; but you think that in the cosmos there is provided no scope and extension for heavy and earthy objects. You see that it is ridiculous for us to deny that the moon is earth because she stands apart from the nether region and yet to call her a star although we see her removed so many thousands of miles from the upper circumference as if plunged into a pit. So far beneath the stars is she that the distance cannot be expressed, but you mathematicians in trying to calculate it run short of numbers; she practically grazes the earth and revolving close to it
[De fac. 9b] Whirls like a chariot’s axle-box about,
Empedocles says,
That skims the post in passing.
[De fac. 9c] Frequently she does not even surmount the earth’s shadow, though it extends but a little way because the illuminating body is very large; but she seems to revolve so close, almost within arm’s reach of the earth, as to be screened by it from the sun unless she rises above this shadowy, terrestrial, and nocturnal place which is the earth’s estate. Therefore we must boldly declare, I think, that the moon is within the confines of the earth inasmuch as she is occulted by its extremities.
[De fac. 10] 10 1 Dismiss the fixed stars and the other planets and consider the demonstrations of Aristarchus in his treatise, On Sizes and Distances, that ‘the distance of the sun is more than 18 times and less than 20 times the distance of the moon,’ that is its distance from us. According to the highest estimate, however, the moon’s distance from us is said to be 56 times the radius of the earth. Even according to the mean calculations this radius is 40,000 stades; and, if we reckon from this, the sun is more than 40,300,000 stades distant from the moon. She has migrated so far from the sun on account of her weight and has moved so close to the earth that, if properties are to be determined by locations, the lot, I mean the position, of earth lays an action against the moon and she is legally assignable by right of propinquity and kinship to the chattels real and personal of earth. We do not err at all, I think, if granting such altitude and extension to the things called ‘upper’ we leave what is ‘down below’ also some room to move about in and so much latitude as there is from earth to moon. For as he is immoderate who calls only the outermost surface of the heaven ‘up’ and all else ‘down,’ so is he intolerable who restricts ‘down’ to the earth or rather to the centre; but both there and here some extension must be granted since the magnitude of the universe permits it. The claim that everything away from the earth is ipso facto ‘up’ and ‘on high’ is answered by a counter-claim that what is away from the circuit of the fixed stars is ipso facto ‘down.’
[De fac. 11] 11 After all, in what sense is earth situated in the middle and in the middle of what? The sum of things is infinite; and the infinite, having neither beginning nor limit, cannot properly have a middle, for the middle is a kind of limit too but infinity is a negation of limits. He who asserts that the earth is in the middle not of the sum of things but of the cosmos is naïve if he supposes that the cosmos itself is not also involved in the same difficulties. In fact, in the sum of things no middle has been left for the cosmos either, but it is without hearth and habitation, moving in infinite void to nothing of its own; or, if it has come to rest because it has found some other reason for abiding, not because of the nature of its location, similar inferences are permissible in the cases of both earth and moon, that the former is stationary here and the latter is in motion there by reason of a different soul or nature rather than a difference of location. Besides this, consider whether they have not overlooked an important point. If anything in any way at all off the centre of the earth is ‘up,’ no part of the cosmos is ‘down’; but it turns out that the earth and the things on the earth and absolutely all body surrounding or enclosing the centre are ‘up’ and only one thing is ‘down,’ that incorporeal point which must be in opposition to the entire nature of the cosmos, if in fact ‘down’ and ‘up’ are natural opposites. This, moreover, does not exhaust the absurdity. The cause of the descent of heavy objects and of their motion to this region is also abolished, for there is no body that is ‘down’ towards which they are in motion and it is neither likely nor in accordance with the intention of these men that the incorporeal should have so much influence as to attract all these objects and keep them together around itself. On the contrary, it proves to be entirely unreasonable and inconsistent with the facts for the whole cosmos to be ‘up’ and nothing but an incorporeal and unextended limit to be ‘down’; but that statement of ours is reasonable, that ample space and broad has been divided between ‘up’ and ‘down.’
[De fac. 12] 12 1 All the same, let us assume, if you please, that the motions of earthy objects in the heaven are contrary to nature; and then let us calmly observe without any histrionics and quite dispassionately that this indicates not that the moon is not earth but that she is earth in an ‘unnatural’ location. For the fire of Aetna too is below earth ‘unnaturally,’ but it is fire; and the air confined in skins, though by nature it is light and has an upward tendency, has been constrained to occupy an ‘unnatural’ location. As to the soul herself,” I said, “by Zeus, is her confinement in body not contrary to nature, swift as she is and fiery, as you say, and invisible in a sluggish, cold, and sensible vehicle? Shall we then on this account deny that there is a soul in body or that mind, a divine thing, though it traverses instantaneously in its flight all heaven and earth and sea, has passed into flesh and sinew and marrow under the influence of weight and density and countless qualities that attend liquefaction? This Zeus of yours too, is it not true that, while in his own nature he is single, a great and continuous fire, at present he is slackened and subdued and transformed, having become and continuing to become everything in the course of his mutations? So look out and reflect, good sir, lest in rearranging and removing each thing to its ‘natural’ location you contrive a dissolution of the cosmos and bring upon things the ‘Strife’ of Empedocles — or rather lest you arouse against nature the ancient Titans and Giants and long to look upon that legendary and dreadful disorder and discord when you have separated all that is heavy and all that is light.
[De fac. 12b] The sun’s bright aspect is not there descried, No, nor the shaggy might of earth, nor sea
[De fac. 12c] as Empedocles says. Earth had no part in heat, water no part in air; there was not anything heavy above or anything light below; but the principles of all things were untempered and unamiable and solitary, not accepting combination or association with one another, but avoiding and shunning one another and moving with their own peculiar and arbitrary motions they were in the state in which, according to Plato, everything is from which God is absent, that is to say in which bodies are when mind or soul is wanting. So they were until desire came over nature providentially, for Affection arose or Aphrodite or Eros, as Empedocles says and Parmenides and Hesiod, in order that by changing position and interchanging functions and by being constrained some to motion and some to rest and compelled to give way and shift from the ‘natural’ to the ‘better’ the bodies might produce a universal concord and community.
[De fac. 13] 13 1 If not a single one of the parts of the cosmos ever got into an ‘unnatural’ condition but each one is ‘naturally’ situated, requiring no transposition or rearrangement and having required none in the beginning either, I cannot make out what use there is of providence or of what Zeus, ‘the master-craftsman’ is maker and father-creator. In an army, certainly, tacticians are useless if each one of the soldiers should know of himself his post and position and the moment when he must take and keep them. Gardeners and builders are useless too if here water all of itself ‘naturally’ moves to the things that require it and irrigates them with its stream, and there bricks and timbers and stones by following their ‘natural’ inclinations and tendencies assume of themselves their appropriate position and arrangement. If, however, this notion eliminates providence forthwith and if the arrangement of existing things pertains to God and the distributing of them too, what wonder is there that nature has been so marshalled and disposed that here in our region there is fire but the stars are yonder and again that earth is here but the moon is established on high, held fast by the bonds of reason which are firmer than the bonds of nature? For, if all things really must follow their ‘natural’ inclinations and move with their ‘natural’ motions, you must order the sun not to revolve and Venus too and every other star as well, for light and fiery bodies move ‘naturally’ upwards and not in a circle. If, however, nature includes such variation in accordance with location that fire, though it is seen to move upwards here, as soon as it has reached the heavens revolves along with their rotation, what wonder is there that the same thing has happened to heavy and earthy bodies that have got there and that they too have been reduced by the environment to a different kind of motion? For it certainly cannot be that heaven ‘naturally’ deprives light objects of their upward motion but is unable to master objects that are heavy and have a downward inclination; on the contrary, by whatever influence it rearranged the former it rearranged the latter too and employed the nature of both of them for the better.
[De fac. 14] 14 1 What is more, if we are finally to throw off the habits and opinions that have held our minds in thrall and fearlessly to say what really appears to be the case, no part of a whole all by itself seems to have any order, position, or motion of its own which could be called unconditionally ‘natural.’ On the contrary, each and every such part, whenever its motion is usefully and properly accommodated to that for the sake of which the part has come to be and which is the purpose of its growth or production, and whenever it acts or is affected or disposed so that it contributes to the preservation or beauty or function of that thing, then, I believe, it has its ‘natural’ position and motion and disposition. In man, at any rate, who is the result of ‘natural’ process if any being is, the heavy and earthy parts are above, chiefly in the region of the head, and the hot and fiery parts are in the middle regions; some of the teeth grow from above and some from below, and neither set is ‘contrary to nature’; and it cannot be said that the fire which flashes in the eyes above is ‘natural’ whereas that in the bowels and heart is ‘contrary to nature,’ but each has been assigned its proper and useful station. Observe, as Empedocles says, the nature of
[De fac. 14b] Tritons and tortoises with hides of stone
and of all testaceans,
Thou’lt see earth there established over flesh;
[De fac. 14c] and the stony matter does not oppress or crush the constitution on which it is superimposed, nor on the other hand does the heat by reason of lightness fly off to the upper region and escape, but they have been somehow intermingled and organically combined in accordance with the nature of each.
[De fac. 15] 15 1 Such is probably the case with the cosmos too, if it really is a living being: in many places it has earth and in many fire and water and breath as the result not of forcible expulsion but of rational arrangement. After all, the eye has its present position in the body not because it was extruded thither as a result of its lightness, and the heart is in the chest not because its heaviness has caused it to slip and fall thither but because it was better that each of them should be so located. Let us not then believe with regard to the parts of the cosmos that earth is situated here because its weight has caused it to subside or that the sun, as Metrodorus of Chios once thought, was extruded into the upper region like an inflated skin by reason of its lightness or that the other stars got into their present positions because they tipped the balance, as it were, at different weights. On the contrary, the rational principle is in control; and that is why the stars revolve fixed like ‘radiant eyes’ in the countenance of the universe, the sun in the heart’s capacity transmits and disperses out of himself heat and light as if it were blood and breath, and earth and sea ‘naturally’ serve the cosmos to the ends that bowels and bladder do an animal. The moon, situate between sun and earth as the liver or another of the soft viscera is between heart and bowels, transmits hither the warmth from above and sends upwards the exhalations from our region, refining them in herself by a kind of concoction and purification. It is not clear to us whether her earthiness and solidity have any use suitable to other ends also. Nevertheless, in everything the better has control of the necessary. Well, what probability can we thus conceive in the statements of the Stoics? They say that the luminous and tenuous part of the ether by reason of its subtility became sky and the part which was condensed or compressed became stars, and that of these the most sluggish and turbid is the moon. Yet all the same anyone can see that the moon has not been separated from the ether but that there is still a large amount of it about her in which she moves and much of it beneath her in which they themselves as that the bearded stars and comets whirl. So it is not the inclinations consequent upon weight and lightness that have circumscribed the precincts of each of the bodies, but their arrangement is the result of a different principle.”
[De fac. 16] 16 1 With these remarks I was about to yield the floor to Lucius, since the proofs of our position were next in order; but Aristotle smiled and said: “The company is my witness that you have directed your entire refutation against those who suppose that the moon is for her part semi-igneous and yet assert of all bodies in common that of themselves they incline either upwards or downwards. Whether there is anyone, however, who says that the stars move naturally in a circle and are of a substance far superior to the four substances here did not even accidentally come to your notice, so that I at any rate have been spared trouble.” And Lucius broke in and said” “. . . good friend, probably one would not for the moment quarrel with you and your friends, dispute the countless difficulties involved, when you ascribe to the other stars and the whole heaven a nature pure and undefiled and free from qualitative change and moving in a circle whereby it is possible to have the nature of endless revolution too; but let this doctrine descend and touch the moon, and in her it no longer preserves the impassivity and beauty of that body. Not to mention her other irregularities and divergencies, this very face which she displays is the result of some alteration of her substance or of the admixture somehow of another substance. That which is subjected to mixture, however, is the subject of some affection too, for it loses its purity, since it is perforce infected by what is inferior to it. The moon’s sluggishness and slackness of speed and the feebleness and faintness of her heat which, in the words of Ion,
[De fac. 16b] ripes not the grape to duskiness,
[De fac. 16c] to what shall we ascribe them except to her weakness and alteration, if an eternal and celestial body can have any part in alteration? The fact is in brief, my dear Aristotle, that regarded as earth the moon has the aspect of a very beautiful, august, and elegant object; but as a star or luminary or a divine and heavenly object she is, I am afraid, misshapen, ugly, and a disgrace to the noble title, if it is true that of all the host in heaven she alone goes about in need of alien light, as Parmenides says
[De fac. 16d] Fixing her glance forever on the sun.
[De fac. 16e] Our comrade in his discourse won approval by his demonstration of this very proposition of Anaxagoras’s that ‘the sun imparts to the moon her brilliance’; for my part, I shall not speak about these matters that I learned from you or in your company but gladly proceed to what remains. Well then, it is plausible that the moon is illuminated not by the sun’s irradiating and shining through her in the manner of glass or ice nor again as the result of some sort of concentration of brilliance or aggregation of rays, the light increasing as in the case of torches. Were that true, we should see the moon at the full on the first of the month no less than in the middle of the month, if she does not conceal and obstruct the sun but because of her subtility let his light through or as a result of combining with it flashes forth and joins in kindling the light in herself. Certainly her deviations or aversions cannot be alleged as the cause of her invisibility when she is in conjunction, as they are when she is at the half and gibbous or crescent; then, rather, ‘standing in a straight line with her illuminant,’ says Democritus, ‘she sustains and receives the sun,’ so that it would be reasonable for her to be visible and to let him shine thru. Far from doing this, however, she is at that time invisible herself and often has concealed and obliterated him
[De fac. 16f] His beams she put to flight,
as Empedocles says,
From heaven above as far as to the earth,
Whereof such breadth as had the bright-eyed moon
She cast in shade,
[De fac. 16g] just as if the light had fallen into night and darkness and not upon another star. As for the explanation of Posidonius that the profundity of the moon prevents the light of the sun from passing through her to us, this is obviously refuted by the fact that the air, though it is boundless and has many times the profundity of the moon, is in its entirety illumined and filled with sunshine by the rays. There remains then the theory of Empedocles that the moonlight which we see comes from the moon’s reflection of the sun. That is why there is neither warmth nor brilliance in it when it reaches us, as we should expect there to be if there had been a kindling or mixture of the lights of sun and moon. To the contrary, just as voices when they are reflected produce an echo which is fainter than the original sound and the impact of missiles after a ricochet is weaker,
[De fac. 16h] Thus, having struck the moon’s broad disk, the ray
[De fac. 16i] comes to us in a refluence weak and faint because the deflection slackens its force.”
[De fac. 17] 17 1 Sulla then broke in and said: “No doubt this position has its plausible aspects; but what tells most strongly on the other side, did our comrade explain that away or did he fail to notice it?” “What’s that?” said Lucius, “or do you mean the difficulty with respect to the half-moon?” “Exactly,” said Sulla, “for there is some reason in the contention that, since all reflection occurs at equal angles, whenever the moon at the half is in mid-heaven the light cannot move earthwards from her but must glance off beyond the earth. The ray that then touches the moon comes from the sun on the horizon and therefore, being reflected at equal angles, would be produced to the point on the opposite horizon and would not shed its light upon us, or else there would be great distortion and aberration of the angle, which is opposite.” “Yes, by Heaven,” said Lucius, “there was talk of this too”; and, looking at Menelaus the mathematician as he spoke, he said: “In your presence, my dear Menelaus, I am ashamed to confute a mathematical proposition, the foundation, as it were, on which rests the subject of catoptrics.
[De fac. 17b] Yet it must be said that the proposition, ‘all reflection occurs at equal angles,’ is neither self-evident nor an admitted fact. It is refuted in the case of convex mirrors when the point of incidence of the visual ray produces images that are magnified in one respect; and it is refuted by folding mirrors, either plane of which, when they have been inclined to each other and have formed an inner angle, exhibits a double image, so that four likenesses of a single object are produced, two reversed on the outer surfaces and two dim ones not reversed in the depth of the mirrors. The reason for the production of these images Plato explains, for he has said that when the mirror is elevated on both sides the visual rays interchange their reflection because they shift from one side to the other. So, if of the visual rays some revert straight to us from the plane surfaces while others glance off to the opposite sides of the mirrors and thence return to us again, it is not possible that all reflections occur at equal angles.
[De fac. 17c] Consequently some people take direct issue with the mathematicians and maintain that they confute the equality of the angles of incidence and reflection by the very streams of light that flow from the moon upon the earth, for they deem this fact to be much more credible than that theory. Nevertheless, suppose that this must be conceded as a favour to geometry, the dearly beloved! In the first place, it is likely of the occur only in mirrors that have been polished to exact smoothness; but the moon is very uneven and rugged, with the result that the rays from a large body striking against considerable heights which receive reflections and diffusions of light from one another are multifariously reflected and intertwined and the refulgence itself combines with itself, coming to us, as it were, from many mirrors. In the second place, even if we assume that the reflections on the surface of the moon occur at equal angles, it is not impossible that the rays as they travel through such a great interval get fractured and deflected so as to be blurred and to bend their light. Some people even give a geometrical demonstration that the moon sheds many of her beams upon the earth along a line extended from the surface that is bent away from us; but I could not construct a geometrical diagram while talking, and talking to many people too.
[De fac. 18] 18 1 Speaking generally,” he said, “I marvel that they adduce against us the moon’s shining upon the earth at the half and at the gibbous and the crescent phases too. After all, if the mass of the moon that is illumined by the sun were ethereal or fiery, the sun would not leave her a hemisphere that to our perception is ever in shadow and unilluminated; on the contrary, if as he revolves he grazed her ever so slightly, she should be saturated in her entirety and altered through and through by the light proceeding easily in all directions. Since wine that just touches water at its surface or a drop of blood fallen into liquid at the moment of contact stains all the liquid red, and since they say that the air itself is filled with sunshine not by having any effluences or rays commingled with it but by an alteration and change that results from impact or contact of the light, how do they imagine that a star can come in contact with a star or light with light and instead of blending and producing a thorough mixture and change merely illumine those portions of the surface which it touches?
[De fac. 18b] In fact, the circle which the sun in its revolution describes and causes to turn about the moon now coinciding with the circle that divides her visible and invisible parts and now standing at right angles to it so as to intersect it and be intersected by it, by different inclinations and relations of the bright part to the dark producing in her the gibbous and crescent phases, conclusively demonstrates that her illumination is the result not of combination but of contact, not of a concentration of light within her but of light shining upon her from without. In that she is not only illumined herself, however, but also transmits to us the semblance of her illumination, she gives us all the more confidence in our theory of her substance. There are no reflections from anything rarefied or tenuous in texture, and it is not easy even to imagine light rebounding from light or fire from fire; but whatever is to cause a repercussion or a reflection must be compact and solid, in order that it may stop a blow and repel it.
[De fac. 18c] At any rate, the same sunlight that the air lets pass without impediment or resistance is widely reflected and diffused from wood and stone and clothing exposed to its rays. The earth too we see illumined by the sun in this fashion. It does not let the light penetrate its depths as water does or pervade it through and through as air does; but such as is the circle of the sun that moves around the moon and so great as is the part of her that it intercepts, just such a circle in turn moves around the earth, always illuminating just so much and leaving another part unlimited, for the illumined portion of either body appears to be slightly greater than a hemisphere. Give me leave then to put it in geometrical fashion in terms of a proportion. Given three things approached by the light from the sun: earth, moon, air; if we see that the moon is illumined not as the air is rather than as the earth, the things upon which the same agent produces the same effects must be of a similar nature.”
[De fac. 19] 19 1 When all had applauded Lucius, I said: “Congratulations upon having added to an elegant account an elegant proportion, for you must not be defrauded of what belongs to you.” He smiled thereat and said: “Well then proportion must be used a second time, in order that we may prove the moon to be like the earth not only because the effects of the same agent are the same on both but also because the effects of have on the same patient are the same. Now, grant me that nothing that happens to the sun is so like its setting as a solar eclipse. You will if you call to mind this conjunction recently which, beginning just after noonday, made many stars shine out from my parts of the sky and tempered the air in the manner of twilight. If you do not recall it, Theon here will cite us Mimnermus and Cydias and Archilochus and Stesichorus besides and Pindar, who during eclipses bewail ‘the brightest star bereft’ and ‘at midday falling’ and say that the beam of the sun ‘is sped the path of shade’; and to crown all he will cite Homer, who says ‘the faces of men are covered with night and gloom’ and ‘the sun has perished out of heaven’ speaking with reference to the moon and hinting that this naturally occurs
[De fac. 19b] When waning month to waxing month gives way.
[De fac. 19c] For the rest, I think that it has been reduced by the precision of mathematics to the clear and certain formula that night is the shadow of earth and the eclipse of the sun is the shadow of the moon whenever the visual ray encounters it. The fact is that in setting the sun is screened from our vision by the earth and in eclipse by the moon; but are cases of occultation, but the vespertine is occultation by the earth and the ecliptic by the moon with her shadow intercepting the visual ray. What follows from this is easy to perceive. If the effect is similar, the agents are similar, for it must be the same agents that cause the same things to happen to the same subject. Nor should we marvel if the darkness of eclipses is not so deep or so oppressive of the air as night is. The reason is that the body which produces night and that which produces the eclipse while the same in substance are not equal in size. In fact the Egyptians, I think, say that the moon is one seventy-second part (of the earth), and Anaxagoras that it is the size of the Peloponnesus; and Aristarchus demonstrates that the ratio of the earth’s diameter to the diameter of the moon is smaller than 60 to 19 and greater than 108 to 43. Consequently the earth because of its size removes the sun from sight entirely, for the obstruction is large and its duration is that of the night. even if the moon, however, does sometimes cover the sun entirely, the eclipse does not have duration or extension; but a kind of light is visible about the rim which keeps the shadow from being profound and absolute. The ancient Aristotle gives this as a reason besides some others why the moon is observed in eclipse more frequently than the sun, saying that the sun is eclipse by interposition of the moon but the moon by that of the earth, which is much larger. Posidonius gave this definition: ‘The following condition is an eclipse of the sun, conjunction of the moon’s shadow with whatever parts of the earth it may obscure, for there is an eclipse only for those whose visual ray the shadow of the moon intercepts and screens from the sun’; — since he concedes then that a shadow of the moon falls upon us, he has left himself nothing to say that I can see. Of a star there can be no shadow, for shadow means the unlighted and light does not produce shadow but naturally destroys it.
[De fac. 20] 20 1 Well now,” he said, “which of the proofs came for this?” And I replied, “That the moon is subject to the same eclipse.” “Thank you,” he said, “for reminding me; but now shall I assume that you have been persuaded and do hold the moon to be eclipsed by being caught in the shadow and so turn straightway to my argument, or do you prefer that I give you a lecture and demonstration in which each of the arguments is enumerated?” “By heaven,” said Theon, “do give these gentlemen a lecture. As for me, I want some persuasion as well, since I have only heard it put this way: when the three body, earth and sun and moon, get into a straight line, eclipses take place because the earth deprives the moon or the moon, on the other hand, deprives the earth of the sun, the sun being eclipsed when the moon and the moon when the earth takes the middle position of the three, the former of which cases occurs at conjunction and the latter at the middle of the month.” Whereupon Lucius said, “Those soldier roughly the main points, though, of what is said on the subject.
[De fac. 20b] Add thereto first, if you will, the argument from the shape of the shadow. It is a cone, as is natural when a large fire or light that is spherical circumfuses a smaller but spherical mass. This is the reason why in eclipses of the moon the darkened parts are outlined against the bright in segments that are curved, for whenever two round bodies come into contact the lines by which either intersects the other turn out to be circular since they have everywhere a uniform tendency. Secondly, I think that you are aware that of the moon the eastward parts are first eclipsed and of the sun the westward parts and that, while the shadow of the earth moves from east to west, the sun and the moon move contrariwise towards the east. This is made visible to sense-perception by the phenomena and needs no very lengthy explanations to be understood, and these Philadelphia confirm the cause of the eclipse.
[De fac. 20c] Since the sun is eclipsed by being overtaken and the moon by encountering that which produces the eclipse, it is reasonable or rather it is necessary that the sun be caught first from behead and the moon from the front, for the obstruction begins from that point which the intercepting body first assails. The sun is assailed from the west by the moon that is striving after him, and she is assailed from the east by the earth’s shadow that is sweeping down as it were in the opposite direction. Thirdly, moreover, consider the matter of the duration and the magnitude of lunar eclipses. If the moon is eclipsed when she is high and far from the earth, she is concealed for a little time; but, if the survey thing happens to her when she is low and near the earth, se is strongly curbed and is slow to get out of the shadow, although when she is low her exertions of motion are greatest and when she is high they are least.
[De fac. 20d] The reason for the difference lies in the shadow, which being broadest at the base, as cones are, and gradually contracting terminates at the vertex in a sharp and fine tip. Consequently the moon, if she has met the shadow when she is low, is involved by it in its largest circles and traverses its deep and darkest part; but above as it were in shallow water by reason of the fineness of the shadow she is just grazed and quickly gets clean away. I pass over all that was said besides with particular reference to the phases and variations, for these too, in so far as is possible, admit the cause alleged; and instead I revert to the argument before us which has its basis in the evidence of the senses. We see that from a shadowy place fire glows and shines forth more intensely, whether because the dark air being dense does not admit its effluences and diffusions but confines and concentrates the substance in a single place or because this is an affection of our senses that as hot things appear to be hotter in comparison with cold and pleasures more intense in comparison with pains so bright things appear conspicuous when compared with dark, their appearance being intensified by contrast to the different impressions.
[De fac. 20e] The former explanation seems to be the more plausible, for in sunlight fire of every kind not only loses its brilliance but by giving way becomes ineffective and less keen, the reason being that the heat of the sun disperses and dissipates its potency. If, then, as the Stoics themselves assert, the moon, being a rather turbid star, has a faint and feeble fire of her own, she ought to have none of the things happen to her that now obviously do but the very opposite; she ought to be revealed when she is hidden and hidden whenever she is now revealed, that is hidden all the rest of the time when she is bedimmed by the circumambient ether but shining forth and becoming brilliantly clear at intervals of six months or again at intervals of five when she sinks under the shadow of the earth, since of 465 ecliptic full moons 404 occur in cycles of six months and the rest in cycles of five months.
[De fac. 20f] It ought to have been at such intervals of time then that the moon is revealed resplendent in the shadow, whereas in the shadow she is eclipsed and loses her light but regains it again as soon as she escapes the shadow and is revealed often even by day, which implies that she is anything but a fiery and star-like body.”
[De fac. 21] 21 1 When Lucius said this, almost while he was speaking Pharnaces and Apollonides sprang forth together. Then, Apollonides having yielded, Pharnaces said that this very point above all proves the moon to be a star or fire, since she is not entirely invisible in her eclipses but displays a colour smouldering and grim which is peculiar to her. Apollonides raised an objection concerning the “shadow” on the ground that the scientists always give this name to the region that is without light and the heaven does not admit shadow. “This,” I said, “is the objection of one who speaks captiously to the name rather than like a natural scientist and mathematician to the fact. If one refuses to call the region screened by the earth ‘shadow’ and insists upon calling it ‘lightless space,’ nevertheless when the moon gets into it she must be obscured since she is deprived of the solar light. Speaking generally too, it is silly,” I said, “to deny that the shadow of the earth reaches that point from which on its part the shadow of the moon by impinging upon the sight and extending to the earth produces an eclipse of the sun. Now I shall turn to you, Pharnaces. That smouldering and glowing colour of the moon which you say is peculiar to her is characteristic of a body that is compact and a solid, for no remnant or trace of flame will remain in tenuous things nor is incandescence possible unless there is a hard body that has been ignited through and through and sustains the ignition. So Homer too has somewhere said:
[De fac. 21b] But when fire’s bloom had flown and flame had ceased
He smoothed the embers. . . .
[De fac. 21c] The reason probably is that what is igneous is not fire but body that has been ignited and subjected to the action of fire, which adheres to a solid and stable mass and continues to occupy itself with it, whereas flames are the kindling and flux of tenuous nourishment or matter which because of its feebleness is swiftly dissolved. Consequently there would be no other proof of the moon’s earthy and compact nature so manifest as the smouldering colour, if it really were her own. But it is not so, my dear Pharnaces, for as she is eclipsed she exhibits many changes of colour which scientists have distinguished as follows, delimiting them according to time or hour. If the eclipse occurs between eventide and half after the third hour, she appears terribly black; if at midnight, then she gives of this reddish and fiery colour; from half after the seventh hour a blush arises on her face; and finally, if she is eclipsed when the dawn is already near, she takes on a bluish or azure hue, from which especially it is that the poets and Empedocles give her the epithet ‘bright-eyed.’ Now, when one sees the moon take on so many hues in the shadow, it is a mistake to settle upon the smouldering colour alone, the very one that might especially be called alien to her and rather an admixture or remnant of the light shining round about through the shadow, while the black or earthy colour could be called her own.
[De fac. 21d] Since here on earth places near lakes and rivers open to the sun take on the colour and brilliance of the purple and red awnings that shade them, by reason of the reflections giving off many various effulgences, what wonder if a great flood of shade debouching as it were into a heavenly sea of light, not calm or at rest but undergoing all sorts of combinations and alterations as it is churned about by countless stars, takes from the moon at different times the stain of different hues and presents them to our sight? A star or fire could not in shadow shine out black or glaucous or bluish; but over mountains, plains, and sea flit many kinds of colours from the sun, and blended with the shadows and mists his brilliance induces such tints as brilliance does when blended with a painter’s pigments. Those of the sea Homer has endeavoured somehow or other to designate, using the terms ‘violet’ and ‘wine-dark deep’ and again ‘purple swell’ and elsewhere ‘glaucous sea’ and ‘white calm’; but he passed over as being an endless multitude the variations of the colours that appear differently at different times about the land.
[De fac. 21e] It is likely, however, that the moon has not a single plane surface like the sea but closely resembles in constitution the earth that the ancient Socrates made the subject of a myth, whether he really was speaking in riddles about this earth or was giving a description of some other. It is in fact not incredible or wonderful that the moon, if she has nothing corrupted or slimy in her but garners pure light from heaven and is filled with width, which is fire not glowing or raging but moist and harmless and in its natural state, has got open regions of marvellous beauty and mountains flaming bright and has zones of royal purple with gold and silver not scattered in her depths but bursting forth in abundance on the plains or openly visible on the smooth heights. If through the shadow there comes to us a glimpse of these, different at different times because of some variation and difference of the atmosphere, the honourable repute of the moon is surely not impaired nor is her divinity because she is held by men to be a celestial and holy earth rather than, as the Stoics say, a fire turbid and dreggish.
[De fac. 21f] Fire, to be sure, is given barbaric honours among the Medes and Assyrians, who from fear by way of propitiation worship the maleficent rather than the reverend; but to every Greek, of course, the name of earth is dear and honourable, and it is our ancestral tradition to revere her like any other god. As men we are far from thinking that the moon, because she is a celestial earth, is a body without soul and mind and without share in the first-fruits that it beseems us to offer to the gods according to custom requiting them for the goods we have received and naturally revering what is better and more honourable in virtue and power. Consequently let us not think it an offence to suppose that she is earth and that for this which appears to be her face, just as our earth has certain great gulfs, so that earth yawns with great depths and clefts which contain water or murky air; the interior of these the light of the sun does not plumb or even touch, but it fails and the reflection which it sends back here is discontinuous.”
[De fac. 22] 22 1 Here Apollonides broke in. “Then by the moon herself,” he said, “do you people think it possible that any clefts and chasms cast shadows which from the moon reach our sight here’ or do you not reckon the consequence and shall I tell you what it is? Please listen then, though it is not anything unknown to you. The diameter of the moon measures twelve digits in apparent size at her mean distance; and each of the black and shadowy spots appears greater than half a digit and consequently would be greater than one twenty-fourth of her diameter. Well then, if we should suppose that the circumference of the moon is only thirty thousand stades and her diameter ten thousand each of the shadowy spots on her would in accordance with the assumption measure not less than five hundred stades. Consider now in the first place whether it is possible for the moon to have depths and corrugations so great as to cast such a large shadow; in the second place why, if they are of such great magnitude, we do not see them.” Then I said to him with a smile: “Congratulations for having discovered such a demonstration, Apollonides. It would enable you to prove that both you and I are taller than the famous sons of Aloeus, not at every time of day to be sure but early in the morning particularly and in late afternoon if, when the sun makes our shadows enormous, you intend to supply sensation with this lovely reasoning that, if the shadow cast is large, what casts the shadow is immense. I am well aware that neither of us has been in Lemnos; we have both, however, often heard this line that is on everyone’s lips:
[De fac. 22b] Athos will veil the Lemnian heifer’s flank.
[De fac. 22c] The point of this apparently is that the shadow of the mountain, extending not less than seven hundred stades over the sea, falls upon a left bronze heifer; but it is not necessary, I presume, that what casts the shadow be size stades high, for the reason that shadows are made many times the size of the objects that cast them by the remoteness of the light from the objects. Come then, observe that, when the moon is at the full and because of the shadow’s depth exhibits most articulately the appearance of the face, the sun is at his maximum distance from her. The reason is that the remoteness of the light alone and not the magnitude of the irregularities on the surface of the moon has made the shadow large. Besides, even in the case of mountains the dazzling beams of the sun prevent their crags from being discerned in broad daylight, although their depths and hollows and shadowy parts are visible from afar. So it is not at all strange that in the case of the moon too it is not possible to discern accurately the reflection and illumination, whereas the juxtapositions of the shadowy and brilliant parts by reason of the contrast do not escape our sight.
[De fac. 23] 23 1 There is this, however,” I said, “which seems to be a stronger objection to the alleged reflection from the moon. It happens that those who have placed themselves in the path of reflected rays see not only the object illumined but also what illuminates it. For example, if when a ray rebounds from water to a wall the eye is situated in the place that is itself illumined by the reflection, the eye discerns all three things, the reflected ray and the water that causes the reflection and the sun itself, the source of the light which has been reflected by impinging upon the water. On the basis of these admitted and apparent facts those who maintain that the moon illuminates the earth with reflected light are bidden (by their adversaries) to point out in the moon at night an appearance of the sun such as there is in water by day whenever there is a reflection of the sun from it.
[De fac. 23b] Since there is no such appearance, (these adversaries) think that the illumination comes about in another way and not by reflection and that, if there is not reflection, neither is the moon an earth.” “What response must be made to them then?” said Apollonides, “for the characteristics of reflection seem to present us with a problem in common.” “In common in a way certainly,” said I, “but in another way not in common either. In the first place consider the matter of the image, how topsy-turvy and like ‘rivers flowing uphill’ they conceive it. The fact is that water is on earth and below, and the moon above the earth and on high; and hence the angles produced by the reflected rays are the converse of each other, the one having its apex above at the moon, the other below at the earth. So they must not demand that every kind of mirror or a mirror at every distance produce a similar reflection, since (in doing so) they are at variance with the manifest facts.
[De fac. 23c] Those, on the other hand, who declare that the moon is not a tenuous or smooth body as water is but a heavy and earthy one, I do not under why it is required of them that the sun be manifest to vision in her. For milk does not return such mirrorings either or produce reflections of the visual ray, and the reason is the irregularity and roughness of its particles; how in the world then is it possible for the moon to cast the visual ray back from herself in the way that the smoother mirrors do? Yet even these, of course, are occluded if a scratch or speck of dirt or roughness covers the point from which the visual ray is naturally reflected, and while the mirrors themselves are seen they do not return the customary reflection. One who demands that the moon either reflect our vision from herself to the sun as well or else not reflect the sun from herself to us either is naïve, for he is demanding that the eye be a sun, the vision light, and the human being a heaven.
[De fac. 23d] Since the light of the sun because of its intensity and brilliance arrives at the moon with a shock, it is reasonable that its reflection should reach to us; but the visual ray, since it is weak and tenuous and many times slighter, what wonder if it does not have an impact that produces recoil or if in rebounding it does not maintain its continuity but is dispersed and exhausted, not having light enough to keep it from being scattered about the irregularities and corrugations (of the moon)? From water, to be sure, and from mirrors of other kinds it is not impossible for the reflection (of the visual ray) to rebound to the sun, since it is still strong because it is near to its point of origin; but from the moon, even if the visual rays do in some cases glance off, they will be weak and dim and prematurely exhausted because of the magnitude of the distance.
[De fac. 23e] What is more too, whereas mirrors that are concave make the ray of light more intense after reflection than it was before so as often even to send off flames, convex and spherical mirrors by not exerting counter-pressure upon it from all points give it off weak and faint. You observe, I presume, whenever two rainbows appear, as one cloud encloses another, that the encompassing rainbow produces colours that are faint and indistinct. The reason for this is that the outer cloud, being situated further off from the eye, returns reflection that is not intense or strong. Nay, what need of further arguments? When the light of the sun by being reflected from the moon loses all its heat and of its brilliance there barely reaches us a slight and feeble remnant, is it really possible that of the visual ray travelling the same double-course any fraction of a remnant should from the moon arrive at the sun?
[De fac. 23f] For my part, I think not; and do you too,” I said, “consider this. If the visual ray were affected in the same way by warm water and by the moon, the full moon ought to show such reflections of the earth and plants and human beings and stars as all other mirrors do; but, if there occur no reflections of the visual ray to these objects either because of the weakness of the ray or the ruggedness of the moon, let us not require that there be such reflection to the sun either.
[De fac. 24] 24 1 So we for our part,” said I, “have now reported as much of that conversation as has not slipped our mind; and it is high time to summon Sulla or rather to demand his narrative as the agreed condition upon which he was admitted as a listener. So, if it is agreeable, let us stop our promenade and sit down upon the benches, that we may provide him with a settled audience.” To this then they agreed; and, when we had sat down, Theon said: “Though, as you know, Lamprias, I am as eager as any of you to hear what is going to be said, I should like before that to hear about that beings that are said to dwell on the moon — not whether any really do inhabit it but whether habitation there is possible. If it is not possible, the assertion that the moon is an earth is itself absurd, for she would then appear to have come into existence vainly and to no purpose, neither bringing forth fruit nor providing for men of some kind an origin, an abode, and a means of life, the purposes for which this earth of ours came into being, as we say with Plato, ‘our nurse, strict guardian and artificer of day and night.’ You see that there is much talk about these things both in jest and seriously. It is said that those who dwell under the moon have her suspended overhead like the stone of Tantalus and on the other hand that those who dwell upon her, fast bound like so many Ixions by such great velocity, Fare kept from falling by being whirled round in a circle. Yet it is not with a single motion that she moves; but she is, as somewhere she is in fact called, the goddess of three ways, for she moves on the zodiac against the signs in longitude and latitude and in depth at the same time. Of these movements the mathematicians call the first ‘revolution,’ the second ‘spiral,’ and the third, I know not why ‘anomaly,’ although they see that she has no motion at all that is uniform and fixed by regular recurrences. There is reason to wonder then not that the velocity caused a lion to fall on the Peloponnesus but how it is that we are not forever seeing countless
[De fac. 24b] Men falling headlong and lives spurned away,
[De fac. 24c] tumbling off the moon, as it were, and turned head over heels. It is moreover ridiculous to raise the question how the inhabitants of the moon remain there, if they cannot come to be or exist. Now, when Egyptians and Troglodytes, for whom the sun stands in the zenith one moment of one day at the solstice and then departs, are all but burnt to a cinder by the dryness of the atmosphere, is it really likely that the men on the moon endure twelve summers every year, the sun standing fixed vertically above them each month at the full moon? Yet winds and clouds and rains, without which plants can neither arise nor having arisen be preserved, because of the heat and tenuousness of the atmosphere cannot possibly be imagined as forming there, for not even here on earth do the lofty mountains admit fierce and continual storms but the air, being tenuous already and having a rolling swell as a result of its lightness, escapes this compaction and condensation. otherwise, by Heaven, we shall have to say that, as Athena when Achilles was taking no food instilled into him some nectar and ambrosia, so the moon, which is Athena in name and fact, nourishes her men by sending up ambrosia for them day by day, the food of the gods themselves as the ancient Pherecydes believes. For even the Indian root which according to Megasthenes the Mouthless Men, who neither eat nor drink, kindle and cause to smoulder and inhale for their nourishment, how could it be supposed to grow there if the moon is not moistened by rain?”
[De fac. 25] 25 1 When Theon had so spoken, I said “Bravo, you have most excellently smoothed our brows by the sport of your speech, wherefore we have been inspired with boldness to reply, since we anticipate no very sharp or bitter scrutiny. It is, moreover, a fact that there really is no difference between those who in such matters are firm believers and those who are violently annoyed by them and firmly disbelieve and refuse to examine calmly what can be and what might be. So, for example, in the first place, if the moon is not inhabited by men, it is not necessary that she have come to be in vain and to no purpose, for we see that this earth of ours is not productive and inhabited throughout its while extent either but only a small part of it is fruitful of animals and plants on the peaks, as it were, and peninsulas rising out of the dee, while of the rest some parts are desert and from less with winter-storms and summer-droughts and the most are sunk in the great sea. You, however, because of your constant fondness and admiration for Aristarchus, give no heed to the text that Crates read:
[De fac. 25b] Ocean, that is the universal source
Of men and gods, spreads over most of earth.
[De fac. 25c] Yet it is by no means for nothing that these parts have come to be. The sea gives off gentle exhalations, and the most pleasant winds when summer is at its height are released and dispersed from the uninhabited and frozen region by the snows that are gradually melting there. ‘A strict guardian and artificer of day and night’ has according to Plato been stationed in the centre. Nothing then prevents the moon too, while destitute of living beings, from providing reflections for the light that is diffused about her and for the rays of the stars a point of confluence in herself and a blending whereby she digests the exhalations from the earth and at the same time slackens the excessive torridity and harshness of the sun. Moreover, conceding a point perhaps to ancient tradition also, we shall say that she was held to be Artemis on the ground that the she is a virgin and sterile but is helpful and beneficial to other females.
[De fac. 25d] In the second place, my dear Theon, nothing that has been said proves impossible the alleged inhabitation of the moon. As to the rotation, since it is very gentle and serene, it smooths the air and distributes it in settled order, so that there is no danger of falling and slipping off for those who stand there. And if it is not simple either, even this complication and variation of the motion is not attributable to irregularity or confusion; but in them astronomers demonstrate a marvellous order and progression, making her revolve with circles that unroll about other circles, some assuming that she is herself motion less and others that she retrogresses smoothly and regularly with ever constant velocity, for these superpositions of the circles and their rotations and relations to one another and to us combine most harmoniously to produce the apparent variations of her motion in altitude and the deviations in latitude at the same time as her revolutions in longitude.
[De fac. 25e] As to the great hear and continual scorching of the sun, you will cease to fear it, if first of all you set the conjunctions over against the universe summery full-moons and suppose that the continuousness of the change produces in the extremes, which do not last a long time, a suitable tempering and removes the excess from either. Between these then, as is likely, they have a season most nearly approaching spring. In the second place, upon us the sun sends, through air which is turbid and nourished by the exhalations, whereas there the air being tenuous and translucent scatters and diffuses the sun’s light, which has no tinder or body to sustain it. The fruits of tree and field here in our region are nourished by rains; but elsewhere, as up in your home around Thebes and Syene, the land drinking water that springs from earth instead of rain-water and enjoying breezes and dews would refuse, I think, to adapt itself to the fruitfulness that attends the most abundant rainfall, and that because of a certain excellence and temperament that it has.
[De fac. 25f] Plants of the same kind, which in our region if sharply nipped in by winter bear good fruit in abundance, in Libya and in your home in Egypt are very sensitive to cold and afraid of winter. And, while Gedrosia and Ethiopia which comes down to the ocean is barren and entirely treeless because of the aridity, in the adjacent and surrounding sea there grow and thrive down in the deep plants of great magnitude, some of which are called olives, some laurels, and some tresses of Isis; and the plants here called ‘love-restorers’ when lifted out of the earth and hung up not only live as long as you wish but sprout ⟨. . .⟩. Some plants are sown towards winter, and some at the height of summer as sesame and millet. Thyme or centaury, if sown in good, rich soil and wetted and watered, departs from its natural quality and loses its strength, whereas drought delights it and causes it to reach its proper stature; and some plants, as they say, cannot stand even dew, as is true of the majority of Arabian plants, but are blighted and destroyed by being moistened.
[De fac. 25g] What wonder t 90 if on the moon there grow roots and seeds and trees that have no need of rain nor yet of snow but are naturally adapted to a summery and rarefied air? And why is it unlikely that winds arise warmed by the moon and that breezes steadily accompany the rolling swell of her revolution by scattering off and diffusing dews and light moisture suffice for the vegetation and that she herself is not fiery or dry in temperament but soft and humidifying? After all, no influence of dry and comes to us from her but much of moistness and femininity: the growth of plants, the decay of meats, the souring and flattening of wine, the softening of timbers, the easy delivery of women. Now that Pharnaces is quiet I am afraid of provoking and arousing him again if I cite, in the words of his own school, the flood-tides of Ocean and the swelling of the straits when they are increased and poured abroad by the liquefying action of the moon. Therefore I shall rather turn to you, my dear Theon, for when you expound these words of Alcman’s,
[De fac. 25h] Such as are nourished by Dew, daughter of Zeus and of divine Selene,
[De fac. 25i] you tell us that at this point he calls the air ‘Zeus’ and says that it is liquefied by the moon and turns to dew-drops. It is in fact probable, my friend, that the moon’s nature is contrary to that of the sun, if of herself she not only naturally softens and dissolves all that he condenses and dries but liquefies and cools even the heat that he casts upon her and imbues her with. They err then who believe the moon to be a fiery and glowing body; and those who demand that living beings there be equipped just as those here are for generation, nourishment, and livelihood seem blind to the diversities of nature, among which one can discover more and greater differences and dissimilarities between living beings than between them and inanimate objects. Let there not be mouthless men nourished by odours who Megasthenes thinks do exist; yet the Hungerbane, the virtue of which he was himself trying to explain to us, Hesiod hinted at when he said
[De fac. 25j] Nor what great profit mallow has and squill
[De fac. 25k] and Epimenides made manifest in fact when he showed that with a very little fuel nature kindles and sustains the living creature, which needs no further nourishment if it gets as much as the size of an olive. It is plausible that the men on the moon, if they do exist, are slight of body and capable of being nourished by whatever comes their way. After all, they say that the moon herself, like the sun which is an animate being of fire many times as large as the earth, is nourished by the moisture on the earth, as are the rest of the stars too, though they are countless; so light and frugal of requirements they do conceive the creatures to be that inhabit the upper region. We have no comprehension of these beings, however, nor of the king that a different place and nature and temperature are suitable to them. Just as, assuming that we were unable to approach the sea or touch it but only had a view of it from afar and the information that it is bitter, unpotable, and salty water, if someone said that it supports in its depths many large animals of multifarious shapes and is full of beasts that use water for all the ends that we use air, his statements would seem to us like a tissue of myths and marvels, such appears to be our relation to the moon and our attitude towards her is apparently the same when we disbelieve that any men dwell there. Those men, I think, would be much more amazed at the earth, when they look out at the sediment and dregs of the universe, as it were, obscurely visible in moisture, mists, and clouds as a light less, low, and motionless spot, to think that it engenders and nourishes animate beings which partake of motion, breath, and warmth. If they should chance to hear somewhere these Homeric words,
[De fac. 25l] Dreadful and dank, which even gods abhor
and
Deep under Hell as far as Earth from Heaven,
[De fac. 25m] these you would say are simply a description of this place and Hell and Tartarus have been relegated hither while the moon alone is earth, since it is equally distant from those upper regions and these lower ones.”
[De fac. 26] (940 F) 26 1 Almost before I had finished, Sulla broke in. “Hold on, Lamprias,” he said, “and put to the wicket of your discourse lest you unwittingly run the myth aground, as it were, and confound my drama, which has a different setting and a different disposition. 941 Well, I am but the actor of the piece, but first I shall say that its author began for our sake — if there be no objection — with a quotation from Homer:
[De fac. 26b] An isle, Ogygia, lies far out at sea,
[De fac. 26c] run of five days off from Britain as you sail westward; and three other islands equally distant from it and from one another lie out from it in the general direction of the summer sunset. In one of these, according to the tale told by the natives, Cronus is confined by Zeus, and the antique Briareus, holding watch and ward over those islands and the sea that they call the Cronian main, has been settled close beside him. The great mainland, by which the great ocean is encircled, while not so far from the other islands, is about five thousand stades from Ogygia, the voyage being made by oar, for the main is slow to traverse and muddy as a result of the multitude of streams. The streams are discharged by the great land-mass and produce alluvial deposits, thus giving density and earthiness to the sea, which has been thought actually to be congealed.
[De fac. 26d] On the coast of the mainland Greeks dwell about a gulf which is not smaller than the Maeotis and the mouth of the Caspian sea. These people consider and call themselves continentals and the inhabitants of this land islanders because the sea flows around it on all sides; and they believe that with the peoples of Cronus there mingled at a later time those who arrived in the train of Heracles and were left behind by him and that these latter so to speak rekindled again to a strong, high flame the Hellenic spark there which was already being quenched and overcome by the tongue, the laws, and the manners of the barbarians. Therefore Heracles has the highest honours and Cronos the second. Now when at intervals of thirty years the star of Cronus, which we call ‘Splendent’ but they, our author said, call ‘Night-watchman,’ enters the sign of the Bull, they, having spent a long time in preparation for the sacrifice and the expedition, choose by lot and send forth a sufficient number of envoys in a correspondingly sufficient number of ships, putting aboard a large retinue and the provisions necessary for men who are going to cross so much sea by oar and live such a long time in a foreign land.
[De fac. 26e] Now when they have put to sea the several voyagers meet with various fortunes as one might expect; but those who survive the voyage first put in at the outlying islands, which are inhabited by Greeks, and see the sun pass out of sight for less than an hour over a period of thirty days, — and this is night, though it has a darkness that is slight and twilight glimmering from the west. There they spend ninety days regarded with honour and friendliness as holy men and so addressed, and then winds carry them across to their appointed goal. Nor do any others inhabit it but themselves and those who have been dispatched before them, for, while those who have served the god together for the stint of thirty years are allowed to sail off home, most of them usually choose to settle in the spot, some out of habit and others because without toil or trouble they have all things in abundance while they constantly employ their time in sacrifices and celebrations or with various discourse and philosophy, for the nature of the island is marvellous as is the softness of the circumambient air.
[De fac. 26f] Some when they intend to sail away are even hindered by the divinity which presents itself to them as to intimates and friends not in dreams only or by means of omens, but many also come upon the visions and the voices of spirits manifest. For Cronus himself sleeps confined in a deep cave of rock that shines like gold — the sleep that Zeus has contrived like a bond for him — , and birds flying in over the summit of the rock bring ambrosia to him, and all the island is suffused with fragrance 942 scattered from the rock as from a fountain; and those spirits mentioned before tend and serve Cronus, having been his comrades what time he ruled as king over gods and men. Many things they do foretell of themselves, for they are oracular; but the prophecies that are greatest and of the greatest matters they come down and report as dreams of Cronus, for all that Zeus premeditates Cronus sees in his dreams and the titanic affections and motions of his soul make him rigidly tense until sleep restores his repose once more and the royal and divine element is all by itself, pure and unalloyed.
[De fac. 26g] Here then the stranger was conveyed, as he said, and while he served the god became at his leisure acquainted with astronomy, in which he made as much progress as one can by practising geometry, and with the rest of philosophy by dealing with so much of it as is possible for the natural philosopher. Since he had a strange desire and longing to observe the Great Island (for so, it seems, they call our part of the world), when the thirty years had elapsed, the relief-party having arrived from home, he saluted his friends and sailed away, lightly equipped for the rest but carrying a large viaticum in golden beakers. Well, all his experiences and all the men whom he visited, encountering sacred writings and being initiated in all rites — to recount all this as he reported it to us, relating it thoroughly and in detail, is not a task for a single day; but listen to so much as is pertinent to the present discussion.
[De fac. 26h] He spent a great deal of time in Carthage inasmuch as Cronus receives great honour in our country, and he discovered certain sacred parchments that had been secretly spirited off to safety when the earlier city was being destroyed and had lain unnoticed in the ground for a long time. Among the visible gods he said that one should especially honour the moon, and so he kept exhorting me to do, inasmuch as she is sovereign over life and death, bordering as she does upon the meads of Hades.
[De fac. 27] 27 1 When I expressed surprise at this and asked for a clearer account, Dhe said: ‘Many assertions about the gods, Sulla, are current among the Greeks, but not all tom are right. So, for example, although they give the right names to Demeter and Cora, they are wrong in believing that both are together in the same region. The fact is that the former is in the region of earth and is sovereign over terrestrial things, and the latter is in the moon and mistress of lunar things. She has been called both Cora and Phersephonê, the latter as being a bearer of light and Cora because that is what we call the part of the eye in which is reflected the likeness of him who looks into it as the light of the sun is seen in the moon. The tales told of the wandering and the quest of these goddesses Econtain the truth ⟨spoken covertly⟩, for they long for each other when they are apart and they often embrace in the shadow. The statement concerning Cora that now she is in the light of heaven and now in darkness and night is not false but has given rise to error in the computation of the time, for not throughout six months but every six months we see her being wrapped in shadow by the earth as it were by her mother, and infrequently we see this happen to her at intervals of five months, for she cannot abandon Hades since she is the boundary of Hades, as Homer too has rather well put it in veiled terms:
[De fac. 27b] But to Elysium’s plain, the bourne of earth.
[De fac. 27c] Where the range of the earth’s shadow ends, this he set as the term and boundary of the earth. To this point rises no one who is evil or unclean, but the good are conveyed thither after death and there continue to lead a life most easy to be sure though not blesséd or divine until their second death.
[De fac. 28] 28 1 And what is this, Sulla? Do not ask about these things, for I am going to give a full explanation myself. 943 Most people rightly hold man to be composite but wrongly hold him to be composed of only two parts. The reason is that they suppose mind to be somehow part of soul, thus erring no less than those who believe soul to be part of body, for in the same degree as soul is superior to body so is mind better and more divine than soul. The result of soul and body commingled is the irrational or the affective factor, whereas of mind and soul the conjunction produces reason; and of these the former is source of pleasure and pain, the latter of virtue and vice. In the composition of these three factors earth furnishes the body, the moon the soul, and the sun furnishes mind to man for the purpose of his generation even as it furnishes light to the moon herself.
[De fac. 28b] As to the death we die, one death reduces man from three factors to two and another reduces him from two to one; and the former takes place in the earth that belongs to Demeter (wherefore “to make an end” is called “to render one’s life to her” and Athenians used in olden times to call the dead “Demetrians”), the latter in the moon that belongs to Phersephonê, and associated with the former is Hermes the terrestrial, with the latter Hermes the celestial. While the goddess here dissociates the soul from the body swiftly and violently, Phersephonê gently and by slow degrees detaches the mind from the soul and has therefore been called “single-born” because the best part of man is “born single” when separated off by her. Each of the two separations naturally occurs in this fashion: All soul, whether without mind or with it, when it has issued from the body is destined to wander in the region between earth and moon but not for an equal time.
[De fac. 28c] Unjust and licentious souls pay penalties for their offences; but the good souls must in the gentlest part of the air, which they call “the meads of Hades,” pass a certain set time sufficient to purge and blow away the pollutions contracted from the body as from an evil odour. Then, as if brought home from banishment abroad, they savour joy most like that of initiates, which attended by glad expectation is mingled with confusion and excitement. For many, even as they are in the act of clinging to the moon, she thrusts off and sweeps away; and some of those souls too that are on the moon they see turning upside down as if sinking again into the deep. Those that have got up, however, and have found a firm footing first go about like victors crowned with wreaths of feathers called wreaths of steadfastness, because in life they had made the irrational or affective element of the soul orderly and tolerably tractable to reason; secondly, in appearance resembling a ray of light but in respect of their nature, which in the upper region is buoyant as it is here in ours, resembling the ether about the moon, they get from it both tension and strength as edged instruments get a temper, for what laxness and diffuseness they still have is strengthened and becomes firm and translucent. In consequence they are nourished by any exhalation that reaches them, and Heraclitus was right in saying: “Souls employ the sense of smell in Hades.”
[De fac. 29] 29 1 First they behold the moon as she is in herself: her magnitude and beauty and nature, which is not simple and unmixed but a blend as it were of star and earth. Just as the earth has become soft by having been mixed with breath and moisture and as blood gives rise to sense-perception in the flesh with which it is commingled, so the moon, they say, because it has been permeated through and through by ether is at once animated and fertile and at the same time Fhas the proportion of lightness to heaviness in equipoise. In fact it is in this way too, they say, that the universe itself has entirely escaped local motion, because it has been constructed out of the things that naturally move upwards and those that naturally move downwards. This was also the conception of Xenocrates who, taking his start from Plato, seems to have reached it by a kind of superhuman reasoning.
[De fac. 29b] Plato is the one who declared that each of the stars as well was constructed of earth and fire bound together in a proportion by means of the two intermediate natures, for nothing, as he said, attains perceptibility that does not contain an admixture of earth and light; but Xenocrates says that the stars and the sun are composed of fire and the first density, the moon of the second density and air that is proper to her, and the earth of water and air and the third kind of density and that in general neither density all by itself nor subtility is receptive of soul. So much for the moon’s substance. As to her breadth or magnitude, it is not what the geometers say but many times greater. She measures off the earth’s shadow with few of her own magnitudes not because it is small but she more ardently hastens her motion in order that she may quickly pass through the gloomy place bearing away the souls of the good which cry out and urge her one because when they are in the shadow they no longer catch the sound of the harmony of heaven.
[De fac. 29c] At the same time too with wails and cries the souls of the chastised then approach through the shadow from below. That is why most people have the custom of beating brasses during eclipses and of raising a din and clatter against the souls, which are frightened off also by the so called face when they get near it, for it has a grim and horrible aspect. It is no such thing, however; but just as our earth contains gulfs that are deep and extensive, one here pouring in towards us through the Pillars of Heracles and outside the Caspian and the Red Sea with its gulfs, so those features are depths and hollows of the moon. The largest of them is called “Hecatê’s Recess,” where the souls suffer and exact penalties for whatever they have endured or committed after having already become Spirits; and the two long ones are called “the Gates”, for through them pass the souls now to the side of the moon that faces heaven and now back to the side that faces earth. The side of the moon towards heaven is named “Elysian plain,” the hither side “House of counter-terrestrial Phersephonê.”
[De fac. 30] 30 1 Yet not forever do the Spirits tarry upon the moon; they descend hither to take charge of oracles, they attend and participate in the highest of the mystic rituals, they act as warders against misdeeds and chastisers of them, and they flash forth as saviour a manifest in war and on the sea. For any act that they perform in these matters not fairly but inspired by wrath or for an unjust end or out of envy they are penalized, for they are cast out upon earth again confined in human bodies. To the former class of better Spirits the attendants of Cronos said that they belong themselves as did aforetime the Idaean Dactyls in Crete and the Corybants in Phrygia as well as the Boeotian Trophoniads in Udora and thousands of others in many parts of the world whose rites, honours, and titles persist but whose powers tended to another place as they achieved the ultimate alteration. They achieve it, some sooner and some later, once the mind has been separated from the soul. It is separated by love for the image in the sun through which shines forth manifest the desirable and fair and divine and blessed towards which all nature in one way or another yearns, for it must be out of love for the sun that the moon herself goes her rounds and gets into conjunction with him in her yearning to receive from him what is most fructifying. The substance of the soul is left upon the moon and retains certain vestiges and dreams of life as it were; it is this that you must properly take to be the subject of the statement
[De fac. 30b] Soul like a dream has taken wing and sped,
[De fac. 30c] for it is not straightway nor once it has been released from the body that it reaches this state but later when, divorced from the mind, it is deserted and alone. Above all else that Homer said his words concerning those in Hades appear to have been divinely inspired
[De fac. 30d] Thereafter marked I mighty Heracles —
His shade; but he is with the deathless god. . . .
[De fac. 30e] In fact the self of each of us is not anger or fear or desire just as it is not bits of flesh or fluids either but is that which we reason and understand; and the soul receives the impression of its shape through being moulded by the mind and moulding in turn and enfolding the body on all sides, so that, even if it be separated from either one for a long time, since it preserves the likeness and the imprint it is correctly called an image. Of these, as has been said, the moon is the element, for they are resolved into it as the bodies of the dead are resolved into earth. This happens quickly to the temperate souls who had been fond of a leisurely, unmeddlesome, and philosophical life, for abandoned by the mind and no longer exercising the passions for anything they quickly wither away. Of the ambitious and the active, the irascible and those who are enamoured of the body, however, some pass their time as it were in sleep with the memories of their lives for dreams as did the soul of Endymion; but, when they are excited by restlessness and emotion and drawn away from the moon to another birth, she forbids them ⟨to sink towards earth⟩ and keeps conjuring them back and binding them with charms, for it is no slight, quiet, or harmonious business when with the affective faculty apart from reason they seize upon a body. Creatures like Tityus and Typho and the Python that with insolence and violence occupied Delphi and confounded the oracle belonged to this class of souls, void of reason and subject to the affective element gone astray through delusion; but even these in time the moon took back to herself and reduced to order. Then when the sun with his vital force has again sowed mind in her she receives it and produces new souls, and earth in the third place furnishes body. In fact, the earth gives nothing in giving back after death all that she takes for generation, and the sun takes nothing but takes back the mind that he gives, whereas the moon both takes and gives and joins together and divides asunder in virtue of her different powers, of which the one that joins together is called Ilithyia and that which divides asunder Artemis. Of the three Fates too Atropos enthroned in the sun initiates generation, Clotho in motion on the moon mingles and binds together, and finally upon the earth Lachesis too puts her hand to the task, she who has the largest share in chance. For the inanimate is itself powerless and susceptible to alien agents, and the mind is impassable and sovereign; but the soul is a mixed and intermediate thing, even as the moon has been created by god a compound and blend of the things above and below and therefore stands to the sun in the relation of earth to moon.’
[De fac. 30f] This,” said Sulla, “I heard the stranger relate; and he had the account, as he said himself, from the chamberlains and servitors of Cronus. You and your companions, Lamprias, may make what you will of the tale.”

## On the principle of cold

[De prim. frig. 1] (945 F) 1 1 Is there, then, Favorinus, an active principle or substance of Cold (as fire is of Heat) through the presence of which and through participation in which everything else becomes cold? Or is coldness rather a negation of warmth, as they say darkness is of light and rest of motion? 946 Cold, indeed, seems to have the quality of being stationary, as heat has that of motion; while the cooling off of hot things is not caused by the presence of any force, but merely by the displacement of heat, for it can be seen to depart completely at the same time as the remainder cools off. The steam, for example, which boiling water emits, is expelled in company with the departing heat; that is why the amount becomes less by cooling off; for this removes the heat and nothing else takes place.
[De prim. frig. 2] 2 1 First of all, must we not be wary of one point in this argument? It eliminates many obvious forces by considering them not to be qualities or properties, but merely the negation of qualities or properties, weight being the negation of lightness and hardness that of softness, black that of white, and bitter that of sweet, and so in any other case where there is a natural opposition of forces rather than a relation of positive and negative. Another point is that all negation is inert and unproductive: blindness, for example, and deafness, silence or death. Here you have the defection of a definite form and the annihilation of a reality, not something that is in itself a part of nature or reality. It is the nature of coldness, however, to produce affects and alterations in bodies that it enters no less than those caused by heat. Many objects can be frozen solid, or become condensed or made viscous, by cold. Moreover, the property whereby coldness promotes rest and resists most is not inert, but acts by pressure and resistance, being constrictive and preservative because of its strength. This explains how, though negation is a disappearance and departure of the contrary force, many things may yet become cold while all the time containing within themselves considerable warmth. There are even some objects which cold solidifies and consolidates the more readily the hotter they are: steel, for example, plunged in water. The Stoics also affirm that in the bodies of infant children the breath is tempered by cooling and, from being a physical substance, becomes a soul. This, however, is debatable; yet since there are many other effects which may be seen to be produced through the agency of cold, we are not justified in regarding it as a negation.
[De prim. frig. 3] 3 1 Besides, a negation does not permit degrees of less or more. Surely nobody will affirm that one blind man is blinder than another, or one dumb man more silent than another, or one corpse deader than its fellow; but among cold things there is a wide range of deviation from much to little, from very cold to not very, and, generally speaking, in degrees of intensity and remission, just as there is in hot things. This occurs because the matter involved is in different cases acted upon by the opposing forces with more or less intensity; it thus exhibits degrees of one or the other, and so of hot and cold. There is, in fact, no such thing as a blending of positive qualities with negative ones, nor may any positive force accept the assault of the negation that corresponds to it or take it into partnership; instead it gives place to it. Now hot things do admit a blending with cold up to a point, just as do black with white, high notes with low, sweet tastes with sour; and this harmonious association of colours and sounds, drugs and sauces, produces many combinations that are pleasant and grateful to the senses.
[De prim. frig. 3b] For the opposition of a negation to a positive quality is an irreconcilable hostility, since the existence of the one is the annihilation of the other. The other opposition, however, of positive forces, if it occurs in due measure, is often operative in the arts, and very often indeed in various phenomena of nature, especially in connexion with the weather and the seasons and those matters from which the god derives his title of harmonizer and musician, because he organizes and regulates them. He does not receive these names merely for bringing sounds of high and low pitch, or black and white colours, into harmonious fellowship, but because he has authority over the association and disunion of heat and cold in the universe, to see that they observe due measure in their combination and separation, and because, by eliminating the excess of either, he brings both into proper order.
[De prim. frig. 4] 4 1 947 Furthermore, we find that cold can be perceived as well as heat; but mere negation cannot be seen or heard or touched or recognized by the other senses. Perception, in fact, must be of something existent; but where nothing existent is observed, privation may be inferred, being the negation of existence, as blindness is of sight, silence of sound, void and emptiness of matter. We cannot perceive a void by touch; but where no matter can be touched, void is inferred. Nor can we hear silence; yet, even though we hear nothing, we infer silence. Nor, in the same way, is sense active when things are unseen or bare; there is, rather, inference from the negation of perception. If, therefore, cold were a privation of warmth, we ought not to be able to feel it, but only to infer it from the deficiency in warmth; but if cold is perceived by the contraction and condensation of our flesh (just as heat is by the warming and loosening of it), clearly there is some special first principle and source of coldness, just as there is of heat.
[De prim. frig. 5] 5 1 And yet another point: privation of any sort is something simple and uncomplicated, whereas substances have many differences and powers. Silence, for example, is of only one kind, while sound varies, sometimes annoying, at other times delighting, the perception. Both colours and figures show the same variation, for they produce different effects on different occasions when they meet the eye; but that which cannot be touched and is without colour or any quality whatever, admits no difference, but is always the same.
[De prim. frig. 6] 6 1 Is cold, then, so like this sort of privation that it produces no effects that differ? Or is the contrary true: Do not great and useful pleasures accrue to our bodies from the presence of cold, as well as mighty detriments and pains and depressions, before which the heat does not always depart and quit the field? Often, rather, though cut off within, it makes a stand and gives battle. This struggle of hot and cold is called shivering or shaking; and if heat is overcome, freezing and torpor set in; but if cold is defeated, there is diffused through the body a relaxed and pleasantly warm sensation which Homer calls “to be aglow.” Surely these facts are obvious to everyone; and it is chiefly by these effects that cold is shown to be in opposition to heat, not as a negation or privation, but as one substance or one state to another: it is not a mere destruction or abolition of heat, but a positive substance or force. Otherwise we might just as well exclude winter from the list of seasons or the northerly blasts from that of winds, on the pretext that they are only a deficiency of hot weather or southerly gales and have no proper origin of their own.
[De prim. frig. 7] 7 1 Furthermore, given four primary bodies in the universe which, because of their quantity, simplicity, and potentiality, most judges regard as being the elements or first principles of everything else — I mean fire, water, air, and earth — the number of primary, simple qualities must be the same. And what should these be but warmth and cold, dryness and moisture, which by their very nature cause all the elements to act and be acted upon? Just as in grammar we have elements long and short and in music elements high and low in pitch — and in neither case is one element merely a negation of the other — so also in physical bodies we must assume an elementary opposition of wet to dry and cold to hot, and in this way we shall be faithful both to logic and to experience. Or are we, as old Anaximenes maintained, to leave neither hot nor cold in the realm of being, but to treat them as states belonging equally to any matter and occurring as a result of changes within it? He affirms, in fact, that anything which undergoes contraction and condensation of matter is cold, while anything that suffers rarefaction and distention — this comes close to his phrasing — is hot. So there is no contradiction in the remark that the man blew both hot and cold, for breath grows cold when it is compressed and condensed by the lips; 948 but when it is expelled from the mouth left slack, it becomes hot through rarefaction. Aristotle, however, holds that in this Anaximenes were mistaken: when the mouth is slack, what is exhaled is warm air from our own bodies; but when we compress the lips and blow, it is not air from ourselves, but the cold air in front of the mouth that is propelled forward and makes contact.
[De prim. frig. 8] 8 1 Perhaps we should now leave the question whether heat and cold are substances; if so, let us advance the argument to the next point and inquire what sort of substance coldness has, and what is its first principle and nature. Now those who affirm that there are certain uneven, triangular formations in our bodies and that shivering and trembling, shuddering and the like manifestations, proceed from this rough irregularity, even if they are wrong in the particulars, at least derive the first principle from the proper place; for the investigation should begin as it were from the very hearth, from the substance of all things. This is, it would seem, the great difference between a philosopher and a physician or a farmer or a flute-player; for the latter are content to examine the causes most remote from the first cause, since as soon as the most immediate cause of an effect is grasped — that fever is brought about by exertion or an overflow of blood, that rusting of grain is caused by days of blazing sun after a rain, that a low note is produced by the angle and construction of the pipes — that is enough to enable a technician to do his proper job. But when the natural philosopher sets out to find the truth as a matter of speculative knowledge, the discovery of immediate causes is not the end, but the beginning of his journey to the first and highest causes. This is the reason why Plato and Democritus, when they were inquiring into the causes of heat and heaviness, were right not to stop their investigation with earth and fire, but to go on carrying back sensible phenomena to rational origins until they reached, as it were, the minimum number of seeds.
[De prim. frig. 9] 9 1 Nevertheless it is better for us first to attack things perceptible to the senses, in which Empedocles and Strato and the Stoics locate the substances that underlie the qualities, the Stoics ascribing the primordially cold to the air, Empedocles and Strato to water; and someone else may, perhaps, be found to affirm that earth is the original substance of coldness. But let us examine Stoic doctrine before the others.
[De prim. frig. 9b] Since fire is not only warm but bright, the opposite natural entity (they say) must be both cold and dark: as gloomy is the opposite of bright, so is cold of hot. Besides, as darkness confounds the sight, so cold confuses the sense of touch. Heat, on the other hand, transmits the sensation of touching, as brightness does that of seeing. It follows, then, that in nature the primordially dark is also the primordially cold; and that it is air which is primordially dark does not, in fact, escape the notice of the poets since they use the term “air” for “darkness”:
[De prim. frig. 9c] Thick air lay all about the ships, nor could
The moon shine forth from heaven.
[De prim. frig. 9d] and another instance:
So clad in air they visit all the earth.
[De prim. frig. 9e] And another:
The air at once he scattered and dispelled the mist;
The sun shone forth and all the battle came in view.
[De prim. frig. 9f] They also call the lightless air knephas, being as it were, kenon phaous “void of light”; and collected and condensed air has been termed nephos “cloud” because it is a negation of light. Flecks in the sky and mist and fog and anything else that does not provide a transparent medium for light to reach our senses are merely variations of air; and its invisible and colourless part is called Hades and Acheron. In the same way, then, as air is dark when light is gone, so when heat departs the residue is cold air and nothing else. And this is the reason why it has been termed Tartarus because of its coldness. Hesiod makes this obvious when he writes “murky Tartarus”; and to shake and shiver with cold is to “tartarize.” Such, then, is the reason for these names.
[De prim. frig. 10] 10 1 949 Since corruption, in each case, is a change of the things that are corrupted into their opposites, let us see whether the saying holds good that “the death of fire is the birth of air.” Fire, indeed, perishes like a living creature, being either extinguished by main force or dying out of itself. Now if it is extinguished, that makes the change of fire into air more conspicuous. Smoke, in fact, is a form of air, as is reek and exhalation, which, to quote Pindar,
[De prim. frig. 10b] Stabs at the air with unctuous smoke.
[De prim. frig. 10c] Nevertheless, even when fire goes out for lack of nourishment, one may see, as for instance in the case of lamps, the apex of the flame passing off into murky, dusky air. Moreover, the vapour ascending from our bodies when, after a bath or sweat, cold water is poured on them, sufficiently illustrates the change of heat, as it were, into the air; and this implies that it is the natural opposite of fire. From this the Stoics drew the conclusion that air was primordially dark and cold.
[De prim. frig. 11] 11 Moreover, freezing, which is the most extreme and violent effect of cold in bodies, is a condition of water, but a function of air. For water of itself is fluid, uncongealed and not cohesive; but when it is compressed by air because of its cold state, it becomes taut and compact. This is the reason for the saying
[De prim. frig. 11b] If Southwind challenges North, instantly snow will appear.
[De prim. frig. 11c] For after the Southwind has collected the moisture as raw material, the Boreal air takes over and congeals it. This is particularly evident in snowfields: when they have discharged a preliminary exhalation of air that is thin and cold, they melt. Aristotle also declares that whetstones of lead will melt and become fluid in the wintertime through excess of cold when no water is anywhere near them; it seems probable that the air with its coldness forces the bodies together until it crushes and breaks them.
[De prim. frig. 12] 12 1 Furthermore, portions of water will freeze sooner than the spring from which they are drawn, for the air more readily masters the smaller amount. If you will draw from a cold well cold water in a jar and let it down again into the well in such a way that the jar does not touch the water, but is suspended in the air, and if you wait a short time, you will find that the water has become colder. This is very good evidence that the First Cause of coldness is not water but air. Certainly, none of the great rivers freezes through its entire depth; for the air does not penetrate down into the whole, but merely renders stationary as much as, by contact and proximity, it includes within the range of its coldness. And this is the reason why barbarians do not cross frozen rivers until they have tried them out with foxes: if the ice is not thick, but merely superficial, the foxes perceive this by the sound of the current running underneath and return to the bank. Some even catch fish by weakening and softening the ice with hot water — enough of the ice, at least, to admit their lines; so the cold has no effect at a depth. Yet the water near the surface undergoes so great a change through freezing that ships are crushed by it when it is forced in on itself and squeezed tight, as those relate who recently passed the winter with Caesar on the Danube. Nevertheless, what happens in our own case is ample testimony: after warm baths and sweats we are cooler, since our bodies are relaxed and porous, so that we take in a good deal of cold along with the air. The same thing happens to water, too: it freezes faster when it has first been heated, thus becoming more susceptible to air; and those who draw off boiling water and suspend it in the air do this, surely, only to secure the admixture of great quantities of air. So now, Favorinus, the argument that attributes the primal force of cold to the air depends on such plausibilities as these.
[De prim. frig. 13] 13 1 But the argument which attributes it to water finds in the same way facts to support it; Empedocles says something like this:
[De prim. frig. 13b] Behold the sun, everywhere bright and warm;
And then the rain, to all men dark and cold.
[De prim. frig. 13c] By thus setting cold against hot, as he does dark against bright, he has given us to understand that dark and cold belong to the same substance, as do also bright and hot. 950 And our senses bear witness that darkness is an attribute of water, not of air, since nothing, to put it simply, is blackened by air and everything is by water. For if you throw the whitest wool or the whitest garment into the water, it will come out black and it will remain black until the moisture is evaporated by heat or is squeezed out by some sort of wringing or pressure. When a patch of ground is sprinkled, the pots which are covered by the drops turn black, but the rest remains as it was. In fact, of water itself the deepest looks the darkest because there is so much of it, while those parts that lie near the air flash and sparkle; and of the other liquids oil is the most transparent, as containing the most air. A proof of this is its lightness, by reason of which it maintains itself on the surface of all other things, buoyed up by the air. If it is sprinkled upon the waves, it will calm the sea, not because it is so smooth that the winds slip off it, as Aristotle affirmed; but because the waves are dissipated when they are struck by any moist substance. But it is peculiar to oil that it provides light and sight at the bottom since the moist elements are interspersed with air; it is, in fact, not only on the surface that it provides light for those who pass the night at sea; Cit does so also for sponge-divers below the surface when it is blown out of their mouths. Air, therefore, has no greater proportion of darkness than water has, and it has less cold. Certainly oil, which has more air than any other moist substance, is least cold; and when it freezes, it forms a soft jelly: the air that is intermixed does not permit it to freeze hard. They dip needles, iron clasps, and all delicate artifacts in oil rather than in water, fearing that the water’s excessive frigidity may distort them. It is, in fact, fairer to judge the argument by this evidence than by that of colour, since snow and hail and ice are at their brightest when they are coldest. Moreover, pitch is both hotter and darker than honey.
[De prim. frig. 14] 14 1 I am surprised, nevertheless, when those who maintain that the air is cold because it is dark do not perceive that others think it must be hot because it is light. For darkness is not so closely connected and akin to cold as heaviness and stability are; many things, in fact, which have no heat are bright, but nothing cold is buoyant, light, and soaring. Why, the very clouds, as long as they are akin to the substance of air, float aloft; but as soon as they change to moisture, they fall at once and lose their lightness no less than their warmth as coldness grows within them. Contrariwise, when heat supervenes, they reverse the movement again, for their substance begins to soar as soon as it has changed to air.
[De prim. frig. 14b] Nor is the argument from destruction true either; for when anything is destroyed, it does not perish by becoming its opposite, though it does perish by the action of its opposite, as fire, for instance, is changed by water into air. For of water Aeschylus speaks in tragic style, but accurately, as
[De prim. frig. 14c] The riot-quelling justicer of fire.
[De prim. frig. 14d] And when Homer matched Hephaestus against the river and Apollo against Poseidon in the battle, he did it rather as a philosopher than as a poet. And Archilochus expressed himself well on a woman who was of two minds:
[De prim. frig. 14e] With guileful thoughts she bore
In one hand water, in the other fire.
[De prim. frig. 14f] Among the Persians it was the most compelling plea to gain an end, one which would admit no refusal, if the suppliant took fire, stood in a river, and threatened that if he lost his suit, he would drop the fire into the water. Now he got how he asked, but though he did so, he was punished for the threat, on the ground that it was contrary to law and against nature. Again, the familiar proverb that is on everyone’s lips, “to mix fire with water,” as an example of the impossible, seems to bear witness that water is hostile to fire, which is destroyed by it and so is punished by being extinguished; 951 it is not so affected by air, which, on the contrary, supports fire and welcomes it in its changed form. For if anything into which the thing destroyed changes is its opposite, why will fire, any more than water, seem opposite to air? For air changes into water by condensation, and into fire by rarefaction just as, on the other hand, water vanishes into air by rarefaction, but into earth by condensation. Now these processes take place, in my opinion, not because these elements are contrary or hostile to one another, but because they are in close affinity and relationship. But my opponents, whichever way they state their case, ruin their proof. Certainly it is perfectly absurd for them to say that water is frozen by air when they have never seen air itself freezing. For clouds, mists, and flecks in the sky are not congelations, but condensations and thickenings of air that is moist and vaporous. But waterless, dry air never admits loss of heat to the point where such a change might occur. There are, in fact, mountains which do not know clouds or dew or mist because their peaks reach a region of pure air that has no humidity at all. From this fact it is especially obvious that it is the condensation and density below that contribute to air the cold, moist element that is found in combination with it.
[De prim. frig. 15] 15 1 It is reasonable that the lower portion of large rivers should not freeze; for the upper portion, being frozen, does not transmit the exhalation which is, accordingly, shut in and turned back, and so provides heat for the deep waters. A demonstration of this is the fact that when the ice melts again a great quantity of vapour rises from the waters. This is also the reason why the bodies of animals are warmer in the winter, because the heat is driven inwards by the cold from without and they keep it within them.
[De prim. frig. 15b] Now drawing off water and suspending it in the air not only takes away its warmth, but its coldness also; those, therefore, who want a very cold drink take care not to disturb the snowpacks or the wet matter that is formed from them by compression, for movement expels both heat and cold.
[De prim. frig. 15c] That such a function of cold belongs not to air, but to water, may be demonstrated as follows from a fresh start. In the first place, it is improbable that air, which lies adjacent to the aether and touches and is touched by the revolving fiery substance, should have a force that is contrary to that of aether. For one thing, it is impossible for two substances whose boundaries touch and are contiguous not to be acted upon by each other — and if acted upon, for the weaker not to be contaminated by the force that resides in the stronger. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that Nature has placed side by side destroyer and victim, as though she were the author of strife and dissension, not of union and harmony. She does, indeed, make use of opposites to constitute the universe; yet she does not employ them without a tempering element, or where they will collide. She disposes them rather so that a space is skipped and an inserted strip duly assigned whereby they will not destroy one another, but may enjoy communication and co-operation. And this strip is occupied by air, suffused as it is through a space under the fire between it and water. It makes distribution both ways and receives contributions from both, being itself neither hot nor cold, but a blending and union of the two. When these are so fused, they meet without injury and the fused matter sends forth or takes to itself the opposing extremes without violence.
[De prim. frig. 16] 16 1 Then, too, air is everywhere equal, though neither winter nor cold is identical everywhere. It is no accident that some parts of the world are cold and damp, while others are hot and dry; it is due to the existence of a single substance that includes coldness and wetness in one. The greater part of Africa is hot and without water; while those who have travelled through Scythia, Thrace, and Pontus report that these regions have great lakes or marshes and are traversed by many deep rivers. As for the regions that lie between, those that are near lakes and marshes are especially cold because of the exhalations from the water. Posidonius, then, in affirming that the freshness and moistness of marsh air is the reason for the cold, has done nothing to disturb the plausibility of the argument; he has, rather, made it more plausible. For fresh air would not always seem colder if cold did not take its origin from moisture. So Homer spoke more truly when he affirmed
[De prim. frig. 16b] 952 The river-air blows chill before the dawn,
thereby indicating the source of coldness.
[De prim. frig. 16c] Our senses, moreover, often deceive us and we imagine, when we touch cold garments or cold wool, that we are touching moist objects: this is because wet and cold have a common substance and their natures have a close affinity and relationship. In very cold climates the low temperature often breaks vessels whether they are of bronze or of clay — not, of course, when they are empty, but only when they are full and the water exerts pressure by means of its coldness. Theophrastus, to be sure, declares that the air breaks these vessels, using the liquid as a spike. But take care that there isn’t more wit than truth in such a remark! For if it were so, vessels full of pitch or of milk would more readily be broken by the air.
[De prim. frig. 16d] Water, however, seems to be cold of itself, and primordially so. It is the antithesis, in its coldness, to the heat of fire, just as in its wetness to the dryness of fire, and in its heaviness to the other’s lightness. To sum up: fire is of a disintegrating and separative nature, while water is adhesive and retentive, holding and gluing together by means of its moistness. Empedocles alluded to this, when, as often as he mentioned them, he termed Fire a “Destructive Strife” and Water “Tenacious Love.” For the nourishment of fire is that which can be changed into fire and only things that have affinity and a close relationship to it can be so changed; while its opposites, like water, are not easily changed to fire. Water itself is practically incombustible, and it renders matter such as damp grass and moist timber very hard to consume; the greenness in them produces a dusky, dull flame because, by dint of cold, it struggles against heat as against its natural enemy.
[De prim. frig. 17] 17 1 Now you must pursue the subject by comparing these arguments with those of my opponents. For Chrysippus, thinking that the air is primordially cold because it is also dark, merely mentioned those who affirm that water is at a greater distance from the aether than is air; and, wishing to make them some answer, he said, “If so, we might as well declare that even earth is primordially cold because it is at the greatest distance from the aether” — tossing off this argument as if it were utterly inadmissible and absurd. But I have a mind to maintain the thesis that earth too is not destitute of probable and convincing arguments, and I shall start with the one that Chrysippus has found most serviceable for air. And what is this? Why, that it is primordially dark and cold. For if he takes these two pairs of opposing forces and assumes that one must of necessity accompany the other, there are, surely, innumerable oppositions and antipathies between the aether and the earth with which one might suppose this to be consistent. For it is not only opposed as heavy to light and as moving by gravity downwards, not upwards, or as dense to rare or as slow and stable to mobile and active, but as heaviest to lightest and as densest to rarest and, finally, as immovable of itself to self-moving, and as occupying the central position in the universe to revolving forever around a centre. It is not absurd, then, if oppositions so numerous and important carry with them the opposition of cold and heat as well. “Yes,” Chrysippus may say, “but fire is bright.” Is not the earth, then, dark? Why, it is the darkest and most unilluminated of all things. Certainly air is first of all to participate in light; it is instantly altered and when it is saturated, it distributes illumination everywhere, lending itself to light as a body in which to reside. For when the sun arises, as one of the dithyrambic writers has said,
[De prim. frig. 17b] It straightway fills the mighty home of the air-borne winds.
[De prim. frig. 17c] Next the air, moving downward, infuses a part of its brightness into the lakes and the sea, and the depths of the rivers flash brightly, to the extent that air is able to penetrate them. Of all bodies only the earth remains constantly without light, impenetrable to the illumination of sun or moon; yet it is warmed by them and permits the heat to sink in and warm it up to a slight depth. 953 But because it is solid, earth does not give passage to light, but is encircled by light on its surface only, while the inner parts are called Darkness and Chaos and Hades — so that Erebus turns out to be the subterranean and interior darkness. Then, too, the poets tell us that Night was born of Earth and mathematicians demonstrate that night is the shadow of Earth blocking the light of the sun. The air, indeed, is saturated with darkness by the earth, just as it is with light by the sun. The unlighted portion of the air is the area of night, amounting to the space occupied by the earth’s shadow. This is the reason why men make use of the air out of doors even when it is night, as well as many beasts which do their pasturing in the darkness, since it retains some vestiges of light and dispersed glimmerings of radiance; but the house-bound man who is under a roof is utterly blind and without light inasmuch as there the earth envelops him from all directions. Whole skins, furthermore, and horns of animals do not let light pass through them because of their solidity; yet if sections are sawed off and polished, they become translucent when once the air has been mixed with them. It is also my opinion that the earth is called black by the poets, whenever they have occasion to do so, because of its murky and lightless characteristics. The result, then, of these considerations is that the much-prized antithesis of light and darkness belongs to earth rather than to air.
[De prim. frig. 18] 18 1 This, however, has no relevance to the question under discussion; for it has been shown that there are many cold objects which are bright and many hot which are dull and dark. Yet there are qualities more closely connected that belong to coldness; heaviness, stability, solidity, and resistance to change. Air has no part at all in them, while earth has a greater share in all of them than water has. Cold, moreover, is perceptibly one of the hardest of things and it makes things hard and unyielding. Theophrastus, for instance, tells us that when frozen fish are dropped on the ground, they are broken and smashed to bits just like objects of glass or earthenware. And at Delphi you yourself heard, in the case of those who climbed Parnassus to rescue the Thyiades when they were trapped by a fierce gale and snowstorm, that their capes were frozen so stiff and wooden that when they were opened out, they broke and split apart. Excessive cold, because of its hardness and immobility, also stiffens the muscles and renders the tongue speechless, for it congeals the moist and tender parts of the body.
[De prim. frig. 19] 19 1 In view of these considerations, regard the facts in the following light: every force, presumably, whenever it prevails, by a law of nature changes and turns into itself whatever it overcomes. What is mastered by heat is reduced to flames, what is mastered by wind turns to air; and anything that falls into the water, unless it gets out quickly, dissolves and liquefies. It follows, then, that whatever is completely frozen must turn into primordial cold. Now freezing is extreme refrigeration that terminates in a complete alteration and petrifaction when, since the cold has obtained complete mastery, the moist elements are frozen solid and the heat is squeezed out. This is the reason why the earth at its bottom-most point is practically all solid frost and ice. For there undiluted and unmitigated cold abides at bay, thrust back to the point farthest removed from the flaming aether. As for these features that are visible, cliffs and crags and rocks, Empedocles thinks that they have been fixed in place and are upheld by resting on the fire that burns in the depths of the earth; but the indications are rather that all these things from which the heat was squeezed out and evaporated were completely frozen by the cold; and for this reason they are called pagoi. So also the peaks of many of them have a black crust where the heat has been expelled and have the appearance of debris from a conflagration. For the cold freezes substances to a varying degree, but hardest those of which it is naturally a primary constituent. 954 Thus, if it is the nature of heat to lighten, the lightest object will have most heat, and if it is the nature of humidity to soften, the softest will have the most humidity; so, if it is also true that the nature of cold is to harden, then it must also follow that the hardest object will have the most cold — that is to say, just as the earth has. But what is coldest by nature is surely also primarily cold, so that the earth is in fact cold both primordially and naturally; and, of course, this is obvious even to the senses. Mud, in fact, is a colder thing than water; and men extinguish a fire by dumping earth upon it. Blacksmiths, when their iron becomes fiery and begins to melt, sprinkle on it marble chips and gypsum to check and cool it off before it melts too much. It is also true that dust cools the bodies of athletes and dries up their sweat.
[De prim. frig. 20] 20 1 And what is the meaning of our demand for a yearly change of habitation? In winter we retreat to the loftiest parts of our homes, those farthest from the earth, while in summer we require the lowest parts, submerging ourselves and going in quest of comfortable retreats, as we make the best of a life in the embrace of mother earth. Since we do this, are we not guided to the earth by our perception of its coldness? Do we not acknowledge it as the natural seat of primordial cold? And surely our living by the sea in the winter is, in a way, an escape from the earth, since we abandon the land as far as possible because of the frost and wrap ourselves in salt sea air because it is warm. Then again, in the summer by reason of the heat, we long for the earth-born, upland air, not because it is itself chilly, but because it has sprung from the naturally and primordially cold and has been imbued with its earthy power, as steel is tempered by being plunged in water. And of flowing waters, also, the coldest are those that fall from rocks or mountains, and of well waters the deepest are the coldest; the air from outside does not, in the case of these wells, affect the water, so deep are they, while any such streams burst forth through pure unmixed earth, like the one at Taenarum, which they call the water of Styx: it flows from the rock in a trickle, but so cold that no vessel except an ass’s hoof can contain it — all others it bursts and breaks apart.
[De prim. frig. 21] 21 1 We are, further, informed by physicians that generically earth is by nature astringent and cold, and they enumerate many metals that provide a styptic, staying effect for medicinal use. The element of earth is not sharp or mobile or slender or prickly or soft or ductile, but solid and compact like a cube. This is how it came to have weight; and the cold, which is its true power, by thickening, compressing, and squeezing out the humidity of bodies, induces shivering and shaking through its inequality; and if it becomes complete master and expels or extinguishes all the heat, it fixes the body in a frozen and corpselike condition. This is the reason why earth does not burn at all, or burns only grudgingly and with difficulty. Air, on the other hand, often shoots forth flames from itself and, turning into fire, makes streams and flashes of lightning. Heat feeds on moisture, for it is not the solid part of wood, but the damp part, that is combustible; and when this is distilled, the solid, dry part remains behind, reduced to ashes. Those who emulously strive to prove that this too is changed and consumed, sprinkling it, perhaps, with oil or kneading it with suet and setting it alight, accomplish nothing; for when the oily part is consumed, the earthy remains as a permanent residue, do what they may. Not only, therefore, because the earth is physically immovable from its station, but also because it is unalterable in essence, it was quite appropriately called Hestia by the ancients — in as much as she “remains in the home of the gods” — because of its stationary and compact nature; and coldness is what binds it together, as Archelaüs the natural philosopher declared, since nothing can relax or soften it, as a substance that is subject to heating or warming might be loosened.
[De prim. frig. 21b] 955 As for those who suppose that they feel cold air and water, but are less sensible of earth’s coldness, what they perceive is that portion of earth which is closest to them and has come to be a medley, a congeries, abounding in air and water, sun and heat. There is no difference between such people and those who declare that the aether is not naturally and primordially hot, but rather that scalding water or red hot iron ore are — because they can feel and touch these, but are unable to touch and feel the primordially pure and heavenly fire. Nor likewise are these persons able to touch and feel the earth at its bottom-most, which is what we particularly mean by earth — earth set off alone by itself, without admixture of any other element. But we can see a sample of such earthiness in that statement about the cliffs that display from deep down so intense a cold that it can scarcely be endured. Then, too, those who want a colder drink throw pebbles into the water, which becomes thicker and denser through the coldness the streams upward, fresh and undiluted, from the stones.
[De prim. frig. 22] 22 1 We must, therefore, believe that the reason why ancient learned men held that there is no commerce between earthly and celestial things was not that they distinguished up and down by relative position, as we do in the case of scales; but rather it was the difference in powers that led them to assign such things as are hot and bright, swift and buoyant, to the eternal and imperishable part of nature, while darkness and cold and slowness they considered the unhappy heritage of transitory and submerged beings. Then too, the body of a living creature, as long as it breathes and flourishes, does, as the poets say, enjoy both warmth and life; but when these forsake it and it is abandoned in the realm of earth alone, immediately frigidity and congelation seize upon it, since warmth naturally resides in anything else rather than in the earthy.
[De prim. frig. 23] 23 1 Compare these statements, Favorinus, with the pronouncements of others; and if these notions of mine are neither less probable nor much more plausible than those of others, say farewell to dogma, being convinced as you are that it is more philosophic to suspend judgement when the truth is obscure than to take sides.

## Whether fire or water is more useful

[Aqua an ignis 1] 955) 1 1 Water is best, but gold is a flaming fire,
[Aqua an ignis 1b] says Pindar. He, therefore, bluntly assigns the second place to fire; and Hesiod agrees with him in the words
[Aqua an ignis 1c] And first of all came Chaos into being;
[Aqua an ignis 1d] for most people believe that this is his name for water because it flows (chysis). Yet the balance of witnesses on both sides seems to be equal. There are, in fact, some who state that fire is the first principle of the universe and, like a seed, creates everything out of itself and receives all things into itself when the conflagration occurs. Ignoring the authors, let us examine the arguments on both sides and see where they will lead us.
[Aqua an ignis 2] 2 1 Is not that element the more useful of which most of all, everywhere, invariably, we stand in need as a household tool and, I swear, a friend, ready to help us at any time, in any emergency? Yet fire is not always useful; sometimes, indeed, we find it too much and interrupt our use of it. But water is used both winter and summer, sick and well, night and day: 956 there is no time when a man does not need it. That, of course, is the reason why the dead are called alibantes, meaning that they are without libas, “moisture,” and for lack of that deprived of life. Man has often existed without fire, but without water never. Besides, that which, from the beginning, was coincidental with the inception of man is more useful than that which was discovered later; for it is obvious that Nature bestowed the one as vitally necessary, while the other was brought to light by luck or contrivance for a superfluous use. Now, none may tell of a time when water was unknown to man, nor is any god or hero said to be its discoverer; it was, in fact, at hand instantly when man appeared and was itself the cause of his appearance. But the use of fire, they say, was discovered only a day or two ago by Prometheus; ⟨consequently all our preceding life was deprived of⟩ fire, though it was not without water. And that this is no poetic fiction is proved by present modes of living; for there are certain races of man who live without fire, with no house or hearth, under the open sky. And Diogenes the Cynic reduced the use of fire to a minimum, so that he even swallowed a squid raw, remarking, “Thus, gentlemen, do I risk my life for you.” But without water no one ever thought it good, or even possible, to live.
[Aqua an ignis 3] 3 1 And why do I split hairs by discussing merely human nature? For though there are many, or rather countless, sorts of creatures, man is practically the only one that knows the use of fire, while all the others live and feed without it: they subsist, whether they range abroad or fly or crawl, upon roots or produce or flesh, all without fire; but without water no creature of the sea or land or air ever existed. For even flesh-eating animals, some of which Aristotle says do not drink, nevertheless keep alive by using the fluids in the flesh. That element, therefore, without which no living nature can subsist or endure is more useful.
[Aqua an ignis 4] 4 1 Let us pass from the people who use fire to the things that we use, namely plants and produce, of which some are completely devoid of heat, while others have an infinitesimal and uncertain amount. Moisture, however, is the element in nature that makes them all burgeon, growing and bearing fruit. And why should I enumerate honey and wine and oil and all the rest that come to us from the vintage, the milking of herds, or taking off of honey — and it is obvious where they belong — when even wheat itself, though it is classed as a dry food, moves into the category of liquids by alteration, fermentation, and deliquescence?
[Aqua an ignis 5] 5 1 Moreover, what is never detrimental is more useful. Now fire, when it forms a stream, is most destructive; but the nature of water is never harmful. Then again, of two elements that is more beneficial which is cheaper and provides its help without any preparation. Now the use of fire requires a supply of fuel, for which reason rich people have more of it than poor, and kings than private persons; but water has another merit in service to man, that of equality, with no discrimination. For it needs no tools or implements, being a self-sufficient, self-fulfilling good.
[Aqua an ignis 6] 6 1 Then, too, that which by multiplication destroys its own contribution is the less useful. Such a thing is fire which, like an all-devouring beast, consumes everything near, so that it is useful rather by skilful handling and craft and moderation in use than by its own nature; but water is never dangerous. Further, of two things the one which may be joined with its fellow is more useful. Now fire does not admit moisture and is of no use when in conjunction with it; but water is of service when combined with fire, for hot water is healing and well adapted to medicinal purposes. A watery fire you will never see; but water is as useful to mankind when hot as when cold.
[Aqua an ignis 7] 7 1 Furthermore, though there are but four elements, water provides from itself a fifth, so to say, the sea, 957 one no less beneficial than the others, especially for commerce among other things. This element, therefore, when our life was savage and unsociable, linked it together and made it complete, redressing defects by mutual assistance and exchange and so bringing about co operation and friendship. Now Heraclitus declares, “If there were no sun, it would be perpetual night”; in the same way we may say that if there were no sea, man would be the most savage and destitute of all creatures. But as it is, the sea brought the Greeks the vine from India, from Greece transmitted the use of grain across the sea, from Phoenicia imported letters Bas a memorial against forgetfulness, thus preventing the greater part of mankind from being wineless, grainless, and unlettered. How, then, should water not be more useful when it has the advantage over fire of one more element?
[Aqua an ignis 8] 8 1 What could anyone find to say on the other side from this point on? This, that God, the master workman, had as material four elements from which to construct the universe. Among these, again, there is a simple mutual distinction, namely, that earth and water are a foundation at the bottom of the universe, being, like raw material, the substance of which things are constructed and moulded, having just so much form and organization, and indeed of capacity for growth and procreation, as is imparted to them by the other elements, air and fire, which are makers and artisans and rouse them, lying lifeless as they were until then, to the act of creation. Between these two, again, fire and air, there is the distinction that fire assumes the rule and leadership. This is clear by induction: earth without warmth is barren and unfruitful, but fire, when it takes possession and inflames, causes it to swell to the point of generation; and it is impossible to find any other reason why rocks and the bare bones of mountains are barren except that they have either no part at all, or very little share, in fire.
[Aqua an ignis 9] 9 1 And, in general, water is so far from being self-sufficient for the preservation or generation of other things that the want of fire is water’s destruction. For heat maintains everything in its proper being and keeps it in its proper substance, water itself as well as everything else. When fire withdraws and fails, water putrefies: the dearth of heat is the death and destruction of water. It is, of course, marsh waters and such as are stagnant, some too that have drained into depressions with no outlet, that are bad and finally putrefy because they have very little motion, which preserves everything by stirring up its heat. This is the reason why we commonly say that those waters are “living” which have most motion and the strongest current; the heat is maintained by their motion. How, then, should that not be the more useful of two things which has provided what is necessary for the other’s existence, as fire does for water? And surely that is the more useful, the lack of which, if it be entirely taken away, causes the living creature to die. For it is obvious that anything without which a creature cannot live must have been a necessary cause of its existence, while it did exist. Now even corpses have moisture which does not entirely vanish; otherwise dead bodies would not putrefy, since putrefaction is not a change from dry to moist, but rather a corruption of the moisture in flesh. Death, then, is nothing but the total disappearance of heat and so dead men are extremely cold; if you attack them with a razor-blade, you will blunt the edge of it through excess of cold. In the living creature itself, too, the parts that have the least heat are the least sensitive, like bones and hair and the parts that are a long way from the heart. And, in general, the presence of fire makes a greater difference than that of moisture; for it is not mere moisture that produces plants and fruits, but warm moisture; cold water, of course, is either less productive or not productive at all. Yet if by its own nature water were fruitful, it would always bear fruit by itself; 958 but on the contrary it is even harmful.
[Aqua an ignis 10] 10 1 To begin again: for the use of fire as fire we do not need water; on the contrary, it would be in our way since it extinguishes and destroys it. But in most circumstances it is impossible to use water without fire. When water is heated, it is more useful; otherwise it is harmful. And it is heat which has made the sea more beneficial, its waters being warmer, since it differs from other waters in no other respect. So that of two things, that is better which of itself lends us its use without need of the other. Besides, water is solely beneficial to the touch, when you wash or bathe in it; but fire is profitable to all the senses. It can, in fact, both be touched and seen from a distance, so that in addition to its other uses, there is also its variegated character.
[Aqua an ignis 11] 11 For to say that man ever exists without fire is absurd, nor can he exist at all without it; but there are differences in kind as in other things. As for men who have no need of fire from without, they have this experience not because they do not need it, but because their own heat more than suffices. This must be predicated also of other animals which do not need fire. So that in this respect, too, the use of fire is probably superior. Water is never in such a condition as to need no external support, but fire is self-sufficient because of its great excellence. As, then, a general is better who manages the affairs of his city so that it needs no allies from without, so also an element is superior which does not often need external assistance.
[Aqua an ignis 11b] Yet, to take the opposite point of view, that is more useful which we alone make great use of, since by the powers of our reason we are able to choose what is better. For what is more useful and more profitable to man than reason? But brute beasts do not have it. What then? Is what has been discovered by the foresight of our better part for this reason less useful?
[Aqua an ignis 12] 12 1 And since we have arrived at this point in our argument: What is more profitable to life than Art? And it was fire that discovered and still preserves all the arts. That is why they make Hephaestus the first of artificers. Man has been granted but a little time to live and, as Ariston says, sleep, like a tax-collector, takes away half of that. But I would rather say that it is a question of darkness; for although a man might stay awake all night, yet no good would come of his wakefulness if fire did not give him the benefits of day and remove the difference between day and night. If, then, there is nothing more advantageous to man than life and life is many times increased by fire, how should fire not be the most useful of all things?
[Aqua an ignis 13] 13 1 And, to be sure, will not that be the most advantageous of which each of the senses has the greatest proportion? Do you not perceive, then, that there is no one of the senses which uses moisture by itself without an admixture of air or fire; and that every sense partakes of fire inasmuch as it supplies the vital energy; and especially that sight, the keenest of the physical senses, is an ignited mass of fire and is that which has made us believe in the gods? And further, through sight, as Plato says, we are able to conform our souls to the movements of the celestial bodies.

## Whether land or sea animals are cleverer

(The speakers in the dialogue are Autobulus, Soclarus, Optatus, Aristotimus, Phaedimus, and Heracleon.)
[De soll. an. 1] 959 1 1 Autobulus. When Leonidas was asked what sort of a person he considered Tyrtaeus to be, he replied, “A good poet to whet the souls of young men,” on the ground that by means of verses the poet inspired in young men keenness, accompanied by ardour and ambition whereby they sacrificed themselves freely in battle. And I am very much afraid, my friends, that the Praise of Hunting which was read aloud to us yesterday may so immoderately inflame our young men who like the sport that they will come to consider all other occupations as of minor, or of no, importance and concentrate on this. As a matter of fact, I myself caught the old fever all over again in spite of my years and longed, like Euripides’ Phaedra,
[De soll. an. 1b] To halloo the hounds and chase the dappled deer;
[De soll. an. 1c] so moved was I by the discourse as it brought its solid and convincing arguments to bear.
[De soll. an. 1d] Soclarus. Exactly so, Autobulus. That reader yesterday seems to have roused his rhetoric from its long disuse to gratify the young men and share their vernal mood. I was particularly pleased with his introduction of gladiators and his argument that it is as good a reason as any to applaud hunting that after diverting to itself most of our natural or acquired pleasure in armed combats between human beings it affords an innocent spectacle of skill and intelligent courage pitted against witless force and violence. It agrees with that passage of Euripides:
[De soll. an. 1e] Slight is the strength of men;
But through his mind’s resource
He subdues the dread
Tribes of the deep and races
Bred on earth and in the air.
[De soll. an. 2] 2 1 Autobulus. Yet that is the very source, my dear Soclarus, from which they say insensibility spread among men and the sort of savagery that learned the taste of slaughter on its hunting trips and has grown accustomed to feel no repugnance for the wounds and gore of beasts, but to take pleasure in their violent death. The next step is like what happened at Athens: the first man put to death by the Thirty was a certain informer who was said to deserve it, and so was the second and the third; but after that they went on, step by step, until they were laying hands on honest men and eventually did not spare even the best of the citizens. Just so the first man to kill a bear or a wolf won praise; and perhaps some cow or pig was condemned as suitable to slay because it had tasted the sacred meal placed before it. So from that point, as they now went on to eat the flesh of deer and hare and antelope, men were introduced to the consumption of sheep and, in some places, of dogs and horses.
[De soll. an. 2b] The tame goose and the dove upon the hearth,
as Sophocles says, were dismembered and carved for food — not that hunger compelled men as it does weasels and cats, but for pleasure and as an appetizer. Thus the brute and the natural lust to kill in man were fortified and rendered inflexible to pity, while gentleness was, for the most part, deadened. It was in this way, on the contrary, that the Pythagoreans, to inculcate humanity and compassion, made a practice of kindness to animals; for habituation has a strange power to lead men onward by 960 a gradual familiarization of the feelings.
[De soll. an. 2c] Well, we have somehow fallen unawares into a discussion not unconnected with what we said yesterday nor yet with the argument that is presently to take place to day. Yesterday, as you know, we proposed the thesis that all animals partake in one way or another of reason and understanding, and thereby offered our young hunters a field of competition not lacking in either instruction or pleasure: the question whether land or sea animals have superior intelligence. This argument, it seems, we shall to day adjudicate if Aristotimus and Phaedimus stand by their challenges; for Aristotimus put himself at his comrades’ disposal to advocate the land as producer of animals with superior intelligence, while the other will be pleader for the sea.
[De soll. an. 2d] Soclarus. They’ll stand by their word, Autobulus; they’ll be here any minute now. Early this morning I observed them both preparing for the fray. But, if you like, before the contest begins, let us review the discussion of whatever topics are germane to our conversation of yesterday, but were not then discussed, either because no occasion offered, or, since we were in our cups, were treated too lightly. I thought, in fact, that I caught the reverberation of a material objection from the Stoa: just as the immortal is opposed to the mortal and the imperishable to the perishable, and, of course, the incorporeal to the corporeal; just so, if there is rationality, the irrational must exist as its opposite and counterpart. This alone, among all these pairings, must not be left incomplete and mutilated.
[De soll. an. 3] 3 1 Autobulus. But who ever, my dear Soclarus, maintained that, while rationality exists in the universe, there is nothing irrational? For there is a plentiful abundance of the irrational in all things that are not endowed with a soul; we need no other sort of counterpart for the rational: everything that is soulless, since it has no reason or intelligence, is by definition in opposition to that which, together with a soul, possesses also reason and understanding. Yet suppose some were to maintain that nature must not be left maimed, but that that part of nature which is endowed with a soul should have its irrational as well as its rational aspect, someone else is bound to maintain that nature endowed with a soul must have both an imaginative and an unimaginative part, and both a sentient part and an insentient. They want nature, they say, to have these counteractive and contraposed positives and negatives of the same kind counterbalanced, as it were. But if it is ridiculous to require an antithesis of sentient and insentient within the class of living things, or an antithesis of imaginative and unimaginative, seeing that it is the nature of every creature with a soul to be sentient and imaginative from the hour of its birth, so he, also, is unreasonable who demands a division of the living into a rational and an irrational part — and that, too, when he is arguing with men who believe that nothing is endowed with sensation which does not also partake of intelligence and that there is no living thing which does not naturally possess both opinion and reason, just as it has sensation and appetite. For nature, which, they rightly say, does everything with some purpose and to some end, did not create the sentient creature merely to be sentient when something happens to it. No, for there are in the world many things friendly to it, many also hostile; and it could not survive for a moment if it had not learned to give the one sort a wide berth while freely mixing with the other. It is, to be sure, sensation that enables each creature to recognize both kinds; but the acts of seizing or pursuing that ensue upon the perception of what is beneficial, as well as the eluding or fleeing of what is destructive or painful, could by no means occur in creatures naturally incapable of some sort of reasoning and judging, remembering and attending. Those beings, then, which you deprive of all expectation, memory, design, or preparation, and of all hopes, fears, desires, or griefs — they will have no use for eyes or ears either, even though they have them. Indeed, it would be better to be rid of all sensation and imagination that has nothing to make use of it, 961 rather than to know toil and distress and pain while not possessing any means of averting them.
[De soll. an. 3b] There is, in fact, a work of Strato, the natural philosopher, which proves that it is impossible to have sensation at all without some action of the intelligence. Often, it is true, while we are busy reading, the letters may fall on our eyes, or words may fall on our ears, which escape our attention since our minds are intent on other things; but later the mind recovers, shifts its course, and follows up every detail that had been neglected; and this is the meaning of the saying:
[De soll. an. 3c] Mind has sight and Mind has hearing;
Everything else is deaf and blind,
[De soll. an. 3d] indicating that the impact on eyes and ears brings no perception if the understanding is not present. For this reason also King Cleomenes, when a recital made at a banquet was applauded and he was asked if it did not seem excellent, replied that the others must judge, for his mind was in the Peloponnesus. So that, if we are so constituted that to have sensation we must have understanding, then it must follow that all creatures which have sensation can also understand.
[De soll. an. 3e] But let us grant that sensation needs no help of intelligence to perform its own function; nevertheless, when the perception that has caused an animal to distinguish between what is friendly and what is hostile is gone, what is it that from this time on remembers the distinction, fears the painful, and wants the beneficial? And, if what it wants is not there, what is there in animals that devises means of acquiring it and providing lairs and hiding-places — both traps for prey and places of refuge from attackers? And yet those very authors rasp our ears by repeatedly defining in their Introductions “purpose” as “an indication of intent to complete,” “design” as “an impulse before an impulse,” “preparation” as “an act before an act,” and “memory” as “an apprehension of a proposition in the past tense of which the present tense has been apprehended by perception.” For there is not one of these terms that does not belong to logic; and the acts are all present in all animals as, of course, are cognitions which, while inactive, they call “notions,” but when they are once put into action, “concepts.” And though they admit that emotions one and all are “false judgements and seeming truths,” it is extraordinary that they obviously fail to note many things that animals do and many of their movements that show anger or fear or, so help me, envy or jealousy. They themselves punish dogs and horses that make mistakes, not idly but to discipline them; they are creating in them through pain a feeling of sorrow, which we call repentance.
[De soll. an. 3f] Now pleasure that is received through the ears is a means of enchantment, while that which comes through the eyes is a kind of magic: they use both kinds against animals. For deer and horses are bewitched by pipes and flutes, and crabs are involuntarily lured from their holes by lotus pipes; it is also reported that shad will rise to the surface and approach when there is singing and clapping. The horned owl, again, can be caught by the magic of movement, as he strives to twist his shoulders in delighted rhythm to the movements of men dancing before him.
[De soll. an. 3g] As for those who foolishly affirm that animals do not feel pleasure or anger or fear or make preparations or remember, but that the bee “as it were” remembers and the swallow “as it were” prepares her nest and the lion “as it were” grows angry and the deer “as it were” is frightened — FI don’t know what they will do about those who say that beasts do not see or hear, but “as it were” hear and see; that they have no cry but “as it were”; nor do they live at all but “as it were.” For these last statements (or so I believe) are no more contrary to plain evidence than those that they have made.
[De soll. an. 4] 4 1 Soclarus. Well, Autobulus, you may count me also as one who believes your statements; yet on comparing the ways of beasts with human customs and lives, 962 with human actions and manner of living, I find not only many other defects in animals, but this especially: they do not explicitly aim at virtue, for which purpose reason itself exists; nor do they make any progress in virtue or have any bent for it; so that I fail to see how Nature can have given them even elementary reason, seeing that they cannot achieve its end.
[De soll. an. 4b] Autobulus. But neither does this, Soclarus, seem absurd to those very opponents of ours; for while they postulate that love of one’s offspring is the very foundation of our social life and administration of justice, and observe that animals possess such love in a very marked degree, yet they assert and hold that animals have no part in justice. Now mules are not deficient in organs; they have, in fact, genitals and wombs and are able to use them with pleasure, yet cannot attain the end of generation. Consider another approach: is it not ridiculous to keep affirming that men like Socrates and Plato are involved in vice no less vicious than that of any slave you please, that they are just as foolish and intemperate and unjust, and at the same time to stigmatize the alloyed and imprecise virtue of animals as absence of reason rather than as its imperfection or weakness?
[De soll. an. 4c] And this, though they acknowledge that vice is a fault of reason and that all animals are infected with vice: many, in fact, we observe to be guilty of cowardice and intemperance, injustice and malice. He, then, who holds that what is not fitted by nature to receive the perfection of reason does not even receive any reason at all is, in the first place, no better than one who asserts that apes are not naturally ugly or tortoises naturally slow for the reason that they are not capable of possessing beauty or speed. In the second place, he fails to observe the distinction which is right before his eyes: mere reason is implanted by nature, but real and perfect reason is the product of care and education. And this is why every living creature has the faculty of reasoning; but if what they seek is true reason and wisdom, not even man may be said to possess it.
[De soll. an. 4d] For as one capacity for seeing or flying differs from another D(hawks and cicadas do not see alike, nor do eagles and partridges fly alike), so also not every reasoning creature has in the same way a mental dexterity or acumen that has attained perfection. For just as there are many examples in animals of social instincts and bravery and ingenuity in ways and means and in domestic arrangements, so, on the other hand, there are many examples of the opposite: injustice, cowardliness, stupidity. And the very factor which brought about our young men’s contest to day provides confirmation. It is on an assumption of difference that the two sides assert, one that land animals, the other that sea animals, are naturally more advanced toward virtue. This is clear also if you contrast hippopotamuses with storks: the latter support their fathers, while the former kill them in order to consort with their mothers.
[De soll. an. 4e] The same is true if you compare doves with partridges; for the partridge cock steals the eggs and destroys them since the female will not consort with him while she is sitting, whereas male doves assume a part in the care of the nest, taking turns at keeping the eggs warm and being themselves the first to feed the fledglings; and if the female happens to be away for too long a time, the male strikes her with his beak and drives her back to her eggs or squabs. And while Antipater was reproaching asses and sheep for their neglect of cleanliness, I don’t know how he happened to overlook lynxes and swallows; for lynxes dispose of their excrement by concealing and doing away with it, while swallows teach their nestlings to turn tail and void themselves outward.
[De soll. an. 4f] Why, moreover, do we not say that one tree is less intelligent than another, as a sheep is by comparison with a dog; or one vegetable more cowardly than another, as a stag is by comparison with a lion? 963 Is the reason not that, just as it is impossible to call one immovable object slower than another, so among all creatures to whom Nature has not given the faculty of understanding, we cannot say that one is more cowardly or more slothful or more intemperate? Whereas it is the presence of understanding, of one kind in one animal, of another kind in another, and in varying degree, that has produced the observable differences.
[De soll. an. 5] 5 1 Soclarus. Yet it is astonishing how greatly man surpasses the animals in his capacity for learning and in sagacity and in the requirements of justice and social life.
[De soll. an. 5b] Autobulus. There are in fact, my friend, many animals which surpass all men, not only in bulk and swiftness, but also in keen sight and sharp hearing; but for all that man is not blind or crippled or earless. We can run, if less swiftly than deer; and see, if less keenly than hawks; nor has Nature deprived us of strength and bulk even though, by comparison with the elephant and the camel, we amount to nothing in these matters. In the same way, then, let us not say of beasts that they are completely lacking in intellect and understanding and do not possess reason even though their understanding is less acute and their intellect inferior to ours; what we should say is that their intellect is feeble and turbid, like a dim and clouded eye. And if I did not expect that our young men, learned and studious as they are, would very shortly present us here, one with a large collection of examples drawn from the land, the other with his from the sea, I should not have denied myself the pleasure of giving you countless examples of the docility and native capacity of beasts — of which fair Rome has provided us a reservoir from which to draw in pails and buckets, as it were, from the imperial spectacles. Let us leave this subject, therefore, fresh and untouched for them to exercise their art upon in discourse.
[De soll. an. 5c] There is, however, one small matter which I should like to discuss with you quietly. It is my opinion that each part and faculty has its own particular weakness or defect or ailment which appears in nothing else, as blindness in the eye, lameness in the leg, stuttering in the tongue. There can be no blindness in an organ which was not created to see, or lameness in a part which was not designed for walking; nor would you ever describe an animal without a tongue as stuttering, or one voiceless by nature as inarticulate. And in the same way you would not call delirious or witless or mad anything that was not endowed by Nature with reason or intelligence or understanding; for it is impossible to ail where you have no faculty of which the ailment is a deficiency or loss or some other kind of impairment. Yet certainly you have encountered mad dogs, and I have also known of mad horses; and there are some who say that cattle and foxes also go mad. But dogs will do, since no one questions the fact in their case, which provides evidence that the creature possesses reason and a by no means despicable intellectual faculty. What is called rabies and madness is an ailment of that faculty when it becomes disturbed and disordered. For we observe no derangement either of the dogs’ sight or of their hearing; yet, just as when a human being suffers from melancholy or insanity, anyone is absurd who does not admit that it is the organ that thinks and reasons and remembers which has been displaced or damaged (we habitually say, in fact, of madmen that they “are not themselves,” but have “fallen out of their wits”), just so, whoever believes that rabid dogs have any other ailment than an affliction of their natural organ of judgement and reason and memory so that, when this has become infected with disorder and insanity, they no longer recognized beloved faces and shun their natural haunts — such a man, I say, either must be disregarding the evidence or, if he does take note of the conclusion to which it leads, must be quarrelling with the truth.
[De soll. an. 6] 6 1 Soclarus. Your inference seems quite justified. For the Stoics and Peripatetics strenuously agree on the other side, to the effect that justice could not then come into existence, but would remain completely without form or substance, 964 if all the beasts partake of reason. For either we are necessarily unjust if we do not spare them; or, if we do not take them for food, life becomes impracticable or impossible; in a sense we shall be living the life of beasts once we give up the use of beasts. I omit the numberless hosts of Nomads and Troglodytes who know no other food but flesh. As for us who believe our lives to be civilized and humane, it is hard to say what pursuit on land or sea, what aerial art, what refinement of living, is left to us if we are to learn to deal innocently and considerately with all creatures, Bas we are bound to if they possess reason and are of one stock with us. So we have no help or cure for this dilemma which either deprives us of life itself or of justice, unless we do preserve that ancient limitation and law by which, according to Hesiod, he who distinguished the natural kinds and gave each class its special domain:
[De soll. an. 6b] To fish and beasts and winged birds allowed
Licence to eat each other, for no right
Exists among them; right, he gave to men
[De soll. an. 6c] for dealing with each other. Those who know nothing of right action toward us can receive no wrong from us either. For those who have rejected this argument have left no path, either broad or narrow, by which any may slip in.
[De soll. an. 7] 7 1 Autobulus. This, my friend, has been spoken “from the heart.” We certainly must not allow philosophers, as though they were women in difficult labour, to put about their necks a charm for speedy delivery so that they may bring justice to birth for us easily and without hard labour. For they themselves do not concede to Epicurus, for the sake of the highest considerations, a thing so small and trifling as the slightest deviation of a single atom — which would permit the stars and living creatures to slip in by chance and would preserve from destruction the principle of free will. But, seeing that they bid him demonstrate whatever is not obvious or take as his starting-point something that is obvious, how are they in any position to make this statement about animals a basis of their own account of justice, when it is neither generally accepted nor otherwise demonstrated by them? For justice has another way to establish itself, a way which is neither so treacherous nor so precipitous, nor is it a route lined with the wreckage of obvious truths. It is the road which, under the guidance of Plato, my son and your companion, Soclarus, points out to those who have no love of wrangling, but are willing to be led and to learn. For certain it is that Empedocles and Heraclitus accept as true the charge that man is not altogether innocent of injustice when he treats animals as he does; often and often do they lament and exclaim against Nature, declaring that she is “Necessity” and “War,” that she contains nothing unmixed and free from tarnish, that her progress is marked by many unjust inflictions. As an instance, say, even birth itself springs from injustice, since it is a union of mortal with immortal, and the offspring is nourished unnaturally on members torn from the parent.
[De soll. an. 7b] These strictures, however, seem to be unpalatably strong and bitter; for there is an alternative, an inoffensive formula which does not, on the one hand, deprive beasts of reason, yet does, on the other, preserve the justice of those who make fit use of them. When the wise men of old had introduced this, gluttony joined luxury to cancel and annul it; Pythagoras, however, reintroduced it, teaching us how to profit without injustice. There is no injustice, surely, in punishing and slaying animals that are anti-social and merely injurious, while taming those that are gentle and friendly to man and making them our helpers in the tasks for which they are severally fitted by nature:
[De soll. an. 7c] Offspring of horse and ass and seed of bulls
which Aeschylus’ Prometheus says that he bestowed on us
965 To serve us and relieve our labours;
[De soll. an. 7d] and thus we make use of dogs as sentinels and keep herds of goats and sheep that are milked and shorn. For living is not abolished nor life terminated when a man has no more platters of fish or pâté de foie gras or mincemeat of beef or kids’ flesh for his banquets — or when he no longer, idling in the theatre or hunting for sport, compels some beasts against their will to stand their ground and fight, while he destroys others which have not the instinct to fight back even in their own defence. For I think sport should be joyful and between playmates who are merry on both sides, not the sort Bof which Bion spoke when he remarked that boys throw stones at frogs for fun, but the frogs don’t die for “fun,” but in sober earnest. Just so, in hunting and fishing, men amuse themselves with the suffering and death of animals, even tearing some of them piteously from their cubs and nestlings. The fact is that it is not those who make use of animals who do them wrong, but those who use them harmfully and heedlessly and in cruel ways.
[De soll. an. 8] 8 1 Soclarus. Restrain yourself, Autobulus, and turn off the flow of these accusations. I see a good many gentlemen approaching who are all hunters; you will hardly convert them and you needn’t hurt their feelings.
[De soll. an. 8b] Autobulus. Thanks for the warning. Eubiotus, however, I know quite well and my cousin Ariston, and Aeacides and Aristotimus here, the sons of Dionysius of Delphi, and Nicander, the son of Euthydamus, all of them “expert,” as Homer expresses it, in the chase by land — and for this reason they will be on Aristotimus’ side. So too yonder comes Phaedimus with the islanders and coast-dwellers about him, Heracleon from Megara and the Euboean Philostratus,
[De soll. an. 8c] Whose hearts are on deeds of the sea.
And here is my contemporary Optatus: like Diomedes, it is
Hard to tell the side on which he ranges,
[De soll. an. 8d] for “with many a trophy from the sea, many likewise from the chase on the mountain, he has glorified” the goddess who is at once the Huntress and Dictynna. It is evident that he is coming to join us with no intention of attaching himself to either side. Or am I wrong, my dear Optatus, in supposing that you will be an impartial and neutral umpire between the young men?
[De soll. an. 8e] Optatus. It is just as you suppose, Autobulus. Solon’s law, which used to punish those who adhered to neither side in a factious outbreak, has long since fallen into disuse.
[De soll. an. 8f] Autobulus. Come over here, then, and take your place beside us so that, if we need evidence, we shall not have to disturb the tomes of Aristotle, but may follow you as expert and return a true verdict on the arguments.
[De soll. an. 8g] Soclarus. Well then, my young friends, have you reached any agreement on procedure?
[De soll. an. 8h] Phaedimus. We have, Soclarus, though it occasioned considerable controversy; but at length, as Euripides has it,
[De soll. an. 8i] The lot, the child of chance,
made arbiter, admits into court the case of the land animals before that of creatures from the sea.
[De soll. an. 8j] Soclarus. The time has come, then, Aristotimus, for you to speak and us to hear.
[De soll. an. 9] 965 9 1 Aristotimus. The court is open for the litigants . . . And there are some fish that waste their milt by pursuing the female while she is laying her eggs.
[De soll. an. 9b] There is also a type of mullet called the grayfish which feeds on its own slime; and the octopus sits through the winter devouring himself,
[De soll. an. 9c] In fireless home and domicile forlorn,
[De soll. an. 9d] so lazy or insensible or gluttonous, or guilty of all of these charges, is he. So this also is the reason, again, why Plato in his Laws enjoined, For rather prayed, that his young men might not be seized by “a love for sea hunting.” For there is no exercise in bravery or training in skill or anything that contributes to strength or fleetness or agility when men endure toil in contests with bass or conger or parrot-fish; 966 whereas, in the chase on land, brave animals give play to the courageous and danger-loving qualities of those matched against them, crafty animals sharpen the wits and cunning of their attackers, while swift ones train the strength and perseverance of their pursuers. These are the qualities which have made hunting a noble sport, whereas there is nothing glorious about fishing. And, and there’s not a god, my friend, who has allowed himself to be called “conger-killer,” as Apollo is “wolf-slayer,” or “surmullet-slayer,” as Artemis is “deer-slaying.” And what is surprising in this when it’s a more glorious thing for a man to have caught a boar or a stag, or, so help me, a gazelle or a hare than to have bought one? As for your tunny and your mackerel and your bonito! They’re more honourable to buy than to catch oneself. B For their lack of spirit or of any kind of resource or cunning has made the sport dishonourable, unfashionable, and illiberal.
[De soll. an. 10] 10 1 In general, then, the evidence by which the philosophers demonstrate that beasts have their share of reason is their possession of purpose and preparation and memory and emotions and care for their young and gratitude for benefits and hostility to what has hurt them; to which may be added their ability to find what they need and their manifestations of good qualities, such as courage and sociability and continence and magnanimity. Let us ask ourselves if marine creatures exhibit any of these traits, or perhaps some suggestion of them, that is extremely faint and difficult to discern (the observer only coming at long last to the opinion that it may be descried); whereas in the case of terrestrial and earth-born animals it is easy to find remarkably plain and unanswerable proofs of every one of the points I have mentioned.
[De soll. an. 10b] In the first place, then, behold the purposeful demonstrations and preparations of bulls stirring up dust when intent on battle, and wild boars whetting their tusks. Since elephants’ tusks are blunted by wear when, by digging or chopping, they fell the trees that feed them, they use only one tusk for this purpose and keep the other always pointed and sharp for defence. Lions always walk with paws clenched and claws retracted so that these may not be dulled by wear at the point or leave a plain trail for trackers; for it is not easy to find any trace of a lion’s claw; on the contrary, any sign of a track that is found is so slight and obscure that hunters lose the trail and go astray. You have heard, I am sure, how the ichneumon girds itself for battle as thoroughly as any soldier putting on his armour, such a quantity of mud does it don and plaster about its body when it plans to attack the crocodile. Moreover, we see house-martins preparing for procreation: how well they lay the solid twigs at the bottom to serve as a foundation, then mould the lighter bits about them; and if they perceive that the nest needs a lump of mud to glue it together, they skim over a pond or lake, touching the water with only the tips of their feathers to make them moist, yet not heavy with dampness; then they scoop up dust and so smear over and bind together any parts that begin to sag or loosen. As for the shape of their work, it has no angles nor many sides, but is as smooth and circular as they can make it; such a shape is, in fact, both stable and capacious and provides no hold on the outside for scheming animals.
[De soll. an. 10c] There is more than one reason for admiring spiders’ webs, the common model for both women’s looms and fowlers’ nets; for there is the fineness of the thread and the evenness of the weaving, which has no disconnected threads and nothing like a warp, but is wrought with the even continuity of a thin membrane and a tenacity that comes from a viscous substance inconspicuously worked in. Then too, there is the blending of the colours that gives it an airy, misty look, the better to let it go undetected; and most notable of all is the art itself, like a charioteer’s or a helmsman’s, with which the spinner handles her artifice. When a possible victim is entangled, she perceives it, and uses her wits, like a skilled handler of nets, to close the trap suddenly and make it tight. 967 Since this is daily under our eyes and observation, my account is confirmed. Otherwise it would seem a mere fiction, as I formerly regarded the tale of the Libyan crows which, when they are thirsty, throw stones into a pot to fill it and raise the water until it is within their reach; but later when I saw a dog on board ship, since the sailors were away, putting pebbles into a half empty jar of oil, I was amazed at its knowing that lighter substances are forced upward when the heavier settle to the bottom.
[De soll. an. 10d] Similar tales are told of Cretan bees and of geese in Cilicia. When the bees are going to round some windy promontory, they ballast themselves with little stones so as not to be carried out to sea; while the geese, in fear of eagles, take a large stone in their beaks whenever they cross Mt. Taurus, as it were reining in and bridling their gaggling loquacity that they may pass over in silence unobserved. It is well known, too, how cranes behave when they fly. Whenever there is a high wind and rough weather they do not fly, as on fine days, in line abreast or in a crescent-shaped curve; but they form at once a compact triangle with the point cleaving the gale that streams past, so that there is no break in the formation. When they have descended to the ground, the sentinels that stand watch at night support themselves on one foot and with the other grasp a stone and hold it firmly; the tension of grasping this keeps them awake for a long time; but when they do relax, the stone escapes and quickly rouses the culprit. So that I am not at all surprised that Heracles tucked his bow under his arm:
[De soll. an. 10e] Embracing it with mighty arm he sleeps,
Keeping his right hand gripped about the club.
[De soll. an. 10f] Nor, again, am I surprised at the man who first guessed how to open an oyster when I read of the ingenuity of herons. For they swallow a closed mussel and endure the discomfort until they know that it has been softened and relaxed by their internal heat; then they disgorge it wide open and unfolded and extract the meat.
[De soll. an. 11] 11 It is impossible to relate in full detail all the methods of production and storage practised by ants, but it would be careless to omit them entirely. Nature has, in fact, nowhere else so small a mirror of greater and nobler enterprises. Just as you may see greater things reflected in a drop of clear water, so among ants there exists the delineation of every virtue.
[De soll. an. 11b] Love and affection are found,
namely their social life. You may see, too, the reflection of courage in their persistence in hard labour. There are many seeds of temperance and many of prudence and justice. Now Cleanthes, even though he declared that animals are not endowed with reason, says that he witnessed the following spectacle: some ants came to a strange anthill carrying a dead ant. Other ants then emerged from the hill and seemed, as it were, to hold converse with the first party and then went back again. This happened two or three times until at last they brought up a grub to serve as the dead ant’s ransom, whereupon the first party picked up the grub, handed over the corpse, and departed.
[De soll. an. 11c] A matter obvious to everyone is the consideration ants show when they meet: those that bear no load always give way to those who have one and let them pass. Obvious also is the manner in which they gnaw through and dismember things that are difficult to carry or to convey past an obstacle, in order that they may make easy loads for several. And Aratus takes it to be a sign of rainy weather when they spread out their eggs and cool them in the open:
[De soll. an. 11d] When from their hollow nest the ants in haste
Bring up their eggs;
[De soll. an. 11e] and some do not write “eggs” here, but “provisions,” in the sense of stored grain which, when they notice that it is growing mildewed and fear 968 that it may decay and spoil, they bring up to the surface. But what goes beyond any other conception of their intelligence is their anticipation of the germination of wheat. You know, of course, that wheat does not remain permanently dry and stable, but expands and lactifies in the process of germination. In order, then, to keep it from running to seed and losing its value as food, and to keep it permanently edible, the ants eat out the germ from which springs the new shoot of wheat.
[De soll. an. 11f] I do not approve of those who, to make a complete study of anthills, inspect them, as it were, anatomically. But, be that as it may, they report that the passage leading downward from the opening is not at all straight or easy for any other creature to traverse; it passes through turns and twists with branching tunnels and connecting galleries and terminates in three hollow cavities. One of these is their common dwelling-place, another serves as storeroom for provisions, while in the third they deposit the dying.
[De soll. an. 12] 12 1 I don’t suppose that you will think it out of order if I introduce elephants directly on top of ants in order that we may concurrently scrutinize the nature of understanding in both the smallest and the largest of creatures, for it is neither suppressed in the latter nor deficient in the former. Let others, then, be astonished that elephants learn, or are taught, to exhibit in the theatre all the many postures and variations of movement that they do, these being so varied and so complicated to memorize and retain that they are not at all easy even for human artists. For my part, I find the beast’s understanding better manifested in his own spontaneous and uninstructed feelings and movements, in a pure, as it were, and undiluted state.
[De soll. an. 12b] Well, not very long ago at Rome, where a large number of elephants were being trained to assume dangerous stances and wheel about in complicated patterns, one of them, who was the slowest to learn and was always being scolded and often punished, was seen at night, alone by himself in the moonlight, voluntarily rehearsing his lessons and practising them.
[De soll. an. 12c] Formerly in Syria, Hagnon tells us, an elephant was brought up in its master’s house and every day the keeper, when he received a measure of barley, would filch away and appropriate half of it; but on one occasion, when the master was present and watching, the keeper poured out the whole measure. The elephant gave a look, raised its trunk, and made two piles of the barley, setting aside half of it and thus revealing as eloquently as could be the dishonesty of its keeper. And another elephant, whose keeper used to mix stones and dirt in its barley ration, when the keeper’s meat was cooking, scooped up some ashes and threw them into the pot. And another in Rome, being tormented by little boys who pricked its proboscis with their writing styluses, grabbed one of them and raised him into the air as first to dash him to death; but when the spectators cried out, it gently set the child down on the ground again and passed along, thinking it sufficient punishment for one so young to have been frightened.
[De soll. an. 12d] Concerning wild elephants who are self-governing they tell many wonderful tales, particularly the one about the fording of rivers: the youngest and smallest volunteers his services to go first into the stream. The others wait on the bank and observe the result, for if his back remains above water, those that are larger than he will have a wide margin of safety to give them confidence.
[De soll. an. 13] 13 1 At this point in my discourse, I imagine that I shall do well not to omit the case of the fox, since it is so similar. Now the story-books tell us that when Deucalion released a dove from the ark, as long as she returned, it was a certain sign that the storm was still raging; but as soon as she flew away, it was a harbinger of fair weather. So even to this day the Thracians, whenever they propose crossing a frozen river, make use of a fox as an indicator of the solidity of the ice. 969 The fox moves ahead slowly and lays her ear to the ice; if she perceives by the sound that the stream is running close underneath, judging that the frozen part has no great depth, but is only thin and insecure, she stands stock still and, if she is permitted, returns to the shore; but if she is reassured by the absence of noise, she crosses over. And let us not declare that this a nicety of perception unaided by reason; it is, rather, a syllogistic conclusion developed from the evidence of perception: “What makes noise must be in motion; what is in motion is not frozen; what is not frozen is liquid; what is liquid gives way.” So logicians assert that a dog, at a point where many paths split off, makes use of a multiple disjunctive argument and reasons with himself: “Either the wild beast has taken this path, or this, or this. But surely it has not taken this, or this. Then it must have gone by the remaining road.” Perception here affords nothing but the minor premiss, while the force of reason gives the major premisses and adds the conclusion to the premisses. A dog, however, does not need such a testimonial, which is both false and fraudulent; for it is perception itself, by means of track and spoor, which indicates the way the creature fled; it does not bother with disjunctive and copulative propositions. The dog’s true capacity may be discerned from many other acts and reactions and the performance of duties, which are neither to be smelled out nor seen by the eye, but can be carried out or perceived only by the use of intelligence and reason. I should only make myself ridiculous if I described the dog’s self-control and obedience and sagacity on hunting parties to you who see and handle these matters every day.
[De soll. an. 13b] There was a Roman named Calvus slain in the Civil Wars, but no one was able to cut off his head until they encircled and stabbed to death the dog who guarded his master and defended him. And King Pyrrhus on a journey chanced upon a dog guarding the body of a murdered man; in answer to his questions he was told that the dog had remained there without eating for three days and refused to leave. Pyrrhus gave orders for the corpse to be buried and the dog cared for and brought along in his train. A few days later there was an inspection of the soldiers, who marched in front of the king seated on his throne, while the dog lay quietly by his side. But when it saw its master’s murderers filing past, it rushed at them with furious barking and, as it voiced its accusation, turned to look at the king so that not only he, but everyone present, became suspicious of the men. They were at once arrested and when put to the question, with the help of some bits of external evidence as well, they confessed the murder and were punished.
The same thing is said to have been done by the poet Hesiod’s dog, which convicted the sons of Ganyctor the Naupactian, by whom Hesiod had been murdered. But a matter which came to the attention of our fathers when they were studying at Athens is even plainer than anything so far mentioned. A certain fellow slipped into the temple of Asclepius, took such gold and silver offerings as were not bulky, and made his escape, thinking that he had not been detected. But the watchdog, whose name was Capparus, when none of the sacristans responded to its barking, pursued the escaping temple-thief. First the man threw stones at it, but could not drive it away. When day dawned, the dog did not approach close, but followed the man, always keeping him in sight, and refused the food he offered. When he stopped to rest, the dog passed the night on guard; when he struck out again, the dog got up and kept following, fawning on the other people it met on the road and barking at the man and sticking to his heels. When those who were investigating the robbery learned this from men who had encountered the pair and were told the colour and size of the dog, they pursued all the more vigorously and overtook the man and brought him back from Crommyon. 970 On the return the dog led the procession, capering and exultant, as though it claimed for itself the credit for pursuing and capturing the temple-thief. The people actually voted it a public ration of food and entrusted the charge of this to the priests in perpetuity, thereby imitating the ancient Athenian kindness to the mule. For when Pericles was building the Hecatompedon on the Acropolis, stones were naturally brought by numerous teams of draught-animals every day. Now one of the mules who had assisted gallantly in the work, but had now been discharged because of old age, used to go down every day to the Ceramicus and meet the beasts which brought the stones, turning back with them and trotting along by their side, as though to encourage and cheer them on. So the people of Athens, admiring its enterprise, gave orders for it to be maintained at the public expense, voting it free meals, as though to an athlete who had succumbed to old age.
[De soll. an. 14] 14 Therefore those who deny that there is any kind of justice owed to animals by us must be conceded to be right so far as marine and deep-sea creatures are concerned; for these are completely lacking in amiability, apathetic, and devoid of all sweetness of disposition. And well did Homer say
[De soll. an. 14b] The gray-green sea bore you,
with reference to a man regarded as uncivilized and unsociable, implying that the sea produces nothing friendly or gentle. But a man who would use such speech in regard to land animals is himself cruel and brutal. Or perhaps you will not admit that there was a bond of justice between Lysimachus and the Hyrcanian dog which alone stood guard by his corpse and, when his body was cremated, rushed into the flames and hurled itself upon him. The same is reported to have been done by the eagle which was kept by Pyrrhus, not the king, but a certain private citizen; when he died, it kept vigil by his body; at the funeral it hovered about the bier and finally folded its wings, settled on the pyre and was consumed with its master’s body.
[De soll. an. 14c] The elephant of King Porus, when he was wounded in the battle against Alexander, gently and solicitously pulled out with its trunk many of the javelins sticking in its master. Though it was in a sad state itself, it did not give up until it perceived that the king had lost much blood and was slipping off; then, fearing that he would fall, it gently kneeled and afforded its master a painless glide.
[De soll. an. 14d] Bucephalas unsaddled would permit his groom to mount him; but when he was all decked out in his royal accoutrements and collars, he would let no one approach except Alexander himself. If any others tried to come near, he would charge at them loudly neighing and rear and trample any of them who were not quick enough to rush far away and escape.
[De soll. an. 15] 15 1 I am not unaware that you will think that my examples are rather a hodge-podge; but it is not easy to find naturally clever animals doing anything which illustrates merely one of their virtues. Their probity, rather, is revealed in their love of offspring and their cleverness in their nobility; then, too, their craftiness and intelligence is inseparable from their ardour and courage. Those, nevertheless, who are intent on classifying and defining each separate occasion will find that dogs give the impression of a mind that is at once civil and superior when they turn away from those who sit on the ground — which is presumably referred to in the lines
[De soll. an. 15b] The dogs barked and rushed up, but wise Odysseus
Cunningly crouched; the staff slipped from his hand;
[De soll. an. 15c] for dogs cease attacking those who have thrown themselves down and taken on an attitude that resembles humility.
[De soll. an. 15d] They relate further that the champion of the Indian dogs, one greatly admired by Alexander, when a stag was let loose and a boar and a bear, lay quiet and still and disregarded them; but when a lion appeared, it sprang up at once to prepare for the fray, showing clearly 971 that it chose to match itself with the lion and scorned all the others.
[De soll. an. 15e] Hounds that hunt hares, if they themselves kill them, enjoy pulling them to pieces and eagerly lap up the blood; but if, as frequently happens, a hare in desperation exhausts all its breath in a final sprint and expires, the hounds, when they come upon it dead, will not touch it at all, but stand there wagging their tails, as much as to say that they do not strive for food, but for victory and the honour of winning.
[De soll. an. 16] 16 1 There are many examples of cunning, but I shall dismiss foxes and wolves and the tricks of crane and daw (for they are obvious), and shall take for my witness Thales, the most ancient of the Wise Men, not the least of whose claims to admiration, they say, was his getting the better of a mule by a trick. For one of the mules that were used to carry salt, on entering a river, accidentally stumbled and, since the salt melted away, it was free of its burden when it got up. It recognized the cause of this and bore it in mind. The result was that every time it crossed the river, it would deliberately lower itself and wet the bags, crouching and bending first to one side, then to the other. When Thales heard of this, he gave orders to fill the bags with wool and sponges instead of salt and to drive the mule laden in this manner. So when it played its customary trick and soaked its burden with water, it came to know that its cunning was unprofitable and thereafter was so attentive and cautious in crossing the river that the water never touched the slightest portion of its burden even by accident.
[De soll. an. 16b] Partridges exhibit another piece of cunning, combined with affection for their young. They teach their fledglings, who are not yet able to fly, to lie on their backs when they are pursued and to keep above them as a screen some piece of turf or rubbish. The mothers meanwhile lure the hunters in another direction and divert attention to themselves, fluttering along at their feet and rising only briefly until, by making it seem that they are on the point of being captured, they draw them far away from their young.
[De soll. an. 16c] When hares return for repose, they put to sleep their leverets in quite different places, often as much as a hundred feet apart, so that, if man or dog comes near, they shall not all be simultaneously in danger. The hares themselves run to and fro and leave tracks in many places, but last of all with a great leap they leave their traces far behind, and so to bed.
[De soll. an. 16d] The she-bear, just prior to the state called hibernation, before she becomes quite torpid and heavy and finds it difficult to move, cleans out her lair and, when about to enter, approaches it as lightly and inconspicuously as possible, treading on tiptoe, then turns around and backs into the den.
[De soll. an. 16e] Hinds are inclined to bear their young beside a public road where carnivorous animals do not come; and stags, when they observe that they have grown heavy by reason of their fat and surplus flesh, vanish and preserve themselves by hiding when they do not trust to their heels.
[De soll. an. 16f] The way in which hedgehogs defend and guard themselves has occasioned the proverb:
[De soll. an. 16g] The fox knows many tricks, but the hedgehog one big one;
for when the fox approaches, as Ion says, it,
Curling its spiny body in a coil,
Lies still, impregnable to touch or bite.
[De soll. an. 16h] But the provision that the hedgehog makes for its young is even more ingenious. When autumn comes, it creeps under the vines and with its paws shakes down to the ground grapes from the bunches and, having rolled about in them, gets up with them attached to its quills. 972 Once when I was a child I saw one, like a creeping or walking bunch of grapes! Then it goes down into its hole and delivers its load to its young for them to enjoy and draw rations from. Their lair has two openings, one facing the south, the other the north; when they perceive that the wind will change, like good skippers who shift sail, they block up the entrance which lies to the wind and open the other. And a man in Cyzicus observing this acquired a reputation for being able to predict unaided which way the wind would blow.
[De soll. an. 17] 17 1 Elephants, as Juba declares, exhibit a social capacity joined with intelligence. Hunters dig pits for them, covering them with slender twigs and light rubbish; when, accordingly, any elephant of a number travelling together falls in, the others bring wood and stones and throw them in to fill up the excavation so that their comrade can easily get out. He also relates that, without any instruction, elephants pray to the gods, purifying themselves in the sea and, when the sun rises, worshipping it by raising their trunks, as if they were hands of supplication. For this reason they are the animal most loved of the gods, as Ptolemy Philopator has testified; for when he had vanquished Antiochus and wished to honour the gods in a really striking way, among many other offerings to commend his victory in battle, he sacrificed four elephants. Thereafter, since he had dreams by night in which the deity angrily threatened him because of that strange sacrifice, he employed many rites of appeasement and set up as a votive offering four bronze elephants to match those he had slaughtered.
[De soll. an. 17b] Social usages are to be found no less among lions. For young lions take along with them to the hunt the old and slow; when the latter are tired out, they rest and wait, while the young lions hunt on. When they have taken anything, they summon the others by a raring like the bleat of a calf; the old ones hear it at once and come to partake in common of the prey.
[De soll. an. 18] 18 1 The loves of some animals are wild and furious, while others have a refinement which is not far from human and an intercourse conducted with much grace. Such was the elephant which at Alexandria played the rival to Aristophanes the grammarian. They were, in fact, in love with the same flower-girl; nor was the elephant’s love less manifest: as he passed by the market, he always brought her fruit and stood beside her for a long time and would insert his trunk, like a hand, within her garments and gently caress her fair breasts.
[De soll. an. 18b] The serpent that fell in love with an Aetolian woman used to visit her at night and slip under some part of her body next the skin and coil about her without doing her any harm at all, either intentional or accidental; but always at daybreak it was decent enough to glide away. And this it did constantly until the kinsmen of the woman removed her to a house at some distance. The serpent did not come to her for three or four nights; but all the time, we may suppose, it was going about in search of her and missing its goal. At last, when it had somehow found her with difficulty, it embraced her, not with that former gentleness it had used, but rather more roughly, its coils binding her hands to her body, and with the end of its tail it lashed the calves of her legs, displaying a light and tender anger that had in it more indulgence than punishment.
[De soll. an. 18c] As for the goose in Aegium that loved a boy and the ram that set his heart on Glauce the harp-player, since these are famous tales and I rather imagine you have had enough of such to spoil your appetite for more, I omit them.
[De soll. an. 19] 19 1 As for starlings and crows and parrots which learn to talk and afford their teachers so malleable and imitative a vocal current to train and discipline, 973 they seem to me to be champions and advocates of the other animals in their ability to learn, instructing us in some measure that they too are endowed both with rational utterance and with articulate voice; for which reason it is quite ridiculous to admit a comparison of them with creatures who have not enough voice even to howl or groan. And what music, what grace do we not find in the natural, untaught warbling of birds! To this the most eloquent and musical of our poets bear witness when they compare their sweetest songs and poems to the singing of swans and nightingales. Now since there is more reason in teaching than in learning, we must yield assent to Aristotle when he says that animals do teach: a nightingale, in fact, has been observed instructing her young how to sing. A further proof that supports him is the fact that birds which have been taken young from the nest and bred apart from their mothers sing the worse for it; for the birds that are bred with their mothers are taught and learn, not for pay or glory, but for the joy of rivalling each other in song and because they cherish the beautiful in their utterance rather than the useful.
[De soll. an. 19b] On this subject I have a story to tell you which I heard myself from many Greeks and Romans who were eye-witnesses. A certain barber at Rome had his shop directly opposite the precinct which they call the Market of the Greeks. He bred up a wonderful prodigy of a jay with a huge range of tones and expressions, which could reproduce the phrases of human speech and the cries of beasts and the sound of instruments — under no compulsion, but making it a rule and point of honour to let nothing go unrepeated or unimitated. Now it happened that a certain rich man was buried from that quarter to the blast of many trumpets and, as is customary, there was a halt in front of the barber-shop while the trumpeters, who were applauded and encored, played for a long time. From that day on the jay was speechless and mute, not letting out even a peep to request the necessities of life; so those who habitually passed the place and had formerly wondered at her voice, were now even more astonished at her silence. Some suspected that she had been poisoned by rival bird-trainers, but most conjectured that the trumpets had blasted her hearing and that her voice had been simultaneously extinguished. Now neither of these guesses was correct: it was self-discipline, it would seem, and her talent for mimicry that had sought an inner retreat as she refitted and prepared her voice like a musical instrument. For suddenly her mimicry returned and there blazed forth none of those old familiar imitations, but only the music of the trumpets, reproduced with its exact sequences and every change of pitch and rhythm and tone. I conclude, as I said before, that self-instruction implies more reason in animals than does readiness to learn from others.
[De soll. an. 19c] Still, I believe that I should not pass over one example at least of a dog’s learning, of which I myself was a spectator at Rome. The dog appeared in a pantomime with a dramatic plot and many characters and conformed in its acting at all points with the acts and reactions required by the text. In particular, they experimented on it with a drug that was really soporific, but supposed in the story to be deadly. The dog took the bread that was supposedly drugged, swallowed it, and a little later appeared to shiver and stagger and nod until it finally sprawled out and lay there like a corpse, letting itself be dragged and hauled about, as the plot of the play prescribed. But when it recognized from the words and the action that the time had come, at first it began to stir slightly, as though recovering from a profound sleep, and lifted its head and looked about. 974 Then to the amazement of the spectators it got up and proceeded to the right person and fawned on him with joy and pleasure so that everyone, and even Caesar himself (for the aged Vespasian was present in the Theatre of Marcellus), was much moved.
[De soll. an. 20] 20 Yet perhaps it is ridiculous for us to make a parade of animals distinguished for learning when Democritus declares that we have been their pupils in matters of fundamental importance: of the spider in weaving and mending, of the swallow in home-building, of the sweet-voiced swan and nightingale in our imitation of their song. Further, of the three divisions of medicine, we can discern in animals a generous portion of each; for it is not cure by drugs alone of which they make use. After devouring a serpent tortoises take a dessert of marjoram, and weasels of rue. Dogs purge themselves when bilious by a certain kind of grass. The snake sharpens and restores its fading sight with fennel. When the she-bear comes forth from her lair, the first thing she eats is wild arum; for its acridity opens her gut which has become constricted. At other times, when she suffers from nausea, she resorts to anthills and sits, holding out her tongue all running and juicy with sweet liquor until it is covered with ants; these she swallows and is alleviated. The Egyptians declare that they have observed and imitated the ibis’ clyster-like purging of herself with brine; and the priests make use of water from which an ibis has drunk to purify themselves; for if the water is tainted or unhealthy in any way, the ibis will not approach it.
[De soll. an. 20b] Then, too, some beasts cure themselves by a short fast, like wolves and lions who, when they are surfeited with flesh, lie still for a while, basking in the sun. And they say a tigress, if a kid is given her, will keep fasting for two days without eating; on the third, she grows hungry and asks for some other food. She will even pull her cage to pieces, but will not touch the kid which she has now come to regard as a fellow-boarder and room mate.
[De soll. an. 20c] Yet again, they relate that elephants employ surgery: they do, in fact, bring aid to the wounded by easily and harmlessly drawing out spars and javelins and arrows without any laceration of the flesh. And Cretan goats, when they eat dittany, easily expel arrows from their bodies and so have presented an easy lesson for women with child to take to heart, that the herb has an abortive property; for there is nothing except dittany that the goats, when they are wounded, rush to search for.
[De soll. an. 21] 21 1 These matters, though wonderful, are less surprising than are those creatures which have cognition of number and can count, as do the cattle near Susa. At that place they irrigate the royal park with water raised in buckets by wheels, and the number of bucketfuls is prescribed. For each cow raises one hundred bucketfuls each day, and more you could not get from her, even if you wanted to use force. In fact, they often try to add to the number to see; but the cow balks and will not continue when once she has delivered her quota, so accurately does she compute and remember the sum, as Ctesias of Cnidus has related.
[De soll. an. 21b] The Libyans laugh at the Egyptians for telling a fabulous tale about the oryx, that it lets out a cry at that very day and hour when the star rises that they call Sothis, which we call the Dog Star or Sirius. At any rate, when this star rises flush with the sun, practically all the goats turn about and look toward the east; and this is the most certain sign of its return and agrees most exactly with the tables of mathematical calculation.
[De soll. an. 22] 22 1 975 But that my discourse may add its finishing touch and terminate, let me “make the move from the sacred line” and say a few words about the divine inspiration and the mantic power of animals. It is, in fact, no small or ignoble division of divination, but a great and very ancient one, which takes its name from birds; for their quickness of apprehension and their habit of responding to any manifestation, so easily are they diverted, serves as an instrument for the god, who directs their movements, their calls or cries, and their formations which are sometimes contrary, sometimes favouring, as winds are; so that he uses some birds to cut short, others to speed enterprises and inceptions to the destined end. It is for this reason that Euripides calls birds in general “heralds of the gods”; and, in particular, Socrates says that he considers himself a “fellow-slave of the swans.” So again, among monarchs Pyrrhus liked to be called an Eagle and Antiochus a Hawk. But when we deride, or rail at, stupid and ignorant people we call them “fish.” Really, we can produce cases by the thousand of signs and portents manifested to us by the gods through creatures of land and air, but not one such can the advocate for aquatic creatures name. No, they are all “deaf and blind” so far as foreseeing anything goes, and so have been cast aside into the godless and titanic region, as into a Limbo of the Unblessed, where the rational and intelligent part of the soul has been extinguished. Having, however, only a last remnant of sensation that is clogged with mud and deluged with water, they seem to be at their last gasp rather than alive.
[De soll. an. 23] 975 23 1 Heracleon. Raise your brows, dear Phaedimus, and rouse yourself to defend us the sea folk, the island-dwellers! This bout of argument has become no child’s play, but a hard-fought contest, a debate which lacks only the actual bar and platform.
[De soll. an. 23b] Phaedimus. Not so, Heracleon, but an ambush laid with malice aforethought has been disclosed. While we are still tipsy and soused from yesterday’s bout, this gentleman, as you see, has attacked us with premeditation, cold sober. Yet there can be no begging off. Devotee of Pindar though I am, I do not want to be addressed with the quotation
[De soll. an. 23c] To excuse oneself when combat is offered
Has consigned valour to deep obscurity;
[De soll. an. 23d] for we have much leisure; and it is not our discourse that will be idle, but our dogs and horses, our nets and seines of all kinds, for a truce is granted for to day because of our argument to every creature both on land and sea. Yet do not fear: I shall use it with moderation, introducing no opinions of philosophers or Egyptian fables or unattested tales of Indians or Libyans. But those facts that may be observed everywhere and have as witnesses the men who exploit the sea and acquire their credit from direct observation, of these I shall present a few. Yet there is nothing to impede illustrations drawn from land animals: the land is wide open for investigation by the senses. The sea, on the other hand, grants us but a few dubious glimpses. She draws a veil over the birth and growth, the attacks and reciprocal defences, of most of her denizens. Among these there are no few feats of intelligence and memory and community spirit that remain unknown to us and so obstruct our argument. Then too, land animals by reason of their close relationship and their cohabitation have to some extent been imbued with human manners; they have the advantage of their breeding and teaching and imitation, which sweetens all their bitterness and sullenness, like fresh water mixed with brine, while their lack of understanding and dullness are roused to life by human contacts. Whereas the life of sea creatures, being set apart by mighty bounds from intercourse with men and having nothing adventitious or acquired from human usage, 976 is peculiar to itself, indigenous and uncontaminated by foreign ways, not by distinction of Nature, but of location. For their Nature is such as to welcome and retain such instruction as reaches them. This it is that renders many eels tractable, like those that are called sacred in Arethusa; and in many places there are fish which will respond to their own names, as the story goes of Crassus’ moray, upon the death of which he wept. And once when Domitius said to him, “Isn’t it true that you wept when a moray died?” he answered, “Isn’t it true that you buried three wives and didn’t weep?’
[De soll. an. 23e] The priests’ crocodiles not only recognize the voice of those who summon them and allow themselves to be handled, but open their mouths to let their teeth be cleaned by hand and wiped with towels. Recently our excellent Philinus came back from a trip to Egypt and told us that he had seen in Antaeopolis an old woman sleeping on a low bed beside a crocodile, which was stretched out beside her in a perfectly decorous way.
[De soll. an. 23f] They have long been telling the tale that when King Ptolemy summoned the sacred crocodile and it would not heed him or obey in spite of his entreaties and requests, it seemed to the priests an omen of his death, which came about not long after; whence it appears that the race of water creatures is not wholly unendowed with your precious gift of divination. Indeed, I have heard that near Sura, a village in Lycia between Phellus and Myra, men sit and watch the gyrations and flights and pursuits of fish and divine from them by a professional and rational system, as others do with birds.
[De soll. an. 24] 24 1 But let these examples suffice to show that sea animals are not entirely unrelated to us or cut off from human fellowship. Of their uncontaminated and native intelligence their caution is strong evidence. For nothing that swims and does not merely stick or cling to rocks is easily taken or captured without trouble by man as are asses by wolves, bees by bee-eaters, cicadas by swallows, and snakes by deer, which easily attract them. This, in fact, is why deer are called elaphoi, not from their swiftness, but from their power of attracting snakes. So too the ram draws the wolf by stamping and they say that very many creatures, and particularly apes, are attracted to the panther by their pleasure in its scent. But in practically all sea-creatures any sensation is suspect and evokes an intelligently inspired defensive reaction against attack, so that fishing has been rendered no simple or trivial task, but needs all manner of implements and clever and deceitful tricks to use against the fish.
[De soll. an. 24b] This is perfectly clear from ready examples: no one wants to have an angler’s rod too thick, though it needs elasticity to withstand the thrashing of such fish as are caught; men select, rather, a slender rod so that it may not cast a broad shadow and arouse suspicion. In the next place, they do not thicken the line with many plies when they attach the loop and do not make it rough; for this, too, betrays the lure to the fish. They also contrive that the hairs which form the leader shall be as white as possible; for in this way they are less conspicuous in the sea because of the similarity of colour. The remark of the Poet:
[De soll. an. 24c] Like lead she sank into the great sea depths,
Like lead infixed in horn of rustic ox
Which brings destruction to the ravenous fish —
[De soll. an. 24d] some misunderstand this and imagine that the ancients used ox-hair for their lines, alleging that keras means “hair” and for this reason keirasthai means “to have one’s hair cut” and koura is a “haircut” and the keroplastes in Archilochus is one who is fond 977 of trimming and beautifying the hair. But this is not so: they use horse-hair which they take from males, for mares by wetting the hair with their urine make it weak. Aristarchus declares that there is nothing erudite or subtle in these lines; the fact is that a small piece of horn was attached to the line in front of the hook, since the fish, when they are confronted by anything else, chew the line in two. They use rounded hooks to catch mullets and bonitos, whose mouths are small; for they are wary of a broader hook. Often, indeed, the mullet suspects even a rounded hook and swims around it, flipping the bait with its tail and snatching up bits it has dislodged; or if it cannot do this, it closes its mouth and purses it up and with the tips of its lips nibbles away at the bait.
[De soll. an. 24e] The sea-bass is braver than your elephant: it is not from another, but from himself without assistance, that he extracts the barb when he is caught by the hook; he swings his head from side to side to widen the wound, enduring the pain of tearing his flesh until he can throw off the hook. The fox-shark does not often approach the hook and shuns the lure; but if he is caught, he immediately turns himself inside out, for by reason of the elasticity and flexibility of his body he can naturally shift and twist it about, so that when he is inside out, the hook falls away.
[De soll. an. 25] 25 1 Now the examples I have given indicate intelligence and an ingenious, subtle use of it for opportune profit; but there are others that display, in combination with understanding, a social sense and mutual affection, as is the case with the barbier and the parrot-fish. For if one parrot-fish swallows the hook, the others present swarm upon the line and nibble it away; and the same fish, when any of their kind have fallen into the net, give them their tails from outside; when they eagerly fix their teeth in these, the others pull on them and bring them through in tow. And barbiers are even more strenuous in rescuing their fellows: getting under the line with their backs, they erect their sharp spines and try to saw the line through and cut if off with the rough edge.
[De soll. an. 25b] Yet we know of no land animal that has the courage to assist another in danger — not bear or boar or lioness or panther. True it is that in the arena those of the same kind draw close together and huddle in a circle; yet they have neither knowledge nor desire to help each other. Instead, each ones flees to get as far as possible from a wounded or dying fellow. That tale of the elephants carrying brushwood to the pits and giving their fallen comrade a ramp to mount is monstrous and far-fetched and dictates, as it were, that we are to believe it on a king’s prescription — that is, on the writs of Juba. Suppose it to be true: it merely proves that many sea creatures are in no way inferior in community spirit and intelligence to the wisest of the land animals. As for their sociability, I shall soon make a special plea on that topic.
[De soll. an. 26] 26 1 Now fishermen, observing that most fish evade the striking of the hook by such countermoves as wrestlers use, resorted, like the Persians, to force and used the dragnet, since for those caught in it there could be no escape with the help of reason or cleverness. For mullet and rainbow-wrasse are caught by casting-nets and round nets, as are also the bream and the sargue and the goby and the sea-bass. The so called net fish, that is surmullet and gilthead and sculpin, are caught in seines by trawling: accordingly it was quite correct for Homer to call this kind of net a “catch-all.” Codfish, like bass, have devices even against these. For when the bass perceives that the trawl is approaching, it forces the mud apart and hammers a hollow in the bottom. When it has made room enough to allow the net to overrun it, it thrusts itself in and waits until the danger is past.
[De soll. an. 26b] Now when the dolphin is caught and perceives itself to be trapped in the net, it bides its time, not at all disturbed but well pleased, for it feasts without stint on the fish that have been gathered with no trouble to itself. But as soon as it comes near the shore, it bites its way through the net and makes its escape. 978 Yet if it should not get away in time, on the first occasion it suffers no harm: the fishermen merely sew rushes to its crest and let it go. But if it is taken a second time, they recognize it from the seam and punish it with a beating. This, however, rarely occurs: most dolphins are grateful for their pardon in the first instance and take care to do no harm in the future.
[De soll. an. 26c] Further, among the many examples of wariness, precaution, or evasion, we must not pass over that of the cuttlefish: it has the so called mytis beside the neck full of black liquid, which they call “ink.” When it is come upon, it discharges the liquid to the purpose that the sea shall be inked out and create darkness around it while it slips through and eludes the fisherman’s gaze. In this it imitates Homer’s gods who often “in a dark cloud” snatch up and smuggle away those whom they are pleased to save. But enough of this.
[De soll. an. 27] 27 1 As for cleverness in attacking and catching prey, we may perceive subtle examples of it in many different species. The starfish, for example, knowing that everything with which it comes in contact dissolves and liquefies, offers its body and is indifferent to the contact of those that overtake or meet it. You know, of course, the property of the torpedo: not only does it paralyse all those who touch it, but even through the net creates a heavy numbness in the hands of the trawlers. And some who have experimented further with it report that if it is washed ashore alive and you pour water on it from above, you may perceive the numbness mounting to the hand and dulling your sense of touch by way of the water which, so it seems, suffers a change and is first infected. Having, therefore, an innate sense of this power, it never makes a frontal attack or endangers itself; rather, it swims in a circle around its prey and discharges its shocks as if they were darts, thus poisoning first the water, then through the water the creature which can neither defend itself nor escape, being held fast as if by chains and frozen stiff.
[De soll. an. 27b] The so called fisherman is known to many; he gets his name from his actions. Aristotle says that the cuttlefish also makes use of this stratagem: he lets down, like a fishing line, a tentacle from his neck which is naturally designed to extend to a great length when it is released, or to be drawn to him when it is pulled in. So when he espies a little fish, he gives it the feeler to bite and then by degrees imperceptibly draws it back toward himself until the prey attached to the arm is within reach of his mouth.
[De soll. an. 27c] As for the octopus’ change of colour, Pindar has made it celebrated in the words
[De soll. an. 27d] To all the cities to which you resort
Bring a mind like the changing skin of the seabeast;
and Theognis likewise:
Be minded like the octopus’ hue:
The colour of its rock will meet the view.
[De soll. an. 27e] The chameleon, to be sure, is metachromatic, but not from any design or desire to conceal itself; it changes colour uselessly from fear, being naturally timid and cowardly. And this is consistent with the abundance of air in it, as Theophrastus says; for nearly the whole body of the creature is occupied by its lungs, which shows it to be full of air and for this reason easily moved to change colour. But this same action on the part of the octopus is not an emotional response, but a deliberate change, since it uses this device to escape what it fears and to capture what it feeds on: by this deceit it can both seize the latter, which does not try to escape, and avoid the former, which proceeds on its way. Now the story that it eats its own tentacles is a lie, but it is true that it fears the moray and the conger. It is, in fact, maltreated by them; for it cannot do them harm, since they slip from its grasp. 979 On the other hand, when the crawfish has once got them in its grasp, it wins the victory easily, for smoothness is no aid against roughness; yet when the octopus has once thrust its tentacles inside the crawfish, the latter succumbs. And so Nature has created this cycle and succession of mutual pursuit and flight as a field for the exercise and competitive practice of adroitness and intelligence.
[De soll. an. 28] 28 1 We have, to be sure, heard Aristotimus telling us about the hedgehog’s foreknowledge of the winds; and our friend also admired the V shaped flight of cranes. I can produce no hedgehog of Cyzicus or Byzantium, but instead the whole body of sea-hedgehogs, which, when they perceive that storm and surf are coming, ballast themselves with little stones in order that they may not be capsized by reason of their lightness or be swept away by the swell, but may remain fixed in position through the weight of their little rocks.
[De soll. an. 28b] Again, the cranes’ change of flight against the wind is not merely the action of one species: all fish generally have the same notion and always swim against wave and current, taking care that a blast from the rear does not fold back their scales and expose and roughen their bodies. For this reason they always present the prow of their bodies to the waves, for in that way head first they cleave the sea, which depresses their gills and, flowing smoothly over the surface, keeps down, instead of ruffling up, the bristling kin. Now this, as I have said, is common to all fish except the sturgeon, which, they say, swims with wind and tide and does not fear the harrowing of its scales since the overlaps are not in the direction of the tail.
[De soll. an. 29] 29 1 The tunny is so sensitive to equinox and solstice that it teaches even men themselves without the need of astronomical tables; for wherever it may be when the winter solstice overtakes it, in that same place it stands and stays until the equinox. As for that clever device of the crane, the grasping of the stone by night so that if it falls, she may awake from sleep — how much cleverer, my friend, is the artifice of the dolphin, for whom it is illicit to stand still or to cease from motion. For its nature is to be ever active: the termination of its life and its movement is one and the same. When it needs sleep, it rises to the surface of the sea and allows itself to sink deeper and deeper on its back, lulled to rest by the swinging motion of the ground swell until it touches the bottom. Thus roused, it goes whizzing up, and when it reaches the surface, again goes slack, devising for itself a kind of rest combined with motion. And they say that tunnies do the same thing for the same reason.
[De soll. an. 29b] Having just a moment ago given you an account of the tunny’s mathematical foreknowledge of the reversal of the sun, of which Aristotle is a witness, I beg you to hear the tale of their arithmetical learning. But first, I swear, I must mention their knowledge of optics, of which Aeschylus seems not to have been ignorant, for these are his words:
[De soll. an. 29c] Squinting the left eye like a tunny fish.
[De soll. an. 29d] They seem, indeed, to have poor sight in one eye. And it is for this reason that when they enter the Black Sea, they hug one bank on the right, and the other when they are going out, it being very prudent and sagacious of them always to entrust the protection of themselves to the better eye. Now since they apparently need arithmetic to preserve their consociation and affection for each other, they have attained such perfection of learning that, since they take great pleasure in feeding and schooling together, they always form the school into a cube, making it an altogether solid figure with a surface of six equal solid plane sides; then they swim on their way preserving their formation, a square that faces both ways. 980 Certainly a hooer watching for tunnies who counts the exact number of the surface at once makes known the total number of the shoal, since he knows that the depth is equal one to one with the breadth and the length.
[De soll. an. 30] 30 1 Schooling together has also given the bonitos their name of amia and I think this is true of year-old tunnies as well. As for the other kinds which are observed to live in shoals in mutual society, it is impossible to state their number. Let us rather, therefore, proceed to examine those that have a special partnership, that is, symbiosis. One of these is the pinna-guard, over which Chrysippus spilled a very great deal of ink; indeed it has a reserved seat in every single book of his, whether ethical or physical. Chrysippus has obviously not investigated the sponge-guard; otherwise he could hardly have left it out. Now the pinna-guard is a crab-like creature, so they say, who lives with the pinna and sits in front of the shell guarding the entrance. It allows the pinna to remain wide open and agape until one of the little fish that are their prey gets within; then the guard nips the flesh of the pinna and slips inside; the shell is closed and together they feast on the imprisoned prey.
[De soll. an. 30b] The sponge is governed by a little creature not resembling a crab, but much like a spider. Now the sponge is no lifeless, insensitive, bloodless thing; though it clings to the rocks, as many other animals do, Cit has a peculiar movement outward and inward which needs, as it were, admonition and supervision. In any case it is loose in texture and its pores are relaxed because of its sloth and dullness; but when anything edible enters, the guard gives the signal, and it closes up and consumes the prey. Even more, if a man approaches or touches it, informed by the scratching of the guard, it shudders, as it were, and so closes itself up by stiffening and contracting that it is not an easy, but a very difficult, matter for the hunters to undercut it.
[De soll. an. 30c] The purplefish lives in colonies which build up a comb together, like bees. In this the species is said to propagate; they catch at edible bits of oyster-green and seaweed that stick to shells, and furnish each other with a sort of periodic rotating banquet, as they feed one after another in series.
[De soll. an. 31] 31 1 And why should anyone be surprised at the community life of these when the most unsociable and brutal of all creatures bred in river, lake, or sea, the crocodile, shows himself marvellously proficient at partnership and goodwill in his dealings with the Egyptian plover? The plover is a bird of the swamps and river banks and it guards the crocodile, not supplying its own food, but as a boarder making a meal of the crocodile’s scraps. Now when it perceives that, during the crocodile’s sleep, the ichneumon is planning to attack it, smearing itself with mud like an athlete dusting himself for the fray, the bird awakes the crocodile by crying and pecking at it. And the crocodile becomes so gentle with it that it will open its mouth and let it in and is pleased that the bird quietly pecks out, with its bill, bits of flesh which are caught in the teeth and cleans them up. When it is now satisfied and wants to close its mouth, it tilts its snout upward as an indication of its desire and does not let it down until the plover, at once perceiving the intention, flies out.
[De soll. an. 31b] The so called “guide” is a small fish, in size and shape like a goby; but by reason of the roughness of its scales it is said to resemble a ruffled bird. It always accompanies one of the great whales, swimming in front of it and directing its course so that it may not go aground in shallows or be cut off in some lagoon or strait from which exit may be difficult. 981 The whale follows it, as a ship obeys the helm, changing course with great docility. And whatever else, creature or boat or stone, it embraces in its gaping jaws is at once destroyed and goes to its ruin completely engulfed; but the little fish it knows and receives inside its mouth as in a haven. While the fish sleeps within, the whale remains motionless and lies by; but when it comes out again, the beast accompanies it and does not depart from it day or night; or, if it does, it gets lost and wanders at random. Many, indeed, have been cast up on the land and perished, being, as it were, without a pilot. We, in fact, were witnesses of such a mishap near Anticyra not long ago; and they relate that some time ago, when a whale came aground not far from Boulis and rotted, a plague ensued.
[De soll. an. 31c] Is it, then, justifiable to compare with these associations and companionships those friendships which Aristotle says exist between foxes and snakes because of their common hostility to the eagle; or those between bustards and horses because the former like to approach and pick over the dung? As for me, I perceive even in ants or bees no such concern for each other. It is true that every one of them promotes the common task, yet none of them has any interest in or regard for his fellow individually.
[De soll. an. 32] 32 1 And we shall observe this difference even more clearly when we turn our attention to the oldest and most important of social institutions and duties, those concerned with generation and procreation. Now in the first place those fish that inhabit a sea that borders on lagoons or receives rivers resort to these when they are ready to deposit their eggs, seeking the tranquillity and smoothness of fresh water, since calm is a good midwife. Besides, lagoons and rivers are devoid of sea monsters, so that the eggs and fry may survive. This is the reason why the Black Sea is most favoured for spawning by very many fish. It breeds no large sea beasts at all except an infrequent seal and a small dolphin; besides, the influx of rivers — and those which empty into the Black Sea are numerous and very large — creates a gentle blend conducive to the production of offspring. The most wonderful tale is told about the anthias, which Homer calls “Sacred Fish.” Yet some think that “sacred” means “important,” just as we call the important bone os sacrum and epilepsy, an important disease, the sacred disease. Others interpret it in the ordinary sense as meaning “dedicated” or “consecrated.” Eratosthenes seems to refer to the gilthead when he says
[De soll. an. 32b] Swift courser golden-browed, the sacred fish.
[De soll. an. 32c] Many say that this is the sturgeon, which is rare and hard to catch, though it is often seen off the coast of Pamphylia. If any ever do succeed in catching it, they put on wreaths themselves and wreathe their boats; and, as they sail past, they are welcomed and honoured with shouts and applause. But most authorities hold that it is the anthias that is and is called “sacred,” for wherever this fish appears there are no sea monsters. Sponge-fishers may dive in confidence and fish may spawn without fear, as though they had a guarantor of their immunity. The reason for this is a puzzle: whether the monsters avoid the anthias as elephants do a pig and lions a cock, or whether there are indications of places free from monsters, which the fish comes to know and frequents, being an intelligent creature with a good memory.
[De soll. an. 33] 33 1 Then again the care of the young is shared by both parents: the males do not eat their own young, but stand by the spawn to guard the eggs, as Aristotle relates. Some follow the female and sprinkle the eggs gradually with milt, for otherwise the spawn will not grow, but remains imperfect and undeveloped. In particular the wrasse makes a sort of nest of seaweed, envelops the spawn in it, and shelters it from the waves.
[De soll. an. 33b] 982 The affection of the dogfish for its young is not inferior in warmth and kindliness to that of any of the tamest animals; for they lay the egg, then sustain and carry the newly hatched young, not without, but within themselves, as if from a second birth. When the young grow larger, the parents let them out and teach them to swim close by; then again they collect them through their mouths and allow their bodies to be used as dwelling-places, affording at once room and board and sanctuary until the young become strong enough to shift for themselves.
[De soll. an. 33c] Wonderful also is the care of the tortoise for the birth and preservation of her young. To bear them she comes out of the sea to the shore near at hand; but since she is unable to incubate the eggs or to remain on dry land for long, she deposits them on the strand and heaps over them the smoothest and softest part of the sand. When she has buried and concealed them securely, some say that she scratches and scribbles the place with her feet, making it easy for her to recognize; others affirm that it is because she has been turned on her back by the male that she leaves peculiar marks and impressions about the place. But what is more remarkable than this, she waits for the fortieth day (for that is the number required to develop and hatch out the eggs) and then approaches. And each tortoise recognizes her own treasure and opens it more joyously and eagerly than a man does a deposit of gold.
[De soll. an. 34] 34 1 The accounts given of the crocodile are similar in other respects, but the animal’s ability to estimate the right place goes beyond man’s power to guess or calculate the cause. Hence they affirm that this creature’s foreknowledge is divine and not rational. For neither to a greater or a less distance, but just so far as the Nile will spread that season and cover the land in flood, just so far does she go to deposit her eggs, with such accuracy that any farmer finding the eggs may know himself and predict to others how far the river will advance. And her purpose in being so exact is to prevent either herself or her eggs getting wet when she sits on them. When they are hatched, the one which, upon emerging, does not immediately seize in its mouth anything that comes along, fly or midge or worm or straw or plant, the mother tears to pieces and bites to death; but those that are bold and active she loves and tends, thus bestowing her affection by judgement, as the wisest of men think right, not by emotion.
[De soll. an. 34b] Furthermore, seals too bear their young on dry land and little by little induce their offspring to try the sea, then quickly take them out again. This they do often at intervals until the young are conditioned in this way to feel confidence and enjoy life in the sea.
[De soll. an. 34c] Frogs in their coupling use a call, the so called ololygon, a cry of wooing and mating. When the male has thus attracted the female, they wait for the night together, for they cannot consort in the water and during the day they are afraid to do so on land; but when the darkness falls, they come out and embrace with impunity. On other occasions when their cry is shrill, it is because they expect rain. And this is among the surest of signs.
[De soll. an. 35] 35 1 But, dear Poseidon! What an absurd and ridiculous error I have almost fallen into: while I am spending my time on seals and frogs, FI have neglected and omitted the wisest of sea creatures, the most beloved of the gods! For what nightingales are to be compared with the halcyon for its love of sweet sound, or what swallows for its love of offspring, or what doves for its love of its mate, or what bees for its skill in construction? What creature’s procreation and birth pangs has the god so honoured? For Leto’s parturition, so they say, only one island was made firm to receive her; but when the halcyon lays her eggs, about the time of the winter solstice, the god brings the whole sea to rest, without a wave, without a swell. 983 And this is the reason why there is no other creature that men love more. Thanks to her they sail the sea without a fear in the dead of winter for seven days and seven nights. For the moment, journey by sea is safer for them than by land. If it is proper to speak briefly of her several virtues, she is so devoted to her mate that she keeps him company, not for a single season, but throughout the year. Yet it is not through wantonness that she admits him to her company, for she never consorts at all with any other male; it is through friendship and affection, as with any lawful wife. When by reason of old age the male becomes too weak and sluggish to keep up with her, she takes the burden on herself, carries him and feeds him, never forsaking, never abandoning him; but mounting him on her own shoulders, she conveys him everywhere she goes and looks after him, abiding with him until the end.
[De soll. an. 35b] As for love of her offspring and care for their preservation, as soon as she perceives herself to be pregnant, she applies herself to building the nest, not making pats of mud or cementing it on walls and roofs like the house-martin; nor does she use the activity of many different members of her body, as when the bee employs its whole frame to enter and open the wax, with all six feet pressing at the same time to fashion the whole mass into hexagonal cells. But the halcyon, having but one simple instrument, one piece of equipment, one tool — her bill and nothing else, co operating with her industry and ingenuity — what she contrives and constructs would be hard to believe without ocular evidence, seeing the object that she moulds — or rather the ship that she builds. Of many possible forms, this alone cannot be capsized or even wet its cargo. She collects the spines of garfish and binds and weaves them together, some straight, others transverse, as if she were thrusting woven threads through the warp, adding such bends and knots of one with another that a compact, round unit is formed, slightly prolate in shape, like a fisherman’s weel. When it is finished, she brings and deposits it beside the surging waves, where the sea beats gently upon it and instructs her how to mend and strengthen whatever is not yet good and tight, as she observes it loosened by the blows. She so tautens and secures the joints that it is difficult even for stones or iron to break or pierce it. The proportions and shape of the hollow interior are as admirable as anything about it; for it is so constructed as to admit herself only, while the entrance remains wholly hidden and invisible to others — with the result that not even a drop of water can get in. Now I presume that all of you have seen this nest; as for me, since I have often seen and touched it, it comes to my mind to chant the words
[De soll. an. 35c] Once such a thing in Delos near Apollo’s shrine
[De soll. an. 35d] I saw, the Altar of Horn, celebrated as one of the Seven Wonders of the World because it needs no glue or any other binding, but is joined and fastened together, made entirely of horns taken from the right side of the head. Now may the god be propitious to me while I sing of the Sea Siren — and indeed, being both a musician and an islander, he should laugh good-naturedly at my opponents’ scoffing questions. Why should he not be called a “conger-slayer” or Artemis be termed a “surmullet-slayer”? Since he well knows that Aphrodite, born of the sea, regards practically all sea creatures as sacred and related to herself and relishes the slaughter of none of them. In Leptis, you know, the priests of Poseidon refrain entirely from any sea food, and those initiated into the mysteries at Eleusis hold the surmullet in veneration, while the priestess of Hera at Argos abstains from this fish to pay it honour. For surmullets are particularly good at killing and eating the sea-hare, which is lethal to man. It is for this reason that surmullets possess this immunity, as being friendly and life-saving creatures.
[De soll. an. 36] 36 1 984 Furthermore, many of the Greeks have temples and altars to Artemis Dictynna and Apollo Delphinios; and that place which the god had chosen for himself the poet says was settled by Cretans under the guidance of a dolphin. It was not, however, the god who changed his shape and swam in front of the expedition, as tellers of tales relate; instead, he sent a dolphin to guide the men and bring them to Cirrha. They also relate that Soteles and Dionysius, the men sent by Ptolemy Soter to Sinope to bring back Serapis, were driven against their will by a violent wind out of their course beyond Malea, Bwith the Peloponnesus on their right. When they were lost and discouraged, a dolphin appeared by the prow and, as it were, invited them to follow and led them into such parts as had safe roadsteads with but a gentle swell until, by conducting and escorting the vessel in this manner, it brought them to Cirrha. Whence it came about that when they had offered thanksgiving for their safe landing, they came to see that of the two statues they should take away the one of Pluto, but should merely take an impress of that of Persephone and leave it behind.
[De soll. an. 36b] Well might the god be fond of the music-loving character of the dolphin, to which Pindar likens himself, saying that he is roused
[De soll. an. 36c] Like a dolphin of the sea
Who on the waveless deep of ocean
Is moved by the lovely sound of flutes.
[De soll. an. 36d] Yet it is even more likely that its affection for men renders it dear to the gods; for it is the only creature who loves man for his own sake. Of the land animals, some avoid man altogether, others, the tamest kind, pay court for utilitarian reasons only to those who feed them, as do dogs and horses and elephants to their familiars. Martins take to houses to get what they need, darkness and a minimum of security, but avoid and fear man as a dangerous wild beast. To the dolphin alone, beyond all others, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage. Though it has no need at all of any man, yet it is a genial friend to all and has helped many. The story of Arion is familiar to all and widely known; and you, my friend, opportunely put us in mind of the tale of Hesiod,
[De soll. an. 36e] But you failed to reach the end of the tale.
When you told of the dog, you should not have left out the dolphins, for the information of the dog that barked and rushed with a snarl on the murderers would have been meaningless if the dolphins had not taken up the corpse as it was floating on the sea near the Nemeon and zealously passed it from group to group until they put it ashore at Rhium and so made it clear that the man had been stabbed.
[De soll. an. 36f] Myrsilus of Lesbos tells the tale of Enalus the Aeolian who was in love with that daughter of Smintheus who, in accordance with the oracle of Amphitrite, was cast into the sea by the Penthilidae, whereupon Enalus himself leaped into the sea and was brought out safe on Lesbos by a dolphin.
[De soll. an. 36g] And the goodwill and friendship of the dolphin for the lad of Iasus was thought by reason of its greatness to be true love. For it used to swim and play with him during the day, allowing itself to be touched; and when the boy mounted upon its back, it was not reluctant, but used to carry him with pleasure wherever he directed it to go, while all the inhabitants of Iasus flocked to the shore each time this happened. Once a violent storm of rain and hail occurred and the boy slipped off and was drowned. The dolphin took the body and threw both it and itself together on the land and would not leave until it too had died, thinking it right to share a death for which it imagined that it shared the responsibility. And in memory of this calamity the inhabitants of Iasus have minted their coins with the figure of a boy riding a dolphin.
[De soll. an. 36h] From this the wild tales about Coeranus gained credence. 985 He was a Parian by birth who, at Byzantium, bought a draught of dolphins which had been caught in a net and were in danger of slaughter, and set them all free. A little later he was on a sea voyage in a penteconter, so they say, with fifty pirates aboard; in the strait between Naxos and Paros the ship capsized and all the others were lost, while Coeranus, they relate, because a dolphin sped beneath him and buoyed him up, was put ashore at Sicinus, near a cave which is pointed out to this day and bears the name of Coeraneum. It is on this man that Archilochus is said to have written the line
[De soll. an. 36i] Out of fifty, kindly Poseidon left only Coeranus.
[De soll. an. 36j] When later he died, his relatives were burning the body near the sea when a large shoal of dolphins appeared off shore as though they were making it plain that they had come for the funeral, and they waited until it was completed.
[De soll. an. 36k] That the shield of Odysseus had a dolphin emblazoned on it, Stesichorus also has related; and the Zacynthians perpetuate the reason for it, as Critheus testifies. For when Telemachus was a small boy, so they say, he fell into the deep inshore water and was saved by dolphins who came to his aid and swam with him to the beach; and that was the reason why his father had a dolphin engraved on his ring and emblazoned on his shield, Cmaking this requital to the animal.
[De soll. an. 36l] Yet since I began by saying that I would not tell you any tall tales and since, without observing what I was up to, I have now, besides the dolphins, run aground on both Odysseus and Coeranus to a point beyond belief, I lay this penalty upon myself: to conclude here and now.
[De soll. an. 37] 37 1 Aristotimus. So, gentlemen of the jury, you may now cast your votes.
[De soll. an. 37b] Soclarus. As for us, we have for some time held the view of Sophocles:
It is a marvel how of rival sides
The strife of tongues welds both so close together.
[De soll. an. 37c] For by combining what you have said against each other, you will together put up a good fight against those who would deprive animals of reason and understanding.

## Beasts are rational

[Bruta an. 1] 985 1 1 Odysseus. These facts, Circe, I believe I have learned and shall not forget them; yet I should be happy to learn from you further whether there are any Greeks among those whom you have changed from the shape of men into wolves and lions.
[Bruta an. 1b] Circe. Quite a few, beloved Odysseus. But what is your reason for asking this question?
[Bruta an. 1c] Odysseus. It is, I swear, because it would bring me noble glory among the Greeks if by your favour I should restore comrades of mine to their original humanity and not allow them to grow old in the unnatural guise of beasts, leading an existence that is so piteous and shameful
[Bruta an. 1d] Circe. Here’s a lad who finds it appropriate that not only himself and his companions, but even total strangers should, through his stupidity, find his ambition their ruin.
[Bruta an. 1e] Odysseus. This is a new potion of words that you are stirring and drugging for me, Circe. It will certainly transform me literally into a beast if I am to take your word for it that changing from beast to man spells ruin.
[Bruta an. 1f] Circe. Haven’t you already worked a stranger magic than this on yourself? You who refused an ageless, immortal life at my side and would struggle through a thousand new dangers to a woman who is mortal and, I can assure you, no longer so very young — 986 and this for no other object than to make yourself more gaped at and renowned than you already are, pursuing an empty phantom instead of what is truly good.
[Bruta an. 1g] Odysseus. All right, let it be as you say, Circe. Why must we quarrel again and again about the same matters? Now please just grant me the favour of letting the men go free.
[Bruta an. 1h] Circe. By the Black Goddess, it’s not so simple as that. These creatures are no run of the mill. You must ask them first if they are willing. If they say no, my hero, you’ll have to argue with them and convince them. And if you don’t, and they win the argument, then you must be content with having exercised poor judgement about yourself and your friends.
[Bruta an. 1i] Odysseus. Dear lady, why are you making fun of me? How can they argue with me or I with them so long as they are asses and hogs and lions?
[Bruta an. 1j] Circe. Courage, courage, my ambitious friend. I’ll see to it that you shall find them both receptive and responsive. Or rather, one of the number will be enough to thrust and parry for them all. Presto! You may talk with this one.
[Bruta an. 1k] Odysseus. And how am I to address him, Circe? Who in the world was he?
[Bruta an. 1l] Circe. What’s that to do with the issue? Call him Gryllus, if you like. I’ll retire now to avoid any suggestion that he is arguing against his own convictions to curry favour with me.
[Bruta an. 2] 2 1 Gryllus. Hello, Odysseus.
[Bruta an. 2b] Odysseus. And you too, Gryllus, for heaven’s sake!
Gryllus. What do you want to ask?
Odysseus. Since I am aware that you have been men, I feel sorry for all of you in your present plight; yet it is only natural that I should be more concerned for those of you who were Greeks before you fell into this misfortune. So now I have asked Circe to remove the spell from any Greek who chooses and restore him to his original shape and let him go back home with us.
[Bruta an. 2c] Gryllus. Stop, Odysseus! Not a word more! You see, we don’t any of us think much of you either, for evidently it was a farce, that talk of your cleverness and your fame as one whose intelligence far surpassed the rest — a man who boggles at the simple matter of changing from worse to better because he hasn’t considered the matter. For just as children dread the doctor’s doses and run from lessons, the very things that, by changing them from invalids and fools, will make them healthier and wiser, just so you have shied away from the change from one shape to another. At this very moment you are not only living in fear and trembling as a companion of Circe, frightened that she may, before you know it, turn you into a pig or a wolf, but you are also trying to persuade us, who live in an abundance of good things, to abandon them, and with them the lady who provides them, and sail away with you, when we have again become men, the most unfortunate of all creatures!
[Bruta an. 2d] Odysseus. To me, Gryllus, you seem to have lost not only your shape, but your intelligence also under the influence of that drug. You have become infected with strange and completely perverted notions. Or was it rather an inclination to swinishness that conjured you into this shape?
[Bruta an. 2e] Gryllus. Neither of these, king of Cephallenians. But if it is your pleasure to discuss the matter instead of hurling abuse, I shall quickly make you see that we are right to prefer our present life in place of the former one, now that we have tried both.
[Bruta an. 2f] Odysseus. Go on. I should like to hear you.
[Bruta an. 3] 3 1 Gryllus. And I, in that case, to instruct you. Let us begin with the virtues, which, we note, inspire you with pride; for you rate yourselves as far superior to animals in justice and wisdom and courage and all the rest of them. But answer me this, wisest of men! Once I heard you telling Circe about the land of Cyclopes, that though it is not ploughed at all nor does anyone sow there, yet it is naturally so fertile and fecund that it produces spontaneously every kind of crops. 987 Do you, then, rate this land higher than rugged, goat-pasturing Ithaca, which barely yields the tiller a meagre, churlish, trifling crop after great efforts and much toil? And see that you don’t lose your temper and give me a patriotic answer that isn’t what you really believe.
[Bruta an. 3b] Odysseus. I have no need to lie; for though I love and cherish my native soil more, the other wins my approval and admiration.
[Bruta an. 3c] Gryllus. Then this, we shall say, is the situation: the wisest of men thinks fit to commend and approve one thing while he loves and prefers another. Now I assume that your answer applies to the spiritual field also, for the situation is the same as with the land: that spiritual soil is better which produces a harvest of virtue as a spontaneous crop without toil.
[Bruta an. 3d] Odysseus. Yes, this too you may assume.
Gryllus. At this moment, then, you are conceding the point that the soul of beasts has a greater natural capacity and perfection for the generation of virtue; for without command or instruction, “unsown and unploughed,” as it were, it naturally brings forth and develops such virtue as is proper in each case.
[Bruta an. 3e] Odysseus. And what sort of virtue, Gryllus, is ever found in beasts?
[Bruta an. 4] 4 1 Gryllus. Ask rather what sort of virtue is not found in them more than in the wisest of men? Take first, if you please, courage, in which you take great pride, not even pretending to blush when you are called “valiant” and “sacker of cities.” Yet you, you villain, are the man who by tricks and frauds have led astray men who knew only a straightforward, noble style of war and were unversed in deceit and lies; while on your freedom from scruple you confer the name of the virtue that is least compatible with such nefariousness. Wild beasts, however, you will observe, are guileless and artless in their struggles, whether against one another or against you, and conduct their battles with unmistakably naked courage under the impulse of genuine valour. No edict summons them, nor do they fear a writ of desertion. No, it is their nature to flee subjection; with a stout heart they maintain an indomitable spirit to the very end. Nor are they conquered even when physically overpowered; they never give up in their hearts, even while perishing in the fray. In many cases, when beasts are dying, their valour withdraws together with the fighting spirit to some point where it is concentrated in one member and resists the slayer with convulsive movements and fierce anger until, like a fire, it is completely extinguished and departs.
[Bruta an. 4b] Beasts never beg or sue for pity or acknowledge defeat: lion is never slave to lion, or horse to horse through cowardice, as man is to man when he unprotestingly accepts the name whose root is cowardice. And when men have subdued beasts by snares and tricks, such of them as are full grown refuse food and endure the pangs of thirst until they induce and embrace death in place of slavery. But nestlings and cubs, which by reason of age are tender and docile, are offered many beguiling allurements and enticements that act as drugs. These give them a taste for unnatural pleasures and modes of life, and in time make them spiritless to the point where they accept and submit to their so called “taming,” which is really Fan emasculation of their fighting spirit.
[Bruta an. 4c] These facts make it perfectly obvious that bravery is an innate characteristic of beasts, while in human beings an independent spirit is actually contrary to nature. The point that best proves this, gentle Odysseus, is the fact that in beasts valour is naturally equal in both sexes and the female is in no way inferior to the male. She takes her part both in the struggle for existence and in the defence of her brood. You have heard, I suppose, of the sow of Crommyon which, though a female beast, caused so much trouble to Theseus. 988 That famous Sphinx would have got no good of her wisdom as she sat on the heights of Mt. Phicium, weaving her riddles and puzzles, if she had not continued to surpass the Thebans greatly in power and courage. Somewhere thereabouts lived also the Teumesian vixen, a “thing atrocious”; and not far away, they say, was the Pythoness who fought with Apollo for the oracle at Delphi.
[Bruta an. 4d] Your king received Aethe from the Sicyusn as a recompense for excusing him from military service, making a very wise choice when he preferred a fine, spirited mare to a cowardly man. You yourself have often observed in panthers and lionesses that the female in no way yields to the male in spirit and valour. Yet, while you are off at the wars, your wife sits at home by the fire and troubles herself not so much as a swallow to ward off those who come against herself and her home — and this though she is a Spartan born and bred. So why should I go on to mention Carian or Maeonian women? Surely from what has been said it is perfectly obvious that men have no natural claim to courage; if they did, women would have just as great a portion of valour. It follows that your practice of courage is brought about by legal compulsion, which is neither voluntary nor intentional, but in subservience to custom and censure and moulded by extraneous beliefs and arguments.
[Bruta an. 4e] When you face toils and dangers, you do so not because you are courageous, but because you are more afraid of some alternative. For just as that one of your companions who is the first to board ship stands up to the light oar, not because he thinks nothing of it, but because he fears and shuns the heavier one; just so he who accepts the lash to escape the sword, or meets a foe in battle rather than be tortured or killed, does so not from courage to face the one situation, but from fear of the other. So it is clear that all your courage is merely the cowardice of prudence and all your valour merely fear that has the good sense to escape one course by taking another. And, to sum up, if you think that you are better in courage than beasts, why do your poets call the doughtiest fighters “wolf-minded” and “lion-hearted” and “like a boar in valour,” though no poet ever called a lion “man-hearted” or a boar “like a man in valour”?
[Bruta an. 4f] But, I imagine, just as when those who are swift are called “wind-footed” and those who are handsome are called “godlike,” there is exaggeration in the imagery; just so the poets bring in a higher ideal when they compare mighty warriors to something else. And the reason is that the spirit of anger is, as it were, the tempering or the cutting edge of courage. Now beasts use this undiluted in their contests, whereas you men have it mixed with calculation, as wine with water, so that it is displaced in the presence of danger and fails you when you need it most. Some of you even declare that anger should not enter at all into fighting, but be dismissed in order to make use of sober calculation; their contention is correct so far as self-preservation goes, but is disgracefully false as regards valorous defence. For surely it is absurd for you to find fault with Nature because she did not equip your bodies with natural stings, or place fighting tusks among your teeth, or give you nails like curved claws, while you yourselves remove or curb the emotional instrument that Nature has given.
[Bruta an. 5] 5 1 Odysseus. Bless me, Gryllus, you must once have been a very clever sophist, one may judge, since even as things are, and speaking from your swinishness, you can attack the subject with such fervent ardour. But why have you failed to discuss temperance, the next in order?
[Bruta an. 5b] Gryllus. Because I thought that you would first wish to take exception to what I have said. But you are eager to hear about temperance since you are the husband of a model of chastity and believe that you yourself have given a proof of self-control by rejecting the embraces of Circe. And in this you are no more continent than any of the beasts; for neither do they desire to consort with their betters, 989 but pursue both pleasure and love with mates of like species. So it is no wonder that, like the Mendesian goat in Egypt which, when shut up with many beautiful women, is said not to be eager to consort with them, but is far more excited about nannies, you likewise are contented with the kind of love that is familiar to you and, being a mortal, are not eager to sleep with a goddess. As for the chastity of Penelope, the cawing of countless crows will pour laughter and contempt upon it; for every crow, if her mate dies, remains a widow, not merely for a short time, but for nine generations of men. It follows that your fair Penelope is nine times inferior in chastity to any crow you please.
[Bruta an. 6] 6 1 Now since you are not unaware that I am a sophist, let me marshal my arguments in some order by defining temperance and analysing the desires according to their kinds. Temperance, then, is a curtailment and an ordering of the desires that eliminate those that are extraneous or superfluous and discipline in modest and timely fashion those that are essential. You can, of course, observe countless differences in the desires . . . and the desire to eat and drink is at once natural and essential, while the pleasures of love, which, though they find their origin in nature, yet may be forgone and discarded without much inconvenience, have been called natural, but not essential. But there are desires of another kind, neither essential nor natural, that are imported in a deluge from without as a result of your inane illusions and because you lack true culture. So great is their multitude that the natural desires are, every one of them, all but overwhelmed, as though an alien rabble were overpowering the native citizenry. But beasts have souls completely inaccessible and closed to these adventitious passions and live their lives as free from empty illusions as though they dwelt far from the sea. They fall short in the matter of delicate and luxurious living, but solidly protect their sobriety and the better regulation of their desires since those that dwell within them are neither numerous nor alien.
[Bruta an. 6b] Certainly there was a time when I myself, no less than you now, was dazzled by gold and held it to be an incomparable possession; so likewise I was caught by the lure of silver and ivory and the man who had most property of this sort seemed to me to be a blissful favourite of the gods, whether he was a Phrygian or a Carian, one more villainous than Dolon or more unfortunate than Priam. In that situation, constantly activated by these desires, I reaped no joy or pleasure from the other things of life, which I had sufficiently and to spare. EI grumbled at my life, finding myself destitute of the most important things and a loser in the lottery of fortune. This is the reason why, as I recall, when I saw you once in Crete tricked out in holiday attire, it was not your intellect or your virtue that I envied, but the softness of the elegantly woven garment and the beautiful wool of your purple cloak that I admired and gaped at (the clasp, I believe, was of gold and had some frivolity worked on it in exquisitely fine intaglio). I followed you about as enchanted as a woman. But now I am rid and purified of all those empty illusions. I have no eyes for gold and silver and can pass them by just like any common stone; and as for your fine robes and tapestries, I swear there’s nothing sweeter for me to rest in when I’m full than deep, soft mud. None, then, of such adventitious desires has a place in our souls; our life for the most part is controlled by the essential desires and pleasures. As for those that are non-essential, but merely natural, we resort to them without either irregularity or excess.
[Bruta an. 7] 7 1 990 Let us, in fact, first describe these pleasures. Our pleasure in fragrant substances, those that by their nature stimulate our sense of smell, besides the fact that our enjoyment of this is simple and costs nothing, also contributes to utility by providing a way for us to tell good food from bad. For the tongue is said to be, and is, a judge of what is sweet or bitter or sour, when liquid flavours combine and fuse with the organ of taste; but our sense of smell, even before we taste, is a judge that can much more critically distinguish the quality of each article of food than any royal taster in the world. It admits what is proper, rejects what is alien, and will not let it touch or give pain to the taste, but informs on and denounces what is bad before any harm is done. And in other respects smell is no nuisance to us, as it is to you, forcing to collect and mix together incense of one kind or another and cinnamon and nard and malobathrum and Arabian aromatic reeds, with the aid of a formidable dyer’s or witch’s art, of the sort to which you give the name of unguentation, thus buying great price an effeminate, emasculating luxury which has absolutely no real use.
[Bruta an. 7b] Yet, though such is its nature, it has depraved not only every woman, but lately the greater part of men as well, so that they refuse to sleep even with their own wives unless they come to bed Creeking with myrrh and scented powders. But sows attract boars and nannies bucks and other female creatures their consorts by means of their own special odours; scented, as they are, with pure dew and grassy meadows, they are attracted to the nuptial union by mutual affection. The females are not coy and do not cloak their desires with deceits or trickeries or denials; nor do the males, driven on by the sting of mad lust, purchase the act of procreation by money or toil or servitude. No! Both parties celebrate at the proper time a love without deceit or hire, a love which in the season of spring awakens, like the burgeoning of plants and trees, the desire of animals, and then immediately extinguishes it.
[Bruta an. 7c] Neither does the female continue to receive the male after she has conceived, nor does the male attempt her. So slight and feeble is the regard we have for pleasure: our whole concern is with Nature. Whence it comes about that to this very day the desires of beasts have encompassed no homosexual mating. But you have a fair amount of such trafficking among your high and mighty nobility, to say nothing of the baser sort. Agamemnon came to Boeotia hunting for Argynnus, who tried to elude him, and slandering the sea and winds . . . then he gave his noble self a noble bath in Lake Copaïs to drown his passion there and get rid of his desire. Just so Heracles, pursuing a beardless lad, lagged behind the other heroes and deserted the expedition. On the Rotunda of Ptoian Apollo one of your men secretly inscribed fair is Achilles — when Achilles already had a son.
[Bruta an. 7d] And I hear that the inscription is still in place. But a cock that mounts another for the lack of a female is burned alive because some prophet or seer declares that such an event is an important and terrible omen. On this basis even men themselves acknowledge that beasts have a better claim to temperance and the non-violation of nature in their pleasures. Not even Nature, with Law for her ally, can keep within bounds the unchastened vice of your hearts; but as though swept by the current of their lusts beyond the barrier at many points, men do such deeds as wantonly outrage Nature, upset her order, and confuse her distinctions. For men have, in fact, attempted to consort with goats and sows and mares, and women have gone mad with lust for male beasts. 991 From such unions your Minotaurs and Aegipans, and, I suppose, your Sphinxes and Centaurs have arisen. Yet it is through hunger that dogs have occasionally eaten a man; and birds have tasted of human flesh through necessity; but no beast has ever attempted a human body for lustful reasons. But the beasts I have mentioned and many others have been victims of the violent and lawless lusts of man.
[Bruta an. 8] 8 1 Though men are so vile and incontinent where the desires I have spoken of are concerned, they can be proved to be even more so in the case of essential desires, being here far inferior to animals in temperance. These are the desires for food and drink, Bin which we beasts always take our pleasure along with some sort of utility; whereas you, in your pursuit of pleasure rather than natural nourishment, are punished by many serious ailments which, welling up from one single source, the surfeit of your bodies, fill you with all manner of flatulence that is difficult to purge. In the first place each species of animal has one single food proper to it, grass or some root or fruit. Those that are carnivorous resort to no other kind of nourishment, nor do they deprive those weaker than themselves of sustenance; but the lion lets the deer, and the wolf lets the sheep, feed in its natural pasture. But man in his pleasures is led astray by gluttony to everything edible; he tries and tastes everything as if he had not yet come to recognize what is suitable and proper for him; alone of all creatures he is omnivorous.
[Bruta an. 8b] In the first place his eating of flesh is caused by no lack of means or methods, for he can always in season harvest and garner and gather in such a succession of plants and grains as will all but tire him out with their abundance; but driven on by luxurious desires and satiety with merely essential nourishment, he pursues illicit food, made unclean by the slaughter of beasts; and he does this in a much more cruel way than the most savage beasts of prey. Blood and gore and raw flesh are the proper diet of kite and wolf and snake; to man they are an appetizer. Then, too, man makes use of every kind of food and does not, like beasts abstain from most kinds and consequently make war on a few only that he must have for food. In a word, nothing that flies or swims or moves on land has escaped your so called civilized and hospitable tables.
[Bruta an. 9] 9 1 Well, then. It is admitted that you use animals as appetizers to sweeten your fare. Why, therefore . . . Animal intelligence, on the contrary, allows no room for useless and pointless arts; and in the case of essential ones, Ewe do not make one man with constant study cling to one department of knowledge and rivet him jealously to that; nor do we receive our arts as alien products or pay to be taught them. Our intelligence produces them on the spot unaided, as its own congenital and legitimate skills. I have heard that in Egypt everyone is a physician; and in the case of beasts each one is not only his own specialist in medicine, but also in the providing of food, in warfare and hunting as well as in self-defence and music, in so far as any kind of animal has a natural gift for it. From whom have we swine learned, when we are sick, to resort to rivers to catch crabs?
[Bruta an. 9b] Who taught tortoises to devour marjoram after eating the snake? And who instructed Cretan goats, when they are pierced by an arrow, to look for dittany, after eating which the arrowhead falls out? For if you speak the truth and say that Nature is their teacher, you are elevating the intelligence of animals to the most sovereign and wisest of first principles. If you do not think that it should be called either reason or intelligence, it is high time for you to cast about for some fairer and even more honourable term to describe it, since certainly the faculty that it brings to bear in action is better and more remarkable. 992 It is no uninstructed or untrained faculty, but rather self-taught and self-sufficient — and not for lack of strength. It is just because of the health and completeness of its native virtue that it is indifferent to the contributions to its intelligence supplied by the lore of others.
[Bruta an. 9c] Such animals, at any rate, as man for amusement or easy living induces to accept instruction and training have understanding to grasp what they are taught even when it goes contrary to their physical endowment, so superior are their mental powers. I say nothing of puppies that are trained as hunters, or colts schooled to keep time in their gait, or crows that are taught to talk, or dogs, to jump through revolving hoops. In the theatres horses and steers go through an exact routine in which they lie down or dance or hold a precarious pose or perform movements not at all easy even for men; and they remember what they have been taught, these exhibitions of docility which are not in the least useful for anything else. If you are doubtful that we can learn arts, then let me tell you that we can even teach them. When partridges are making their escape, they accustom their fledglings to hide by falling on their backs and holding a lump of earth over themselves with their claws.
[Bruta an. 9d] You can observe storks on the roof, the adults showing the art of flying to the young as they make their trial flights. Nightingales set the example for their young to sing; while nestlings that are caught young and brought up by human care are poorer singers, as though they had left the care of their teacher too early. . . . and since I have entered into this new body of mine, I marvel at those arguments by which the sophists brought me to consider all creatures except man irrational and senseless.
[Bruta an. 10] Odysseus. So now, Gryllus, you are transformed. Do you attribute reason even to the sheep and the ass?
[Bruta an. 10b] Gryllus. From even these, dearest Odysseus, it is perfectly possible to gather that animals have a natural endowment of reason and intellect. For just as one tree is not more nor less inanimate than another, but they are all in the same state of insensibility, since none is endowed with soul, in the same way one animal would not be thought to be more sluggish or indocile mentally than another if they did not all possess reason and intellect to some degree — though some have a greater or less proportion than others. Please note that cases of dullness and stupidity in some animals are demonstrated by the cleverness and sharpness of others — as when you compare an ass and a sheep with a fox or a wolf or a bee. It is like comparing Polyphemus to you or that dunce Coroebus to your grandfather Autolycus. EI scarcely believe that there is such a spread between one animal and another as there is between man and man in the matter of judgement and reasoning and memory.
[Bruta an. 10c] Odysseus. But consider, Gryllus: it is not a fearful piece of violence to grant reason to creatures that have no inherent knowledge of God?
[Bruta an. 10d] Gryllus. Then shall we deny, Odysseus, that so wise and remarkable a man as you had Sisyphus for a father?

## On the eating of flesh

[De esu I 1] I 993 1 1 Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man who did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?
[De esu I 1b] The skins shivered; and upon the spits the flesh bellowed,
Both cooked and raw; the voice of kine was heard.
[De esu I 1c] Though this is an invention and a myth, yet that sort of dinner is really portentous — when a man craves the meat that is still bellowing, giving instructions which tell us on what animals we are to feed while they are still alive uttering their cries, and organizing various methods of seasoning and roasting and serving. It is the man who first began these practices that one should seek out, not him who all too late desisted.
[De esu I 2] 2 1 Or would everyone declare that the reason for those who first instituted flesh-eating was the necessity of their poverty? It was not while they passed their time in lawful desires nor when they had necessaries in abundance that after indulgence in unnatural and antisocial pleasures they resorted to such a practice. If, at this moment, they could recover feelings and voice, they might, indeed, remark: “Oh blessed and beloved of the gods, you who live now, what an age has fallen to your lot wherein you enjoy and assimilate a heritage abounding in good things! How many plants grow for you! What vintages you gather! What wealth you may draw from the plains and what pleasant sustenance from trees! Why, you may even live luxuriously without the stain of blood. But as for us, it was a most dismal and fearful portion of the world’s history the confronted us, falling as we did into great and unbearable poverty brought on by our first appearance among the living. As yet the heavens and the stars were concealed by dense air that was contaminated with turbid moisture, not easily to be penetrated, and fire and furious wind. Not yet was the sun established undeviating
[De esu I 2b] In his firm course,
Dividing day and night; he brought them back
Again and crowned them with the fruitful hours
All wreathed with bloom, while violence
[De esu I 2c] had been done to earth by rivers pouring forth their floods at random and most parts were deformed by pools. Earth was made a wilderness by deep quagmires and the unfruitful growth of thickets and forests; nor was there as yet any agricultural production or professional tool or any resource of skill. Our hunger gave us no respite nor was there any seed at that time awaiting the annual season of sowing. What wonder if, contrary to nature, we made use of the flesh of beasts when even mud was eaten and the bark of trees devoured, and to light on sprouting grass or the root of a rush was a piece of luck? When we had tasted and eaten acorns we danced for joy around some oak, calling it “life-giving” and “mother” and “nurse.” 994 This was the only festival that those times had discovered; all else was a medley of anguish and gloom. But you who live now, what madness, what frenzy drives you to the pollution of shedding blood, you who have such a superfluity of necessities? Why slander the earth by implying that she cannot support you? Why impiously offend law-giving Demeter and bring shame upon Dionysus, lord of the cultivated vine, the gracious one, as if you did not receive enough from their hands? Are you not ashamed to mingle domestic crops with blood and gore? You call serpents and panthers and lions savage, but you yourselves, by your own foul slaughters, leave them no room to outdo you in cruelty; for their slaughter is their living, yours is a mere appetizer.”
[De esu I 3] 3 1 It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defence; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. . . .
[De esu I 3b] [It is as though one, seeing the Nile overflow its banks, filling the landscape with its fertile and productive stream, should not marvel at this, its nourishing of plants and its fruitfulness in such crops as are most to be cultivated and contribute most to the support of life, but should espy a crocodile swimming there somewhere or an asp being swept along or a thousand other savage creatures and should cite them as the reasons for his censure and this compulsion to do as he does. Or, I swear, it is as though one fixed one’s gaze on this land and its soil covered with cultivated crops and heavy with ears of wheat, and then, looking beneath these rich harvests, one were to catch sight somewhere of a growth of darnel or broom-rape and, without more ado, ceasing to reap the benefit and claim the booty of the good crops, burst into a tirade about the weeds. Another example: if one should see an orator making a speech at some trial where he was advocate, a speech in which his eloquence in full flood was advancing to the succour of someone in jeopardy or (so help me) to the conviction or denunciation of rash acts or defaults — a flood of eloquence not simple or jejune, but charged with many (or rather all kinds of) emotional appeals for the simultaneous influencing of the many different kinds of minds in the audience or jury, which must either be roused and won over or (by heaven!) soothed and made gentle and calm — then if one neglected to observe and take into account this main point and issue of the matter, but merely picked out flaws of style that the flood of oratory, as it moved to its goal, had swept along by the momentum of its current, flaws that came rushing out and slipped by with the rest — and seeing . . . of some popular leader. . . .]
[De esu I 4] 4 1 But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being. Then we go on to assume that when they utter cries and squeaks their speech is inarticulate, that they do not, begging for mercy, entreating, seeking justice, each one of them say, “I do not ask to be spared in case of necessity; only spare me your arrogance! Kill me to eat, but not to please your palate!” Oh, the cruelty of it! What a terrible thing it is to look on when the tables of the rich are spread, men who employ cooks and spicers to groom the dead! And it is even more terrible to look on when they are taken away, for more is left than has been eaten. So the beasts died for nothing! There are others who refuse when the dishes are already set before them and will not have them cut into or sliced. Though they bid spare the dead, they did not spare the living.
[De esu I 5] 5 1 We declare, then, that it is absurd for them to say that the practice of flesh-eating is based on Nature. For that man is not naturally carnivorous is, in the first place, obvious from the structure of his body. A man’s frame is in no way similar to those creatures who were made for flesh-eating: he has no hooked beak or sharp nails or jagged teeth, 995 no strong stomach or warmth of vital fluids able to digest and assimilate a heavy diet of flesh. It is from this very fact, the evenness of our teeth, the smallness of our mouths, the softness of our tongues, our possession of vital fluids too inert to digest meat that Nature disavows our eating of flesh. If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of axe. Rather, just as wolves and bears and lions themselves slay what they eat, so you are to fell an ox with your fangs or a boar with your jaws, or tear a lamb or hare in bits. Fall upon it and eat it still living, as animals do. But if you wait for what you eat to be dead, if you have qualms about enjoying the flesh while life is still present, why do you continue, contrary to nature, to eat what possesses life? Even when it is lifeless and dead, however, no one eats the flesh just as it is; men boil it and roast it, altering it by fire and drugs, recasting and diverting and smothering with countless condiments the taste of gore so that the palate may be deceived and accept what is foreign to it.
[De esu I 5b] It was, indeed, a witty remark of the Spartan who bought a little fish in an inn and gave it to the innkeeper to prepare. When the latter asked for cheese and vinegar and oil, the Spartan said, “If I had those, I should not have bought a fish. “But we are so refined in our blood-letting that we term flesh a supplementary food; and then we need “supplements” for the flesh itself, mixing oil, wine, honey, fish paste, vinegar, with Syrian and Arabian spices, as though we were really embalming a corpse for burial. The fact is that meat is so softened and dissolved and, in a way, predigested that it is hard for digestion to cope with it; and if digestion loses the battle, the meats affect us with dreadful pains and malignant forms of indigestion.
[De esu I 6] 6 1 Diogenes ventured to eat a raw octopus Din order to put an end to the inconvenience of preparing cooked food. In the midst of a large throng he veiled his head and, as he brought the flesh to his mouth, said, “It is for you that I am risking my life.” Good heavens, a wondrous fine risk! Just like Pelopidas for the liberty of the Thebans or Harmodius and Aristogiton for that of the Athenians, this philosopher risked his life struggling with a raw octopus — in order to brutalize our lives!
[De esu I 6b] Note that the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit. “For wine and indulgence in meat make at body strong and vigorous, but the soul weak.” And in order that I may not offend athletes, I shall take my own people as examples. It is a fact that the Athenians used to call us Boeotians beef-witted and insensitive and foolish, precisely because we stuffed ourselves. “These men are swine”; . . . and Menander says, “Who have jaws; and Pindar “And then to learn . . .”; “A dry soul is wisest” according to Heraclitus. Empty jars make a noise when struck, but full ones do not resound to blows. Thin bronze objects will pass the sounds from one to another in a circle until you dampen and deaden the noise with your hand as the beat goes round. The eye when it is flooded by an excess of moisture grows dim and weakened for its proper task. When we examine the sun through dank atmosphere and a fog of gross vapours, we do not see it clear and bright, but submerged and misty, with elusive rays. In just the same way, then, when the body is turbulent and surfeited and burdened with improper food, the lustre and light of the soul inevitably come through it blurred and confused, aberrant and inconstant, since the soul lacks the brilliance and intensity to penetrate to the minute and obscure issues of active life.
[De esu I 7] 7 1 But apart from these considerations, do you not find here a wonderful means of training in social responsibility? Who could wrong a human being 996 when he found himself so gently and humanely disposed ªtoward other non-human creatures? Two days ago in a discussion I quoted the remark of Xenocrates, that the Athenians punished the man who had flayed a ram while it was still alive; yet, as I think, he who tortures a living creature is no worse than he who slaughters it outright. But it seems that we are more observant of acts contrary to convention than of those that are contrary to nature. In that place, then, I made my remarks in a popular vein. I still hesitate, however, to attempt a discussion of the principle underlying my opinion, great as it is, and mysterious and incredible, as Plato says, with merely clever men of mortal opinions, just as a steersman hesitates to shift his course in the midst of a storm, or a playwright to raise his god from the machine in the midst of a play. Yet perhaps it is not unsuitable to set the pitch and announce the theme by quoting some verses of Empedocles. . . . By these lines he means, though he does not say so directly, that human souls are imprisoned in mortal bodies as a punishment for murder, the eating of animal flesh, and cannibalism. This doctrine, however, seems to be even older, for the stories told about the sufferings and dismemberment of Dionysus and the outrageous assaults of the Titans upon him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they had tasted his blood — all this is a myth which in its inner meaning has to do with rebirth. For to that faculty in us which is unreasonable and disordered and violent, and does not come from the gods, but from evil spirits, the ancients gave the name Titans, that is to say, those that are punished and subjected to correction. . . .
[De esu II 1] II 996 1 1 Reason urges us with fresh ideas and fresh zeal to attack again our yesterday’s discourse on the eating of flesh. It is indeed difficult, as Cato remarked, to talk to bellies which have no ears. And the potion of familiarity has been drunk, like that of Circe
[De esu II 1b] Commingling pains and pangs, tricks and tears;
[De esu II 1c] nor is it easy to extract the hook of flesh-eating, entangled as it is and embedded in the love of pleasure. And, like the Egyptians who extract the viscera of the dead and cut them open in view of the sun, then throw them away as being the cause of every single sin that the man had committed, it would be well for us to excise our own gluttony and lust to kill and become pure for the remainder of our lives, since it is not so much our belly that drives us to the pollution of slaughter; it is itself polluted by our incontinence. Yet if, for heavens sake, it is really impossible for us to be far from error because we are on such terms of familiarity with it, let us at least be ashamed of our ill doing and resort to it only in reason. We shall eat flesh, but from hunger, not as a luxury. We shall kill an animal, but in pity and sorrow, not degrading or torturing it — which is the current practice in many cases, some thrusting red-hot spits into the throats of swine 997 so that by the plunging in of the iron the blood may be emulsified and, as it circulates through the body, may make the flesh tender and delicate. Others jump upon the udders of sows about to give birth and kick them so that, when they have blended together blood and milk and gore (Zeus the Purifier!) and the unborn young have at the same time been destroyed at the moment of birth, they may eat the most inflamed part of the creature. Still others sew up the eyes of cranes and swans, shut them up in darkness and fatten them, making flesh appetizing with strange compounds and spicy mixtures.
[De esu II 2] 2 1 From these practices it is perfectly evident that it is not for nourishment or need or necessity, but out of satiety and insolence and luxury that they have turned this lawless custom into a pleasure. Then, just as with women who are insatiable in seeking pleasure, their lust tries everything, goes astray, and explores the gamut of profligacy until at last it ends in unspeakable practices; so intemperance in eating passes beyond the necessary ends of nature and resorts to cruelty and lawlessness to give variety to appetite. For it is in their own company that organs of sense are infected and won over and become licentious when they do not keep to natural standards. Just so the art of hearing has fallen sick, corrupting musical taste. From this our luxury and debauchery conceives a desire for shameful caresses and effeminate titillations. These taught the sight not to take pleasure in warlike exercises or gesticulations or refined dances or statues and paintings, but to regard the slaughter and death of men, their wounds and combats, as the most precious sort of spectacle. Just so intemperate intercourse follows a lawless meal, inharmonious music follows a shameful debauch, barbarous spectacles follow shameless songs and sounds, insensitivity and cruelty toward human kind follow savage exhibitions in the theatre. It was for this reason that the godlike Lycurgus gave directions in certain rhetrae that the doors and roofs of houses should be fashioned by saw and axe alone and no other tool should be used — not of course because he had a quarrel with gimlets and adzes and other instruments for delicate work. It was because he knew that through such rough-hewn work you will not be introducing a gilded couch, nor will you be so rash as to bring silver tables and purple rugs and precious stones into a simple house. The corollary of such a house and couch and table and cup is a dinner which is unpretentious and a lunch which is truly democratic; but all manner of luxury and extravagance follow the lead of an evil way of life
[De esu II 2b] As new-weaned foal beside his mother runs.
[De esu II 3] 3 1 For what sort of dinner is not costly for which a living creature loses its life? Do we hold a life cheap? EI do not yet go so far as to say that it may well be the life of your mother or father or some friend or child, as Empedocles declared. Yet it does, at least, possess some perception, hearing, seeing, imagination, intelligence, which last every creature receives from Nature to enable it to acquire what is proper for it and to evade what is not. Do but consider which are the philosophers who serve the better to humanize us: those who bid us eat our children and friends and fathers and wives after their death, or Pythagoras and Empedocles who try to accustom us to act justly towards other creatures also? You ridicule a man who abstains from eating mutton. But are we, they will say, to refrain from laughter when we see you slicing off portions from a dead father or mother and sending them to absent friends and inviting those who are at hand, heaping their plates with flesh? But as it is, perhaps we commit a sin when we touch these books of theirs without cleansing our hands and faces, our feet and ears — unless, by Heaven, it is a purification of those members to speak on such a subject as this, “washing,” as Plato says, 998”the brine from one’s ears with the fresh water of discourse.” If one should compare these two sets of books and doctrines, the former may serve as philosophy for the Scyths and Sogdians and the Black Cloaks, whose story as told by Herodotus gains no credit; but the precepts of Pythagoras and Empedocles were the laws for the ancient Greeks, along with their diet of wheat. . . . [Because there is no question of justice between us and the irrational animals.]
[De esu II 4] 4 1 Who, then, were they who later decreed this?
[De esu II 4b] The first to forge the highway’s murderous sword,
And first to eat the flesh of ploughing ox.
[De esu II 4c] This is the way, you may be sure, in which tyrants begin their course of bloody slaughters. Just as, for instance, at Athens they put to death initially the worst of the sycophants, and likewise in the second and third instances; but next, having become accustomed to bloodshed they allowed Niceratus, the son of Nicias, to be killed and the general Theramenes and the philosopher Polemarchus. Just so, at the beginning it was some wild and harmful animal that was eaten, then a bird or fish that had its flesh torn. And so when our murderous instincts had tasted blood and grew practised on wild animals, they advanced to the labouring ox and the well-behaved sheep and the housewarding cock; thus, little by little giving a hard edge to our insatiable appetite, we have advanced to wars and the slaughter and murder of human beings. Yet if someone once demonstrates that souls in their rebirths make use of common bodies and that what is now rational reverts to the irrational, and again what is now wild becomes tame, and that Nature changes everything and assigns new dwellings
[De esu II 4d] Clothing souls with unfamiliar coat of flesh;
[De esu II 4e] will not this deter the unruly element in those who have adopted the doctrine from implanting disease and indigestion in our bodies and perverting our souls to an ever more cruel lawlessness, as soon as we are broken of the habit of not entertaining a guest or celebrating a marriage or consorting with our friends without bloodshed and murder?
[De esu II 5] 5 1 Yet even if the argument of the migration of souls from body to body is not demonstrated to the point of complete belief, there is enough doubt to make us quite cautious and fearful. It is as though in a clash of armies by night you had drawn your sword and were rushing at a man whose fallen body was hidden by his armour and should hear someone remarking that he wasn’t quite sure, but that he thought and believed that the prostrate figure was that of your son or brother or father or tent-mate — which would be the better course: to approve a false suspicion and spare your enemy as your friend, or to disregard an uncertain authority and kill your friend as your foe? The latter course you will declare to be shocking. Consider also Merope in the play raising her axe against her son himself because she believes him to be that son’s murderer and saying
[De esu II 5b] This blow I give you is more costly yet —
[De esu II 5c] what a stir she rouses in the theatre as she brings them to their feet in terror lest she wound the youth before the old man can stop her! Now suppose one old man stood beside her saying, “Hit him! He’s your enemy,” and another who said, “Don’t strike! He is your son”: which would be the greater misdeed, to omit the punishment of an enemy because of the son, or to slay a child under the impulse of anger against an enemy? In a case, then, where it is not hate or anger or self-defence or fear for ourselves that induces us to murder, but the motive of pleasure, and the victim stands there under our power with its head bent back and one of our philosophers says, “Kill it! It’s only a brute beast”; but the other says, “Stop! What if the soul of some relative or friend has found its way into this body?” — Good God! Of course the risk is equal or much the same in the two cases — if I refuse to eat flesh, or if I, disbelieving, kill my child or some other relative!
[De esu II 6] 999 6 1 There remains yet another contention with the Stoics about flesh-eating, and this is not “equal,” either. For what is this great “tension” on the belly and the kitchen? Why, when they count pleasure effeminate and denounce it as being neither a good nor an “advanced principle “ nor “commensurate with Nature,” are they so concerned with these pleasures? It would certainly be consistent for them, since they banish perfume and cakes from their banquets, to be more squeamish about blood and flesh. But as it is, confining as it were their philosophy to their ledgers, they economize on their dinners in trivial and needless details while they do not deprecate this inhuman and murderous item of expense. “Of course,” they say, “we human beings have no compact of justice with irrational animals.” Nor, one might reply, have you with perfume or exotic sweetmeats either. Refrain from animals also, if you are expelling the useless and unnecessary element in pleasure from all its lurking-places.
[De esu II 7] 7 1 Let us, however, now examine the point whether we really have no compact of justice with animals; and let us do so in no artificial or sophistical manner, but fixing our attention on our own emotions and conversing like human beings with ourselves and weighing . . .

## Platonic questions

[Plat. quaest. 1.1] Question I.
[Plat. quaest. 1.1b] Why Did God Command Socrates to Act the Midwife’s Part to Others, but Charged Himself Not to Generate; as he Affirms in Theaetetus?
(See Plato, “Theaetetus,” p. 149 B.)
[Plat. quaest. 1.1c] For he would never have used the name of God in such a merry, jesting manner, though Plato in that book makes Socrates several times to talk with great boasting and arrogance, as he does now. “There are many, dear friend, so affected towards me, that they are ready even to snap at me, when I offer to cure them of the least madness. For they will not be persuaded that I do it out of goodwill, because they are ignorant that no god bears ill-will to man, and that therefore I wish ill to no man; but I cannot allow myself either to stand in a lie or to stifle the truth.” (Ibid. p. 151 C.) Whether therefore did he style his own nature, which was of a very strong and pregnant wit, by the name of God, — as Menander says, “For our mind is God,” and as Heraclitus, “Man’s genius is a Deity”? Or did some divine cause or some daemon or other impart this way of philosophizing to Socrates, whereby constantly interrogating others, he cleared them of pride, error, and ignorance, and of being troublesome both to themselves and to others? For about that time there happened to be in Greece several sophists; to these some young men paid great sums of money, for which they purchased a strong opinion of learning and wisdom, and of being stout disputants; but this sort of disputation spent much time in trifling squabblings, which were of no credit or profit. Now Socrates, using an argumentative discourse by way of a purgative remedy procured belief and authority to what he said, because in refuting others he himself affirmed nothing; and he the sooner gained upon people, because he seemed rather to be inquisitive after the truth as well as they, than to maintain his own opinion.
[Plat. quaest. 1.2] Now, however useful a thing judgment is, it is mightily infected By the begetting of a man’s own fancies. For the lover is blinded with the thing loved; and nothing of a man’s own is so beloved as is the opinion and discourse he has begotten. And the distribution of children said to be the justest, in respect of discourses is the unjustest; for there a man must take his own, but here a man must choose the best, though it be another man’s. Therefore he that has children of his own, is a worse judge of other men’s; it being true, as the sophister said well, “The Eleans would be the most proper judges of the Olympic games, were no Eleans gamesters.” So he that would judge of disputations cannot be just, if he either seeks the bays for himself, or is himself antagonist to either of the antagonists. For as the Grecian captains, when they were to settle by their suffrages who had behaved himself the best, every man of them voted for himself; so there is not a philosopher of them all but would do the like, besides those that acknowledge, like Socrates, that they can say nothing that is their own; and these only are the pure uncorrupt judges of the truth. For as the air in the ears, unless it be still and void of noise in itself, without any sound or humming, does not exactly take sounds so the philosophical judgment in disputations, if it be disturbed and obstreperous within, is hardly comprehensive of what is said without. For our familiar and inbred opinion will not allow that which disagrees with itself, as the number of sects and parties shows, of which philosophy — if she deals with them in the best manner — must maintain one to be right, and all the others to be contrary to the truth in their positions.
[Plat. quaest. 1.3] Furthermore, if men can comprehend and know nothing, God did justly interdict Socrates the procreation of false and unstable discourses, which are like wind-eggs, and did him convince others who were of any other opinion. And reasoning, which rids us of the greatest of evils, error and vanity of mind, is none of the least benefit to us; “For God has not granted this to the Esculapians.” (Theognis, vs. 432,) Nor did Socrates give physic to the body; indeed he purged the mind of secret corruption. But if there be any knowledge of the truth, and if the truth be one, he has as much that learns it of him that invented it, as the inventor himself. Now he the most easily attains the truth, that is persuaded he has it not; and he chooses best, just as he that has no children of his own adopts the best. Mark this well, that poetry, mathematics, oratory, and sophistry, which are the things the Deity forbade Socrates to generate, are of no value; and that of the sole wisdom about what is divine and intelligible (which Socrates called amiable and eligible for itself), there is neither generation nor invention by man, but reminiscence. Wherefore Socrates taught nothing, but suggesting principles of doubt, as birth-pains, to young men, he excited and at the same time confirmed the innate notions. This he called his Art of Midwifery, which did not (as others professed) extrinsically confer intelligence upon his auditors; but demonstrated it to be innate, yet imperfect and confused, and in want of a nurse to feed and fortify it.
[Plat. quaest. 2.1] Question II.
[Plat. quaest. 2.1b] Why Does he Call the Supreme God Father and Maker of All Things? (Plato, “Timaeus,” p. 28 C.)
[Plat. quaest. 2.1c] Is it because he is (as Homer calls him) of created gods and men the Father, and of brutes and things that have no soul the maker? If Chrysippus may be believed, he is not properly styled the father of the afterbirth who supplied the seed, although it arose from the seed. Or has Plato figuratively called the maker of the world the father of it? In his Convivium he calls Phaedrus the father of the amatorious discourse which he had commenced; and so in his Phaedrus (“Phaedrus,” p. 261 A.) he calls him “father of noble children,” when he had been the occasion of many pre-eminent discourses about philosophical questions. Or is there any difference between a father and a maker? Or between procreation and making? For as what is procreated is also made, but not the contrary recreated did also make, for the procreation of an animal is the making of it. Now the work of a maker — as of a builder, a weaver, a musical-instrument maker, or a statuary — is altogether apart and separate from its author; but the principle and power of the procreator is implanted in the progeny, and contains his nature, the progeny being a piece pulled off the procreator. Since therefore the world is neither like a piece of potter’s work nor joiner’s work, but there is a great share of life and divinity in it, which God from himself communicated to and mixed with matter, God may properly be called Father of the world — since it has life in it — and also the maker of it.
[Plat. quaest. 2.2] And since these things come very near to Plato’s opinion, consider, I pray, whether there may not be some probability in them. Whereas the world consists of two parts, body and soul, God indeed made not the body; but matter being at hand, he formed and fitted it, binding up and confirming what was infinite within proper limits and figures. But the soul, partaking of mind, reason, and harmony, was not only the work of God, but part of him not only made by him, but begot by him.
[Plat. quaest. 3.1] Question III.
[Plat. quaest. 3.1b] In the Republic, (“Republic,” vi. pp. 509 D-511 E.) he assumes the universe, as one line to be cut into two unequal parts; again he cuts each of these parts in two after the same manner, and supposes the two sections first made to form the two genera of things sensible and things intelligible. The first stands for the genus of intelligibles, comprehending in the first subdivision the primitive forms, in the second the mathematics. Of sensibles, the first subdivision comprehends solid bodies, the second comprehends the images and representations of them. Moreover, to every one of these four he has assigned its proper criterion; — to the first reason; to the mathematics, the understanding; to sensibles, belief; to images and likenesses, conjecture.
[Plat. quaest. 3.1c] But what Does he Mean by Dividing the Universe into Unequal Parts? And which of the Sections, the Intelligible or the Sensible, is the Greater? For in this he has Not Explained Himself.
[Plat. quaest. 3.1d] At first glance it will appear that the sensible is the greater portion. For the essence of intelligibles being indivisible, and in the same respect ever the same, is contracted into a little, and pure; but an essence divisible and running through bodies constitutes the sensible part. Now what is immaterial is limited; but body in respect of matter is infinite and unlimited, and it becomes sensible only when it is limited by partaking of the intelligible. Besides, as every sensible has many images, shadows, and representations, and from one and the same original several copies may be taken both by nature and art; so the latter must surpass the former in number, according to Plato, who makes things of the intellect to be patterns or ideas of things sensible, as if the last were images and reflections. Further, Plato derives the knowledge of ideas by abstraction and cutting away of body, leading us by mathematical discipline from arithmetic to geometry, thence to astronomy, and placing harmony above them all. For things become geometrical by the accession of magnitude to quantity; solid, by the accession of profundity to magnitude; astronomical, by the accession of motion to solidity; harmonical, by the accession of sound to motion. Take then sound from moving bodies, motion from solids, profundity from superficies, magnitude from quantity, we then reach pure intelligible ideas, which have no difference among themselves as regards the one single intelligible essence. For unity makes no number unless joined by the infinite binary; then it makes a number. And thence we proceed to points, thence to lines, from them to superficies, and solids, and bodies, and to the qualities of the bodies so and so affected. Now the reason is the only criterion of intelligibles; and the understanding is the reason in the mathematics, where intelligibles appear as if in mirrors. But as to the knowledge of bodies, because of their multitude, Nature has given us five powers or distinctions of senses; nor are all bodies discerned by them, many escaping sense by reason of their smallness. And though every one of us consists of a body and soul, yet the hegemonic and intellectual faculty is small, being hid in the huge mass of flesh. And the case is the same in the universe, as to sensible and intelligible. For intelligibles are the principles of bodily things, but everything is greater than the principle whence it came.
[Plat. quaest. 3.2] Yet, on the contrary, some will say that, by comparing sensibles with intelligibles, we match things mortal with divine, in some measure; for God is in intelligibles. Besides, the thing contained is ever less than the containing, and the nature of the universe contains the sensible in the intelligible. For God, having placed the soul in the middle, hath extended it through all, and hath covered it all round with bodies. The soul is invisible, and cannot be perceived by any of the senses, as Plato says in his Book of Laws; therefore every man must die, but the world shall never die. For mortality and dissolution surround every one of our vital faculties. The case is quite otherwise in the world; for the corporeal part, contained in the middle by the more noble and unalterable principle, is ever preserved. And a body is said to be without parts and indivisible for its minuteness; but what is incorporeal and intelligible is so, as being simple and sincere, and void of all firmness and difference. Besides, it were folly to think to judge of incorporeal things by corporeal. The present, or now, is said to be without parts and indivisible, since it is everywhere and no part of the world is void of it. But all affections and actions, and all corruptions and generations in the world, are contained by this same now. But the mind is judge only of what is intelligible, as the sight is of light, by reason of its simplicity and similitude. But bodies, having several differences and diversities, are comprehended, some by one judicatory function, others by another, as by several organs. Yet they do not well who despise the discriminative faculty in us; for being great, it comprehends all sensibles, and attains to things divine. The chief thing he himself teaches in his Banquet, where he shows us how we should use amatorious matters, turning our minds from sensible goods to things discernible only by the mind, that we ought not to be enslaved by the beauty of any body, study, or learning, but laying aside such weakness, should turn to the vast ocean of beauty. (See Plato’s “Symposium,” p. 210 D.)
[Plat. quaest. 4.1] Question IV.
[Plat. quaest. 4.1b] What is the Reason That, Though Plato Always Says that the Soul is Ancienter than the Body, and that it is the Cause and Principle of its Rise, Yet he Likewise Says, that Neither Could the Soul Exist Without the Body, Nor the Reason Without the Soul, but the Soul in the Body and the Reason in the Soul? For 80 the Body Will Seem to Be and Not to Be, Because it Both Exists with the Soul, and is Begot by the Soul.
[Plat. quaest. 4.1c] Perhaps what we have often said is true; viz., that the soul without reason and the body without form did mutually ever coexist, and neither of them had generation or beginning. But after the soul did partake of reason and harmony, and being through consent made wise, it wrought a change in matter, and being stronger than the other’s motions, it drew and converted these motions to itself. So the body of the world drew its original from the soul, and became conformable and like to it. For the soul did not make the nature of the body out of itself, or out of nothing; but it wrought an orderly and pliable body out of one disorderly and formless. Just as if a man should say that the virtue of the seed is with the body, and yet that the body of the fig-tree or olive-tree was made of the seed, he would not be much out; for the body, its innate motion and mutation proceeding from the seed, grew up and became what it is. So, when formless and indefinite matter was once formed by the inbeing soul, it received such a form and disposition.
[Plat. quaest. 5.1] Question V.
[Plat. quaest. 5.1b] Why, Since Bodies and Figures are Contained Partly by Rectilinears and Partly by Circles, Does he Make Isosceles Triangles and Triangles of Unequal Sides the Principles of Rectilinears; of which the Isosceles Triangle Constitutes the Cube, the Element of the Earth; and a Scalene Triangle Forms the Pyramid, the Octahedron the Seed of Fire, Air and Water Respectively, and the Icosahedron; — While he Passes Over Circulars, Though he Does Mention the Globe, where he Says that Each of the Afore- Reckoned Figures Divides a Round Body that Circumscribes it into Equal Parts. (See “Timaeus,” pp. 53–56.)
[Plat. quaest. 5.1c] Is their opinion true who think that he ascribed a dodecahedron to the globe, when he says that God made use of it in delineating the universe? For upon account of the multitude of its bases and the obtuseness of its angles, avoiding all rectitude, it is flexible, and by circumtension, like globes made of twelve skins, it becomes circular and comprehensive. For it has twenty solid angles, each of which is contained by three obtuse planes, and each of these contains one and the fifth part of a right angle. Now it is made up of twelve equilateral and equangular quinquangles (or pentagons), each of which consists of thirty of the first scalene triangles. Therefore it seems to resemble both the Zodiac and the year, it being divided into the same number of parts as these.
[Plat. quaest. 5.2] Or is a right line in Nature prior to circumference; or is circumference but an accident of rectilinear? For a right line is said to bend; and a circle is described by a centre and distance, which is the place of a right line from which a circumference is measured, this being everywhere equally distant from the middle. And a cone and a cylinder are made by rectilinears; a cone by keeping one side of a triangle fixed and carrying another round with the base, — a cylinder, by doing the like with a parallelogram. Further, that is nearest to principle which is less; but a right is the least of all lines, as it is simple; whereas in a circumference one part is convex without, another concave within. Besides, numbers are before figures, as unity is before a point, which is unity in position. But indeed unity is triangular; for every triangular number (Triangular numbers are those of which
equilateral triangles can be formed in this way:
.
. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[Plat. quaest. 5.2b] Such are: 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, etc.; that is, numbers formed by adding the digits in regular order. (G.)) taken eight times, by adding unity, becomes quadrate; and this happens to unity. Therefore a triangle is before a circle, whence a right line is before a circumference. Besides, no element is divided into things compounded of itself; indeed there is a dissolution of all other things into the elements. Now a triangle is divided into no circumference, but two diameters cut a circle into four triangles; therefore a rectilinear figure is before a circular, and has more of the nature of an element. And Plato himself shows that a rectilinear is in the first place, and a circular is only consequential and accidental. For when he says the earth consists of cubes, each of which is contained with rectilinear superficies, he says the earth is spherical and round. Therefore there was no need of making a peculiar element for round things, since rectilinears, fitted after a certain manner among themselves, do make up this figure.
[Plat. quaest. 5.3] Besides, a right line, whether great or little, preserves the same rectitude; but as to the circumference of a circle, the less it is, the crookeder it is; the larger, the straighter. Therefore if a convex surface stands on a plane, it sometimes touches the under plane in a point, sometimes in a line. So that a man may imagine that a circumference is made up of little right lines.
[Plat. quaest. 5.4] But observe whether this be not true, that no circle or sphere in this world is exactly drawn; but since by the tension and circumtension of the straight lines, or by the minuteness of the parts, the difference is hidden, the figure seems circular and round. Therefore no corruptible body moves circularly, but altogether in a right line. To be truly spherical is not in a sensible body, but is the element of the soul and mind, to which he has given circular motion, as being agreeable to their nature.
[Plat. quaest. 6.1] Question VI.
[Plat. quaest. 6.1b] How Comes it to Pass that in Phaedrus it is Said, that the Nature of a Wing, by which Anything that is Heavy is Carried Upwards, Participates Most of the Body of God? (See “Phaedrus,” p. 246 D.)
[Plat. quaest. 6.1c] Is it because the discourse is of love, and love is of beauty inherent in a body? Now beauty, by similitude to things divine, moves and reminds the soul. Or it may be (without too much curiosity) he may be understood in plain meaning, to wit, that the several faculties of the soul being employed about bodies, the power of reasoning and understanding partakes most about divine and heavenly things; which he did not improperly call a wing, it raising the soul from mean and mortal things to things above.
[Plat. quaest. 7.1] Question VII.
[Plat. quaest. 7.1b] In what Sense Does Plato Say, that the Antiperistasis (Or Reaction) Of Motion — By Reason There is No Vacuum — Is the Cause Of the Phenomena in Physicians’ Cupping- Glasses, in Swallowing, in Casting Weights, in the Running of Water, in Thunder, in The Attraction of the Loadstone, and in the Harmony of Sounds? (See “Timaeus,” pp. 79–81.)
[Plat. quaest. 7.1c] For it seems unreasonable to ascribe the reason of such different effects to the selfsame cause.
[Plat. quaest. 7.2] How respiration is made by the reaction of the air, he has sufficiently shown. But the others, he says, seem to be effected miraculously, but really the bodies force each other aside and change places with one another; while he has left for us to discover how each is particularly done.
[Plat. quaest. 7.3] As to cupping-glasses, the case is thus: the air next to the flesh being comprehended and inflamed by the heat, and being made more rare than the pores of the brass, does not go into a vacuum (for there is no such thing), but into the air that is without the cupping-glass, and has an impulse upon it. This air drives that before it; and each, as it gives way, strives to succeed into the place which was vacuated by the cession of the first. And so the air approaching the flesh comprehended by the cupping-glass, and attracting it, draws the humors into the cupping-glass.
[Plat. quaest. 7.4] Swallowing takes place in the same way. For the cavities about the mouth and stomach are full of air; when therefore the meat is squeezed down by the tongue and tonsils, the elided air follows what gives way, and also forces down the meat.
[Plat. quaest. 7.5] Weights also thrown cleave the air and dissipate it, as they fall with force; the air recoiling back, according to its proper tendency to rush in and fill the vacuum, follows the impulse, and accelerates the motion.
[Plat. quaest. 7.6] The fall also of thunderbolts is like to darting anything. For by the blow in the cloud, the fiery matter exploded breaks into the air; and it being broken gives way, and again being contracted above, by main force it presses the thunderbolt downwards contrary to Nature.
[Plat. quaest. 7.7] And neither amber nor the loadstone draws anything to it which is near, nor does anything spontaneously approach them. But this stone emits strong exhalations, by which the surrounding air being impelled forceth that which is before it; and this being drawn round in the circle, and returning into the vacuated place, forcibly draws the iron in the same movement. In amber there is a flammeous and spirituous nature, and this by rubbing on the surface is emitted by recluse passages, and does the same that the loadstone does. It also draws the lightest and driest of adjacent bodies, by reason of their tenuity and weakness; for it is not so strong nor so endued with weight and strength as to force much air and to act with violence and to have power over great bodies, as the magnet has. But what is the reason the air never draws a stone, nor wood, but iron only, to the loadstone? This is a common question both by those who think the coition of these bodies is made by the attraction of the loadstone, and by such as think it done by the incitement of the iron. Iron is neither so rare as wood, nor altogether so solid as gold or a stone; but has certain pores and asperities, which as far as inequality is concerned are proportionable to the air; and the air being received in certain positions, and having (as it were) certain stays to hang to, does not slip off; but when it is carried up to the stone and is forced against it, it draws the iron by force along with it to the stone. Such then may be the reason of this.
[Plat. quaest. 7.8] But the manner of the waters running over the earth is not so evident. But it is observable that the waters of lakes and ponds stand immovable, because the air about them stagnates immovable and admits of no vacuity. For the water on the surface of lakes and seas is troubled and fluctuates as the air is moved, it following the motion of the air, and moving as it is moved. For the force from below causes the hollowness of the wave, and from above the swelling thereof; until the air ambient and containing the water is still. Therefore the flux of such waters as follow the motion of the receding air, and are impelled by that which presses behind, is continued without end. And this is the reason that the stream increases with the waters, and is slow where the water is weak, the air not giving way, and therefore enduring less reaction. So the water of fountains must needs go upwards, the extrinsic air succeeding into the vacuity and throwing the water out. In a close house, that keeps in the air and wind, the floor sprinkled with water causes an air or wind, because, as the sprinkled water falls, the air gives way. For it is so provided by Nature that air and water force one another and give way to one another; because there is no vacuity in which one can be fixed without experiencing the change and alteration in the other.
[Plat. quaest. 7.9] Concerning symphony, he shows how sounds harmonize. A quick sound is acute, a slow is grave. Therefore acute sounds move the senses the quicker; and these dying and grave sounds supervening, what arises from the contemperation of one with the other causes pleasure to the ear, which we call harmony. And by what has been said, it may easily be understood that air is the instrument of these things. For sound is the stroke upon the sense of the hearer, caused by the air; and the air strikes as it is struck by the thing moving, — if violent, acutely, — if languid, softly. The violent stroke comes quick to the ear; then the circumambient air receiving a slower, it affects and carries the sense along with it.
[Plat. quaest. 8.1] Question VIII.
[Plat. quaest. 8.1b] What Means Timaeus (See “Timaeus,” p. 42 D.) When he Says that Souls are Dispersed into the Earth, the Moon, and into Other Instruments of Time?
[Plat. quaest. 8.1c] Does the earth move like the sun, moon, and five planets, which for their motions he calls organs or instruments of time? Or is the earth fixed to the axis of the universe; yet not so built as to remain immovable, but to turn and wheel about, as Aristarchus and Seleucus have shown since; Aristarchus only supposing it, Seleucus positively asserting it? Theophrastus writes how that Plato, when he grew old, repented him that he had placed the earth in the middle of the universe, which was not its place.
[Plat. quaest. 8.2] Or is this contradictory to Plato’s opinion elsewhere, and in the Greek instead of [Greek omitted] should it be written [Greek omitted], taking the dative case instead of the genitive, so that the stars will not be said to be instruments, but the bodies of animals? So Aristotle has defined the soul to be “the actualization of a natural organic body, having the power of life.” The sense then must be this, that souls are dispersed into meet organical bodies in time. But this is far besides his opinion. For it is not once, but several times, that he calls the stars instruments of time; as when he says, the sun was made, as well as other planets, for the distinction and conservation of the numbers of time.
[Plat. quaest. 8.3] It is therefore most proper to understand the earth to be here an instrument of time; not that the earth is moved, as the stars are; but that, they being carried about it, it standing still makes sunset and sunrising, by which the first measures of time, nights and days, are circumscribed. Wherefore he called it the infallible guard and artificer of night and day. For the gnomons of dials are instruments and measures of time, not in being moved with the shadows, but in standing still; they being like the earth in closing out the light of the sun when it is down, — as Empedocles says that the earth makes night by intercepting light. This therefore may be Plato’s meaning.
[Plat. quaest. 8.4] And so much the rather might we consider whether the sun is not absurdly and without probability said to be made for the distinction of time, with the moon and the rest of the planets. For as in other respects the dignity of the sun is great; so by Plato in his Republic (Plato, “Republic.” vi. pp. 508, 509.) the sun is called the king and lord of the whole sensible nature, as the Chief Good is of the intelligible. For it is said to be the offspring of Good, it supplying both generation and appearance to things visible; as it is from Good that things intelligible both are and are understood. But that this God, having such a nature and so great power, should be only an instrument of time, and a sure measure of the difference that happens among the eight orbs, as they are slow or swift in motion, seems neither decent nor highly rational. It must therefore be said to such as are startled at these things, that it is their ignorance to think that time is the measure of motion in respect of sooner or later, as Aristotle calls it; or quantity in motion, as Speusippus; or an interval of motion and nothing else, as some of the Stoics define it, by an accident, not comprehending its essence and power, which Pindar has not ineptly expressed in these words: Time, who surpasses all in the seats of the blest. Pythagoras also, when he was asked what time was, answered, it was the soul of the universe. For time is no affection or accident of motion, but the cause, power, and principle of that symmetry and order that confines all created beings, by which the animated nature of the universe is moved. Or rather, this order and symmetry itself — so far as it is motion — is called time. For this,
[Plat. quaest. 8.4b] Walking by still and silent ways, Mortal things with justice leads.(Euripides, “Troades,” 887.)
[Plat. quaest. 8.4c] According to the ancients, the principle of the soul is a number moving itself. Therefore Plato says that time and heaven were coexistent, but that motion was before heaven had being. But time was not. For then there neither was order, nor measure, nor determination; but indefinite motion, as it were, the formless and rude matter of time. . . . But when matter was informed with figures, and motion with circuitions, from that came the world, from this time. Both are representations of God; the world, of his essence; time, of his eternity in the sphere of motion, as the world is God in creation. Therefore they say heaven and motion, being bred together, will perish together, if ever they do perish. For nothing is generated without time, nor is anything intelligible without eternity; if this is to endure forever, and that never to die when once bred. Time, therefore, having a necessary connection and affinity with heaven, cannot be called simple motion, but (as it were) motion in order having terms and periods; whereof since the sun is prefect and overseer, to determine, moderate, produce, and observe changes and seasons, which (according to Heraclitus) produce all things, he is coadjutor to the governing and chief God, not in trivial things, but in the greatest and most momentous affairs.
[Plat. quaest. 9.1] Question IX.
[Plat. quaest. 9.1b] Since Plato in his Commonwealth, discoursing of the faculties of the soul, has very well compared the symphony of reason and of the irascible and the concupiscent faculties to the harmony of the middle, lowest, and highest chord, (See “Republic,” iv. p. 443.) some men may properly inquire: —
[Plat. quaest. 9.1c] Did Plato Place the Rational or the Irascible Faculty in the Middle? For he is Not Clear in the Point.
[Plat. quaest. 9.1d] Indeed, according to the natural system of the parts, the place of the irascible faculty must be in the middle, and of the rational in the highest, which the Greeks call hypate. For they of old called the chief and supreme [Greek omitted]. So Xenocrates calls Jove, in respect of immutable things, [Greek omitted] (or HIGHEST), in respect of sublunary things [Greek omitted] (or LOWEST). And long before him, Homer calls the chief God [Greek omitted], HIGHEST OF RULERS. And Nature has of due given the highest place to what is most excellent, having placed reason as a steersman in the head, and the appetitive faculty at a distance, last of all and lowest. And the lowest place they call [Greek omitted], as the names of the dead, [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted], do show. And some say, that the south wind, inasmuch as it blows from a low and obscure place, is called [Greek omitted].
[Plat. quaest. 9.1e] Now since the appetitive faculty stands in the same opposition to reason in which the lowest stands to the highest and the last to the first, it is not possible for the reason to be uppermost and first, and yet for any other part to be the one called [Greek omitted] (or HIGHEST). For they that ascribe the power of the middle to it, as the ruling power, are ignorant how they deprive it of a higher power, namely, of the highest, which is compatible neither to the irascible nor to the concupiscent faculty; since it is the nature of them both to be governed by and obsequious to reason, and the nature of neither of them to govern and lead it. And the most natural place of the irascible faculty seems to be in the middle of the other two. For it is the nature of reason to govern, and of the irascible faculty both to govern and be governed, since it is obsequious to reason, and commands the appetitive faculty when this is disobedient to reason.
[Plat. quaest. 9.1f] And as in letters the semi-vowels are middling between mutes and vowels, having something more than those and less than these; so in the soul of man, the irascible faculty is not purely passive, but hath often an imagination of good mixed with the irrational appetite of revenge. Plato himself, after he had compared the soul to a pair of horses and a charioteer, likened (as every one knows) the rational faculty to the charioteer, and the concupiscent to one of the horses, which was resty and unmanageable altogether, bristly about the ears, deaf and disobedient both to whip and spur; and the irascible he makes for the most part very obsequious to the bridle of reason, and assistant to it. As therefore in a chariot, the middling one in virtue and power is not the charioteer, but that one of the horses which is worse than his guider and yet better than his fellow; so in the soul, Plato gives the middle place not to the principal part, but to that faculty which has less of reason than the principal part and more than the third.
[Plat. quaest. 9.1g] This order also keeps the analogy of the symphonies, i.e. the proportion of the irascible to the rational (which is placed as hypate) making the diatessaron (or fourth), that of the irascible to the concupiscent (or nete) making the diapente (or fifth), and that of the rational to the concupiscent (as hypate to nete) making an octave or diapason. But should you place the rational in the middle, you would make the irascible farther from the concupiscent; though some of the philosophers have taken the irascible and the concupiscent faculty for the selfsame, by reason of their likeness.
[Plat. quaest. 9.2] But it may be ridiculous to describe the first, middle, and last by their place; since we see hypate highest in the harp, lowest in the pipe; and wheresoever you place the mese in the harp, provided it is tunable, it sounds more acute than hypate, and more grave than nete. Nor does the eye possess the same place in all animals; but whereever it is placed, it is natural for it to see. So a pedagogue, though he goes not foremost but follows behind, is said to lead ([Greek omitted]), as the general of the Trojan army,
[Plat. quaest. 9.2b] Now in the front, now in the rear was seen, And kept command;(“Iliad,” xi. 64.)
[Plat. quaest. 9.2c] but wherever he was, he was first and chief in power. So the faculties of the soul are not to be ranged by mere force in order of place or name, but according to their power and analogy. For that in the body of man reason is in the highest place, is accidental. But it holds the chief and highest power, as mese to hypate, in respect of the concupiscent; as mese to nete, in respect of the irascible; insomuch as it depresses and heightens, — and in fine makes a harmony, — by abating what is too much and by not suffering them to flatten and grow dull. For what is moderate and symmetrous is defined by mediocrity. Still more is it the end of the rational faculty to bring the passions to moderation, which is called sacred, as making a harmony of the extremes with reason, and through reason with each other. For in chariots the best of the team is not in the middle; nor is the skill of driving to be placed as an extreme, but it is a mean between the inequality of the swiftness and the slowness of the horses. So the force of reason takes up the passions irrationally moved, and reducing them to measure, constitutes a mean betwixt too much and too little.
[Plat. quaest. 10.1] Question X.
[Plat. quaest. 10.1b] Why Said Plato, that Speech was Composed of Nouns and Verbs?
(Plato’s “Sophist,” p. 262 A.)
[Plat. quaest. 10.1c] For he seems to make no other parts of speech but them. But Homer in a playful humor has comprehended them all in one verse: —
[Plat. quaest. 10.1d] [Greek omitted] (“Iliad”, i. 185.)
[Plat. quaest. 10.1e] For in it there is pronoun, participle, noun, preposition, article, conjunction, adverb, and verb, the particle — [Greek omitted] being put instead of the preposition [Greek omitted]; for [Greek omitted], TO THE TENT, is said in the same sense as [Greek omitted], TO ATHENS. What then shall we say for Plato?
[Plat. quaest. 10.1f] Is it that at first the ancients called that [Greek omitted], or speech, which once was called protasis and now is called axiom or proposition, — which as soon as a man speaks, he speaks either true or false? This consists of a noun and verb, which logicians call the subject and predicate. For when we hear this said, “Socrates philosphizeth” or “Socrates is changed,” requiring nothing more, we say the one is true, the other false. For very likely in the beginning men wanted speech and articulate voice, to enable them to express clearly at once the passions and the patients, the actions and the agents. Now, since actions and affections are adequately expressed by verbs, and they that act and are affected by nouns, as he says, these seem to signify. And one may say, the rest signify not. For instance, the groans and shrieks of stage players, and even their smiles and silence, make their discourse more emphatic. But they have no absolute power to signify anything, as a noun and verb have, but only an ascititious power to vary speech; just as they vary letters who mark spirits and quantities upon letters, these being the accidents and differences of letters. This the ancients have made manifest, whom sixteen letters sufficed to speak and write anything.
[Plat. quaest. 10.2] Besides, we must not fail to observe, that Plato says that speech is composed OF these, not BY these; nor must we find fault with Plato for omitting conjunctions, prepositions, and the rest, any more than we should criticise a man who should say such a medicine is composed of wax and galbanum, because fire and utensils are omitted, without which it cannot be produced. For speech is not composed of these; yet by their means, and not without them, speech must be composed. As, if a man says BEATS or IS BEATEN, and adds Socrates and Pythagoras to the same, he gives us something to conceive and understand. But if a man pronounce INDEED or FOR or ABOUT and no more, none can conceive any notion of a body or matter; and unless such words as these be uttered with verbs and nouns, they are but empty noise and chattering. For neither alone nor joined one with another do they signify anything. And join and confound together conjunctions, articles, and prepositions, supposing you would make something of them; yet you will be taken to babble, and not to speak sense. But when there is a verb in construction with a noun, the result is speech and sense. Therefore some do with justice make only these two parts of speech; and perhaps Homer is willing to declare himself of this mind, when he says so often,
[Plat. quaest. 10.2b] [Greek omitted]
For by [Greek omitted] he usually means a verb, as in these verses.
[Plat. quaest. 10.2c] [Greek omitted],
and,
[Greek omitted] (“Odyssey,” xxiii. 183; viii. 408.)
[Plat. quaest. 10.2d] For neither conjunction, article, nor preposition could be said to be [Greek omitted] (TERRIBLE) or [Greek omitted] (SOUL GRIEVING), but only a verb signifying a base action or a foolish passion of the mind. Therefore, when we would praise or dispraise poets or writers, we are wont to say, such a man uses Attic nouns and good verbs, or else common nouns and verbs; but none can say that Thucydides or Euripides used Attic or common articles.
[Plat. quaest. 10.3] What then? May some say, do the rest of the parts conduce nothing to speech? I answer, They conduce, as salt does to victuals; or water to barley cakes. And Euenus calls fire the best sauce. Though sometimes there is neither occasion for fire to boil, nor for salt to season our food, which we have always occasion for. Nor has speech always occasion for articles. I think I may say this of the Latin tongue, which is now the universal language; for it has taken away all prepositions, saving a few, nor does it use any articles, but its nouns are (as it were) without skirts and borders. Nor is it any wonder, since Homer, who in fineness of epic surpasses all men, has put articles only to a few nouns, like handles to cans, or crests to helmets. Therefore these verses are remarkable wherein the articles are suppressed. —
[Plat. quaest. 10.3b] [Greek omitted] (“Iliad,” xiv. 459.)
[Plat. quaest. 10.3c] and,
[Greek omitted] (Ibid. xx. 147.)
[Plat. quaest. 10.3d] and some few besides. But in a thousand others, the omission of the articles hinders neither perspicuity nor elegance of phrase.
[Plat. quaest. 10.4] Now neither an animal nor an instrument nor arms nor anything else is more fine, efficacious, or pleasanter, for the loss of a part. Yet speech, by taking away conjunctions, often becomes more persuasive, as here: —
[Plat. quaest. 10.4b] One rear’d a dagger at a captive’s breast; One held a living foe, that freshly bled With new-made wounds, another dragg’d a dead.(Ibid. xviii. 536.)
[Plat. quaest. 10.4c] And this of Demosthenes: —
“A bully in an assault may do much which his victim cannot even report to another person, — by his attitude, his look, his voice, — when he insults, when he attacks as an enemy, when he smites with his fist, when he strikes a blow on the face. These rouse a man; these make a man beside himself who is unused to such foul abuse.”
[Plat. quaest. 10.4d] And again: —
“Not so with Midias; but from the very day, he talks, he abuses, he shouts. Is there an election of magistrates? Midias the Anagyrrasian is nominated. He is the advocate of Plutarchus; he knows state secrets; the city cannot contain him.” (“Demosthenes against Midias,” p. 537,25, and p. 578, 29.)
[Plat. quaest. 10.4e] Therefore the figure asyndeton, whereby conjunctions are omitted, is highly commended by writers of rhetoric. But such as keep overstrict to the law, and (according to custom) omit not a conjunction, rhetoricians blame for using a dull, flat, tedious style, without any variety in it. And inasmuch as logicians mightily want conjunctions for the joining together their axioms, as much as charioteers want yokes, and Ulysses wanted withs to tie Cyclop’s sheep; this shows they are not parts of speech, but a conjunctive instrument thereof, as the word conjunction imports. Nor do conjunctions join all, but only such as are not spoken simply; unless you will make a cord part of the burthen, glue a part of a book, or distribution of money part of the government. For Demades says, that money which is given to the people out of the exchequer for public shows is the glue of a democracy. Now what conjunction does so of several propositions make one, by fitting and joining them together, as marble joins iron that is incited with it in the fire? Yet the marble neither is nor is said to be part of the iron; although in this case the substances compose the mixture and are melted together, so as to make a common substance from several and to be mutually affected. But there be some who think that conjunctions do not make anything one, but that this kind of speech is merely an enumeration, as when magistrates or days are reckoned in order.
[Plat. quaest. 10.5] Moreover, as to the other parts of speech, a pronoun is manifestly a sort of noun; not only because it has cases, but because some pronouns, when they are used of objects already defined, by their mere utterance give the most distinct designation of them. Nor do I know whether he that says SOCRATES or he that says THIS ONE does more by name declare the person.
[Plat. quaest. 10.6] The thing we call a participle, being a mixture of a verb and noun is nothing of itself, as are not the common names of male and female qualities (i.e, adjectives), but in construction it is put with others, in regard of tenses belonging to verbs, in regard of cases to nouns. Logicians call them [Greek omitted], (i.e., REFLECTED), — as [Greek omitted], comes from [Greek omitted], and from [Greek omitted], — having the force both of nouns and appellatives.
[Plat. quaest. 10.7] And prepositions are like to the crests of a helmet, or footstools and pedestals, which (one may rather say) do belong to words than are words themselves. See whether they rather be not pieces and scraps of words, as they that are in haste write but dashes and points for letters. For it is plain that [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] are abbreviations of the whole words [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted]. As undoubtedly for haste and brevity’s sake, instead of [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] men first said [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted].
[Plat. quaest. 10.8] Therefore every one of these is of some use in speech; but nothing is a part or element of speech (as has been said) except a noun and a verb, which make the first juncture allowing of truth or falsehood, which some call a proposition or protasis, others an axiom, and which Plato called speech.

## On the birth of the spirit in Timaeus

THE FATHER TO AUTOBULUS AND PLUTARCH WISHETH HEALTH.
[De an. procr. 1] 1. Since it is your opinion that it would be requisite for me to collect together what I have discoursed and written dispersedly in several treatises explaining, as we apprehended his sense and meaning, what opinion Plato had concerning the soul, as requiring a particular commentary by itself; therefore I have compiled this discourse, which asks for your consideration and pardon not only because the matter itself is by no means easy to be handled, but also because the doctrines herein contained are somewhat contrary to those held by most of the Platonic philosophers. And I will first rehearse the words as they run originally in the text itself of Timaeus.
[De an. procr. 1b] “There being one substance not admitting of division, but continuing still the same, and another liable to be divided among several bodies, out of both these he produced for a middle mixture a third sort of Substance, partaking of the nature of the Same and of the nature of the Other, and placed it in the midst between that which was indivisible and that which was subject to be corporeally divided. Then taking all three, he blended them into one form, forcibly adapting to the Same the nature of the Other, not readily condescending to a mixture. Now when he had thus mixed them with the Substance, and reduced the three into one, he again divided this whole matter into so many parts as were thought to be necessary; every one of these parts being composed of the Same, the Other, and the Substance And thus he began his division.”
[De an. procr. 1c] By the way, it would be an endless toil to recite the contentions and disputes that have from hence arisen among his interpreters, and to you indeed superfluous, who are not ignorant yourselves of the greatest part.
[De an. procr. 1d] But seeing that Xenocrates won to his opinions several of the most eminent philosophers, while he defined the substance of the soul to be number moved by itself; and that many adhered to Crantor the Solian, who affirmed the soul to consist partly of an essence perceptible to the mind, partly of a nature concerned with sensible things and subject to opinions; I am apt to believe that the perspicuity of these matters clearly dilucidated will afford you a fair entrance into the knowledge of the rest.
[De an. procr. 2] 2. Nor does either of the two conjectures require many words of explanation. For the one side pretends that by the mixture of the divisible and indivisible substance no other thing is meant than the generation or original of number, seeing that the unit is undividable but multitude is subject to division; however, that out of these is begot number, unity terminating plurality and putting a period to infinity, which they call the unlimited binary. This binary Zaratas, the scholar of Pythagoras, named the mother, but the unit the father of number; and therefore he believed those numbers were the best which approached nearest in resemblance to the unit. Nevertheless, this number cannot be said to be the soul; for it neither has the power to move, neither can it be moved. But the Same and the Other being blended together, of which one is the original of motion and mutation, the other of rest and stability, from these two springs the soul, which is no less active or passive itself to stay or to be stayed, than to move or to be moved.
[De an. procr. 2b] But the followers of Crantor, supposing the proper function of the soul to consist in judging of those things which are discernible to the understanding and those which are liable to sense, as also of the differences and similitudes of these things, as well in themselves as in reference one to another, allege the soul to be composed of all, to the end she may have a true knowledge of the whole. Now the things of which the All is composed are fourfold, — the intelligible nature, always immutable and still the same, and the sensitive nature, which is passive and subject to alteration; and also the nature of the Same, and the nature of the Other, in regard the two former in some measure participate also of diversity and identity.
[De an. procr. 3] 3. All these philosophers likewise equally hold that the soul neither derives its beginning from time nor is the product of generation, but that it is endued with several faculties and virtues, into which Plato, as it were, melting and dissolving its substance for contemplation’s sake, supposes it in his discourse to have had its original from procreation and mixture.
[De an. procr. 3b] The same was his opinion concerning the world; for he knew it to be uncreated and without end, but not perceiving it so easy to apprehend how the structure was reared, or by what order and government supported, unless by admitting its beginning and the causes thereto concurring, he followed that method to instruct himself. These things being thus generally by them laid down, Eudorus will allow to neither side any share of probability; and indeed to me they both seem to have wandered from the opinion of Plato, if we intend to make the most likely rule our guide, — which is not to advance our own conceits, but to come as close as we can to his sense and meaning. Now as to this same mixture (as they call it) of the intelligible and sensitive substance, no reason appears why it should be more the original of the soul than of any other thing that ye can name. For the whole world itself and every one of its parts pretend to no other composition than of a sensitive and an intelligible substance, of which the one affords matter and foundation, the other form and figure to the whole mass. And then again, whate’er there is of material substance, framed and structured by participation and assimilation of the intelligible nature is not only to be felt but visible to the eye; when as the soul still soars above the reach of all natural apprehension. Neither did Plato ever assert the soul to be number, but a perpetually self-moving nature, the fountain and principle of motion. Only he embellished and adorned the substance of it with number, proportion, and harmony; as being a subject capable of receiving the most goodly form which those ornaments could produce. So that I cannot believe it to be the same thing to compose the soul according to number, and to affirm the soul to be number itself. Nor can it be said to be harmony because harmoniously composed, as he has clearly demonstrated in his Treatise of the Soul. But plain it is, that those philosophers understood not the meaning of the Same and the Other. For they tell us how the Same contributes rest, the Other motion toward the generation of the soul. Though Plato himself, in his treatise entitled the Sophist, disposes and distinguishes Essence, the Same, the Other, together with Motion and Rest, as being five things altogether differing one from another and void of mutual affinity.
[De an. procr. 4] 4. But these men are generally, as the most part of Plato’s readers, timorous and vainly perplexed, using all their endeavors by wresting and tormenting his sense to conceal and hide what he has written, as if it were some terrible novelty not fit for public view, that the world and the soul neither had their beginning and composition from eternity, nor had their essence from a boundless immensity of time, — of which we have particularly spoken already. So that now it shall suffice to say no more than this, that these writers confound and smother (if they do not rather utterly abolish) his eager contest and dispute in behalf of the Gods, wherein Plato confesses himself to have been transported with an ambitious zeal, even beyond the strength of his years, against the atheists of his time. For if the world had no beginning, Plato’s opinion vanishes, — that the soul, much elder than the body, is the principle of all motion and alteration, or (to use his own words) their chieftain and first efficient cause, whose mansion is in Nature’s secret retirements. But what the soul is, what the body, and why the soul is said to have been elder than the body, shall be made appear in the progress of this discourse. The ignorance of this seems to have been the occasion of much doubt and incredulity in reference to the true opinion.
[De an. procr. 5] 5. First therefore, I shall propose my own sentiments concerning these things, desiring to gain credit no otherwise than by the most probable strength of arguments, explaining and reconciling to the utmost of my ability truth and paradox together; after which I shall apply both the explication and demonstration to the words of the text. In my opinion then the business lies thus. The world, saith Heraclitus, neither did any one of all the Gods nor any mortal man create, — as if he had been afraid that, not being able to make out the creation by a Deity, we should be constrained to acknowledge some man to have been the architect of the universe. But certainly far better it is, in submission to Plato’s judgment, to avow, both in discourse and in our songs of praise, that the glory of the structure belongs to God, — for the frame itself is the most beautiful of all masterpieces, and God the most illustrious of all causes, — but that the substance and materials were not created, but always ready at the ordering and disposal of the Omnipotent Builder, to give it form and figure, as near as might be, approaching to his own resemblance. For the creation was not out of nothing, but out of matter wanting beauty and perfection, like the rude materials of a house, a garment, or a statue, lying first in shapeless confusion. For before the creation of the world there was nothing but a confused heap; yet was that confused heap neither without a body, without motion, nor without a soul. The corporeal part was without form or consistence, and the moving part stupid and headlong; and this was the disorder of a soul not guided by reason. God neither incorporated that which is incorporeal, nor conveyed a soul into that which had none before; like a person either musical or poetical, who does not make either the voice or the movement, but only reduces the voice with harmony, and graces the movement with proper measures. Thus God did not make the tangible and resistant solidity of the corporeal substance, nor the imaginative or moving faculties of the soul; but taking these two principles as they lay ready at hand, — the one obscure and dark, the other turbulent and senseless, both imperfect without the bounds of order and decency, — he disposed, digested, and embellished the confused mass, so that he brought to perfection a most absolute and glorious creature. Therefore the substance of the body is no other than that all-receiving Nature, the seat and nurse of all created beings.
[De an. procr. 6] 6. But the substance of the soul, in Philebus, he called an infinite being, the privation of number and proportion; having neither period nor measure either of diminution or excess or distinction or dissimilitude. But as to that order which he alleges in Timaeus to be the mixture of nature with the indivisible substance, but which being applied to bodies becomes liable to division, — he would not have it thought to be a bulk made up by units or points, nor longitude and breadth, which are qualities more consentaneous to bodies than to the soul, but that disorderly unlimited principle, moving both itself and other substances, that which he frequently calls necessity, and which within his treatise of laws he openly styles the disorderly, ill-acting, or harm-doing soul. For such was this soul of herself; but at length she came to partake of understanding, ratiocination, and harmony, that she might be the soul of the world.
[De an. procr. 6b] Now that all-receiving principle of matter enjoyed both magnitude, space, and distance; but beauty, form, and measure of proportion it had none. However, all these it obtained, to the end that, when it came to be thus embellished and adorned, it might assume the form of all the various bodies and organs of the earth, the sea, the heavens, the stars, and of all those infinite varieties of plants and living creatures. Now as for those who attribute to this matter, and not to the soul, that which in Timaeus is called necessity, in Philebus vast disproportion and unlimited exorbitancy of diminution and excess, — they can never maintain it to be the cause of disorder, since Plato always alleges that same matter to be without any form or figures, and altogether destitute of any quality or effectual virtue properly belonging to it; comparing it to such oils as have no scent at all, which the perfumers mix in their tinctures.
[De an. procr. 6c] For there is no likelihood that Plato would suppose that to be the cause and principle of evil which is altogether void of quality in itself, sluggish, and never to be roused on to action, and yet at the same time brand this immensity with the harsh epithets of base and mischievous, and call it necessity repugnant and contumaciously rebellious against God. For this same necessity, which renverses heaven (to use his own phrase in his Politicus) and turns it the quite contrary way from decency and symmetry, together with innate concupiscence, and that inbred confusion of ancient nature, hurly-burly’d with all manner of disorder, before they were wrought and kneaded into the graceful decorum of the world, — whence came they to be conveyed into several varieties of forms and beings, if the subject, which is the first matter, were void of all quality whatsoever and deprived of all efficient cause; more especially the Architect being so good of himself, and intending a frame the nearest approaching to his own perfections?
[De an. procr. 6d] For besides these there is no third principle. And indeed, we should stumble into the perplexed intricacies of the Stoics, should we advance evil into the world out of nonentity, without either any preceding cause or effect of generation, in regard that among those principles that have a being, it is not probable that either real good or that which is destitute of all manner of quality should afford birth or substance to evil. But Plato escaped those pitfalls into which they blundered who came after him; who, neglecting what he carefully embraced, the third principle and energetic virtue in the middle between God and the first matter, maintain the most absurd of arguments, affirming the nature of evils to have crept in spontaneously and adventitiously, I know not how nor by what strange accidents. And yet they will not allow an atom of Epicurus so much as a moment’s liberty to shift in its station, which, as they say, would infer motion out of nonentity without any impulsive cause; nevertheless themselves presuming all this while to affirm that vice and wickedness, together with a thousand other incongruities and vexations afflicting the body, of which no cause can be ascribed to any of the principles, came into being (as it were) “by consequence.”
[De an. procr. 7] 7. Plato however does not so; who, despoiling the first matter of all manner of distinction, and separating from God, as far as it is possible, the causes of evil, has thus delivered himself concerning the world, in his Politicus. “The world,” saith he, “received from the Illustrious Builder all things beautiful and lovely; but whatsoever happens to be noxious and irregular in heaven, it derives from its ancient habit and disposition, and conveys them into the several creatures.” And a little farther in the same treatise he saith: “In process of time, when oblivion had encroached upon the world, the distemper of its ancient confusion more prevailed, and the hazard is, lest being dissolved it should again be sunk and plunged into the immense abyss of its former irregularity.” But there can be no dissimilitude in the first matter, as being void of quality and distinction.
[De an. procr. 7b] Of which when Eudemus with several others was altogether ignorant, he seems deridingly to cavil with Plato, and taxes him with asserting the first matter to be the cause, the root, and principle of all evil, which he had at other times so frequently dignified with the tender appellations of mother and nurse. Whereas Plato gives to matter only the titles of the mother and nurse; but the cause of evil he makes to be the moving force residing within it, not governed by order and reason though not without a soul neither, which, in his treatise of the Laws, he calls expressly the soul repugnant and in hostility with that other propitiously and kindly acting. For though the soul be the principle of motion, yet is it the understanding and intelligence which measures that motion by order and harmony, and is the cause of both. For God could not have brought to rest mere sleepy and sluggish matter, but he brought it to rest when it had been troubled and disquieted by a senseless and stupid cause. Neither did he infuse into nature the principles of alteration and affections; but when it was under the pressure of those unruly disorders and alterations, he discharged it of its manifold enormities and irregularities, making use of symmetry, proportion, and number. For these are the most proper instruments, not by alteration and lawless motion to distract the several beings with passions and distinctions, but rather to render them fixed and stable, and nearest in their composition to those things that in themselves continue still the same upon the equal poise of diuturnity. And this, in my judgment, is the sense and meaning of Plato.
[De an. procr. 8] 8. Of which the easy reconciliation of his seeming incongruities and contradiction of himself may serve for the first proof. For indeed no men of judgment would have objected to the most Bacchanalian sophister, more especially to Plato, the guilt of so much inconvenience and impudent rashness in a discourse by him so elaborately studied, as to affirm the same nature in one place never to have been created, in another to have been the effects of generation; — in Phaedrus to assert the soul eternal, in Timaeus to subject it to procreation. The words in Phaedrus need no repetition, as being familiar to nearly every one, wherein he proves the soul to be incorruptible in regard it never had a beginning, and to have never had a beginning because it moves itself. But in Timaeus, “God,” saith he, “did not make the soul a junior to the body, as now we labor to prove it to have been subsequent to the body. For he would never have suffered the more ancient, because linked and coupled with the younger, to have been governed by it; only we, guided I know not how by chance and inconsiderate rashness, frame odd kind of notions to ourselves. But God most certainly composed the soul excelling the body both in seniority of origin and in power, to be mistress and governess of her inferior servant.” And then again he adds, how that the soul, being turned upon herself, began the divine beginning of an eternal and prudent life. “Now,” saith he, “the body of heaven became visible; but the soul being invisible, nevertheless participating of ratiocination and harmony, by the best of intelligible and eternal beings she was made the best of things created.” Here then he determines God to be the best of sempiternal beings, the soul to be the most excellent of temporal existences. By which apparent distinction and antithesis he denies that the soul is eternal, and that it never had a beginning.
[De an. procr. 9] 9. And now what other or better reconciliation of these seeming contrarieties than his own explanation, to those that are willing to apprehend it? For he declares to have been without beginning the never procreated soul, that moved all things confusedly and in an irregular manner before the creation of the world. But as for that which God composed out of this and that other permanent and choicest substance, making it both prudent and orderly, and adding of his own, as if it were for form and beauty’s sake, intellect to sense, and order to motion, and which he constituted prince and chieftain of the whole, — that he acknowledges to have had a beginning and to have proceeded from generation. Thus he likewise pronounces the body of the world in one respect to be eternal and without beginning, in another sense to be the work of creation. To which purpose, where he says that the visible structure, never in repose at first but restless in a confused and tempestuous motion, was at length by the hand of God disposed and ranged into majestic order, — where he says that the four elements, fire and water, earth and air, before the stately pile was by them embellished and adorned, caused a prodigious fever and shivering ague in the whole mass of matter, that labored under the combats of their unequal mixtures, — by his urging these things, he gives those bodies room in the vast abyss before the fabric of the universe.
[De an. procr. 9b] Again, when he says that the body was younger than the soul, and that the world was created, as being of a corporeal substance that may be seen and felt, — which sort of substances must necessarily have a beginning and be created, — it is evidently demonstrable from thence that he ascribes original creation to the nature of bodies. But he is far from being repugnant or contradictory to himself in these sublimest mysteries. For he does not contend, that the same body was created by God or after the same manner, and yet that it was before it had a being, — which would have been to act the part of a juggler; but he instructs us what we ought to understand by generations and creation. Therefore, says he, at first all these things were void of measure and proportion; but when God first began to beautify the whole, the fire and water, earth and air, having perhaps some prints and footsteps of their forms, lay in a huddle jumbled all together, — as probable it is that all things are, where God is absent, — which then he reduced to a comely perfection varied by number and order. Moreover, having told us before that it was a work not of one but of a twofold proportion to bind and fasten the bulky immensity of the whole, which was both solid and of a prodigious profundity, he then comes to declare how God, after he had placed the water and the earth in the midst between the fire and the air, incontinently closed up the heavens into a circular form. Out of these materials, saith he, being four in number, was the body of the world created, agreeing in proportion, and so amicably corresponding together, that being thus embodied and confined within their proper bounds, it is impossible that any dissolution should happen from their own contending force, unless he that riveted the whole frame should go about again to rend it in pieces; — most apparently teaching us, that God was not the parent and architect of the corporeal substance only, or of the bulk and matter, but of the beauty and symmetry and similitude that adorned and graced the whole. The same we are to believe, he thought, concerning the soul; that there is one which neither was created by God nor is the soul of the world, but a certain self-moving and restless efficacy of a giddy and disorderly agitation and impetuosity, irrational and subject to opinion; while the other is that which God himself, having accoutred and adorned it with suitable numbers and proportions, has made queen regent of the created world, herself the product of creation also.
[De an. procr. 10] 10. Now that Plato had this belief concerning these things, and did not for contemplation’s sake lay down these suppositions concerning the creation of the world and the soul, — this, among many others, seems to be an evident signification that, as to the soul, he avers it to be both created and not created, but as to the world, he always maintains that it had a beginning and was created, never that it was uncreated and eternal. What necessity therefore of bringing any testimonies out of Timaeus? For the whole treatise, from the beginning to the end, discourses of nothing else but of the creation of the world. As for the rest, we find that Timaeus, in his Atlantic, addressing himself in prayer to the Deity, calls God that being which of old existed in his works, but now was apparent to reason. In his Politicus, his Parmenidean guest acknowledges that the world, which was the handiwork of God, is replenished with several good things, and that, if there be any thing in it which is vicious and offensive, it comes by mixture of its former incongruous and irrational habit. But Socrates, in the Politics, beginning to discourse of number, which some call by the name of wedlock, says: “The created Divinity has a circular period, which is, as it were, enchased and involved in a certain perfect number;” meaning in that place by created Divinity no other than the world itself.
[De an. procr. 11] 11. The first pair of these numbers consists of one and two, the second of three and four, the third of five and six; neither of which pairs make a tetragonal number, either by themselves or joined with any other figures. The fourth consists of seven and eight, which, being added all together, produce a tetragonal number of thirty-six. But the quaternary of numbers set down by Plato have a more perfect generation, of even numbers multiplied by even distances, and of odd by uneven distances. This quaternary contains the unit, the common original of all even and odd numbers. Subsequent to which are two and three, the first plane numbers; then four and nine, the first squares; and next eight and twenty-seven, the first cubical numbers (not counting the unit). Whence it is apparent, that his intention was not that the numbers should be placed in a direct line one above another, but apart and oppositely one against the other, the even by themselves, and the odd by themselves, according to the scheme here given. In this manner similar numbers will be joined together, which will produce other remarkable numbers, as well by addition as by multiplication.
[De an. procr. 12] 12. By addition thus: two and three make five, four and nine make thirteen, eight and twenty-seven make thirty-five. Of all which numbers the Pythagoreans called five the nourisher, that is to say, the breeding or fostering sound, believing a fifth to be the first of all the intervals of tones which could be sounded. But as for thirteen, they called it the remainder, despairing, as Plato himself did, of being ever able to divide a tone into equal parts. Then five and thirty they named harmony, as consisting of the two cubes eight and twenty-seven, the first that rise from an odd and an even number, as also of the four numbers, six, eight, nine, and twelve, comprehending both harmonical and arithmetical proportion. Which nevertheless will be more conspicuous, being made out in a scheme to the eye.
[De an. procr. 12b] Admit a right-angled parallelogram, A B C D, the lesser side of which A B consists of five, the longer side A C contains seven squares. Let the lesser division be unequally divided into two and three squares, marked by E; and the larger division in two unequal divisions more of three and four squares, marked by F. Thus A E F G comprehends six, E B G I nine, F G C H eight, and G I H D twelve. By this means the whole parallelogram, containing thirty-five little square areas, comprehends all the proportions of the first concords of music in the number of these little squares. For six is exceeded by eight in a sesquiterce proportion (3:4), wherein the diatessaron is comprehended. And six is exceeded by nine in a sesquialter proportion (2:3), wherein also is included the fifth. Six is exceeded by twelve in duple proportion (1:2), containing the octave; and then lastly, there is the sesquioctave proportion of a tone in eight to nine. And therefore they call that number which comprehends all these proportions harmony. This number is 35, which being multiplied by 6, the product is 210, which is the number of days, they say, which brings those infants to perfection that are born at the seventh month’s end.
[De an. procr. 13] 13. To proceed by way of multiplication, — twice 3 make 6, and 4 times 9 thirty-six, and 8 times 27 produce 216. Thus six appears to be a perfect number, as being equal in its parts; and it is called matrimony, by reason of the mixture of the first even and odd. Moreover it is composed of the original number, which is one, of the first even number, which is two, and the first odd number, which is three. Then for 36, it is the first number which is as well quadrangular as triangular, being quadrangular from 6, and triangular from 8. The same number arises from the multiplication of the first two square numbers, 4 and 9; as also from the addition of the three cubical numbers, 1, 8, and 27, which being put together make up 36. Lastly, you have a parallelogram with unequal sides, by the multiplication of 12 by 3, or 9 by 4. Take then the numbers of the sides of all these figures, the 6 of the square, the 8 of the triangle, the 9 for the one parallelogram, and the 12 for the other; and there you will find the proportions of all the concords. For 12 to 9 will be a fourth, as nete to paramese. To eight it will prove a fifth, as nete to mese. To six it will be an octave, as nete to hypate. And the two hundred and sixteen is the cubical number proceeding from six which is its root, and so equal to its own perimeter.
[De an. procr. 14] 14. Now these numbers aforesaid being endued with all these properties, the last of them, which is 27, has this peculiar to itself, that it is equal to all those that precede together; besides, that it is the periodical number of the days wherein the moon finishes her monthly course; the Pythagoreans make it to be the tone of all the harmonical intervals. On the other side, they call thirteen the remainder, in regard it misses a unit to be half of twenty-seven. Now that these numbers comprehend the proportions of harmonical concord, is easily made apparent. For the proportion of 2 to 1 is duple, which contains the diapason; as the proportion of 3 to 2 sesquialter, which embraces the fifth; and the proportion of 4 to 3 sesquiterce, which comprehends the diatessaron; the proportion of 9 to 3 triple, including the diapason and diapente; and that of 8 to 2 quadruple, comprehending the double diapason. Lastly, there is the sesquioctave in 8 to 9, which makes the interval of a single tone. If then the unit, which is common, be counted as well to the even as the odd numbers, the whole series will be equal to the sum of the decade. For the even numbers (1 + 2 + 4 + 8) give 15, the triangular number of five. On the other side, take the odd numbers, 1, 3, 9, and 27, and the sum is 40; by which numbers the skilful measure all musical intervals, of which they call one a diesis, and the other a tone. Which number of 40 proceeds from the force of the quaternary number by multiplication. For every one of the first four numbers being by itself multiplied by four, the products will be 4, 8, 12, 16, which being added all together make 40, comprehending all the proportions of harmony. For 16 is a sesquiterce to 12, duple to 8, and quadruple to 4. Again, 12 holds a sesquialter proportion to 8, and triple to 4. In these proportions are contained the intervals of the diatessaron, diapente, diapason, and double diapason. Moreover, the number 40 is equal to the two first tetragons and the two first cubes being taken both together. For the first tetragons are 1 and 4, the first cubes are 8 and 27, which being added together make 40. Whence it appears that the Platonic quaternary is much more perfect and fuller of variety than the Pythagoric.
[De an. procr. 15] 15. But since the numbers proposed did not afford space sufficient for the middle intervals, therefore there was a necessity to allow larger bounds for the proportions. And now we are to tell you what those bounds and middle spaces are. And first, concerning the medieties (or mean terms); of which that which equally exceeds and is exceeded by the same number is called arithmetical; the other, which exceeds and is exceeded by the same proportional part of the extremes, is called sub-contrary. Now the extremes and the middle of an arithmetical mediety are 6, 9, 12. For 9 exceeds 6 as it is exceeded by 12, that is to say, by the number three. The extremes and middle of the sub-contrary are 6, 8, 12, where 8 exceeds 6 by 2, and 12 exceeds 8 by 4; yet 2 is equally the third of 6, as 4 is the third of 12. So that in the arithmetical mediety the middle exceeds and is exceeded by the same number; but in the sub contrary mediety, the middle term wants of one of the extremes, and exceeds the other by the same part of each extreme; for in the first 3 is the third part of the mean; but in the latter 4 and 2 are third parts each of a different extreme. Whence it is called sub-contrary. This they also call harmonic, as being that whose middle and extremes afford the first concords; that is to say, between the highest and lowermost lies the diapason, between the highest and the middle lies the diapente, and between the middle and lowermost lies the fourth or diatessaron. For suppose the highest extreme to be placed at nete and the lowermost at hypate, the middle will fall upon mese, making a fifth to the uppermost extreme, but a fourth to the lowermost. So that nete answers to 12, mese to 8, and hypate to 6.
[De an. procr. 16] 16. Now the more readily to find out these means Eudorus hath taught us an easy method. For after you have proposed the extremities, if you take the half part of each and add them together, the product shall be the middle, alike in both duple and triple proportions, in arithmetical mediety. But as for sub-contrary mediety, in duple proportion, first having fixed the extremes, take the third part of the lesser and the half of the larger extreme, and the addition of both together shall be the middle; in triple proportion, the half of the lesser and the third part of the larger extreme shall be the mean. As for example, in triple proportion, let 6 be the least extreme, and 18 the biggest; if you take 3 which is the half of 6, and 6 which is the third part of 18, the product by addition will be 9, exceeding and exceeded by the same proportional parts of the extremes. In this manner the mediums are found out; and these are so to be disposed and placed as to fill up the duple and triple intervals. Now of these proposed numbers, some have no middle space, others have not sufficient. Being therefore so augmented that the same proportions may remain, they will afford sufficient space for the aforesaid mediums. To which purpose, instead of a unit they choose the six, as being the first number including in itself a half and third part, and so multiplying all the figures below it and above it by 6, they make sufficient room to receive the mediums, both in double and triple distances, as in the example below: —
[De an. procr. 16b] Now Plato laid down this for a position, that the intervals of sesquialters, sesquiterces, and sesquioctaves having once arisen from these connections in the first spaces, the Deity filled up all the sesquiterce intervals with sesquioctaves, leaving a part of each, so that the interval left of the part should bear the numerical proportion of 256 to 243. From these words of Plato they were constrained to enlarge their numbers and make them bigger. Now there must be two numbers following in order in sesquioctave proportion. But the six does not contain a sesquioctave; and if it should be cut up into parts and the units bruised into fractions, this would strangely perplex the study of these things. Therefore the occasion itself advised multiplication; so that, as in changes in the musical scale, the whole scheme was extended in agreement with the first (or base) number. Eudorus therefore, imitating Crantor, made choice of 384 for his first number, being the product of 64 multiplied by 6; which way of proceeding the number 64 led them to, having for its sesquioctave 72. But it is more agreeable to the words of Plato to introduce the half of 384. For the remainder of that will bear a sesquioctave proportion in those numbers which Plato mentions, 256 and 243, if we make use of 192 for the first number. But if the same number be made choice of doubled, the remainder (or leimma) will have the same proportion, but the numbers will be doubled, i.e. 512 and 486. For 256 is in sesquiterce proportion to 192, as 512 to 384. Neither was Crantor’s reduction of the proportions to this number without reason, which made his followers willing to pursue it; in regard that 64 is both the square of the first cube, and the cube of the first square; and being multiplied by 3, the first odd and trigonal, and the first perfect and sesquialter number, it produces 192, which also has its sesquioctave, as we shall demonstrate.
[De an. procr. 17] 17. But first of all, we shall better understand what this leimma or remainder is and what was the opinion of Plato, if we do but call to mind what was frequently bandied in the Pythagorean schools. For interval in music is all that space which is comprehended by two sounds varied in pitch. Of which intervals, that which is called a tone is the full excess of diapente above diatessaron; and this being divided into two parts, according to the opinion of the musicians, makes two intervals, both which they call a semitone. But the Pythagoreans, despairing to divide a tone into equal parts, and therefore perceiving the two divisions to be unequal, called the lesser leimma (or defect), as being lesser than the half. Therefore some there are who make the diatessaron, which is one of the concords, to consist of two tones and a half; others, of two tones and leimma. In which case sense seems to govern the musicians, and demonstration the mathematicians. The proof by demonstration is thus made out. For it is certain from the observation of instruments that the diapason has double proportion, the diapente a sesquialter, the diatessaron a sesquiterce, and the tone a sesquioctave proportion. Now the truth of this will easily appear upon examination, by hanging two weights double in proportion to two strings, or by making two pipes of equal hollowness double in length, the one to the other. For the bigger of the pipes will yield the deep sound, as hypate to nete; and of the two strings, that which is extended by the double weight will be acuter than the other, as nete to hypate; and this is a diapason. In the same manner two longitudes or ponderosities, being taken in the proportion of 3: 2, will produce a diapente; and three to four will yield a diatessaron; of which the latter carries a sesquiterce, the former a sesquialter proportion. But if the same inequality of weight or length be so ordered as nine to eight, it will produce a tonic interval, no perfect concord, but harmonical enough; in regard the strings being struck one after another will yield so many musical and pleasing sounds, but all together a dull and ungrateful noise. But if they are touched in consort, either single or together, thence a delightful melody will charm the ear. Nor is all this less demonstrable by reason. For in music, the diapason is composed of the diapente and diatessaron. But in numbers, the duple is compounded of the sesquialter and sesquiterce. For 12 is a sesquiterce to 9, but a sesquialter to 8, and a duple to 6. Therefore is the duple proportion composed of the sesquialter and sesquiterce, as the diapason of the diapente and diatessaron. For here the diapente exceeds the diatessaron by a tone; there the sesquialter exceeds the sesquiterce by a sesquioctave. Whence it is apparent that the diapason carries a double proportion, the diapente a sesquialter, the diatessaron a sesquiterce, and the tone a sesquioctave.
[De an. procr. 18] 18. This being thus demonstrated, let us see whether the sesquioctave will admit a division into two equal parts; which if it will not do, neither will a tone. However, in regard that 9 and 8, which make the first sesquioctave, have no middle interval, but both being doubled, the space that falls between causes two intervals, thence it is apparent that, if those distances were equal, the sesquioctave also might be divided into equal parts. Now the double of 9 is 18, that of 8 is 16, the intermedium 17; by which means one of the intervals becomes larger, the other lesser; for the first is that of 18 to 17, the second that of 17 to 16. Thus the sesquioctave proportion not being to be otherwise than unequally divided, consequently neither will the tone admit of an equal division. So that neither of these two sections of a divided tone is to be called a semitone, but according as the mathematicians name it, the remainder. And this is that which Plato means, when he says, that God, having filled up the sesquiterces with sesquioctaves, left a part of each; of which the proportion is the same as of 256 to 243. For admit a diatessaron in two numbers comprehending sesquiterce proportion, that is to say, in 256 and 192; of which two numbers, let the lesser 192 be applied to the lowermost extreme, and the bigger number 256 to the uppermost extreme of the tetrachord. Whence we shall demonstrate that, this space being filled up by two sesquioctaves, such an interval remains as lies between the numbers 256 and 243. For the lower string being forced a full tone upward, which is a sesquioctave, it makes 216; and being screwed another tone upward it makes 243. Which 243 exceeds 216 by 27, and 216 exceeds 192 by 24. And then again of these two numbers, 27 is the eighth of 216, and 24 the eighth of 192. So the biggest of these two numbers is a sesquioctave to the middle, and the middle to the least; and the distance from the least to the biggest, that is from 192 to 243, consists of two tones filled up with two sesquioctaves. Which being subtracted, the remaining interval of the whole between 243 and 256 is 13, for which reason they called this number the remainder. And thus I am apt to believe the meaning and opinion of Plato to be most exactly explained in these numbers.
[De an. procr. 19] 19. Others, placing the two extremes of the diatessaron, the acute part in 288, and the lower sound in 216, in all the rest observe the same proportions, only that they take the remainder between the two middle intervals. For the base, being forced up a whole tone, makes 243; and the upper note, screwed downward a full tone, begets 256. Moreover 243 carries a sesquioctave proportion to 216, and 288 to 256; so that each of the intervals contains a full tone, and the residue is that which remains between 243 and 256, which is not a semitone, but something less. For 288 exceeds 256 by 32, and 243 exceeds 216 by 27; but 256 exceeds 243 by 13. Now this excess is less than half of the former. So it is plain that the diatessaron consists of two tones and the residue, not of two tones and a half. Let this suffice for the demonstration of these things. Nor is it a difficult thing to believe, by what has been already said, wherefore Plato, after he had asserted that the intervals of sesquialter, sesquiterce, and sesquioctave had arisen, when he comes to fill up the intervals of sesquiterces with sesquioctaves, makes not the least mention of sesquialters; for that the sesquialter is soon filled up, by adding the sesquiterce to the sesquioctave, or the sesquioctave to the sesquiterce.
[De an. procr. 20] 20. Having therefore shown the manner how to fill up the intervals, and to place and dispose the medieties, had never any person taken the same pains before, I should have recommended the further consideration of it to the recreation of your fancies; but in regard that several most excellent musicians have made it their business to unfold these mysteries with a diligence more than usually exact, — more especially Crantor, Clearchus, and Theodorus, all born in Soli, — it shall suffice only to show how these men differed among themselves. For Theodorus, varying from the other two, and not observing two distinct files or rows of numbers, but placing the duples and triples in a direct line one before another, grounds himself upon that division of the substance which Plato calls the division in length, making two parts (as it were) out of one, not four out of two. Then he says, that the interposition of the mediums ought to take place in that manner, to avoid the trouble and confusion which must arise from transferring out of the first duple into the first triple the intervals which are ordained for the supplement of both. . . . But as for those who take Crantor’s part, they so dispose their numbers as to place planes with planes, tetragons with tetragons, cubes with cubes, opposite to one another, not taking them in file, but alternatively odd to even. [Here is some great defect in the original.]
[De an. procr. 21] 21. . . . Which, being in themselves permanently the same, afford the form and species; but being subject to corporeal division, they become the matter and subject to receive the other’s impression, the common mixture being completed out of both. Now the indivisible substance, which is always one and the same, is not to be thought to be incapable of division by reason of its smallness, like the most minute of bodies, called atoms. But as it is unmixed, and not to be any way affected, but pure and altogether of one sort, it is said not to consist of parts, but to be indivisible. By means of which purity, when it comes in any manner whatsoever to approach and gently touch compounded divisible and differing substances, all their variety ceases and they crowd together into one habit by sympathy and similitude. If now any one will call that substance which admits corporeal separation matter, as a nature subject to the former and partaking of it, the use of that equivocal term will nothing disadvantage our discourse. But they are under a mistake that believe the corporeal to be blended with the indivisible matter. First, for that Plato does not here make use of any one of its names; whereas in other places he calls it the receptacle and nurse, capable of both receiving and fostering the vast infinity of created beings; not divisible among bodies, but rather the body itself parted and divided into single individuals. Then again, what difference would there be between the creation of the world and that of the soul, if the composition of each proceeded from both matter and the intelligible essence? Certainly Plato, as endeavoring to separate the generation of the body from that of the soul, tells us that the corporeal part was by God seated and deposited within it, and that it was outwardly covered and enveloped by it; and after he had thus wrought the soul to its perfection out of proportion, he then proceeds to this argument concerning matter, of which he had no occasion to make mention before when he was producing the soul, as being that which had not its existence from matter.
[De an. procr. 22] 22. The same may be said against the followers of Posidonius. For they seem not altogether to separate the soul from matter; but imagining the essence of limitations to be divisible in reference to bodies, and intermixing it with the intelligible essence, they defined the soul to be an idea (or essential form) of that which has extension in every direction, subsisting in an harmonical proportion of numbers. For (they say) all mathematical objects are disposed between the first intelligible and sensible beings; and since the soul contains the sempiternal nature of things intelligible and the pathetic nature of things subjected to sense, it seems but rational that it should consist of a substance between both. But they were ignorant that God, when the soul was already brought to perfection, afterwards making use of the limitations of bodies to form and shape the matter, confined and environed the dissipated and fleeting substance within the compass of certain surfaces composed of triangles adapted together. And it is even more absurd to make the soul an idea. For the soul is always in motion; the idea is incapable of motion; the one never to be mixed with that which is subjected to sense, the other wrought into the substance of the body. Moreover, God could be said only to imitate an idea, as his pattern; but he was the artificer of the soul, as of a work of perfection. Now enough has been already said to show that Plato does not assert number to be the substance of the soul, only that it is ordered and proportioned by number.
[De an. procr. 23] 23. However this is a common argument against both the former opinions, that neither in corporeal limits nor in numbers there is the least footstep or appearance of that power by which the soul assumes to itself to judge of what is subject to sense. For it was the participation of the intelligible principle that endued it with understanding and the perceiving faculty. But as for opinion, belief, imagination, and its being affected with qualities relating to the body, no man could ever dream that they proceeded simply either from units, or lines, or surfaces. For not only the souls of mortals have a power to judge of what is subject to sense; but the soul of the world also, says Plato, “when it revolves upon itself, and happens once to touch upon any fluid and roving substance or upon any thing indivisible, then being moved throughout its whole self, it gives notice with what this or that thing is identical, to what heterogeneal, and in what relations especially and in what manner it happens to be and to be affected towards each created thing.” Here he gives at the same time an intimation of the ten Categories or Predicaments; but afterwards he gives us a clearer manifestation of these things. “For when true reason,” says he, “is fixed upon what is subject to sense, and the circle of the Other, observing a just and equal motion, conveys its intelligence to the whole soul, then both opinion and belief become steadfast and certain; on the other side, when it is settled upon ratiocination, and the circle of the Same, turning readily and easily, furnishes its intimations, then of necessity knowledge arrives to perfection. And indeed, whoever shall affirm that any thing in which these two operations take place is any thing besides a soul, may deservedly be thought to speak any thing rather than the truth.”
[De an. procr. 23b] From whence then does the soul enjoy this motion whereby it comprehends what is subject to sense, different from that other intelligible motion which ends in knowledge? This is a difficult task to resolve, unless we steadfastly assert that Plato here did not compose the soul, so singly considered, but the soul of the world also, of the parts above mentioned, — of the more worthy indivisible substance, and of the less worthy divisible in reference to bodies. And this soul of the world is no other than that motion which gives heat and vigor to thought and fancy, and sympathizes with what is subject to sense, not created, but existing from eternity, like the other soul. For Nature, which had the power of understanding, had also the power of opining. But the intelligible power is subject neither to motion nor affection, being established upon a substance that is still the same. The other is movable and fleeting, as being engaged to an unstable, fluctuating, and disunited matter. In regard the sensible substance was so far from any order, that it was without shape and boundless. So that the power which is fixed in this was capable of producing no clear and well-grounded notions and no certain or well-ordered movements, but only sleepy dreams and deliriums, which amuse and trouble corporeal stupidity; unless by accident they lighted upon the more worthy substance. For it was in the middle between the sensible and discerning faculty, and had a nature conformable and agreeable to both; from the sensible apprehending substance, and borrowing from judgment its power of discerning things intelligible.
[De an. procr. 24] 24. And this the express words of Plato declare. “For this is my opinion,” saith he, “in short, that being, place, and generation were three distinct things even before the heavens were created.” By place he means matter, as being the seat and receptacle; by being or existence, the intelligible nature; and by generation, the world not being yet created, he designs only that substance which was subject to change and motion, disposed between the forming cause and the thing formed, transmitting hither those shapes and figures which were there contrived and moulded. For which reason it was called divisible; there being a necessity of distributing sense to the sensitive, and imagination to the imaginative faculty. For the sensitive motion, being proper to the soul, directs itself to that which is outwardly sensible. As for the understanding, it was fixed and immovable of itself, but being settled in the soul and becoming its lord and governor, it turns upon itself, and accomplishes a circular motion about that which is always permanent, chiefly laboring to apply itself to the eternally durable substance.
[De an. procr. 24b] With great difficulty therefore did they admit a conjunction, till the divisible at length intermixing with the indivisible, and the restlessly hurried with the sleepy and motionless, constrained the Other to meet and join with the Same. Yet the Other was not motion, as neither was the Same stability, but the principle of distinction and diversity. For both the one and the other proceed from a different principle; the Same from the unit, the Other from the duad; and these were first intermixed with the soul, being fastened and bound together by number, proportion, and harmonical mediums; so that the Other being riveted into the Same begets diversity and disagreement; and the Same being fermented into the Other produces order. And this is apparent from the first powers of the soul, which are judgment and motion. Motion immediately shows itself in the heavens, giving us an example of diversity in identity by the circumvolution of the fixed stars, and of identity in diversity by the order of the planets.
[De an. procr. 24c] For in them the Same bears the chiefest sway; in terrestrial bodies, the contrary principle. Judgment has two principles, — understanding from the Same, to judge of things in general, and sense from the Other, to judge of things in particular. Reason is a mixture of both, becoming intellect in reference to things intelligible, and opinion in things subject to sense; making use of the interdisposed organs of imagination and memory, of which these in the Same produce the Other, and those in the Other make the Same. For understanding is the motion of the considerative faculty about that which is permanent and stable. Opinion is a continuance of the perceptive faculty upon that which is continually in motion. But as for fancy or imagination, being a connection of opinion with sense, the Same has placed it in the memory; and the Other moves it again in the difference between past and present, touching at the same time upon diversity and identity.
[De an. procr. 25] 25. But now let us take a draught of the corresponding composition of the soul from the structure of the body of the universe. There we find fire and earth, whose nature is such as not to admit of mixture one with another but with great difficulty, or rather is altogether obstinately refractory to mixture and constancy. God therefore, placing air and water in the middle between both, — the air next the fire, the water next the earth, — first of all tempered the middlemost one with another, and next, by the assistance of these two, he brought the two extreme elements not only to mix with the middlemost, but also to a mutual closure or conjunction between themselves. Then he drew together those contrary powers and opposing extremes, the Same and the Other, not immediately, the one adjoining to the other, but placing other substances between; the indivisible next the Same, and the divisible next the Other, disposing each to each in convenient order, and mixing the extremes with the middlemost. After which manner he interweaved and tissued the whole into the form and composition of the soul, completing, as far as it was possible, similitude out of things different and various, and one out of many. Therefore it is alleged by some, that Plato erroneously affirmed the nature of the Other to be an enemy to mixture, as being not only capable to receive it, but a friend of change. Whereas that should have been rather said of the nature of the Same; which, being stable and an utter adversary to mutability, is so far from an easy and willing condescension to mixture, that it flies and abhors it, to the end it may preserve itself pure and free from alteration. But they who make these objections against Plato betray their own ignorance, not understanding that the Same is the idea (or essential form) of those things that always continue in the same state and condition, and that the Other is the idea of those things which are subject to be variously affected; and that it is the peculiar nature of the one to disjoin and separate into many parts whatever it happens to lay hold upon, and of the other to cement and assimilate scattered substances, till they resume one particular form and efficacy.
[De an. procr. 26] 26. And these are the powers and virtues of the soul of the universe. And when they once enter into the organs of corruptible bodies, being themselves incorruptible, there the form of the binary and boundless principle shows itself most briskly, while that of the unmixed and purer principle lies as it were dormant in obscurity. And thus it happens, that a man shall rarely observe any human passion or motion of the understanding, void of reason, where there shall not something appear either of desire or emulation, joy or grief. Several philosophers therefore will have the passions to be so many sorts of reasonings, seeing that desire, grief, and anger are all the effects of judgment. Others allege the virtues themselves to be derived from passions; fortitude depending on fear, temperance on voluptuousness, and justice on love of gain. Now the soul being both speculative and practical, contemplating as well generals as particulars, and seeming to comprehend the one by the assistance of the intellect and the other by the aid of sense, common reason, which encounters the Same in the Other and the Other in the Same, endeavors by certain limits and distinctions to separate one from many and the divisible from the indivisible; but she cannot accomplish her design nor be purely in one or the other, in regard the principles are so oddly interwoven and intermixed and confusedly huddled together.
[De an. procr. 26b] For this reason did God constitute a receptacle for the Same and the Other, out of the indivisible and divisible substance, to the end there might be order in variety. Now this was generation. For without this the Same could have no variety, and therefore no motion or generation; and the Other could have no order, and therefore no consistence or generation. For should we grant the Same to be different from the Other, and the Other to be the Same with itself, such a commixture would produce nothing generative, but would want a third something, like matter, to receive both and be disposed of by both. And this is that matter which God first composed, when he bounded the movable nature of bodies by the steadfastness of things intelligible.
[De an. procr. 27] 27. Now then, as voice, merely voice, is only an insignificant and brutish noise, but speech is the expression of the mind by significant utterance; as harmony consists of sounds and intervals, — a sound being always one and the same, and an interval being the difference and diversity of sounds, while both being mixed together produce air and melody; — thus the passive nature of the soul was without limits and unstable, but afterwards became determinate, when limits were set and a certain form was given to the divisible and manifold variety of motion. Thus having comprised the Same and the Other, by the similitudes and dissimilitudes of numbers which produce concord out of disagreement, it becomes the life of the world, sober and prudent, harmony itself, and reason overruling necessity mixed with persuasion. This necessity is by most men called fate or destiny, by Empedocles friendship and discord, by Heraclitus the opposite straining harmony of the world, as of a bow or harp, by Parmenides light and darkness, by Anaxagoras mind and infinity, by Zoroaster God and Daemon, naming one Oromasdes, the other Arimanius. Though as for Euripides, he makes use of the disjunctive erroneously for the copulative, where he says,
[De an. procr. 27b] •Jove, whether he be
•Necessity, that Nature’s force controls,
•Or the intelligence of human souls.
[De an. procr. 27c] For, indeed, the powers which bear dominion over the universe are necessity and wisdom. This is that therefore which the Egyptians intimate in their fables, feigning that, when Horus was punished and dismembered, he bequeathed his spirit and blood to his father, but his flesh and his fat to his mother. There is no part of the soul which remains pure and unmixed, or separate from the rest; for, according to the opinion of Heraclitus, “harmony latent is of greater value than that which is visible,” as being that wherein the blending Deity concealed and sunk all varieties and dissimilitudes. Nevertheless, there appears in the irrational part a turbulent and boisterous temerity; in the rational part, an orderly and well-marshalled prudence; in the sensitive part, the constraint of necessity; but in the understanding, entire and perfect command of itself. The limiting and bounding power sympathizes with the whole and the indivisible, by reason of the nearness of their relations; on the other side, the dividing power fixes itself upon particulars, by virtue of the divisible substance; and the whole rejoices at the mutation of the Same by means of the Other, as occasion requires. In the like manner, the various inclinations of men to virtue and vice, to pleasure and toil, as also the enthusiasms and raptures of lovers, the combats of honor with lustful desires, plainly demonstrate the mixture of the divine and impassible with the moral and corporeal part; of which Plato himself calls the one concupiscence of pleasures, natural to ourselves; the other an opinion introduced from without, aspiring to the chiefest good. For passible qualities of the soul arise from herself; but she participates of understanding, as being infused from without, by the more worthy principle.
[De an. procr. 28] 28. Nor is the celestial nature privileged from this double society and communion. For sometimes it is seen to incline one way or the other, but it is set right again by the more powerful revolution of the Same, and governs the world. Nay, there shall come a time, as it has happened already, when the world’s moving wisdom shall grow dull and drowsy, drowned in oblivion of its own duty; while that which is familiar and agreeable to the body from the beginning draws and winds back the righthand motion of the universe, causing the wheels to go slow and heavy. Yet shall it not be able to dash in pieces the whole movement, for that the better part, rousing and recollecting herself and observing the pattern and exemplar of God, shall with his aid reduce all things again into their former order. Thus it is demonstrable by many proofs, that the soul was not altogether the workmanship of the Deity, but that having in itself a certain portion of innate evil, it was by him digested and beautified who limited infinity by unity, to the end it might be a substance within the compass of certain limits; intermixing order and mutation, variety and resemblance, by the force of the Same and the Other; and lastly working into all these, as far as it was possible, a mutual community and friendship by the assistance of numbers and harmony.
[De an. procr. 29] 29. Concerning which things, although you have heard frequent discourses, and have likewise read several arguments and disputes committed to writing upon the same subjects, it will not be amiss for me also to give a short account, after a brief repetition of Plato’s own words. “God,” said he, “in the first place withdrew one part from the whole; which done, he took away the double of that; then a third part, sesquialter in proportion to the second, and triple to the first; then a fourth part, double to the second; next a fifth part, being the triple of the third; then a sixth, eight times the first; and lastly a seventh, being twenty-seven times the first. This done, he filled up the duple and triple intervals, retrenching also from thence certain other particles, and placing them in the midst of those intervals; so that in every interval there might be two medieties, the one exceeding and being exceeded by one and the same part of the extremes, the other exceeding and being exceeded by the same number. Now in regard that from these connections in the first spaces there arose the intervals of sesquialters, sesquiterces, and sesquioctaves, he filled up all the sesquiterce intervals with sesquioctaves, leaving a part of each, so that the interval left of the part might bear the numerical proportion of 256 to 243.”
[De an. procr. 29b] Here the question will be first concerning the quantity, next concerning the order, and in the third place concerning the force and virtue of the numbers. As to the quantity, we are to consider which he takes in the double and triple intervals. As to the order, whether they are to be placed in one row, according to the direction of Theodorus, or (as Crantor will have them) in the form of a Λ, placing the unit at the top, and the duples and triples apart by themselves in two several files. Lastly, we are to examine of what use and virtue they are in the structure and composition of the soul.
[De an. procr. 30] 30. As to the first, we shall relinquish the opinion of those who affirm that it is enough, in proportions, to consider the nature of the intervals, and of the medieties which fill up their vacancies; and that the demonstration can be made out for any numbers whatsoever that have spaces sufficient to receive the aforesaid proportions. For this being granted, it makes the demonstration obscure, without the help of schemes, and drives us from another theory, which carries with it a delight not unbecoming philosophy.
[De an. procr. 30b] Beginning therefore from the unit, let us place the duples and triples apart; and there will be on the one side, 2, 4, 8; on the other 3, 9, 27; — seven numbers in all, proceeding forward by multiplication four steps from the unit, which is assumed as the common base. . . . For not only here, but upon other occasions, the sympathy of the quaternary number with the septenary is apparent. There is this peculiar to that tetractys or quaternary number thirty six, so much celebrated by the Pythagoreans, which is more particularly worthy admiration, — that it is composed of the first four even numbers and the first four odd numbers; and it is the fourth connection made of numbers put together in order. The first connection is of one and two; the second of odd numbers. . . . For placing the unit, which is common to both, before, he first takes eight and then twenty-seven, as it were pointing out with the finger where to place each particular sort.
[These places are so depraved in the original, that the sense is lost.]
[De an. procr. 30c] But it belongs to others to explain these things more accurately and distinctly; while we content ourselves with only what remains, as peculiarly proper to the subject in hand.
[De an. procr. 31] 31. For it was not out of vain-glory, to boast his skill in the mathematical sciences, that Plato inserted in a treatise of natural philosophy this discourse of harmonical and arithmetical medieties, but believing them both apt and convenient to demonstrate the structure and composition of the soul. For some there are who seek these proportions in the swift motions of the spheres of the planets; others rather in the distances, others in the magnitude of the stars; others, more accurate and nice in their enquiry, seek for the same proportions in the diameters of the epicycles; as if the Supreme Architect, for the sake of these, had adapted the soul, divided into seven parts, to the celestial bodies. Many also there are, who hither transfer the inventions of the Pythagoreans, tripling the distances of bodies from the middle. This is done by placing the unit next the fire; three next the Antichthon, or earth which is opposite to our earth; nine next the Earth; 27 next the Moon; 81 next to Mercury; 243 upon Venus; and 729 upon the Sun.
[De an. procr. 31b] The last 729 is both a tetragonal and cubical number, whence it is, that they also call the sun a tetragon and a cube. By this way of tripling they also reduce the other stars to proportion. But these people may be thought to dote and to wander very much from reason, if there by any use of geometrical demonstration, since by their mistakes we find that the most probable proofs proceed from thence; and although geometers do not always make out their positions exactly, yet they approach the nearest to truth when they say that the diameter of the sun, compared with the diameter of the earth, bears the proportion of 12 to 1; while the diameter of the earth to that of the moon carries a triple proportion. And for that which appears to be the least of the fixed stars, the diameter of it is no less than the third part of the diameter of the earth, and the whole globe of the earth to the whole globe of the moon is as twenty-seven to one.
[De an. procr. 31c] The diameters of Venus and the earth bear a duple, the globes or spheres of both an octave proportion. The width of the shadow which causes an eclipse holds a triple proportion to the diameter of the moon; and the deviation of the moon from the middle of the signs, either to the one or the other side, is a twelfth part. Her positions as to the sun, either in triangular or quadrangular distances, give her the form when she appears as in the first quarter and gibbous; but when she comes to be quite round, that is, when she has run through half the signs, she then makes (as it were) a kind of diapason harmony with six notes. But in regard the motions of the sun are slowest when he arrives at the solstices, and swiftest when he comes to the equinoxes, by which he takes from the day or adds to the night, the proportion holds thus. For the first thirty days after the winter solstice, he adds to the day a sixth part of the length whereby the longest night exceeds the shortest; the next thirty days he adds a third part; to all the rest till the equinox he adds a half; and so by sextuple and triple distances he makes even the irregularity of time.
[De an. procr. 31d] Moreover, the Chaldaeans make the spring to hold the proportion of a diatessaron to autumn; of a diapente to the winter, and of a diapason to the summer. But if Euripides rightly divides the year, where he says,
[De an. procr. 31e] •Four months the parching heats of summer reign,
•And four of hoary winter’s cold complain;
•Two months doth vernal pride the fields array,
•And two months more to autumn tribute pay,
then the seasons shall be said to change in octave proportion.
[De an. procr. 31f] Others there are, who fancy the earth to be in the lowest string of the harp, called proslambanomenos; and so proceeding, they place the moon in hypate, Mercury and Venus in the diatoni and lichani; the sun they likewise place in mese, as in the midst of the diapason, a fifth above the earth and a fourth from the sphere of the fixed stars.
[De an. procr. 32] 32. But neither doth this pleasant conceit of the latter come near the truth, neither do the former attain perfect accuracy. However, they who will not allow the latter to depend upon Plato’s sentiments will yet grant the former to partake of musical proportions; so that, there being five tetrachords, called ὑπάτων, μέσων, συνημμένων, διεζευγμένων, and ὑπεϱβολαίων, in these five distances they place all the planets; making the first tetrachord from the Moon to the Sun and the planets which move with the Sun, that is, Mercury and Venus; the next from the Sun to the fiery planet of Mars; the third between this and Jupiter; the fourth from thence to Saturn; and the fifth from Saturn to the sphere of the fixed stars. So that the sounds and notes which bound the five tetrachords bear the same proportion with the intervals of the planets. Still further, we know that the ancient musicians had two notes called hypate, three called nete, one mese, and one paramese, thus confining their scale to seven standing notes, equal in number to the number of the planets. But the moderns, adding the proslambanomenos, which is a full tone in descent from hypate, have multiplied the scheme into the double diapason, and thereby confounded the natural order of the concords; for the diapente happens to be before the diatessaron, with the addition of the whole tone in the bass. Whereas Plato makes his addition in the upper part; for in his Republic he says, that every one of the eight spheres rolls about a Siren which is fixed upon each of the tuneful globes, and that they all sing one counterpoint without diversity of modulation, taking every one their peculiar concords, which together complete a melodious consort.
[De an. procr. 32b] These Sirens sing for their pleasure divine and heavenly tunes, and accompany their sacred circuit and dance with an harmonious song of eight notes. Nor was there necessity of a fuller chorus, in regard that within the confines of eight notes lay the first bounds and limits of all duple and triple proportions; the unit being added to both the even and odd numbers. And certainly from hence it was that the ancients raised their invention of nine Muses; of which eight were employed in celestial affairs, as Plato said; the ninth was to take care of things terrestrial, and to reduce and reform the inequality and confusion of error and jarring variance.
[De an. procr. 33] 33. Now then consider whether the soul does not roll and turn and manage the heavens and the celestial bodies by means of those harmonious concords and equal motions that are wrought and fermented within her, being herself most wise and most just. And such she became by virtue of harmonical proportions, whose images representing things incorporeal are imprinted into the discernible and visible parts and bodies of the world. But the chief and most predominating power is visibly mixed in the soul, which renders her harmonious and obedient to herself, the other parts unanimously yielding to her as the most supreme and the divinest part of all. For the Sovereign Artificer and Creator finding a strange disorder and erroneous confusion in the motions of the decomposed and unruly soul, which was still at variance with herself, some things he divided and separated, others he brought together and reconciled to a mutual sympathy, making use of harmony and numbers. By virtue of which, the slightest and meanest of insensible substances, even stocks and stones, the rinds of trees, and sometimes even the rennets of beasts, by various mixtures, compositions, and temperatures, may become the charming objects of the sight, or afford most pleasing perfumes and wholesome medicaments for the relief of mankind, or be wrought and hollowed to send forth pleasing musical sounds. And for this reason it was that Zeno of Citium encouraged and persuaded youth to frequent the theatres, there to observe the variety of melodious sounds that proceeded from horns or cornets, wooden hautboys, flutes and reeds, or any other musical instruments to which the contrivance of art had rightly applied the reason of number and proportion. Not that we will here maintain, with the Pythagoreans, that all things resemble number, for that requires a long discourse to prove it. But where mutual society and sympathy arise out of discord and dissimilitude, that the cause of this is moderation and order, produced by the power of harmony and number, was a thing not concealed even from the poets. And these give to what is friendly and kind the epithet “evenly fitted;” while, on the other side, men of rugged and malicious dispositions they called “unevenly tempered,” as if enmity and discord were nothing but a sort of a disproportion. For this reason, he who writes Pindar’s elegy gives him this encomium,
[De an. procr. 33b] To foreigners agreeable, to citizens a friend;
[De an. procr. 33c] the poet plainly inferring complacency of humor and the aptitude of a person to fit himself to all tempers to be an excellency aspiring to virtue itself. Which Pindar himself also testifies, saying of Cadmus, that he listened to true music from Apollo himself. Nor must we believe that the theologists, who were the most ancient philosophers, ordered the pictures and statues of the Gods to be made with musical instruments in their hands because they thought the Gods no better than pipers or harpers, but to signify that no work was so becoming to the Gods as accord and harmony.
[De an. procr. 33d] Now then, as it would be absurd and ridiculous for any man to search for sesquiterces, sesquialters, and duples in the neck, or belly, or sides of a lute or harp, — though every one of these must also be allowed their symmetry of length and thickness, — the harmony and proportion of concords being to be sought for in the sound; so it is most probable that the bodies of the stars, the distances of spheres, and the swiftness of the motions and revolutions, have their sundry proportions, as well one to another as to the whole fabric, like instruments of music well set and tuned, though the measure of the quantity be unknown to us. However, we are to imagine that the principal effect and efficacy of these numbers and proportions, which the Supreme Architect made use of, is that same agreement, harmony, and consent of the soul with itself, by means of which she replenished the heavens themselves, when she came to actuate and perform her office there, with so many infinite beauties, and by which she governs the earth by virtue of the several seasons, and other alterations wisely and artificially measured and varied as well for the generation as preservation of all terrestrial productions.

## Summary of the birth of the spirit

[Epit. de an. procr. 1] 1. The treatise that bears the title On the Generation of the Soul in the Timaeus sets out all the points on which Plato and the Platonists have vied with one another; it also brings in certain geometrical proportions and likenesses which, as the author supposes, bear on his study of the soul, and with them musical and arithmetical theorems.
[Epit. de an. procr. 2] 2. He says that matter was given its shape by the soul. He grants a soul to the universe, and grants to each living thing as well the soul that governs it; and he presents this soul as in one way ungenerated and in another way subject to generation, while matter, he says, is everlasting and received its form from the divine through the agency of the soul. Evil too arose as an offshoot of matter — so that, in his words, the divine might not be thought the cause of evils.
[Epit. de an. procr. 3] 3. He says that Posidonius and his followers did not set the soul far apart from matter. Taking the being “divisible about bodies” to mean the being of the limits, and blending these with the intelligible, they declared the soul to be the form of what is extended in every direction, constituted according to number that embraces harmony. For the objects of mathematics, they held, are ranked between the first intelligibles and the sensibles; and since the soul shares everlastingness with the intelligible and passivity with the sentient, it is fitting that its being should lie in the middle. But these men too failed to notice that God uses the limits of bodies only afterwards, when the soul has already been completed, for the shaping of matter, bounding and enclosing what is dispersed and unconnected in it with the surfaces made by the fitting together of the triangles. Stranger still is it to make the soul a form: for the soul is always in motion and the form is motionless; the form has no mixture with the sensible, while the soul is yoked to the body. Besides, God stands to the form as an imitator to his pattern, but to the soul as a craftsman to his finished work. And that Plato does not make number the being of the soul either, but makes that being something ordered by number, has been said already.
[Epit. de an. procr. 4] 4. Against both these views alike there is this: neither in limits nor in numbers is there any trace of that power by which the soul is fitted by nature to judge what is sensible. Intelligence and the power of thought have been produced in it by its share in the intelligible principle; but its opinions and beliefs, its power of imagination and its susceptibility to the qualities that belong to body — no one could conceive of this as arising in it simply from units, or lines, or surfaces. And indeed it is not only the souls of mortals that have a power of knowing the sensible. Of the soul of the universe too he says that, as it revolves upon itself, whenever it touches anything whose being is dispersed, and whenever anything whose being is undivided, it is moved through the whole of itself and declares with what a thing is the same and from what it is different, and in what relation above all, and where and how, the things that come to be both are and are acted upon, each in respect of each.
[Epit. de an. procr. 4b] In these words he gives at the same time a sketch of the ten categories, and he makes his meaning plainer still in what follows. “A true account,” he says, “whenever it is concerned with the sensible, and the circle of the Different, running straight, carries the report through the whole of its soul, gives rise to opinions and beliefs that are firm and true; and whenever again it is concerned with the rational, and the circle of the Same, turning smoothly, makes these things known, knowledge is of necessity the result. And if anyone ever calls that in which these two come to be by any other name than soul, he will be saying anything rather than the truth.” From what source, then, the soul got this movement that apprehends the sensible and forms opinions — a movement different from that intellective one which ends in knowledge — it is hard to say, unless we lay it down
[Epit. de an. procr. 4c] firmly that at this point he is constructing not soul without qualification but the soul of the universe, out of the better and undivided being which was already there, and out of the worse, which he has called divisible about bodies. This is nothing other than the movement that forms opinions and images and is affected together with sensible things — a movement that did not come into being but subsisted from everlasting, just as the other did. For nature, possessing the power of intellect, possessed the power of opinion as well; but the former is unmoved and unaffected and is seated about the being that always abides, while the latter is divisible and wandering, since it was in contact with matter that was in motion and being scattered. For the sensible had not received any order but was shapeless and undefined; and the power stationed about it had neither articulate opinions nor motions that were all orderly. Most of them were dreamlike and deranged and troubled the corporeal, except in so far as it fell in by chance with what is better. For it was midway between the two and had a nature in sympathy and kinship with both, laying hold of matter with its sentient part and of the intelligibles with its part that judges.
[Epit. de an. procr. 5] 5. Plato himself makes this clear, in words something like these: “Let this,” he says, “be the account rendered in sum, as reckoned by my vote: that being, and space, and becoming are three things, in three ways, even before the heaven came to be.” For he calls matter “space”, as he sometimes calls it “seat” and “receptacle”; by “being” he means the intelligible; and the “becoming” of a universe that had not yet come to be is nothing other than that being which consists in changes and motions, stationed between what impresses and what is impressed, and passing on to this world the images from that one. It was for this reason that it was called divisible, and also because what perceives must be distributed along with what is perceived, and what imagines along with what is imagined, and must extend as far as they do. For the motion of perception, which belongs to the soul, moves towards the sensible outside it; whereas intelligence, taken by itself, was abiding and unmoved, but once it has come to be in the soul and gained the mastery, it turns the soul towards itself and with it brings to completion the circular motion about what always abides, the motion that most nearly touches what is.
[Epit. de an. procr. 5b] That is also why their union proved so hard to blend: it was a mixing of the divisible with the indivisible, and of what is carried every way with what is in no way movable, and a forcing of the Different to come together with the Same. Now the Different was not motion, any more than the Same was rest; it was the principle of difference and unlikeness. For each of the two comes down from one of the two principles, the Same from the One and the Different from the Dyad; and it is here, in the soul, that they are first mixed, bound together by numbers and ratios and harmonic means. The Different, when it comes to be in the Same, produces difference, and the Same in the Different produces order, as is plain in the first powers of the soul; and these are the power to judge and the power to move. Motion shows itself at once in the heaven: difference within sameness, in the revolution of the fixed stars, and sameness within difference, in the ordering of the planets. For in those the Same prevails, but in the things about the earth the opposite.
[Epit. de an. procr. 5c] Judgement, for its part, has two principles: intelligence, proceeding from the Same, for universals, and perception, proceeding from the Different, for particulars. Reason is a blend of both; it becomes intellection where its objects are intelligible and opinion where they are sensible, and it uses as instruments between the two imaginations and memories, of which the former are produced by the Different in the Same and the latter by the Same in the Different. For intellection is a motion of what thinks about what abides, and opinion is an abiding of what perceives about what is in motion; and imagination, which is a weaving together of opinion with perception, is brought to a stand in memory by the Same and set moving again by the Different in the distinction of before and now, since it is in touch with difference and sameness at once.
[Epit. de an. procr. 6] 6. The fusion that was brought about in the body of the universe must be taken as an image of the proportion by which he tuned the soul. There the extremes were fire and earth, whose nature made them hard to blend with one another — or rather wholly unmixable and unable to hold together. So he set between them air in front of fire and water in front of earth, blended these with each other first, and then by means of them mixed and fitted those extremes both to the intermediates and to each other. And here in turn he brought together the Same and the Different, opposed powers and rival extremes, not through themselves but by setting other beings between them — the indivisible in front of the Same and the divisible in front of the Different, each assigned in the way that suits it to each. Then, blending the extremes in upon these once they were mixed, he wove together the whole form of the soul, making, as far as it could be done, a thing uniform out of things that differ and one out of many.

## On Stoic self-contradictions

[De Stoic. rep. 1] I first lay this down for an axiom, that there ought to be seen in men’s lives an agreement with their doctrines. For it is not so necessary that the pleader (as Aeschines has it) and the law speak one and the same thing, as that the life of a philosopher be consonant to his speech. For the speech of a philosopher is a law of his own and voluntarily imposed on himself, unless they esteem philosophy to be a game, or an acuteness in disputing invented for the gaining of applause, and not — what it really is — a thing deserving our greatest study.
[De Stoic. rep. 2] Since, then, there are in their discourses many things written by Zeno himself, many by Cleanthes, and most of all by Chrysippus, concerning policy, governing, and being governed, concerning judging and pleading, and yet there is not to be found in any of their lives either leading of armies, making of laws, going to parliament, pleading before the judges, fighting for their country, travelling on embassies, or making of public gifts, but they have all, feeding (if I may so say) on rest as on the lotus, led their whole lives, and those not short but very long ones, in foreign countries, amongst disputations, books, and walkings; it is manifest that they have lived rather according to the writings and sayings of others than their own professions, having spent all their days in that repose which Epicurus and Hieronymus so much commend.
[De Stoic. rep. 2b] Chrysippus indeed himself, in his Fourth Book of Lives, thinks there is no difference between a scholastic life and a voluptuous one. I will set down here his very words: “They who are of opinion that a scholastic life is from the very beginning most suitable to philosophers seem to me to be in an error, thinking that men ought to follow this for the sake of some recreation or some other thing like to it, and in that manner to spin out the whole course of their life; that is, if it may be explained, to live at ease. For this opinion of theirs is not to be concealed, many of them delivering it clearly, and not a few more obscurely.” Who therefore did more grow old in this scholastic life than Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Diogenes, Zeno, and Antipater, who left their countries not out of any discontent but that they might quietly enjoy their delight, studying, and disputing at their leisure. To verify which, Aristocreon, the disciple and intimate friend of Chrysippus, having erected his statue of brass upon a pillar, engraved on it these verses: —
[De Stoic. rep. 2c] This brazen statue Aristocreon To’s friend Chrysippus newly here has put, Whose sharp-edged wit, like sword of champion, Did Academic knots in sunder cut.
[De Stoic. rep. 2d] Such a one then was Chrysippus, an old man, a philosopher, one who praised the regal and civil life, and thought there was no difference between a scholastic and voluptuous one.
[De Stoic. rep. 3] But those others of them who intermeddle in state affairs act yet more contradictorily to their own doctrines. For they govern, judge, consult, make laws, punish, and honor, as if those were indeed cities in the government of which they concern themselves, those truly counsellors and judges who are at any time allotted to such offices, those generals who are chosen by suffrages, and those laws which were made by Clisthenes, Lycurgus, and Solon, whom they affirm to have been vicious men and fools. Thus even over the management of state affairs are they at variance with themselves. Indeed Antipater, in his writings concerning the difference between Cleanthes and Chrysippus, has related that Zeno and Cleanthes would not be made citizens of Athens, lest they might seem to injure their own countries. I shall not much insist upon it, that, if they did well, Chrysippus acted amiss in suffering himself to be enrolled as a member of that city. But this is very contradictory and absurd, that, removing their persons and their lives so far off amongst strangers, they reserved their names for their countries; which is the same thing as if a man, leaving his wife, and cohabiting and bedding with another, and getting children on her, should yet refuse to contract marriage with the second, lest he might seem to wrong the former.
[De Stoic. rep. 5] Again, Chrysippus, writing in his treatise of Rhetoric, that a wise man will so plead and so act in the management of a commonwealth, as if riches, glory, and health were really good, confesses that his speeches are inextricable and impolitic, and his doctrines unsuitable for the uses and actions of human life.
[De Stoic. rep. 6] It is moreover a doctrine of Zeno’s, that temples are not to be built to the gods; for that a temple is neither a thing of much value nor holy; since no work of carpenters and handicrafts-men can be of much value. And yet they who praise these things as well and wisely said are initiated in the sacred mysteries, go up to the Citadel (where Minerva’s temple stands), adore the shrines, and adorn with garlands the sacraries, being the works of carpenters and mechanical persons. Again, they think that the Epicureans, who sacrifice to the gods and yet deny them to meddle with the government of the world, do thereby refute themselves; whereas they themselves are more contrary to themselves, sacrificing on altars and in temples, which they affirm ought not to stand nor to have been built.
[De Stoic. rep. 7] Moreover, Zeno admits (as Plato does) several virtues having various distinctions — to wit, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice — as being indeed inseparable, but yet divers and different from one another. But again, defining every one of them, he says that fortitude is prudence in executing, justice prudence in distributing, as being one and the same virtue, but seeming to differ in its relation to different affairs when it comes to action. Nor does Zeno alone seem to contradict himself in these matters; but Chrysippus also, who blames Ariston for saying that the other virtues are different habits of one and the same virtue, and yet defends Zeno, who in this manner defines every one of the virtues. And Cleanthes, having in his Commentaries concerning Nature said, that vigor is the striking of fire, which, if it is sufficient in the soul to perform the duties presented to it, is called force and strength; subjoins these very words: “Now this force and strength, when it is in things apparent and to be persisted in, is continence; when in things to be endured, it is fortitude; when about worthiness, it is justice; and when about choosing or refusing, it is temperance.” Against him, who said,
[De Stoic. rep. 7b] Give not thy judgment till both sides are heard,(In the “Pseudo–Phocylidea,” vs. 87 (Bergk).)
[De Stoic. rep. 7c] Zeno on the contrary made use of such an argument as this: “If he who spake first has plainly proved his cause, the second is not to be heard, for the question is at an end; and if he has not proved it, it is the same case as if being cited he did not appear, or appearing did nothing but wrangle; so that, whether he has proved or not proved his cause, the second is not to be heard.” And yet he who made this dilemma has written against Plato’s Commonweal, dissolved sophisms, and exhorted his scholars to learn logic, as enabling them to do the same. Now Plato has either proved or not proved those things which he writ in his Commonweal; but in neither case was it necessary to write against him, but wholly superfluous and vain. The same may be said concerning sophisms.
[De Stoic. rep. 9] Chrysippus is of opinion, that young students should first learn logic, secondly, ethics, and after these, physics, and likewise in this to meddle last of all with the disputes concerning the gods. Now these things having been often said by him, it will suffice to set down what is found in his Fourth Book of Lives, being thus word for word: “First, then, it seems to me, according as it has been rightly said by the ancients, that there are three kinds of philosophical speculations, logical, ethical, and physical, and that of these, the logical ought to be placed first, the ethical second, and the physical third, and that of the physical, the discourse concerning the gods ought to be the last; wherefore also the traditions concerning this have been styled [Greek omitted], or the ENDINGS.” But that very discourse concerning the gods, which he says ought to be placed the last, he usually places first and sets before every moral question. For he is seen not to say anything concerning the ends, or concerning justice, or concerning good and evil, or concerning marriage and the education of children, or concerning the law and the commonwealth; but, as those who propose decrees to states set before them the words To Good Fortune, so he also premises something of Jupiter, Fate, Providence, and of the world’s being one and finite and maintained by one power. None of which any one can be persuaded to believe, who has not penetrated deeply into the discourses of natural philosophy. Hear what he says of this in his Third Book of the Gods: “For there is not to be found any other beginning or any other generation of Justice, but what is from Jupiter and common Nature. From thence must every such thing have its beginning, if we will say anything concerning good and evil.” And again, in his Natural Positions he says: “For one cannot otherwise or more properly come to the discourse of good and evil, to the virtues, or to felicity, than from common Nature and the administration of the world.” And going farther on, he adds: “For to these we must annex the discourse concerning good and evil, there being no other better beginning or relation thereof, and the speculation of Nature being learned for nothing else, but to understand the difference between good and evil.” According to Chrysippus, therefore, the natural science is both before and after the moral; or rather, it is an inversion of order altogether absurd, if this must be put after those things none of which can be comprehended without this; and his contradicting himself is manifest, when he asserts the discourse of Nature to be the beginning of that concerning good and evil, and yet commands it to be delivered, not before, but after it.
[De Stoic. rep. 9b] Now, if any one shall say that Chrysippus in his book concerning the Use of Speech has written, that he who applies himself to logic first needs not absolutely to abstain from the rest, but should take as much of them as shall fall in his way, he will indeed say the truth, but will withal confirm the fault. For he oppugns himself, one while commanding that the science concerning God should be taken last and for a conclusion, as being therefore also called [Greek omitted], and again, another while saying that this is to be learned together with the very first. For order is at an end, if all things must be used at all times. But this is more, that having made the science concerning the gods the beginning of that concerning good and evil, he bids not those who apply themselves to the ethics to begin with that; but learning these, to take of that also as it shall come in their way, and then to go from these to that, without which, he says, there is no beginning or entrance upon these.
[De Stoic. rep. 10] As for disputing on both sides, he says, that he does not universally reject it, but exhorts us to use it with caution, as is done in pleadings, not with the aim really to disprove, but to dissolve their probability. “For to those,” says he, “who endeavor a suspension of assent concerning all things, it is convenient to do this, and it co-operates to what they desire; but as for those who would work and constitute in us a certain science according to which we shall professedly live, they ought, on the contrary, to state the first principles, and to direct their novices who are entered from the beginning to the end; and where there is occasion to make mention of contrary discourses, to dissolve their probability, as is done in pleadings.” For this he hath said in express words. Now that it is absurd for philosophers to think that they ought to set down the contrary opinion, not with all its reasons, but like pleaders, disabling it, as if they contended not for truth but victory, we have elsewhere spoken against him. But that he himself has, not in one or two places in his disputations, but frequently, confirmed the discourses which are contrary to his own opinions, and that stoutly, and with so much earnestness and contention that it was not for every one to understand what he liked, — the Stoics themselves affirm, who admire the man’s acuteness, and think that Carneades said nothing of his own, but that catching hold of those arguments which Chrysippus alleged for the contrary opinion, he assaulted with them his positions, and often cried out,
[De Stoic. rep. 10b] Wretch, thy own strength will thee undo,(“Iliad”, vi. 407.)
as if Chrysippus had given great advantages against himself to those who would disturb and calumniate his doctrines.
But of those things which he has written against Custom they are so proud and boastful, that they fear not to affirm, that all the sayings of all the Academics together, if they were collected into one body, are not comparable to what Chrysippus has writ in disparagement of the senses. Which is an evident sign of the ignorance or self-love of the speakers; but this indeed is true, that being afterwards desirous to defend custom and the senses, he was inferior to himself, and the latter treatise was much weaker than the former. So that he contradicts himself; for having always directed the proposing of an adversary’s opinions not with approbation, but with a demonstration of their falsity, he has showed himself more acute in opposing than defending his own doctrines; and having admonished others to take heed of contrary arguments, as withdrawing comprehension, he has been more sedulous in framing such proofs as take away comprehension, than such as confirm it.
[De Stoic. rep. 10c] And yet he plainly shows that he himself feared this, writing thus in his Fourth Book of Lives: “Repugnant arguments and probabilities on the contrary side are not rashly to be proposed, but with caution, lest the hearers distracted by them should let go their conceptions, not being able sufficiently to apprehend the solutions, but so weakly that their comprehensions may easily be shaken. For even those who have, according to custom, preconceived both sensible phenomena and other things depending on the senses quickly forego them, being distracted by Megarian interrogatories and by others more numerous and forcible.” I would willingly therefore ask the Stoics, whether they think these Megarian interrogatories to be more forcible than those which Chrysippus has written in six books against custom; or rather this should be asked of Chrysippus himself.
[De Stoic. rep. 10d] For observe what he has written about the Megarian reason, in his book concerning the Use of Speech, thus: “Some such things fell out in the discourse of Stilpo and Menedemus; for, whereas they were renowned for wisdom, their disputing has turned to their reproach, their arguments being part clumsy, and the rest plainly sophistical.” And yet, good sir, you fear lest those arguments which you deride and term the disgrace of their proposers, as having a manifest faultiness, should divert some from comprehension. And did not you yourself, writing so many books against custom, in which you have added whatever you could invent, ambitiously striving to exceed Arcesilaus, expect that you should perplex some of your readers? For neither does he use slender arguments against custom; but as if he were pleading, he with some passion in himself stirs up the affections of others, telling his opponent that he talks foolishly and labors in vain.
[De Stoic. rep. 10e] And that he may leave no room to deny his speaking of contradictions, he has in his Natural Positions written thus: “It may be lawful for those who comprehend a thing to argue on the contrary side, applying to it that kind of defence which the subject itself affords; and sometimes, when they comprehend neither, to discourse what is alleged for either.” And having said in his book concerning the Use of Speech, that we ought no more to use the force of reason than of arms for such things as are not fitting, he subjoins this: “For they are to be employed for the finding out of truths and for the alliance of them, and not for the contrary, though many men do it.” By “many” perhaps he means those who withhold their assent. But these teachers, understanding neither, dispute on both sides, believing that, if anything is comprehensible, thus only or chiefly does truth afford a comprehension of itself. But you, who accuse them, and do yourself write contrary to those things which you understood concerning custom, and exhort others under your authority to do the same, confess that you wantonly use the faculty of disputing, out of vain ambition, even on useless and hurtful things.
[De Stoic. rep. 11] They say, that a good deed is the command, and sin the prohibition of the law; and therefore that the law forbids the wicked many things, but commands them nothing, because they cannot do a good deed. But who is ignorant that he who cannot do a good deed cannot also sin? Therefore they make the law to contradict itself, commanding men those things which they cannot perform, and forbidding them those things from which they cannot abstain. For a man who cannot be temperate cannot but act intemperately; and he who cannot be wise cannot but act foolishly. And they themselves affirm, that those who forbid say one thing, forbid another and command another. For he who says “Thou shalt not steal” at the same time that he says these words, “Thou shalt not steal, forbids also to steal and directs not to steal. The law therefor bids the wicked nothing, unless it also commands them something. And they say, that the physician bids his disciple to cut and cauterize, omitting to add these words, “seasonably and moderately”; and the musician commands his scholar to play on the harp and sing, omitting “tunably” and “keeping time.” Wherefore also they punish those who do these things unskilfully and faultily; for that they were commanded to do them well, and they have done them ill. If therefore a wise man commands his servant to say or do something, and punishes him for doing it unseasonably or not as he ought, is it not manifest that he commanded him to do a good action and not an indifferent one? But if wise men command wicked ones indifferent things, what hinders but the commands of the law may be also such? Moreover, the impulse (called [Greek omitted]) is, according to him, the reason of a man commanding him to do something, as he has written in his book of the law. Is not therefore also the aversion (called [Greek omitted]) a prohibiting reason, and a disinclination, a disinclination agreeable to reason? Caution therefore is also reason prohibiting a wise man; for to be cautious is proper only to the wise, and not to the wicked. If, then, the reason of a wise man is one thing and the law another, wise men have caution contrary to the law; but if the law is nothing else but the reason of a wise man, the law is found to forbid wise men the doing of those things of which they are cautious.
[De Stoic. rep. 12] Chrysippus says, that nothing is profitable to the wicked, that the wicked have neither use nor need of anything. Having said this in his First Book of Good Deeds, he says again, that both commodiousness and grace pertain to mean or indifferent things, none of which according to them, is profitable. In the same place he affirms, that there is nothing proper, nothing convenient for a vicious man, in these words: “On the same principle we declare that there is nothing foreign or strange to the good man, and nothing proper or rightfully belonging to the bad man, since the one is good and the other bad.” Why, then, does he break our heads, writing particularly in every one of his books, as well natural as moral, that as soon as we are born we are appropriated to ourselves, our parts, and our offspring? And why in his First Book of Justice does he say that the very brutes, proportionably to the necessity of their young, are appropriated to them, except fishes, whose young are nourished by themselves? For neither have they sense who have nothing sensible, nor they appropriation who have nothing proper; for appropriation seems to be the sense and perception of what is proper.
[De Stoic. rep. 13] And this opinion is consequent to their principal ones. It is moreover manifest that Chrysippus, though he has also written many things to the contrary, lays this for a position, that there is not any vice greater or any sin more grievous than another, nor any virtue more excellent or any good deed better than another; so that he says in his Third Book of Nature: “As it well beseems Jupiter to glory in himself and his life, to magnify himself, and (if we may so say) to bear up his head, have an high conceit of himself, and speak big, for that he leads a life worthy of lofty speech; so the same things do not misbeseem all good men, since they are in nothing exceeded by Jupiter.” And yet himself, in his Third Book of Justice, says, that they who make pleasure the end destroy justice, but they who say it is only a good do not destroy it. These are his very words: “For perhaps, if we leave this to pleasure, that it is a good but not the end, and that honesty is one of those things which are eligible for themselves, we may preserve justice, making the honest and the just a greater good than pleasure.” But if that only is good which is honest, he who affirms pleasure to be a good is in an error, but he errs less than he who makes it also the end; for the one destroys justice, the other preserves it; and by the one human society is overthrown, but the other leaves a place to goodness and humanity.
[De Stoic. rep. 13b] Now I let pass his saying farther in his book concerning Jupiter, that the virtues increase and go on, lest I may seem to catch at words; though Chrysippus is indeed in this kind very sharp upon Plato and others. But when he forbids the praising of everything that is done according to virtue, he shows that there is some difference between good deeds. Now he says thus in his book concerning Jupiter: “For since each virtue has its own proper effects, there are some of these that are to be praised more highly than others; for he would show himself to be very frigid, that should undertake to praise and extol any man for holding out the finger stoutly, for abstaining continently from an old woman ready to drop into the grave, and patiently hearing it said that three are not exactly four.” What he says in his Third Book of the Gods is not unlike to this: “For I moreover think that the praises of such things as to abstain from an old woman who has one foot in the grave, and to endure the sting of a fly, though proceeding from virtue, would be very impertinent.” What other reprehender of his doctrines does this man then expect?
[De Stoic. rep. 13c] For if he who praises such things is frigid, he who asserts every one of them to be a great — nay, a very great good deed — is much more frigid. For if to endure a fly is equal to being valiant, and to abstain from an old woman now at the edge of the grave is equal to being temperate, there is, I think, no difference whether a virtuous man is prized for these or for those. Moreover, in his Second Book of Friendship, teaching that friendships are not for every fault to be dissolved, he has these very expressions: “For it is meet that some faults should be wholly passed by, others lightly reprehended, others more severely, and others deemed worthy a total dissolution of friendship.” And which is more, he says in the same book, that we will converse with some more and some less, so that some shall be more and some less friends; and this diversity extending very far, some are worthy of such an amity, others of a greater; and these will deserve to be so far trusted, those not so far, and the like.
[De Stoic. rep. 13d] For what else has he done in these places, but shown the great diversity there is between these things? Moreover, in his book concerning Honesty, to demonstrate that only to be good which is honest, he uses these words: “What is good is eligible; what is eligible is acceptable; what is acceptable is laudable; and what is laudable is honest.” And again: “What is good is joyous; what is joyous is venerable; what is venerable is honest.” But these speeches are repugnant to himself; for either all good is commendable, and then the abstaining chastely from an old woman is also commendable; or all good is neither venerable nor joyous, and his reasoning falls to the ground. For how can it possibly be frigid in others to praise any for such things, and not ridiculous for him to rejoice and glory in them?
[De Stoic. rep. 14] Such indeed he frequently is; but in his disputations against others he takes not the least care of speaking things contrary and dissonant to himself. For in his books of Exhorting, reprehending Plato, who said, that to him who has neither learned nor knows how to live it is profitable not to live, he speaks in this manner: “For this speech is both repugnant to itself, and not at all conclusive. For first insinuating that it is best for us not to live, and in a sort counselling us to die, he will excite us rather to anything else than to be philosophers; for neither can he who does not live philosophize, nor he who shall live long wickedly and ignorantly become wise.” And going on, he says that it is convenient for the wicked also to continue in life. And afterwards thus, word for word: “First, as virtue, barely taken, has nothing towards our living, so neither has vice anything to oblige us to depart.” Nor is it necessary to turn over other books, that we may show Chrysippus’s contradictoriness to himself; but in these same, he sometimes with commendation brings forth this saying of Antisthenes, that either understanding or a halter is to be provided, as also that of Tyrtaeus,
[De Stoic. rep. 14b] Come nigh the bounds of virtue or of death.
[De Stoic. rep. 14c] Now what else will this show, but that to wicked men and fools not to live is more profitable than to live? And sometimes correcting Theognis, he says, that the poet should not have written,
[De Stoic. rep. 14d] From poverty to fly; —
but rather thus,
From wickedness to fly, into the deep Throw thyself, Cyrnus, or from rocks so steep.(See “Theognis,” vs. 175.)
[De Stoic. rep. 14e] What therefore else does he seem to do, but to set down himself those things and doctrines which, when others write them, he expunges; condemning, indeed, Plato for showing that not to live is better than to live viciously and ignorantly; and yet advising Theognis to let a man break his neck or throw himself into the sea, that he may avoid vice? For having praised Antisthenes for directing fools to an halter, he again blames him, saying that vice has nothing that should oblige us to depart out of life.
[De Stoic. rep. 15] Moreover, in his books against the same Plato, concerning Justice, he immediately at the very beginning leaps into a discourse touching the gods, and says, that Cephalus did not rightly avert men from injustice by the fear of the gods, and that his teaching is easily refuted, and that it affords to the contrary many arguments and probabilities impugning the discourse concerning divine punishments, as nothing differing from the tales of Acco and Alphito (or Raw–Head and Bloody–Bones), with which women are wont to frighten little children from their unlucky pranks. Having thus traduced Plato, he in other places again praises him, and often alleges this saying of Euripides: —
[De Stoic. rep. 15b] Howe’er you may deride it, there’s a Jove, With other gods, who sees men’s ills above.
[De Stoic. rep. 15c] And likewise, in his First Book of Justice citing these verses of Hesiod,
[De Stoic. rep. 15d] Then Jove from heaven punishments did send, And plague and famine brought them to their end,(“Works and Days,” 242.)
[De Stoic. rep. 15e] he says, the gods do these things, that the wicked being punished, others admonished by these examples may less dare to attempt the doing of such things.
[De Stoic. rep. 15f] Again, in his book of Justice, subjoining, that it is possible for those who make pleasure a good but not the end to preserve also justice, he said in express terms: “For perhaps if we leave this to pleasure, that it is a good but not the end, and that honesty is one of those things which are eligible for themselves, we may preserve justice, making the honest and the just a greater good than pleasure.” So much he says in this place concerning pleasure. But in his book against Plato, accusing him for seeming to make health a good, he says, that not only justice, but also magnanimity, temperance, and all the other virtues will be taken away, if we make pleasure, health, or anything else which is not honest, to be a good. What therefore is to be said for Plato, we have elsewhere written against him. But here his contradicting himself is manifest, when he says in one place, that if a man supposes that with honesty pleasure also is a good, justice is preserved, and in another, accuses those who make anything besides honesty to be a good of taking away all the virtues.
[De Stoic. rep. 15g] But that he may not leave any means of making an apology for his contradictions, writing against Aristotle concerning justice, he affirms him not to have spoken rightly when he said, that pleasure being made the end, justice is taken away, and together with justice, every one also of the other virtues. For justice (he says) will indeed be taken away; but there is nothing to hinder the other virtues from remaining and being, though not eligible for themselves, yet good and virtues. Then he reckons up every one of them by name. But it will be better to set down his own words. “For pleasure,” says he, “appearing according to this discourse to be made the end, yet all this seems not to me to be contained in it. Wherefore we must say, that neither any of the virtues is eligible nor any of the vices to be avoided for itself, but that all these things are to be referred to the proposed scope.
[De Stoic. rep. 15h] Yet nothing, according to their opinion, will hinder but that fortitude, prudence, continence, and patience may be good, and their contraries to be avoided.” Has there ever then been any man more peevish in his disputes than he, who has blamed two of the principal philosophers, the one for taking away all virtue, by not making that only to be good which is honest, and the other for not thinking all the virtues except justice to be preserved, though pleasure is made the end? For it is a wonderful licentiousness that, discoursing of the same matters, he should when accusing Plato take away again those very things which himself sets down when reprehending Aristotle. Moreover, in his demonstrations concerning justice, he says expressly, that every good deed is both a lawful action and a just operation; but that everything which is done according to continence, patience, prudence, or fortitude is a good deed, and therefore also a just operation. Why, then, does he not also leave justice to them to whom he leaves prudence, fortitude, and continence; since whatever they do well according to the said virtue, they do also justly?
[De Stoic. rep. 16] Moreover, Plato having said, that injustice, as being the corruption and sedition of the soul, loses not its power even in those who have it within them, but sets the wicked man against himself, and molests and disturbs him; Chrysippus, blaming this, affirms that it is absurdly said, “A man injures himself”; for that injustice is to another, and not to one’s self. But forgetting this, he again says, in his demonstrations concerning justice, that the unjust man is injured by himself and injures himself when he injures another, becoming to himself the cause of transgressing, and undeservedly hurting himself. In his books indeed against Plato, contending that we cannot talk of injustice against one’s self, but as concerns another, he has these words: “For men cannot be unjust by themselves; injustice requires several on different sides, speaking contrary one unto another and the injustice must be taken in different ways. But no such thing extends to one alone, except inasmuch as he is affected towards his neighbor.” But in his demonstrations he has such discourses as these, concerning the unjust man’s being injurious also to himself: “The law forbids the being any way the author of transgression, and to act unjustly will be transgression. He therefore who is to himself the author of acting unjustly transgresses against himself. Now he that transgresses against any one also injures him; therefore he who is injurious to any one whomsoever is injurious also to himself.” Again: “Sin is a hurt, and every one who sins sins against himself; every one therefore who sins hurts himself undeservedly, and if so, is also unjust to himself.” And farther thus: “He who is hurt by another hurts himself, and that undeservedly. Now that is to be unjust. Every one therefore that is injured, by whomsoever it is, is unjust also to himself.”
[De Stoic. rep. 17] He says, that the doctrine concerning good and evil which himself introduces and approves is most agreeable to life, and does most of all reach the inbred prenotions; for this he has affirmed in his Third Book of Exhortations. But in his First Book he says, that this doctrine takes a man off from all other things, as being nothing to us, nor co-operating anything towards felicity. See, now, how consonant he is to himself, when he asserts a doctrine which takes us off from life, health, indolence, and integrity of the senses, and says that those things we beg of the gods are nothing to us, though most agreeable to life and to the common presumptions. But that there may be no denial of his speaking contradictions, in his Third Book of Justice he has said thus: “Wherefore also, from the excellence of their greatness and beauty, we seem to speak things like to fictions, and not according to man or human nature.” Is it then possible that any one can more plainly confess his speaking things contrary to himself than this man does, who affirms those things which (he says) for their excellency seem to be fictions and to be spoken above man and human nature, to be agreeable to life, and most of all to reach the inbred prenotions?
[De Stoic. rep. 18] In every one of his natural and ethical books, he asserts vice to be the very essence of unhappiness; writing and contending that to live viciously is the same thing as to live unhappily. But in his Third Book of Nature, having said that it is profitable for a fool to live rather than to die, though he is never to become wise, he subjoins: “For such is the nature of good things among mortals, that evil things are in some sort chosen before indifferent ones.” I let pass therefore, that having elsewhere said that nothing is profitable to fools, he here says that to live foolishly is profitable to them. Now those things being by them called indifferent which are neither bad nor good, when he says that bad things precede them, he says nothing else but that evil things precede those that are not evil, and that to be unhappy is more profitable than not to be unhappy; and if so, he esteems not to be unhappy to be more unprofitable — and if more unprofitable, more hurtful — than to be unhappy. Desiring therefore to mitigate this absurdity, he adds concerning evils: “But it is not these evils that have precedence, but reason; with which it is more convenient to live, though we shall be fools.” First therefore he says that vice and things participating of vice are evil, and that nothing else is so. Now vice is something reasonable, or rather depraved reason. For those therefore who are fools to live with reason, is nothing else but to live with vice. Thence to live being fools is to live being unhappy. In what then is this to be preferred to indifferent things? For he surely will not say that with regard to happiness unhappiness is to be preferred. But neither, say they, does Chrysippus altogether think that the remaining in life is to be reckoned amongst good things, or the going out of it amongst bad; but both of them amongst indifferent ones, according to Nature. Wherefore also it sometimes becomes meet for the happy to make themselves away, and again for the unhappy to continue in life. Now what greater repugnance can there be than this in the choice and avoiding of things, if it is convenient for those who are in the highest degree happy to forsake those good things that are present, for the want of some one indifferent thing? And yet they esteem none of the indifferent things either desirable or to be avoided; but only good desirable, and only evil to be avoided. So that it comes to pass, according to them, that the reasoning about actions regards neither things desirable nor things refusable; but that aiming at other things, which they neither shun nor choose, they make life and death to depend on these.
[De Stoic. rep. 19] Chrysippus confesses that good things are totally different from bad; and it must of necessity be so, if these make them with whom they are present miserable to the very utmost point, and those render their possessors in the highest degree happy. Now he says, that good and evil things are sensible, writing thus in his First Book of the End: “That good and evil things are perceptible by sense, we are by these reasons forced to say; for not only the passions, with their species, as sorrow, fear, and such others, are sensible; but we may also have a sense of theft, adultery, and the like, and generally, of folly, cowardice, and other vices not a few; and again, not only of joy, beneficence, and many other dependences on good deeds, but also of prudence, fortitude, and the other virtues.” Let us pass by the other absurdities of these things; but that they are repugnant to those things which are delivered by him concerning “the wise man that knows nothing of his being so,” who does not confess? For good, when present, being sensible and having a great difference from evil, is it not most absurd, that he who is of bad become good should be ignorant of it, and not perceive virtue when present, but think that vice is still within him? For either none who has all virtues can be ignorant and doubt of his having them; or the difference of virtue from vice, of happiness from misery, and of a most honest life from a most shameful one, is little and altogether difficult to be discerned, if he who has taken the one in exchange for the other does not perceive it.
[De Stoic. rep. 20] He has written one volume of lives divided into four books; in the fourth of these he says, that a wise man meddles with no business but his own, and is employed about his own affairs. His words are these: “For I am of opinion, that a prudent man shuns affairs, meddles little, and at the same time minds his own occasions; civil persons being both minders of their own affairs and meddlers with little else.” He has said almost the same in his book of Things eligible for Themselves, in these very words: “For indeed a quiet life seems to have in it a certain security and freedom from danger, though there are not very many who can comprehend it.” It is manifest that he does not much dissent from Epicurus, who takes away Providence that he may leave God in repose. But the same Chrysippus in his First Book of Lives says, that a wise man willingly takes upon him a kingdom, making his profit by it; and if he cannot reign himself, will dwell with a king, and go to the wars with a king like Hydanthyrsus the Scythian or Leucon the Pontic. But I will here also set down his very discourse, that we may see whether, as from the treble and the base strings there arises a symphony in music, so the life of a man who chooses quietness and meddling with little accords with him who, upon any necessity, rides along with the Scythians and manages the affairs of the tyrants in the Bosphorus: “For that a wise man will both go to the wars and live with potentates, we will again consider this hereafter; some indeed upon the like arguments not so much as suspecting this, and we for semblable reasons admitting it.” And a little after: “Not only with those who have proceeded well, and are become proficients in discipline and good manners, as with Leucon and Hydanthyrsus.”
[De Stoic. rep. 20b] Some there are who blame Callisthenes for sailing to Alexander in hopes to obtain the rebuilding of Olynthus, as Aristotle had procured that of Stagira; and commend Ephorus, Xenocrates, and Menedemus, who rejected Alexander’s solicitation. But Chrysippus thrusts his wise man headforwards for the sake of gain, as far as Panticapaeum and the desert of the Scythians. And that he does this for the sake of profit and gain, he has showed before, supposing three ways of gaining most suitable for a wise man, — the first by a kingdom, the second by his friends, and the third, besides these, by teaching philosophy. And yet he frequently even tires us with his praises of this saying: —
[De Stoic. rep. 20c] What need have men of more than these two things?
[De Stoic. rep. 20d] And in his books of Nature he says, that a wise man, if he has lost the greatest wealth imaginable, seems to have lost but a single groat. But having there thus elevated and puffed him up, he again here throws him down to mercenariness and sophistry; nay, to asking money and even to receiving it beforehand, sometimes at the very entrance of his scholar, and otherwhiles after some time past. The last, he says indeed, is the more polite, but to receive beforehand the more sure; delay allowing of injuries. Now he says thus: “All who are well advised do not require their salary in the same manner, but differently; a multitude of them, as opportunity offers, not promising to make their scholars good men, and that within a year, but to do this, as far as in them lies, within a time agreed on.” And again going on, he says: “But he will know his opportunity, whether he ought to receive his recompense presently at the very entrance (as many have done), or to give them time, this manner being more liable to injuries, but withal, seeming the more courteous.” And how is the wise man a contemner of wealth, who upon a contract delivers virtue for money, and if he has not delivered it, yet requires his reward, as having done what is in him? Or how is he above being endamaged, when he is so cautious lest he be wronged of his recompense? For no man is wronged who is not endamaged. Therefore, though he has elsewhere asserted that a wise man cannot be injured, he here says, that this manner of dealing is liable to injury.
[De Stoic. rep. 21] In his book of a Commonweal he says, that his citizens will neither act nor prepare anything for the sake of pleasure, and praises Euripides for having uttered this sentence: —
[De Stoic. rep. 21b] What need have men of more than these two things, The fruits of Ceres, and thirst-quenching springs?
[De Stoic. rep. 21c] And yet a little after this, going on, he commends Diogenes, who forced his nature to pass from himself in public, and said to those that were present: I wish I could in the same manner drive hunger also out of my belly. What reason then is there to praise in the same books him who rejects all pleasure, and withal, him who for the sake of pleasure does such things, and proceeds to such a degree of filthiness? Moreover, having in his book of Nature written, that Nature has produced many creatures for the sake of beauty, delighting in pulchritude and pleasing herself with variety, and having added a most absurd expression, that the peacock was made for the sake of his tail and for the beauty of it; he has, in his treatise of a Commonweal, sharply reprehended those who bred peacocks and nightingales, as if he were making laws contrary to the lawgiver of the world, and deriding Nature for pleasing herself in the beauty of animals to which a wise man would not give a place in his city. For how can it but be absurd to blame those who nourish these creatures, if he commends Providence which created them? In his Fifth Book of Nature, having said, that bugs profitably awaken us out of our sleep, that mice make us cautious not to lay up everything negligently, and that it is probable that Nature, rejoicing in variety, takes delight in the production of fair creatures, he adds these words: “The evidence of this is chiefly shown in the peacock’s tail; for here she manifests that this animal was made for the sake of his tail, and not the contrary; so, the male being made, the female follows.” In his book of a Commonweal, having said that we are ready to paint even dunghills, a little after he adds, that some beautify their cornfields with vines climbing up trees, and myrtles set in rows, and keep peacocks, doves, and partridges, that they may hear them cry and coo, and nightingales. Now I would gladly ask him, what he thinks of bees and honey? For it was of consequence, that he who said bugs were created profitably should also say that bees were created unprofitably. But if he allows these a place in his city, why does he drive away his citizens from things that are pleasing and delight the ear? To be brief, — as he would be very absurd who should blame the guests for eating sweetmeats and other delicacies and drinking of wine, and at the same time commend him who invited them and prepared such things for them; so he that praises Providence, which has afforded fishes, birds, honey, and wine, and at the same time finds fault with those who reject not these things, nor content themselves with
[De Stoic. rep. 21d] The fruits of Ceres and thirst-quenching springs,
[De Stoic. rep. 21e] which are present and sufficient to nourish us, seems to make no scruple of speaking things contradictory to himself.
[De Stoic. rep. 22] Moreover, having said in his book of Exhortations, that the having carnal commerce with our mothers, daughters, or sisters, the eating forbidden food, and the going from a woman’s bed or a dead carcass to the temple, have been without reason blamed, he affirms, that we ought for these things to have a regard to the brute beasts, and from what is done by them conclude that none of these is absurd or contrary to Nature; for that the comparisons of other animals are fitly made for this purpose, to show that neither their coupling, bringing-forth, nor dying in the temples pollutes the Divinity. Yet he again in his Fifth Book of Nature says, that Hesiod rightly forbids urinating into rivers and fountains, and that we should rather abstain from doing this against any altar, or statue of the gods; and that it is not to be admitted for an argument, that dogs, asses, and young children do it, who have no discretion or consideration of such things. It is therefore absurd to say in one place, that the savage example of irrational animals is fit to he considered, and in another, that it is unreasonable to allege it.
[De Stoic. rep. 23] To give a solution to the inclinations, when a man seems to be necessitated by exterior causes, some philosophers place in the principal faculty of the soul a certain adventitious motion, which is chiefly manifested in things differing in no way from one another. For when, with two things altogether alike and of equal importance, there is a necessity to choose the one, there being no cause inclining to either, for that neither of them differs from the other, this adventitious power of the soul, seizing on its inclination, determines the doubt. Chrysippus, discoursing against these men, as offering violence to Nature by imagining an effect without a cause, in many places alleges the die and the balance, and several other things, which cannot fall or incline either one way or the other without some cause or difference, either wholly within them or coming to them from without; for that what is causeless (he says) is wholly insubsistent, as also what is fortuitous; and in those motions devised by some and called adventitious, there occur certain obscure causes, which, being concealed from us, move our inclinations to one side or other. These are some of those things which are most evidently known to have been frequently said by him; but what he has said contrary to this, not lying so exposed to every one’s sight, I will set down in his own words. For in his book of Judging, having supposed two running for a wager to have exactly finished their race together, he examines what is fit for the judge in this case to do. “Whether,” says he, “may the judge give the palm to which of them he will, since they both happen to be so familiar to him, that he would in some sort appear to bestow on them somewhat of his own? Or rather, since the palm is common to both, may it be, as if lots had been cast, given to either, according to the inclination he chances to have? I say the inclination he chances to have, as when two groats, every way else alike, being presented to us, we incline to one of them and take it.” And in his Sixth Book of Duties, having said that there are some things not worthy of much study or attention, he thinks we ought, as if we had cast lots, to commit the choice of those things to the casual inclination of the mind: “As if,” says he, “of those who try the same two drams in a certain time, some should approve this and others that, and there being no more cause for the taking of one than the other, we should leave off making any farther investigation and take that which chances to come first; thus casting the lot (as it were) according to some uncertain principle, and being in danger of choosing the worse of them.” For in these passages, the casting of lots and the casual inclining of the mind, which is without any cause, introduce the choice of indifferent things.
[De Stoic. rep. 24] In his Third Book of Dialectics, having said that Plato, Aristotle, and those who came after them, even to Polemon and Straton, but especially Socrates, diligently studied dialectics, and having cried out that one would even choose to err with such and so great men as these, he brings in these words: “For if they had spoken of these things cursorily, one might perhaps have cavilled at this place; but having treated of dialectic skill as one of the greatest and most necessary faculties, it is not probable they should have been so much mistaken, having been such in all the parts of philosophy as we esteem them.” Why, then (might some one say to him), do you never cease to oppose and argue against such and so great men, as if you thought them to err in the principal and greatest matters? For it is not probable that they writ seriously of dialectics, and only transitorily and in sport of the beginning, end, gods, and justice, in which you affirm their discourse to be blind and contradictory to itself, and to have a thousand other faults.
[De Stoic. rep. 25] In one place he says, that the vice called [Greek omitted], or the rejoicing at other men’s harms, has no being; since no good man ever rejoiced at another’s evils. But in his Second Book of Good, having declared envy to be a sorrow at other men’s good, — to wit, in such as desire the depression of their neighbors that themselves may excel, he joins to it this rejoicing at other men’s harms, saying thus: “To this is contiguous the rejoicing at other men’s harms, in such as for like causes desire to have their neighbors low; but in those that are turned according to other natural motions, is engendered mercy.” For he manifestly admits the joy at other men’s harms to be subsistent, as well as envy and mercy; though in other places he affirms it to have no subsistence; as he does also the hatred of wickedness, and the desire of dishonest gain.
[De Stoic. rep. 26] Having in many places said, that those who have a long time been happy are nothing more so, but equally and in like manner with those who have but a moment been partakers of felicity, he has again in many other places affirmed, that it is not fit to stretch out so much as a finger for the obtaining momentary prudence, which flies away like a flash of lightning. It will be sufficient to set down what is to this purpose written by him in his Sixth Book of Moral Questions. For having said, that neither does every good thing equally cause joy, nor every good deed the like glorying, he subjoins these words: “For if a man should have wisdom only for a moment of time or the final minute of life, he ought not so much as to stretch out his finger for such a shortlived prudence.” And yet men are neither more happy for being longer so, nor is eternal felicity more eligible than that which lasts but a moment. If he had indeed held prudence to be a good, producing felicity, as Epicurus thought, one should have blamed only the absurdity and the paradoxicalness of this opinion; but since prudence of itself is not another thing differing from felicity, but felicity itself, how is it not a contradiction to say, that momentary happiness is equally desirable with eternal, and yet that momentary happiness is nothing worth?
[De Stoic. rep. 27] Chrysippus also says, that the virtues follow one another, and that not only he who has one has all, but also that he who acts according to any one of them acts according to them all; and he affirms, that there is not any man perfect who is not possessed of all the virtues, nor any action perfect to the doing of which all the virtues do not concur. But yet in his Sixth Book of Moral Questions he says, that a good man does not always act valiantly, nor a vicious man always fearfully; for certain objects being presented to the fancies, the one must persist in his judgments, and the other depart from them; and he says that it is not probable a wicked man should be always indulging his lust. If then to act valiantly is the same thing as to use fortitude; and to act timorously as to yield to fear, they cannot but speak contradictions who say, that he who is possessed of either virtue or vice acts at she same time according to all the virtues or all the vices, and yet that a valiant man does not always act valiantly nor a vicious man timorously.
[De Stoic. rep. 28] He defines Rhetoric to be an art concerning the ornament and the ordering of a discourse that is pronounced. And farther in his First Book he has written thus: “And I am of opinion not only that a regard ought to be had to a liberal and simple adorning of words, but also that care is to be taken for proper delivery, as regards the right elevation of the voice and the compositions of the countenance and hands.” Yet he, who is in this place so curious and exact, again in the same book, speaking of the collision of the vowels, says: “We ought not only to let these things pass, minding somewhat that is better, but also to neglect certain obscurities and defects, nay, solecisms also, of which others, and those not a few, would be ashamed.” Certainly, in one place to allow those who would speak eloquently so carefully to dispose their speech as even to observe a decorum in the very composition of their mouth and hands, and in another place to forbid the taking care of defects and inelegancies, and the being ashamed even of committing solecisms, is the property of a man who little cares what he says, but rashly utters whatever comes first into his mouth.
[De Stoic. rep. 29] Moreover, in his Natural Positions having warned us not to trouble ourselves but to be at quiet about such things as require experience and scientific investigation, he says: “Let us not think after the same manner with Plato, that liquid nourishment is conveyed to the lungs, and dry to the stomach; nor let us embrace other errors like to these.” Now it is my opinion, that to reprehend others, and then not to keep one’s self from falling into those things which one has reprehended, is the greatest of contradictions and shamefullest of errors. But he says, that the connections made by ten axioms amount to above a million in number, having neither searched diligently into it by himself nor attained to the truth by men experienced in it. Yet Plato had to testify for him the most renowned of the physicians, Hippocrates, Philistion, and Dioxippus the disciple of Hippocrates; and of the poets, Euripides, Aleaeus, Eupolis, and Eratosthenes, who all say that the drink passes through the lungs. But all the arithmeticians refute Chrysippus, amongst whom also is Hipparchus, demonstrating that the error of his computation is very great; since the affirmative makes of the ten axioms one hundred and three thousand forty and nine connections, and the negative three hundred and ten thousand nine hundred fifty and two.
[De Stoic. rep. 30] Some of the ancients have said, that the same befell Zeno which befalls him who has sour wine which he can sell neither for vinegar nor wine; for his “things preferable,” as he called them, cannot be disposed of, either as good or as indifferent. But Chrysippus has made the matter yet far more intricate; for he sometimes says, that they are mad who make no account of riches, health, freedom from pain, and integrity of the body, nor take any care to attain them; and having cited that sentence of Hesiod,
[De Stoic. rep. 30b] Work hard, O God-born Perses,(“Works and Days,” 299.)
he cries out, that it would be a madness to advise the contrary and say,
Work not, O God-born Perses.
[De Stoic. rep. 30c] And in his book of Lives he affirms, that a wise man will for the sake of gain live with kings, and teach for money, receiving from some of his scholars his reward beforehand, and making contract with others of them; and in his Seventh Book of Duties he says, that he will not scruple to turn his heels thrice over his head, if for so doing he may have a talent. In his First Book of Good Things, he yields and grants to those that desire it to call these preferable things good and their contraries evil, in these very words: “Any one who likes, according to these permutations, may call one thing good and another evil, if he has a regard to the things themselves, not wandering elsewhere, not failing in the understanding of the thing signified, and in the rest accommodating himself to custom in the denomination.” Having thus in this place set his things preferable so near to good, and mixed them therewith, he again says, that none of these things belongs at all to us, but that reason withdraws and averts us from all such things; for he has written thus in his First Book of Exhortations. And in his Third Book of Nature he says, that some esteem those happy who reign and are rich, which is all one as if those should be reputed happy who make water in golden chamber-pots and wear golden fringes; but to a good man the losing of his whole estate is but as the losing of one groat, and the being sick no more than if he had stumbled. Wherefore he has not filled virtue only, but Providence also, with these contradictions. For virtue would seem to the utmost degree sordid and foolish, if it should busy itself about such matters, and enjoin a wise man for their sake to sail to Bosphorus or tumble with his heels over his head. And Jupiter would be very ridiculous to be styled Ctesius, Epicarpius, and Charitodotes, because forsooth he gives the wicked golden chamber-pots and golden fringes, and the good such things as are hardly worth a groat, when through Jupiter’s providence they become rich. And yet much more ridiculous is Apollo, if he sits to give oracles concerning golden fringes and chamber-pots and the recovering of a stumble.
[De Stoic. rep. 31] But they make this repugnancy yet more evident by their demonstration. For they say, that what may be used both well and ill, the same is neither good nor bad; but fools make an ill use of riches, health, and strength of body; therefore none of these is good. If therefore God gives not virtue to men, — but honesty is eligible of itself, — and yet bestows on them riches and health without virtue, he confers them on those who can use them not well but ill, that is hurtfully, shamefully, and perniciously. Now, if the gods can bestow virtue and do not, they are not good; but if they cannot make men good, neither can they help them, for outside of virtue nothing is good and advantageous. Now to judge those who are otherwise made good according to virtue and strength . . . is nothing to the purpose, for good men also judge the gods according to virtue and strength; so that they do no more aid men than they are aided by them.
[De Stoic. rep. 31b] Now Chrysippus neither professes himself nor any one of his disciples and teachers to be virtuous. What then do they think of others, but those things which they say, — that they are all mad fools, impious, transgressors of laws, and in the most degree of misery and unhappiness? And yet they say that our affairs, though we act thus miserably, are governed by the providence of the gods. Now if the gods, changing their minds, should desire to hurt, afflict, overthrow, and quite crush us, they could not put us in a worse condition than we already are; as Chrysippus demonstrates that life can admit only one degree either of misery or of unhappiness; so that if it had a voice, it would pronounce these words of Hercules:
[De Stoic. rep. 31c] I am so full of miseries, there isNo place to stow them in.(Euripides, “Hercules Furens,” 124 5.)
[De Stoic. rep. 31d] Now who can imagine any assertions more repugnant to one another than chat of Chrysippus concerning the gods and that concerning men; when he says, that the gods do in the best manner possible provide for men, and yet men are in the worst condition imaginable?
[De Stoic. rep. 32] Some of the Pythagoreans blame him for having in his book of Justice written concerning cocks, that they are usefully procreated, because they awaken us from our sleep, hunt out scorpions, and animate us to battle, breeding in us a certain emulation to show courage; and yet that we must eat them, lest the number of chickens should be greater than were expedient. But he so derides those who blame him for this, that he has written thus concerning Jupiter the Saviour and Creator, the father of justice, equity, and peace, in his Third Book of the Gods: “As cities overcharged with too great a number of citizens send forth colonies into other places and make war upon some, so does God give the beginnings of corruption.” And he brings in Euripides for a witness, with others who say that the Trojan war was caused by the gods, to exhaust the multitude of men.
[De Stoic. rep. 32b] But letting pass their other absurdities (for our design is not to inquire what they have said amiss, but only what they have said dissonantly to themselves), consider how he always attributes to the gods specious and kind appellations, but at the same time cruel, barbarous, and Galatian deeds. For those so great slaughters and earnages, as were the productions of the Trojan war and again of the Persian and Peloponnesian, were no way like to colonies unless these men know of some cities built in hell and under the earth. But Chrysippus makes God like to Deiotarus, the Galatian king, who having many sons, and being desirous to leave his kingdom and house to one of them, killed all the rest; as he that cuts and prunes away all the other branches from the vine, that one which he leaves remaining may grow strong and great. And yet the vine-dresser does this, the sprigs being slender and weak; and we, to favor a bitch, take from her many of her new-born puppies, whilst they are yet blind. But Jupiter, having not only suffered and seen men to grow up, but having also both created and increased them, plagues them afterwards, devising occasions of their destruction and corruption; whereas he should rather not have given them any causes and beginnings of generation.
[De Stoic. rep. 33] However, this is but a small matter; but that which follows is greater. For there is no war amongst men without vice. But sometimes the love of pleasure, sometimes the love of money, and sometimes the love of glory and rule is the cause of it. If therefore God is the author of wars, he must be also of sins, provoking and perverting men. And yet himself says in his treatise of Judgment and his Second Book of the Gods, that it is no way rational to say that the Divinity is in any respect the cause of dishonesty. For as the law can in no way be the cause of transgression, so neither can the gods of being impious; therefore neither is it rational that they should be the causes of anything that is filthy. What therefore can be more filthy to men than the mutual killing of one another? — to which Chrysippus says that God gives beginnings. But some one perhaps will say, that he elsewhere praises Euripides for saying,
[De Stoic. rep. 33b] If gods do aught dishonest, they’re no gods;
and again,
[De Stoic. rep. 33c] ‘Tis a most easy thing t’ accuse the gods;(From the “Bellerophontes” of Euripides, Frag. 294;and the “Archelaus,” Frag. 256.)
[De Stoic. rep. 34] as if we were now doing anything else than setting down such words and sentences of his as are repugnant to one another. Yet that very thing which is now praised may be objected, not once or twice or thrice, but even ten thousand times, against Chrysippus: —
[De Stoic. rep. 34b] ‘Tis a most easy thing t’ accuse the gods.
[De Stoic. rep. 34c] For first having in his book of Nature compared the eternity ofmotion to a drink made of divers species confusedly mixed together,turning and jumbling the things that are made, some this way,others that way, he goes on thus: “Now the administration of theuniverse proceeding in this manner, it is of necessity we should bein the condition we are, whether contrary to our own nature we aresick or maimed, or whether we are grammarians or musicians.”And again a little after, “According to this reason we shall saythe like of our virtue and vice, and generally of arts or theignorance of arts, as I have said.” And a little after, takingaway all ambiguity, he says: “For no particular thing, not even theleast, can be otherwise than according to common Nature and itsreason.” But that common Nature and the common reason of Natureare with him Fate and Providence and Jupiter, is not unknown evento the antipodes. For these things are everywhere inculcated inthe Stoic system; and Chrysippus affirms that Homer said very well,
[De Stoic. rep. 34d] Jove’s purposes were ripening,(“Iliad,” i. 5.)
having respect to Fate and the Nature of the universe, according to which everything is governed. How then do these agree, both that God is no way the cause of any dishonest thing, and again, that not even the least thing imaginable can be otherwise done than according to common Nature and its reason? For amongst all things that are done, there must of necessity be also evil things attributed to the gods. And though Epicurus indeed turns himself every way, and studies artifices, devising how to deliver and set loose our voluntary free will from this eternal motion, that he may not leave vice irreprehensible; yet Chrysippus gives vice a most absolute liberty, as being done not only of necessity or according to Fate, but also according to the reason of God and best Nature. And these things are yet farther seen in what he says afterwards, being thus word for word: “For common Nature extending to all things, it will be of necessity that everything, howsoever done in the whole or in any one soever of its parts, must be done according to this common Nature and its reason, proceeding on regularly without any impediment. For there is nothing without that can hinder the administration, nor is there any of the parts that can be moved or habituated otherwise than according to common Nature.” What, then, are these habits and motions of the parts? It is manifest, that the habits are vices and diseases, covetousness, luxury, ambition, cowardice, injustice; and that the motions are adulteries, thefts, treasons, murders, parricides. Of these Chrysippus thinks, that no one, either little or great, is contrary to the reason of Jupiter, or to his law, justice, and providence; so neither is the transgressing of the law done against the law, nor the acting unjustly against justice, nor the committing of sin against Providence.
[De Stoic. rep. 35] And yet he says, that God punishes vice, and does many things for the chastising of the wicked. And in his Second Book of the Gods he says, that many adversities sometimes befall the good, not as they do the wicked, for punishment, but according to another dispensation, as it is in cities. And again in these words: “First we are to understand of evils in like manner as has been said before: then that these things are distributed according to the reason of Jupiter, whether for punishment, or according to some other dispensation, having in some sort respect to the universe.” This therefore is indeed severe, that wickedness is both done and punished according to the reason of Jupiter. But he aggravates this contradiction in his Second Book of Nature, writing thus: “Vice in reference to grievous accidents, has a certain reason of its own. For it is also in some sort according to the reason of Nature, and, as I may so say, is not wholly useless in respect of the universe. For otherwise also there would not be any good.” Thus does he reprehend those that dispute indifferently on both sides, who, out of a desire to say something wholly singular and more exquisite concerning everything, affirms, that men do not unprofitably cut purses, calumniate, and play madmen, and that it is not unprofitable there should be unprofitable, hurtful, and unhappy persons. What manner of god then is Jupiter, — I mean Chrysippus’s Jupiter, — who punishes an act done neither willingly nor unprofitably? For vice is indeed, according to Chrysippus’s discourse, wholly reprehensible; but Jupiter is to be blamed, whether he has made vice which is an unprofitable thing, or, having made it not unprofitable, punishes it.
[De Stoic. rep. 36] Again, in his First Book of Justice, having spoken of the gods as resisting the injustices of some, he says: “But wholly to take away vice is neither possible nor expedient.” Whether it were not better that law-breaking, injustice, and folly should be taken away, is not the design of this present discourse to inquire. But he himself, as much as in him lies, by his philosophy taking away vice, which it is not expedient to take away, does something repugnant both to reason and God. Besides this, saying that God resists some injustices, he again makes plain the impiety of sins.
[De Stoic. rep. 37] Having often written that there is nothing reprehensible, nothing to be complained of in the world, all things being finished according to a most excellent nature, he again elsewhere leaves certain negligences to be reprehended, and those not concerning small or base matters. For having in his Third Book of Substance related that some such things befall honest and good men, he says: “May it not be that some things are not regarded, as in great families some bran — yea, and some grains of corn also — are scattered, the generality being nevertheless well ordered; or maybe there are evil Genii set over those things in which there are real and faulty negligence?” And he also affirms that there is much necessity intermixed. I let pass, how inconsiderate it is to compare such accidents befalling honest and good men, as were the condemnation of Socrates, the burning of Pythagoras, whilst he was yet living, by the Cyloneans, the putting to death — and that with torture — of Zeno by the tyrant Demylus, and of Antiphon by Dionysius, with the letting of bran fall. But that there should be evil Genii placed by Providence over such charges, — how can it but be a reproach to God, as it would be to a king, to commit the administration of his provinces to evil and rash governors and captains, and suffer the best of his subjects to be despised and ill-treated by them? And furthermore, if there is much necessity mixed amongst affairs, then God has not power over them all, nor are they all administered according to his reason.
[De Stoic. rep. 38] He contends much against Epicurus and those that take away providence from the conceptions we have of the gods, whom we esteem beneficial and gracious to men. And these things being frequently said by them, there is no necessity of setting down the words. Yet all do not conceive the gods to be good and favorable to us. For see what the Jews and Syrians think of the gods; consider also with how much superstition the poets are filled. But there is not any one, in a manner to speak of, that imagines God to be corruptible or to have been born. And to omit all others, Antipater the Tarsian, in his book of the gods writes thus, word for word: “At the opening of our discourse we will briefly repeat the opinion we have concerning God. We understand therefore God to be an animal, blessed and incorruptible, and beneficial to men.” And then expounding every one of these terms he says: “And indeed all men esteem the gods to be incorruptible.” Chrysippus therefore is, according to Antipater, not one of “all men”; for he thinks none of the gods, except Fire, to be incorruptible, but that they all equally were born and will die.
[De Stoic. rep. 38b] These things are, in a manner, everywhere said by him. But I will set down his words out of his Third Book of the Gods: “It is otherwise with the gods. For some of them are born and corruptible, but others not born. And to demonstrate these things from the beginning will be more fit for a treatise of Nature. For the Sun, the Moon, and other gods who are of a like nature, were begotten; but Jupiter is eternal.” And again going on: “But the like will be said concerning dying and being born, both concerning the other gods and Jupiter. For they indeed are corruptible, but his past incorruptible.” With these I compare a few of the things said by Antipater: “Whosoever they are that take away from the gods beneficence, they affect in some part our conception of them; and according to the same reason they also do this, who think they participate of generation and corruption.” If, then, he who esteems the gods corruptible is equally absurd with him who thinks them not to be provident and gracious to men, Chrysippus is no less in an error than Epicurus.
[De Stoic. rep. 39] For one of them deprives the gods of beneficence, the other of incorruptibility. ============ And moreover, Chrysippus, in his Third Book of the Gods treating of the other gods being nourished, says thus: “The other gods indeed use nourishment, being equally sustained by it; but Jupiter and the World are maintained after another manner from those who are consumed and were engendered by fire.” Here indeed he declares, that all the other gods are nourished except the World and Jupiter; but in his First Book of Providence he says: “Jupiter increases till he has consumed all things into himself. For since death is the separation of the soul from the body, and the soul of the World is not indeed separated, but increases continually till it has consumed all matter into itself, it is not to be said that the World dies.” Who can therefore appear to speak things more contradictory to himself than he who says that the same god is now nourished and again not nourished?
[De Stoic. rep. 39b] Nor is there any need of gathering this by argument: for himself has plainly written in the same place: “But the World alone is said to be self-sufficient, because it alone has in itself all things it stands in need of, and is nourished and augmented of itself, the other parts being mutually changed into one another.” He is then repugnant to himself, not only by declaring in one place that all the gods are nourished except the World and Jupiter, and saying in another, that the World also is nourished; but much more, when he affirms that the World increases by nourishing itself. Now the contrary had been much more probable, to wit, that the World alone does not increase, having its own destruction for its food; but that addition and increase are incident to the other gods, who are nourished from without, and the World is rather consumed into them, if so it is that the World feeds on itself, and they always receive something and are nourished from that.
[De Stoic. rep. 40] Secondly, the conception of the gods contains in it felicity, blessedness, and self-perfection. Wherefore also Euripides is commanded for saying: —
[De Stoic. rep. 40b] For God, if truly God, does nothing want, So all these speeches are the poets’ cant.(“Hercules Furens,” 134 5.)
[De Stoic. rep. 40c] But Chrysippus in the places I have alleged says, that the World only is self-sufficient, because this alone has in itself all things it needs. What then follows from this, that the World alone is self-sufficient? That neither the Sun, Moon, nor any other of the gods is self-sufficient, and not being self-sufficient, they cannot be happy or blessed.
[De Stoic. rep. 41] He says, that the infant in the womb is nourished by Nature, like a plant; but when it is brought forth, being cooled and hardened by the air, it changes its spirit and becomes an animal; whence the soul is not unfitly named Psyche because of this refrigeration [Greek omitted]. But again he esteems the soul the more subtile and fine spirit of Nature, therein contradicting himself; for how can a subtile thing be made of a gross one, and be rarefied by refrigeration and condensation? And what is more, how does he, declaring an animal to be made by refrigeration, think the sun to be animated, which is of fire and made of an exhalation changed into fire? For he says in his Third Book of Nature: “Now the change of fire is such, that it is turned by the air into water; and the earth subsiding from this, the air exhales; the air being subtilized, the ether is produced round about it; and the stars are, with the sun, kindled from the sea.” Now what is more contrary to kindling than refrigeration, or to rarefaction than condensation? For the one makes water and earth of fire and air, and the other changes that which is moist and earthy into fire and air. But yet in one place he makes kindling, in another cooling, to be the beginning of animation. And he moreover says, that when the inflammation is throughout, it lives and is an animal, but being again extinct and thickened, it is turned into water and earth and corporeity. Now in his First Book of Providence he says: “For the world, indeed, being wholly set on fire, is presently also the soul and guide of itself; but when it is changed into moisture, and has altered the soul remaining within it by some method into a body and soul, so as to consist of these two it exists then after another manner.” Here, forsooth, he plainly says, that the inanimate parts of the world are by inflammation turned into an animated thing, and that again by extinction the soul is relaxed and moistened, being changed into corporeity. He seems therefore very absurd, one while by refrigeration making animals of senseless things, and again, by the same changing the greatest part of the world’s soul into senseless and inanimate things.
[De Stoic. rep. 41b] But besides this, his discourse concerning the generation of the soul has a demonstration contrary to his own opinion; or he says, that the soul is generated when the infant is already brought forth, the spirit being changed by refrigeration, as by hardening. Now for the soul’s being engendered, and that after the birth, he chiefly uses this demonstration, that the children are for the most part in manners and inclinations like to their parents. Now the repugnancy of these things is evident. For it is not possible that the soul, which is not generated till after the birth, should have its inclination before the birth; or it will fall out that the soul is like before it is generated; that is, it will be in likeness, and yet not be, because it is not yet generated. But if any one says that, the likeness being bred in the tempers of the bodies, the souls are changed when they are generated, he destroys the argument of the soul’s being generated. For thus it may come to pass, that the soul, though not generated, may at its entrance into the body be changed by the mixture of likeness.
[De Stoic. rep. 42] He says sometimes, that the air is light and mounts upwards, and sometimes, that it is neither heavy nor light. For in his Second Book of Motion he says, that the fire, being without gravity, ascends upwards, and the air like to that; the water approaching more to the earth, and the air to the fire. But in his Physical Arts he inclines to the other opinion, that the air of itself has neither gravity nor levity.
[De Stoic. rep. 43] He says that the air is by nature dark, and uses this as an argument of its being also the first cold; for that its darkness is opposite to the brightness, and its coldness to the heat of fire. Moving this in his First Book of Natural Questions, he again in his treatise of Habits says, that habits are nothing else but airs; for bodies are contained by these, and the cause that every one of the bodies contained in any habit is such as it is, is the containing air, which they call in iron hardness, in stone solidness, in silver whiteness. These words have in them much absurdity and contradiction. For if the air remains such as it is of its own nature, how comes black, in that which is not white, to be made whiteness; and soft, in that which is not hard, to be made hardness; and rare, in that which is not thick, to be made thickness? But if, being mixed with these, it is altered and made like to them, how is it a habit or power or cause of these things by which it is subdued? For such a change, by which it loses its own qualities, is the property of a patient, not of an agent, and not of a thing containing, but of a thing languishing. Yet they everywhere affirm, that matter, being of its own nature idle and motionless, is subjected to qualities, and that the qualities are spirits, which, being also aerial tensions, give a form and figure to every part of matter to which they adhere. These things they cannot rationally say, supposing the air to be such as they affirm it. For if it is a habit and tension, it will assimilate every body to itself, so that it shall be black and soft. But if by the mixture with these things it receives forms contrary to those it has, it will be in some sort the matter, and not the cause or power of matter.
[De Stoic. rep. 44] It is often said by Chrysippus, that there is without the world an infinite vacuum, and that this infinity has neither beginning, middle, nor end. And by this the Stoics chiefly refute that spontaneous motion of the atoms downward, which is taught by Epicurus; there not being in infinity any difference according to which one thing is thought to be above, another below. But in his Fourth Book of Things Possible, having supposed a certain middle place and middle region, he says that the world is situated there. The words are these: “Wherefore, if it is to be said of the world that it is corruptible, this seems to want proof; yet nevertheless it rather appears to me to be so. However, its occupation of the place wherein it stands cooperates very much towards its immunity from corruption, because it is in the midst; since if it were conceived to be anywhere else, corruption would absolutely happen to it.” And again, a little after: “For so also in a manner has essence happened eternally to possess the middle place, being immediately from the beginning such as it is; so that both by another manner and through this chance it admits not any corruption, and is therefore eternal.” These words have one apparent and visible contradiction, to wit, his admitting a certain middle place and middle region infinity.
[De Stoic. rep. 44b] They have also a second, more obscure indeed, but withal more absurd than this. For thinking that the world would not have remained incorruptible if its situation had happened to have been in any other part of the vacuum, he manifestly appears to have feared lest, the parts of essence moving towards the middle, there should be a dissolution and corruption of the world. Now this he would not have feared, had he not thought that bodies do by nature tend from every place towards the middle, not of essence, but of the region containing essence; of which also he has frequently spoken, as of a thing impossible and contrary to Nature; for that (as he says) there is not in the vacuum any difference by which bodies are drawn rather this way than that way, but the construction of the world is the cause of motion, bodies inclining and being carried from every side to the centre and middle of it.
[De Stoic. rep. 44c] It is sufficient to this purpose, to set down the text out of his Second Book of Motion; for having discoursed, that the world indeed is a perfect body, but that the parts of the world are not perfect, because they have in some sort respect to the whole and are not of themselves; and going forward concerning its motion, as having been framed by Nature to be moved by all its parts towards compaction and cohesion, and not towards dissolution and breaking, he says thus: “But the universe thus tending and being moved to the same point, and the arts having the same motion from the nature of the body, it is probable that all bodies have this first motion according to Nature towards the centre of the world, — the world being thus moved as concerns itself, and the parts being moved as being its parts.” What, then, ailed you, good sir (might some one say to him), that you have so far forgotten those words, as to affirm that the world, if it had not casually possessed the middle place, would have been dissoluble and corruptible?
[De Stoic. rep. 44d] For if it is by nature so framed as always to incline towards the middle, and its parts from every side tend to the same, into what place soever of the vacuum it should have been transposed, — thus containing and (as it were) embracing itself, — it would have remained incorruptible and without danger of breaking. For things that are broken and dissipated suffer this by the separation and dissolution of their parts, every one of them hasting to its own place from that which it had contrary to Nature. But you, being of opinion that, if the world should have been seated in any other place of the vacuum, it would have been wholly liable to corruption, and affirming the same, and therefore asserting a middle in that which naturally can have no middle, — to wit, in that which is infinite, — have indeed dismissed these tensions, coherences, and inclinations, as having nothing available to its preservation, and attributed all the cause of its permanency to the possession of place.
[De Stoic. rep. 44e] And, as if you were ambitious to confute yourself, to the things you have said before you join this also: “In whatsoever manner every one of the parts moves, being coherent to the rest, it is agreeable to reason that in the same also the whole should move by itself; yea, though we should, for argument’s sake, imagine and suppose it to be in some vacuity of this world; for as, being kept in on every side, it would move towards the middle, so it would continue in the same motion, though by way of disputation we should admit that there were on a sudden a vacuum round about it.” No part then whatsoever, though encompassed by a vacuum, loses its inclination moving it towards the middle of the world; but the world itself, if chance had not prepared it a place in the middle, would have lost its containing vigor, the parts of its essence being carried some one way, some another.
[De Stoic. rep. 45] And these things indeed contain great contradictions to natural reason; but this is also repugnant to the doctrine concerning God and Providence, that assigning to them the least causes, he takes from them the most principal and greatest. For what is more principal than the permanency of the world, or that its essence, united in its parts, is contained in itself? But this, as Chrysippus says, fell out casually. For if the possession of place is the cause of incorruptibility, and this was the production of chance, it is manifest that the preservation of the universe is a work of chance, and not of Fate and Providence.
[De Stoic. rep. 46] Now, as for his doctrine of possibles, how can it but be repugnant to his doctrine of Fate? For if that is not possible which either is true or shall be true, as Diodorus has it, but everything which is capable of being, though it never shall be, is possible, there will be many things possible which will never be according to invincible, inviolable, and all-conquering Fate. And thus either Fate will lose its power; or if that, as Chrysippus thinks, has existence, that which is susceptible of being will often fall out to be impossible. And everything indeed which is true will be necessary, being comprehended by the principal of all necessities; and everything that is false will be impossible, having the greatest cause to oppose its ever being true. For how is it possible that he should be susceptible of dying on the land, who is destined to die at sea? And how is it possible for him who is at Megara to come to Athens, if he is prohibited by Fate?
[De Stoic. rep. 47] But moreover, the things that are boldly asserted by him concerning fantasies or imaginations are very opposite to Fate. For desiring to show that fantasy is not of itself a perfect cause of consent, he says, that the Sages will prejudice us by imprinting false imaginations in our minds, if fantasies do of themselves absolutely cause consent; for wise men often make use of falsity against the wicked, representing a probable imagination, — which is yet not the cause of consent, for then it would be also a cause of false apprehension and error. Any one therefore, transferring these things from the wise man to Fate, may say, that consents are not caused by Fate; for if they were, false consents and opinions and deceptions would also be by Fate. Thus the reason which exempts the wise man from doing hurt also demonstrates at the same time that Fate is not the cause of all things. For if men neither opine nor are prejudiced by Fate, it is manifest also that they neither act rightly nor are wise nor remain firm in their sentiments nor have utility by Fate, but that there is an end of Fate’s being the cause of all things. Now if any one shall say that Chrysippus makes not Fate the absolute cause of all things, but only a PROCATARCLICAL (or antecedent) one, he will again show that he is contradictory to himself, since he excessively praises Homer for saying of Jupiter,
[De Stoic. rep. 47b] Receive whatever good or ill He sends to each of you;
as also Euripides for these words,
[De Stoic. rep. 47c] O Jove, how can I say that wretched we,Poor mortals, aught do understand? On thee We all depend, and nothing can transact, But as thy sacred wisdom shall enact.(Euripides, “Suppliants,” 734.)
[De Stoic. rep. 47d] And himself writes many things agreeable to these. In fine, he says that nothing, be it never so little, either rests or is moved otherwise than according to the reason of Jupiter, which is the same thing with Fate. Moreover, the antecedent cause is weaker than the absolute one, and attains not to its effect when it is subdued by others that rise up against it. But he himself declaring Fate to be an invincible, unimpeachable, and inflexible cause, calls it Atropos, (That is, Unchangeable.) Adrasteia, (That is, Unavoidable.) Necessity, and Pepromene (as putting a limit to all things). Whether then shall we say, that neither consents nor virtues nor vices nor doing well nor doing ill is in our power? Or shall we affirm, that Fate is deficient, that terminating destiny is unable to determine, and that the motions and habits of Jupiter cannot be effective? For the one of these two consequences will follow from Fate’s being an absolute, the other from its being only an antecedent cause. For if it is an absolute cause, it takes away our free will and leaves nothing in our control; and if it is only antecedent, it loses its being unimpeachable and effectual. For not once or ten times, but everywhere, especially in his Physics, he has written, that there are many obstacles and impediments to particular natures and motions, but none to that of the universe. And how can the motion of the universe, extending as it does to particular ones, be undisturbed and unimpeached, if these are stopped and hindered? For neither can the nature of man be free from impediment, if that of the foot or hand is not so; nor can the motion of a ship but be hindered, if there are any obstacles about the sails or the operation of the oars.
[De Stoic. rep. 47e] Besides all this, if the fantasies are not according to Fate, neither are they causes of consents; but if, because it imprints fantasies leading to consent, the consents are said to be according to Fate, how is it not contrary to itself, imprinting in the greatest matters different imaginations and such as draw the understanding contrary ways? For (they say) those who adhere to one of them, and withhold not their consent, do amiss: if they yield to obscure things, they stumble; if to false, they are deceived; if to such as are not commonly comprehended, they opine. And yet one of these three is of necessity, — either that every fantasy is not the work of Fate, or that every receipt and consent of fantasy is faultless, or that Fate itself is not irreprehensible. For I do not know how it can be blameless, proposing to us such fantasies that not the resisting or going against them, but the following and yielding to them, is blamable. Moreover, both Chrysippus and Antipater, in their disputes against the Academics, take not a little pains to prove that we neither act nor are incited without consent, saying, that they build on fictions and false suppositions who think that, a proper fantasy being presented, we are presently incited, without having either yielded or consented. Again, Chrysippus says, that God imprints in us false imaginations, as does also the wise man; not that they would have us consent or yield to them, but only that we should act and be incited with regard to that which appears; but we, being evil, do through infirmity consent to such fantasies. Now, the perplexity and discrepancy of these discourses among themselves are not very difficult to be discerned. For he that would not have men consent but only act according to the fantasies which he offers unto them — whether he be God or a wise man — knows that the fantasies are sufficient for acting, and that consents are superfluous. For if, knowing that the imagination gives us not an instinct to work without consent, he ministers to us false and probable fantasies, he is the voluntary cause of our falling and erring by assenting to incomprehensible things.

## The Stoics speak more paradoxically than the poets

[Stoic. absurd. poet. 1] Pinder’s Caeneus hath been taken to task by several, for being improbably feigned, impenetrable by steel and impassible in his body, and so
[Stoic. absurd. poet. 2] Descending, into hell without a wound. And with sound foot parting in two the ground.
But the Stoics’ Lapithes, as if they had carved him out of the very adamantine matter of impassibility itself, though he is not invulnerable, nor exempt from either sickness or pain, yet remains fearless, regretless, invincible, and unconstrainable in the midst of wounds, dolors, and torments, and in the very subversions of the walls of his native city, and other such like great calamities. Again, Pindar’s Caeneus is not wounded when struck; but the Stoics’ wise man is not detained when shut up in a prison, suffers no compulsion by being thrown down a precipice, is not tortured when on the rack, takes no hurt by being maimed, and when he catches a fall in wrestling he is still unconquered; when he is encompassed with a rampire, he is not besieged; and when sold by his enemies, he is still not made a prisoner. The wonderful man is like to those ships that have inscribed upon them A PROSPEROUS VOYAGE, OR PROTECTING PROVIDENCE, or A PRESERVATIVE AGAINST DANGERS, and yet for all that endure storms, and are miserably shattered and overturned. Euripides’s Iolaus of a feeble, superannuated old man, by means of a certain prayer, became on a sudden youthful and strong for battle; but the Stoics wise man was yesterday most detestable and the worst of villains, but today is changed on a sudden into a state of virtue, and is become of a wrinkled, pale fellow, and as Aeschylus speaks,
[Stoic. absurd. poet. 2b] Of an old sickly wretch with stitch in ‘s back, Distent with rending pains as on a rack,
[Stoic. absurd. poet. 2c] gallant, godlike, and beauteous person.
[Stoic. absurd. poet. 3] The goddess Minerva took from Ulysses his wrinkles, baldness, and deformity, to make him appear a handsome man. But these men’s wise man, though old age quits not his body, but contrariwise still lays on and heaps more upon it, though he remains (for instance) humpbacked, toothless, one-eyed, is yet neither deformed, disfigured, nor ill-favored. For as beetles are said to relinquish perfumes and to pursue after ill scents; so Stoical love, having used itself to the most foul and deformed persons, if by means of philosophy they change into good form and comeliness, becomes presently disgusted.
[Stoic. absurd. poet. 4] He that in the Stoics’ account was in the forenoon (for example) the worst man in the world is in the afternoon the best of men; and he that falls asleep a very sot, dunce, miscreant, and brute, nay, by Jove, a slave and a beggar to boot, rises up the same day a prince, a rich and a happy man, and (which is yet more) a continent, just, determined, and unprepossessed person; — not by shooting forth out of a young and tender body a downy beard or the sprouting tokens of mature youth, but by having in a feeble, soft, unmanful, and undetermined mind, a perfect intellect, a consummate prudence, a godlike disposition, an unprejudiced science, and an unalterable habit. All this time his viciousness gives not the least ground in order to it, but he becomes in an instant, I had almost said, of the vilest brute, a sort of hero, genius, or god. For he that receives his virtue from the Stoics portico may say,
[Stoic. absurd. poet. 4b] Ask what thou wilt, it shall be granted thee.(From Menander)
[Stoic. absurd. poet. 4c] It brings wealth along with it, it contains kingship in it, it confers fortune; it renders men prosperous, and makes them to want nothing and to have a sufficiency of everything, though they have not one drachm of silver in the house.
[Stoic. absurd. poet. 5] The fabular relations of the poets are so careful of decorum, that they never leave a Hercules destitute of necessaries; but those still spring, as out of some fountain, as well for him as for his companions. But he that hath received of the Stoics Amalthaea becomes indeed a rich man, but he begs his victuals of other men; he is a king, but resolves syllogisms for hire; he is the only man that hath all things, but yet he pays rent for the house he lives in, and oftentimes buys bread with borrowed money, or else begs it of those that have nothing themselves.
[Stoic. absurd. poet. 6] The king of Ithaca begs with a design that none may know who he is, and makes himself
[Stoic. absurd. poet. 6b] As like a dirty sorry beggar(“Odyssey,” xvi. 273.)
as he can. But he that is of the Portico, while he bawls and cries out, It is I only that am a king, It is I only that am a rich man, is yet many times seen at other people’s doors saying: —
[Stoic. absurd. poet. 6c] On poor Hipponax, pray, some pity take, Bestow an old cast coat for heaven’s sake;I’m well-nigh dead with cold, and all o’er quake.

## Against the Stoics, on common conceptions

LAMPRIAS, DIADUMENUS
[De comm. not. 1] LAMPRIAS. You, O Diadumenus, seem not much to care, if any one thinks that you philosophize against the common notions; since you confess that you contemn also the senses, from whence the most part of these notions in a manner proceed, having for their seat and foundation the belief of such things as appear to us. But I beseech you, with what speed you can, either by reasons, incantations, or some other manner of discourse, to cure me, who come to you full, as I seem to myself, of great and strange perturbations; so much have I been shaken, and into such a perplexity of mind have I been brought, by certain Stoics, in other things indeed very good men and my familiar friends, but most bitterly and hostility bent against the Academy. These, for some few words modestly spoken by me, have (for I will tell you no lie) rudely and unkindly reprehended me; angrily censuring and branding the ancient philosophers as Sophists and corrupters of philosophy, and subverters of regular doctrines; and saying things yet more absurd than these, they fell at last upon the conceptions, into which (they contend) the Academics had brought a certain confusion and disturbance. At length one of them said, that he thought it was not by fortune, but by the providence of the gods, that Chrysippus came into the world after Arcesilaus and before Carneades; of which the one was the author of the contumelies and injuries done to custom, and the other flourished most of all the Academics. Chrysippus then, coming between them, by his writings against Arcesilaus, stopped also the way against the eloquence of Carneades, leaving indeed many things to the senses, as provisions against a siege, but wholly taking away the trouble about anticipations and conceptions, directing every one of them and putting it in its proper place; so that they who will again embroil and disquiet matters should gain nothing, but be convinced of being malicious and deceitful Sophists. I, having been this morning set on fire by these discourses, want some cooling remedies to extinguish and take away this doubting, as an inflammation, out of my mind.
[De comm. not. 2] DIADUMENUS. You perhaps have suffered the same things with some of the vulgar. But if you believe the poets, who say that the ancient city Sipylus was overthrown by the providence of the gods when they punished Tantalus, believe also the companions of the Stoa saying that Nature, not by chance but by divine providence, brought forth Chrysippus, when she had a mind to turn things upside down and alter the course of life; for which purpose never any man was fitter than he. But as Cato said of Caesar, that never any but he came to the management of public affairs sober and considerately resolved on the ruin of the state; so does this man seem to me with the greatest diligence and eloquence to overturn and demolish custom, as those who magnify the man testify, when they dispute against him concerning the sophism called Pseudomenos (or the Liar). For to say, my best friend, that a conclusion drawn from contrary positions is not manifestly false, and again to say that some arguments having true premises and true inductions may yet moreover have the contrary to their conclusions true, what conception of demonstration or what assumption of confidence does it not overthrow? They say, that the polypus in the winter gnaws his own claws; but the logic of Chrysippus, taking away and cutting off its own chiefest parts and principles, — what other notion has it left unsuspected of falsehood? For the superstructures cannot be steady and sure, if the foundations remain not firm but are shaken with so many doubts and troubles. But as those who have dust or dirt upon their bodies, if they touch or rub the filth that is upon them, seem rather to increase than remove it; so some men blame the Academics, and think them guilty of the faults with which they show themselves to be burdened. For who do more subvert the common conceptions than the Stoic school? But if you please, let us leave accusing them, and defend ourselves from the things with which they charge us.
[De comm. not. 3] LAMPRIAS. Methinks, Diadumenus, I am this day become a various and unconstant man. For erewhile I came dejected and trembling, as one that wanted an apology; and now I am changed to an accuser, and desire to enjoy the pleasure of revenge, in seeing them all convicted of philosophizing against the common conceptions and presumptions, on which they think chiefly their doctrine is founded, whence they say that it alone agrees with Nature.
[De comm. not. 3b] DIADUMENUS. Shall we then first attack those common and celebrated doctrines of theirs which themselves, gently admitting their absurdity, style paradoxes; as that only wise men are kings, that they only are rich and fair, they only citizens and judges? Or shall we send all this to the brokers, as old decayed frippery, and make our inquiry into such things as are most practical and with the greatest earnestness delivered by them?
[De comm. not. 3c] Lamprias. I indeed like this best. For who is there that is not already full of the arguments brought against those paradoxes?
[De comm. not. 4] DIADUMENUS. First, then, consider this, whether, according to the common conceptions, they can be said to agree with Nature, who think all natural things indifferent, and esteem neither health, strength of body, beauty, nor strength as desirable, commodious, profitable, or any way contributory to the completing of natural perfection; nor consider that their contraries, as maims, pains, disgraces, and diseases, are hurtful or to be shunned? To the latter of these they themselves say that Nature gives us an abhorrence, and an inclination to the former. Which very thing is not a little repugnant to common understanding, that Nature should incline us to such things as are neither good nor available, and avert us from such as are neither ill nor hurtful, and which is more, that she should render this inclination and this aversion so violent, that they who either possess not the one or fall into the other detest their life with good reason, and withdraw themselves out of it.
[De comm. not. 5] I think also that this is said by them against common sense, that Nature herself is indifferent, and yet that it is good to agree with Nature. For it is not our duty either to follow the law or be persuaded by argument, unless the law and argument be good and honest. And this indeed is the least of their errors. But if, as Chrysippus has written in his First Book concerning Exhortation, a happy life consists only in living according to virtue, other things (as he says) being nothing to us, nor cooperating any ways towards it, Nature is not only indifferent, but foolish also and stupid, in inclining us to such things as belong nothing to us; and we also are fools in thinking felicity to be an agreeing with Nature, which draws us after such things as contribute nothing to happiness. For what can be more agreeable to common sense, than that, as desirable things are requisite to live commodiously, so natural things are necessary that we may live according to Nature? Now these men say not so; but having settled the living according to Nature for their end, do nevertheless hold those things which are according to Nature to be indifferent.
[De comm. not. 6] Nor is this less repugnant to common sense, that an intelligent and prudent man should not be equally affected to equal good things, but should put no value on some, and be ready to undergo and suffer anything for others, though the things themselves are neither greater nor less one than another. For they say, It is the same thing to abstain from the enjoyment of an old woman that is about to die as to take part in the greatest actions with moderation . . . since in both cases we do what duty requires. And yet for this, as a great and glorious thing, they should be ready to die; when as to boast of the other would be shameful and ridiculous. And even Chrysippus himself in his commentary concerning Jupiter, and in the Third Book of the Gods, says, that it were a poor, absurd, and impertinent thing to glory in such acts, as proceeding from virtue, as bearing valiantly the stinging of a wasp, or abstaining chastely from an old woman that lies a dying. Do not they then philosophize against the common conception, who profess nothing to be more commendable than those things which yet themselves are ashamed to praise? For how can that be desirable or to be approved, which is worthy neither of praise nor admiration, but the praisers and admirers of which they esteem absurd and ridiculous?
[De comm. not. 7] And yet this will (I suppose) appear to you more against common sense, that a wise man should take no care whether he enjoys or not enjoys the greatest good things, but should carry himself after the same manner in these things, as in those that are indifferent both in their management and administration. For all of us, “whoever we are that eat the fruit of the broad earth,” judge that desirable, good, and profitable, which being present we use, and absent we want and desire. But that which no man thinks worth his concern, either for his profit or delight, is indifferent. For we by no other means distinguish a laborious man from a trifler, who is for the most part also employed in action, but that the one busies himself in useless matters and indifferently, and the other in things commodious and profitable. But these men act quite contrary; for with them, a wise and prudent man, being conversant in many comprehensions and memories of comprehension, esteems few of them to belong to him; and not caring for the rest, he thinks he has neither more or less by remembering that he lately had the comprehension of Dion sneezing or Theon playing at ball. And yet every comprehension in a wise man, and every memory having assurance and firmness, is a great, yea, a very great good. When therefore his health fails, when some organ of his senses is disordered, or when his wealth is lost, is a wise man so careless as to think that none of these things concern him? Or does he, “when sick, give fees to the physicians: for the gaining of riches sail to Leucon, governor in the Bosphorus, or travel to Idanthyrsus, king of the Scythians,” as Chrysippus says? And being deprived of some of his senses, does he not become weary even of life? How then do they not acknowledge that they philosophize against the common notions, employing so much care and diligence on things indifferent, and not minding whether they have or have not great good things?
[De comm. not. 8] But this is also yet against the common conceptions, that he who is a man should not rejoice when coming from the greatest evils to the greatest goods. Now their wise men suffer this. Being changed from extreme viciousness to the highest virtue, and at the same time escaping a most miserable life and attaining to a most happy one, he shows no sign of joy, nor does this so great change lift him up or yet move him, being delivered from all infelicity and vice, and coming to a certain sure and firm perfection of virtue. This also is repugnant to common sense, to hold that the being immutable in one’s judgments and resolutions is the greatest of goods, and yet that he who has attained to the height wants not this, nor cares for it when he has it, nay, many times will not so much as stretch forth a finger for this security and constancy, which nevertheless themselves esteem the sovereign and perfect good.
[De comm. not. 8b] Nor do the Stoics say only these things, but they add also this to them, — that the continuance of time increases not any good thing; but if a man shall be wise but a minute of an hour, he will not be any way inferior in happiness to him who has all his time practised virtue and led his life happily in it. Yet, whilst they thus boldly affirm these things, they on the contrary also say, that a short-lived virtue is nothing worth; “For what advantage would the attainment of wisdom be to him who is immediately to be swallowed up by the waves or tumbled down headlong from a precipice? What would it have benefited Lichas, if being thrown by Hercules, as from a sling into the sea, he had been on a sudden changed from vice to virtue?” These therefore are the positions of men who not only philosophize against the common conceptions but also confound their own, if the having been but a little while endued with virtue is no way short of the highest felicity, and at the same time nothing worth.
[De comm. not. 9] Nor is this the strangest thing you will find in their doctrine; but their being of opinion that virtue and happiness, when present, are frequently not perceived by him who enjoys them, nor does he discern that, having but a little before been most miserable and foolish, he is of a sudden become wise and happy. For it is not only childish to say that he who is possessed of wisdom is ignorant of this thing alone, that he is wise, and knows not that he is delivered from folly; but, to speak in general, they make goodness to have very little weight or strength, if it does not give so much as a feeling of it when it is present. For according even to them, it is not by nature imperceptible; nay, even Chrysippus in his books of the End expressly says that good is sensible, and demonstrates it also, as he maintains. It remains, then, that by its weakness and littleness it flies the sense, when being present it is unknown and concealed from the possessors.
[De comm. not. 9b] It were moreover absurd to imagine that the sight, perceiving those things which are but a little whitish or inclining to white, should not discern such as are white in perfection; or that the touch, feeling those things which are but warm or moderately hot, should be insensible of those that are hot in the highest degree. And yet more absurd it is, that a man who perceives what is commonly according to Nature — as are health and good constitution of body — should yet be ignorant of virtue when it is present, which themselves hold to be most of all and in the highest degree according to Nature. For how can it but be against sense, to conceive the difference between health and sickness, and yet so little to comprehend that between wisdom and folly as to think the one to be present when it is gone, and possessing the other to be ignorant that one has it?
[De comm. not. 9c] Now because there is from the highest progress a change made to felicity and virtue, one of these two things must of necessity follow; either that this progress is not vice and infelicity, or that virtue is not far distant from vice, nor happiness from misery, but that the difference between good and evil is very small and not to be perceived by sense; for otherwise they who have the one for the other could not be ignorant of it.
[De comm. not. 10] Since, then, they will not depart from any of these contrarieties, but confess and hold them all, — that those who are proceeding towards virtue are fools and vicious, that those who are become good and wise perceive not this change in themselves, and that there is a great difference between folly and wisdom, — they must assuredly seem to you wonderfully to preserve an agreement in their doctrines, and yet more so in their conduct, when affirming all men who are not wise to be equally wicked, unjust, faithless, and fools, they on the other side abhor and detest some of them, — nay, sometimes to such a degree that they refuse even to speak to them when they meet them, — while others of them they trust with their money, choose to offices, and take for husbands to their daughters. Now if they say these things in jest, let them smooth their brows; but if in earnest and as philosophers, it is against the common notions to reprove and blame all men alike in words, and yet to deal with some of them as moderate persons and with others as very wicked; and exceedingly to admire Chrysippus, to deride Alexinus, and yet to think neither of them more or less mad than the other. “‘Tis so,” say they; “but as he who is not above a cubit under the superficies of the sea is no less drowned than he who is five hundred fathom deep, so they that are coming towards virtue are no less in vice their those that are farther off. And as blind men are still blind, though they shall perhaps a little after recover their sight; so these that have proceeded towards virtue, till such time as they have attained to it, continue foolish and wicked.” But that they who are in the way towards virtue resemble not the blind, but such as see less clearly, nor are like to those who are drowned, but — those which swim, and that near the harbor — they themselves testify by their actions. For they would not use counsellors and generals and lawgivers as blind leaders, nor would they imitate the works and actions and words and lives of some, if they saw them all equally drowned in folly and wickedness. But leaving this, wonder at the men in this behalf, that they are not taught by their own examples to give up the doctrine that these men are wise being ignorant of it themselves, and neither knowing nor being sensible that they are recovered from being drowned and see the light, and that being gotten above vice, they fetch breath again.
[De comm. not. 11] This also is against common sense, that it should be convenient for a man who has all good things, and wants nothing requisite to felicity and happiness, to make away himself; and much more this, that for him who neither has nor ever shall have any good thing, but who is and ever shall be accompanied with all adversities, difficulties, and mishaps, it should not be fitting to quit this life unless some of the indifferent things befall him. These laws are enacted in the Stoa; and by these they incite many wise men to kill themselves, as if they would be thereby more happy; and they prevent many foolish men, as if it were proper for them to live on in misery. Although the wise man is fortunate, blessed, every way happy, secure, and free from danger; but the vicious and foolish man is “full, as I may say, of evils, so that there is not room to put them in”; and yet they think that continuing in life is fit for the latter, and departing out of it for the former. And not without cause, says Chrysippus, for we are not to measure life by good things or evil, but by those that are according to Nature. In this manner do they maintain custom, and philosophize according to the common conceptions. What do you say? — that he who enters upon a deliberation of life and death has no right to consider
[De comm. not. 11b] What good or ill in his own house there is;
[De comm. not. 11c] or to weigh, as in a balance, what things have the greatest sign of serving to felicity or infelicity; but must argue whether he should live or die from those things which are neither profitable nor prejudicial, and follow such principles and sentences as command the choosing of a life full of all things to be avoided, and the shunning of one which wants nothing of all those things that are desirable? For though it is an absurd thing, friend Lamprias, to shun a life in which there is no evil, it is yet more absurd, if any one should leave what is good because he is not possessed of what is indifferent, as these men do who leave present felicity and virtue for want of riches and health which they have not.
[De comm. not. 11d] Satumian Jove from Glaucus took his wits,
[De comm. not. 11e] when he went about to change his suit of golden armor for a brazen one, and to give what was worth a hundred oxen for that which was worth but nine. And yet the brazen armor was no less useful for fight than the golden; whereas beauty and health of body, as the Stoics say, contribute not the least advantage so far as happiness is concerned. And yet they seek health in exchange for wisdom. For they say, it would well enough have become Heraclitus and Pherecydes to have parted with their virtue and wisdom, if the one of them could have thereby been freed from his lousy disease, and the other from his dropsy; and if Circe had used two sorts of magical drinks, one to make wise men fools, and the other to make fools wise, Ulysses would rather have drunk that of folly, than have changed his shape for the form of a beast, though having with it wisdom, and consequently also happiness. And, they say, wisdom itself dictates to them these things, exhorting them thus: Let me go, and value not my being lost, if I must be carried about in the shape of an ass. But this, some will say, is an ass-like wisdom which teacheth thus; granting that to be wise and enjoy felicity is good, and to wear the shape of an ass is indifferent. They say, there is a nation of the Ethiopians where a dog reigns, is called king, and has all regal honors and services done to him; but men execute the offices of magistrates and governors of cities. Do not the Stoics act in the very same manner? They give the name and appearance of good to virtue, saying that it alone is desirable, profitable, and available; but in the meantime they act these things, they philosophize, they live and die, as at the command of things indifferent. And yet none of the Ethiopians kill that dog; but he sits in state, and is revered by all. But these men destroy and corrupt their virtue, that they may obtain health and riches.
[De comm. not. 12] But the corollary which Chrysippus himself has given for a conclusion to his doctrines seems to free us from the trouble of saying anything more about it. For there being, says he, in Nature some things good, some things bad, and some things between them both, which we call indifferent; there is no man but would rather have the good than the indifferent, and the indifferent than the bad. And of this we call the gods to witness, begging of them by our prayers principally the possession of good things, and if that may not be, deliverance from evil; not desiring that which is neither good nor bad instead of good, but willing to have it instead of evil. But this man, changing Nature and inverting its order, removes the middle out of its own place into the last, and brings back the last into the middle, — not unlike to those tyrants who give the first place to the wicked, — and he gives us a law, first to seek the good, and secondly the evil, and lastly to judge that worst which is neither good nor evil; as if any one should place infernal things next to celestial, thrusting the earth and earthly things into Tartarus,
[De comm. not. 12b] Where very far from hence, deep under ground, Lies a vast gulf.(Iliad, viii. 14.)
[De comm. not. 12c] Having therefore said in his Third Book concerning Nature, that it is more expedient for a fool to live than not, though he should never attain to wisdom, he adds these words: “For such are the good things of men, that even evil things do in a manner precede other things that are in the middle place; not that these things themselves really precede, but reason, which makes us choose rather to live, though we were to be fools.” Therefore also, though we were to be unjust, wicked, hated of the gods, and unhappy; for none of these things are absent from those that live foolishly. Is it then convenient rather to live miserably than not to live miserably, and better to be hurt than not hurt, to be unjust than not unjust, to break the laws than not to break them? That is, is it convenient to do things that are not convenient, and a duty to live even against duty? Yes indeed, for it is worse to want sense and reason than to be a fool. What then ails them, that they will not confess that to be evil which is worse than evil? Why do they say that folly alone is to be avoided, if it is not less but rather more convenient to shun that disposition which is not capable of folly?
[De comm. not. 13] But who can complain of this, that shall remember what he has written in his Second Book of Nature, declaring that vice was not unprofitably made for the universe? But it is meet I should set down his doctrine in his own words, that you may understand in what place those rank vice, and what discourses they hold of it, who accuse Xenocrates and Speusippus for not reckoning health indifferent and riches useless. “Vice,” saith he, “has its limit in reference to other accidents. For it is also in some sort according to the reason of Nature, and (as I may so say) is not wholly useless in respect of the universe; for other wise there would not be any good.” Is there then no good among the gods, because there is no evil? And when Jupiter, having resolved all matter into himself, shall be alone, other differences being taken away, will there then be no good, because there will be no evil? But is there melody in a choir though none in it sings faultily, and health in the body though no member is sick; and yet cannot virtue have its existence without vice? But as the poison of a serpent or the gall of an hyena is to be mixed with some medicines, was it also of necessity that there must have been some conjunction of the wickedness of Meletus with the justice of Socrates, and the dissolute conduct of Cleon with the probity of Pericles? And could not Jupiter have found a means to bring into the world Hercules and Lycurgus, if he had not also made for us Sardanapalus and Phalaris? It is now time for them to say that the consumption was made for the sound constitution of men’s bodies, and the gout for the swiftness of their feet; and that Achilles would not have had a good head of hair if Thersites had not been bald. For what difference is there between such triflers and ravers, and those who say that intemperance was not brought forth unprofitably for continence, nor injustice for justice, so that we must pray to the gods, there may be always wickedness,
[De comm. not. 13b] Lies, fawning speeches, and deceitful manners,(Hesiod, “Works and Days,” 78.)
[De comm. not. 13c] if, when these are taken away, virtue will also vanish and be lost?
[De comm. not. 14] Or do you desire to understand the greatest sweetness of his eloquence and persuasion? “For,” says he, “as comedies have in them sometimes ridiculous epigrams, which, though bad in themselves, give nevertheless a certain grace to the whole poem; so, though you may blame vice in itself, yet is it not useless to other things.” First, then, to say that vice was made by the providence of God, as a wanton epigram by the will of the poet, transcends in absurdity all imagination. For this being granted, how will the gods be rather givers of good than evil? How will wickedness be displeasing to them, and hated by them? And what shall we have to oppose against these ill-sounding sentences of the poets. —
[De comm. not. 14b] A cause to men God sends, When to chastise some house his wrath intends;(From the “Niobe” of Aeschylus, Frag. 151.)
[De comm. not. 14c] and again,
What God those seeds of strife ‘twixt them did sow?(Iliad, i. 8.)
[De comm. not. 14d] Moreover, a lewd epigram adorns the comedy and contributes to its end, which is to delight the spectators and make them laugh. But Jupiter, who is surnamed fatherly, supreme, just, and (as Pindar has it) the most perfect artist, framing the world, not as a great interlude, full of variety and great learning, but as a common city of Gods and men, living together in concord and happiness with justice and virtue, — what need had he, for the attaining to this excellent end, of thieves, murderers, parricides, and tyrants? For vice entered not as a morris-dance, pleasing and delightful to the Divinity; nor was it brought in amongst the affairs of men, to cause mirth and laughter by its raillery and facetiousness, since there is not to be seen in it so much as a dream of that celebrated agreement with Nature. Besides, that foolish epigram is a very small part of the poem, and takes up but a very little place in the comedy; neither do such things abound in it, nor do they corrupt any of those things which seem to have been well done, or spoil their grace. But all human affairs are replete with vice, and the whole life, from the very prologue and beginning to the end, being disordered, depraved, and disturbed, and having no part of it pure or irreprehensible (as these men say), is the most filthy and most unpleasant of all farces.
[De comm. not. 15] Wherefore I would willingly ask, in what vice is profitable to the universe. Not surely in respect of heavenly things, and such as are divine by nature. For it would be ridiculous to say, that if there had not arisen, or were not amongst men, malice and covetousness and lying, or that if we did not rob, plunder, slander, and murder one another, the sun would not run his appointed course, the world enjoy its seasons and periods of time, or the earth, which is seated in the midst of the universe, afford the principles of the wind and rain. It remains, then, that the existence of vice must be profitable for us and our affairs; and that perhaps these men mean. Are we more healthy for being vicious, or do we more abound with necessaries? Or does vice contribute anything to our beauty and strength? They say, no. But where on earth is virtue to be met with? Is it then only a base name, and a visionary opinion of night-walking Sophists, and not an actual thing lying conspicuous to all, like vice, so that we cannot partake of anything as profitable, . . . but least, O ye gods! of virtue, for which we were created? Is it not then absurd, that the utensils of the husbandman, mariner, and charioteer should be serviceable and aiding towards his intended end, whilst that which was by God made for virtue destroys and corrupts virtue? But perhaps it is time now to leave this point, and pass to another.
[De comm. not. 16] LAMPRIAS. Not for my sake, my dear friend, I beseech you; for I desire to understand, in what manner these men bring in evil things before the good, and vice before virtue.
[De comm. not. 16b] DIADUMENUS. It is indeed, sir, a thing worth knowing. They babble indeed much; but in conclusion they say that prudence, being the knowledge of good and evil, would be wholly taken away if there were no evil. For as, if there are truths, it is impossible but there must be some lies also near to them; so it stands with reason, that if there are good things, there must also be evil things.
[De comm. not. 17] LAMPRIAS. One of these things is not said amiss; and I think also that the other is not unapprehended by me. For I see a difference here: that which is not true must immediately be false; but that is not of necessity evil which is not good; because that between true and false there is no medium, but between good and evil there is the indifferent. Nor is it of necessity that the one must subsist with the other. For Nature may have good without having any need of evil, but only having that which is neither good nor evil. But if there is anything to be said by you to the former reason, let us hear it.
[De comm. not. 17b] DIADUMENUS. Many things indeed are said; but at present we shall make use only of what is most necessary. In the first place, it is a folly to imagine that good and evil have their existence for the sake of prudence. For good and evil being already extant, prudence came afterwards; as the art of physic was invented, there being already things wholesome and unwholesome. For good and evil are not therefore extant that there may be prudence; but the faculty by which we judge good and evil that are already in being is named prudence. As sight is a sense distinguishing white from black; which colors were not therefore made that we might have sight, but we rather wanted sight to discern these things. Secondly, when the world shall be set on fire (as the Stoics hold), there will then no evil be left, but all will then be prudent and wise. There is therefore prudence, though there is no evil; nor is it of necessity for evil to exist that prudence may have a being. But supposing that prudence must always be a knowledge of good and evil, what inconvenience would it be if, evil being taken away, prudence should no longer subsist; but instead of this we should have another virtue, not being the knowledge of good and evil, but of good only? So, if black should be wholly lost from among the colors, and any one should therefore contend that sight is also lost, for that there is no more the sense of discerning black and white, what should hinder us from answering him: It is no prejudice to us, if we have not what you call sight, but in lieu of that have another sense and faculty, by which we apprehend colors that are white and not white. For I indeed think that neither our taste would be lost, if bitter things were wanting, nor our feeling, if pain were taken away, nor prudence, if evil had no being; but that these senses would remain, to apprehend things sweet and grateful and those that are not so, and prudence to be the science of things good and not good. But let those who think otherwise take the name to themselves, leaving us the thing.
[De comm. not. 18] Besides all this, what should hinder but there may be an understanding of evil, and an existence of good? As the gods, I believe, enjoy health, but understand the fever and pleurisy. Since even we, who, as they say, have abundance of evils but no good, are not yet destitute of the knowledge what prudence, what goodness, and what happiness is. And this also would be remarkable, that if virtue were absent, there should be those who could teach us what it is and give us a comprehension of it, when if vice were not extant, it should be impossible to have any understanding of it. For see what these men persuade us who philosophize against the conceptions, — that by folly indeed we comprehend prudence, but prudence without folly cannot so much as comprehend folly itself.
[De comm. not. 19] And if Nature had absolutely stood in need of the generation of evil, yet might one or two examples of vice have been sufficient; or if you will, it might have been requisite that ten, a thousand, or ten thousand vicious men should be brought forth, and not that the multitude of vices should be so great as “to exceed in number the sands of the sea, the dust of the earth, and the feathers of all the various kinds of birds in the world,” and yet that there should not be so much all this while as a dream of virtue. Those who in Sparta had the charge of the public halls or eating places called Phiditia were wont to bring forth two or three Helots drunken and full of wine, that the young men, seeing what drunkenness was, might learn to keep sobriety. But in human life there are many such examples of vice. For there is not any one sober to virtue; but we all stagger up and down, acting shamefully and living miserably. Thus does reason inebriate us, and with so much trouble and madness does it fill us, that we fall in nothing short of those dogs of whom Aesop says, that seeing certain skins swimming in the water, they endeavored to gulp down the sea, but burst before they could get at them. For reason also, by which we hope to gain reputation and attain to virtue, does, ere we can reach to it, corrupt and destroy us, being before filled with abundance of heady and bitter vice; — if indeed, as these men say, they who are got even to the uppermost step have no ease, cessation, or breathing from folly and infelicity.
[De comm. not. 20] But let us see what manner of thing he shows vice to be who says that it was not brought forth unprofitably, and of what use and what a thing he makes it to be to those who have it, writing in his book of right conduct, that a wicked man wants nothing, has need of nothing, nothing is useful to him, nothing proper, nothing fit for him. How then is vice useful, with which neither health nor abundance of riches nor advancement in virtue is profitable? Who then does not want these things, of which some are “preferable” and “acceptable” and therefore highly useful, and others are “according to Nature,” as themselves term them? But (they affirm) no one has need of them, unless he become wise. So the vicious man does not even stand in want of being made wise. Nor are men hungry and thirsty before they become wise. When thirsty, therefore, they have no need of water, nor when hungry, of bread.
[De comm. not. 20b] Be like to courteous guests, and him Who asks only fire and shelter:
[De comm. not. 20c] does this man now not need entertainment? Nor had he need of a cloak, who said,
[De comm. not. 20d] Give Hipponax a cloak, for I’m stiff with cold.
[De comm. not. 20e] But will you speak a paradox indeed, both extravagant and singular? Say then that a wise man has need of nothing, that he wants nothing, he is fortunate, he is free from want, he is self-sufficient, blessed, perfect. Now what madness is this, that he to whom nothing is wanting has need of the goods he has, but that the vicious indeed wants many things, and stands in need of nothing. For thus indeed says Chrysippus, that the vicious wants but stands not in need; removing the common notions, like chessmen, backwards and forwards. For all men think that having need precedes wanting, esteeming him who stands in need of things that are not at hand or easy to be got, to want them. For no man wants horns or wings, because no one has need of them. But we say that those want arms and money and clothes who are destitute of them, when they have occasion for them. But these men are so desirous of seeming always to say something against the common notions, that for the love of novelty they often depart from their own opinions, as they do here.
[De comm. not. 21] Recall yourself to the consideration of what has been said a little above. This is one of their assertions against the common conception, that no vicious man receives any utility. And yet many being instructed profit, many being slaves are made free; many being besieged are delivered, being lame are led by the hand, and being sick are cured. “But possessing all these things, they are never the better, neither do receive benefits, nor have they any benefactors, nor do they slight them.” Vicious men then are not ungrateful, no more than are wise men. Ingratitude therefore has no being; because the good receiving a benefit fail not to acknowledge it, and the bad are not capable of receiving any. Behold, now, what they say to this, — that benefit is ranked among mean or middle things, and that to give and receive utility belongs only to the wise, but the bad also receive a benefit. Then they who partake of the benefit partake not also of its use; and whither a benefit extends, there is nothing useful or commodious. Now what else is there that makes a kind office a benefit, but that the bestower of it is, in some respect, useful to the needy receiver?
[De comm. not. 22] LAMPRIAS. But let these things pass. What, I beseech you, is this so highly venerated utility, which preserving as some great and excellent thing for the wise, they permit not so much as the name of it to the vicious?
[De comm. not. 22b] DIADUMENUS. If (say they) one wise man does but any way prudently stretch out his finger, all the wise men all the world over receive utility by it. This is the work of their amity; in this do the virtues of the wise man terminate by their common utilities. Aristotle then and Xenocrates doted, saving that men receive utility from the gods, from their parents, from their masters, being ignorant of that wonderful utility which wise men receive from one another, being moved according to virtue, though they neither are together nor yet know it. Yet all men esteem, that laying up, keeping, and bestowing are then useful and profitable, when some benefit or profit is recovered by it. The thriving man buys keys, and diligently keeps his stores,
[De comm. not. 22c] With ‘s hand unlocking wealth’s sweet treasury.(From the “Bellerophontes” of Euripides, Frag. 287, vs. 8.)
[De comm. not. 22d] But to store up and to keep with diligence and labor such things as are for no use is not seemly or honorable, but ridiculous. If Ulysses indeed had tied up with the knot which Circe taught him, not the gifts he had received from Alcinous, — tripods, caldrons, cloths, and gold, — but heaping up trash, stones, and such like trumpery, should have thought his employment about such things, and the possession and keeping of them, a happy and blessed work, would any one have imitated this foolish providence and empty care? Yet this is the beauty, gravity, and happiness of the Stoical consent, being nothing else but a gathering together and keeping of useless and indifferent things. For such are things according to Nature, and more exterior things; if indeed they compare the greatest riches to fringes and golden chamberpots, and sometimes also, as it happens, to oil-cruets. Then, as those who seem proudly to have affronted and railed at some gods or demigods presently changing their note, fall prostrate and sit humbly on the ground, praising and magnifying the Divinity; so these men, having met with punishment of this arrogancy and vanity, again exercise themselves in these indifferent things and such as pertain nothing to them, crying out with a loud voice that there is only one thing good, specious, and honorable, the storing up of these things and the communication of them, and that it is not meet for those to live who have them not, but to despatch out of the way and famish themselves, bidding a long farewell to virtue.
[De comm. not. 22e] They esteem indeed Theognis to have been a man altogether of a base and abject spirit, for saying, as one overfearful in regard to poverty, which is an indifferent thing: —
[De comm. not. 22f] From poverty to fly, into the deep Throw thyself, Cyrnus, or from rocks so steep.
[De comm. not. 22g] Yet they themselves exhort the same thing in prose, and affirm that a man, to free himself from some great disease or exceedingly acute pain, if he have not at hand sword or hemlock, ought to leap into the sea or throw himself headlong from a precipice; neither of which is hurtful, or evil, or incommodious, or makes them who fall into it miserable.
[De comm. not. 23] With what, then, says he, shall I begin? And what shall I take for the principle of duty and matter of virtue, leaving Nature and that which is according to Nature?
[De comm. not. 23b] With what, O good sir, do Aristotle and Theophrastus begin? What beginnings do Xenocrates and Polemo take? Does not also Zeno follow these, who hold Nature and that which is according to Nature to be the elements of happiness? But they indeed persisted in these things, as desirable, good, and profitable; and joining to them virtue, which employs them and uses every one of them according to its property, thought to complete and consummate a perfect life and one every way absolute, producing that concord which is truly suitable and consonant to Nature. For these men did not run into confusion, like those who leap up from the ground and presently fall down again upon it, terming the same things acceptable and not desirable, proper and not good, unprofitable and yet useful, nothing to us and yet the principles of duties. But their life was such as their speech, and they exhibited actions suitable and consonant to their sayings. But they who are of the Stoic sect — not unlike to that woman in Archilochus, who deceitfully carried in one hand water, in the other fire — by some doctrines draw Nature to them, and by others drive her from them. Or rather, by their deeds and actions they embrace those things which are according to Nature, as good and desirable, but in words and speeches they reject and contemn them, as indifferent and of no use to virtue for the acquiring felicity.
[De comm. not. 24] Now, forasmuch as all men esteem the sovereign good to be joyous, desirable, happy, of the greatest dignity, self-sufficient, and wanting nothing; compare their good, and see how it agrees with this common conception. Does the stretching out a finger prudently produce this joy? Is a prudent torture a thing desirable? Is he happy, who with reason breaks his neck? Is that of the greatest dignity, which reason often chooses to let go for that which is not good? Is that perfect and self-sufficient, by enjoying which, if they possess not too indifferent things, they neither can nor will endure to live? There is also another tenet of the Stoics, by which custom is still more injured, taking and plucking from her genuine notions, which are as her legitimate children, and supposing other bastardly, wild, and illegitimate ones in their room, and necessitating her to nourish and cherish the one instead of the other; and that too in those principles which concern things good and bad, desirable and avoidable, proper and strange, the energy of which ought to be more clearly distinguished than that of hot and cold, black and white. For the imaginations of these things are brought in by the senses from without; but those have their original bred from the good things which we have within us. But these men entering with their logic upon the topic of felicity, as on the sophism called Pseudomenos, or that named Kyrieuon, have removed no ambiguities, but brought in very many.
[De comm. not. 25] Indeed, of two good things, of which the one is the end and the other belongs to the end, none is ignorant that the end is the greater and perfecter good. Chrysippus also acknowledges this difference, as is manifest from his Third Book of Good Things. For he dissents from those who make science the end, and sets it down. . . . In his Treatise of Justice, however, he does not think that justice can be preserved, if any one makes pleasure to be the end; but allows it may, if pleasure is not said to be the end, but simply a good. Nor do I think that you need now to hear me repeat his words, since his Third Book of Justice is everywhere to be had. When, therefore, O my friend, they elsewhere say that no one good is greater or less than another, and that what is not the end is equal to the end, they contradict not only the common conceptions, but even their own words. Again, if of two evils, the one when it is present renders us worse, and the other hurts us but renders us not worse, it is against reason not to say that the evil which by its presence renders us worse is greater than that which hurts us but renders us not worse. Now Chrysippus indeed confesses, that there are some fears and sorrows and errors which hurt us, but render us not worse. Read his First Book of Justice against Plato; for in respect of other things, it is worth the while to note the babbling of the man in that place, expounding indifferently all matters and doctrines, as well proper to his own sect as foreign to it.
[De comm. not. 26] It is likewise against common sense when he says that there may be two ends or scopes proposed of life, and that all the things we do are not to be referred to one; and yet this is more against common sense, to say that there is an end, and yet that every action is to be referred to another. Nevertheless they must of necessity endure one of these. For if those things which are first according to Nature are not eligible for themselves, but the choice and taking of them agreeably to reason is, and if every one therefore does all his actions for the acquiring the first things according to Nature, then all things which are done must have their reference to this, that the principal things according to Nature may be obtained. But they think that they who aim and aspire to get these things do not have the things themselves as the end, but that to which they must make reference, namely, the choice and not the things. For the end indeed is to choose and receive these things prudently. But the things themselves and the enjoying of them are not the end, but the material ground, having its value only from the choice. For it is my opinion that they both use and write this very expression, to show the difference.
[De comm. not. 26b] LAMPRIAS. You have exactly related both what they say and in what manner they deliver it.
[De comm. not. 26c] DIADUMENUS. But observe how it fares with them, as with those that endeavor to leap over their own shadow; for they do not leave behind, but always carry along with them in their speech some absurdity most remote from common sense. For as, if any one should say that he who shoots does all he can, not that he may hit the mark, but that he may do all he can, such a one would rightly be esteemed to speak enigmatically and prodigiously; so these doting dreamers, who contend that the obtaining of natural things is not the end of aiming after natural things, but the taking and choosing them is, and that the desire and endeavor after health is not in every one terminated in the enjoyment of health, but on the contrary, the enjoyment of health is referred to the desire and endeavor after it, and that certain walkings and contentions of speech and suffering incisions and taking of medicines, so they are done by reason, are the end of health, and not health of them, they, I say, trifle like to those who say, Let us sup, that we may offer sacrifice, that we may bathe. But this rather changes order and custom, and all things which these men say carry with them the total subversion and confusion of affairs. Thus, we do not desire to take a walk in fit time that we may digest our meat; but we digest our meat that we may take a walk in fit time. Has Nature also made health for the sake of hellebore, instead of producing hellebore for the sake of health? For what is wanting to bring them to the highest degree of speaking paradoxes, but the saying of such things? What difference is there between him who says that health was made for the sake of medicines and not medicines for the sake of health, and him who makes the choice of medicines and their composition and use more desirable than health itself? — or rather who esteems health not at all desirable, but placing the end in the negotiation about these things, prefers desire to enjoyment, and not enjoyment to desire? For to desire, forsooth (they affirm), is joined the proceeding wisely and discreetly. It is true indeed, we will say, if respect be had to the end, that is, the enjoyment and possession of the things it pursues; but otherwise, it is wholly void of reason, if it does all things for the obtaining of that the enjoyment of which is neither honorable nor happy.
[De comm. not. 27] Now, since we are fallen upon this discourse, anything may rather be said to agree with common sense, than that those who have neither received nor have any conception of good do nevertheless desire and pursue it. For you see how Chrysippus drives Ariston into this difficulty, that he should understand an indifference in things inclining neither to good nor to bad, before either good or bad is itself understood; for so indifference will appear to have subsisted even before itself, if the understanding of it cannot be perceived unless good be first understood, while the good is nothing else than this very indifference. Understand now and consider this indifference which the Stoa refutes and calls consent, whence and in what manner it gives us the knowledge of good. For if without good the indifference to that which is not good cannot be understood, much less does the knowing of good things give any intelligence of itself to those who had not before some notion of the good. But as there can be no knowledge of the art of things wholesome and unwholesome in those who have not first some knowledge of the things themselves; so they cannot conceive any notion of the science of good and evil who have not some fore-knowledge of good and evil.
[De comm. not. 27b] LAMPRIAS. What then is good? DIADUMENUS. Nothing but prudence. LAMPRIAS. And what is prudence? DIADUMENUS. Nothing but the science of good.
[De comm. not. 27c] LAMPRIAS. There is much then of “Jupiter’s Corinth” (that is, much begging the question) admitted into their reasoning. For I would have you let alone the saying about the turning of the pestle, lest you should seem to mock them; although an accident like to that has insinuated itself into their discourse. For it seems that, to the understanding of good, one has need to understand prudence, and to seek for prudence in the understanding of good, being forced always to pursue the one by the other, and thus failing of both; since to the understanding of each we have need of that which cannot be known without the other be first understood.
[De comm. not. 27d] DIADUMENUS. But there is yet another way, by which you may perceive not only the perversion but the eversion of their discourse, and the reduction of it entirely to nothing. They hold the essence of good to be the reasonable election of things according to Nature. Now the election is not reasonable which is not directed to some end, as has been said before. What, then, is this end? Nothing else, say they, but to reason rightly in the election of things according to Nature. First, then, the conception of good is lost and gone. For to reason rightly in election is an operation proceeding from an habit of right reasoning, and therefore being constrained to get this from the end; and the end not without this, we fail of understanding either of them. Besides, which is more, this reasonable election ought strictly to be a choice of things good and useful, and cooperating to the end; for how can it be reasonable to choose things which are neither convenient nor honorable nor at all eligible? For be it, as they say, a reasonable election of things having a fitness for the causing felicity; see then to what a beautiful and solemn conclusion their discourse brings them. For the end is (it seems), according to them, to reason rightly in the choice of things which are useful in causing us to reason rightly.
[De comm. not. 27e] LAMPRIAS. When I hear these words, my friend, what is laid down seems to me strangely extravagant; and I farther want to know how this happens.
[De comm. not. 27f] DIADUMENUS. You must then be more attentive; for it is not for every one to understand this riddle. Hear therefore and answer. Is not the end, according to them, to reason rightly in the election of things according to Nature?
[De comm. not. 27g] LAMPRIAS. So they say.
DIADUMENUS. And are these things according to Nature chosen as good, or as having some fitness or preferences . . . either for this end or for something else?
[De comm. not. 27h] Lamprias. I think not for anything else but for this end.
[De comm. not. 27i] DIADUMENUS. Now, then, having discovered the matter, see what befalls them. They affirm that the end is to reason rightly in the selection of things which are of value in causing us to reason rightly, for they say that we neither have nor understand any other principle either of good or of felicity but this precious rectitude of reasoning in the election of things that are of worth. But there are some who think that this is spoken against Antipater, and not against the whole sect; for that he, being pressed by Carneades, fell into these fooleries.
[De comm. not. 28] But as for those things that are against the common conceptions taught in the Stoa concerning love, they are all of them concerned in the absurdity. They say youths are deformed who are vicious and foolish, and that the wise are fair; and yet that none of these beautiful ones is either beloved or worthy of being beloved. Nor yet is this the worst; but they add, that those who love the deformed ones cease to do so when they are become fair. Now whoever knew such a love as is kindled and has its being at the sight of the body’s deformity joined with that of the soul, and is quenched and decays at the accession of beauty joined with prudence, justice, and temperance? These men are not unlike to those gnats which love to settle on the dregs of wine, or on vinegar, but shun and fly away from potable and pleasant wine. As for that which they call and term an appearance of beauty, saying that it is the inducement of love, — first, it has no probability, for in those who are very foul and highly wicked there cannot be an appearance of beauty, if indeed (as is said) the wickedness of the disposition fills the face with deformity. And secondly, it is absolutely against all common experience for the deformed to be worthy of love because he one day will be fair and expects to have beauty, but that when he has got it and is become fair and good, he is to be beloved of none.
[De comm. not. 28b] LAMPRIAS. Love, they say, is a certain hunting after a young person who is as yet indeed undeveloped, but naturally well disposed towards virtue.
[De comm. not. 28c] DIADUMENUS. And what do we now else, O my best friend, but demonstrate that their sect perverts and destroys all our common conceptions with improbable things and unusual expressions? For none would hinder the solicitude of these wise men towards young persons, if it were free from all passionate affection, from being named hunting or love of instruction; but they ought to call love what all men and women understand and call by this name, like that which Penelope’s suitors in Homer seem to acknowledge,
[De comm. not. 28d] Who all desired to lie with her;(“Odyssey,” i. 366)
or as Jupiter in another place says to Juno,
[De comm. not. 28e] For neither goddess yet nor mortal dameE’er kindled in my heart so great a flame.(“Iliad.” xiv. 315.)
[De comm. not. 29] Thus casting moral philosophy into these matters, in which all is
[De comm. not. 29b] A mazy whirl, with nothing sound, and all perplexed,(Euripides, “Andromache,” 448.)
[De comm. not. 30] they contemn and deride it, as if boasting themselves to be the only men who observe nature and custom as it ought to be, and who at the same time adapted reason to each man by means of aversions, desires, appetites, pursuits, and impulses. But custom has received no good from their logic, but, like the ear diseased by vain sounds, is filled with difficulty and obscurity, — of which, if you think good, we will elsewhere begin a new discourse. But now we will run through the chief and principal heads of their natural philosophy, which no less confounds the common conceptions than that other concerning ends. ============= First, this is altogether absurd and against sense, to say that is which is not, and things which are not are. But above all that is most absurd which they say of the universe. For, putting round about the circumference of the world an infinite vacuum, they say that the universe is neither a body nor bodiless. It follows then from this that the universe has no being, since with them body only has a being. Since therefore it is the part of that which has a being both to do and suffer, and the universe has no being, it follows that the universe will neither do nor suffer. Neither will it be in a place; for that which takes up place is a body, and the universe is not a body, therefore the universe exists nowhere. And since that only rests which continues in one and the same place, the universe rests not, because it takes not up place. Neither yet is it moved, for what is moved must have a place and space in which to move. Moreover, what is moved either moves itself, or suffers motion from another. Now, that which is moved by itself has some bents and inclinations proceeding from its gravity or levity; and gravity and levity are either certain habits or faculties or differences of bodies. But the universe is not a body. It follows then of necessity, that the universe is neither, heavy nor light, and consequently, that it has not in itself any principle of motion. Nor yet will the universe be moved by any other; for there is nothing else besides the universe. Thus are they necessitated to say as they do, that the universe neither rests nor is moved. Lastly since according to their opinion it must not be said that the universe is a body, and yet the heaven, the earth, animals, plants, men, and stones are bodies, it follows that that which is no body will have bodies for its parts, and things which have existence will be parts of that which has no existence, and that which is not heavy will have parts that are heavy, and what is not light will have parts that are light; — than which there cannot be any dreams imagined more repugnant to the common conceptions.
[De comm. not. 30b] Moreover, there is nothing so evident or so agreeing to common sense as this, that what is not animate is inanimate, and what is not inanimate is animate. And yet they overthrow also this evidence, confessing the universe to be neither animate nor inanimate. Besides this, none thinks the universe, of which there is no part wanting to be imperfect; but they deny the universe to be perfect, saying that what is perfect may be defined, but the universe because of its infiniteness cannot be defined. Therefore, according to them, there is something which is neither perfect nor imperfect. Moreover, the universe is neither a part, since there is nothing greater than it; nor the whole, for the whole (they say) is predicated only of that which is digested into order; but the universe is, through its infiniteness, undetermined and unordered. Moreover, there is no other thing which can be the cause of the universe, there being nothing besides the universe; nor is the universe the cause of other things or even of itself; for its nature suffers it not to act, and a cause is understood by its acting. Suppose, now, one should ask all men what they imagine NOTHING to be, and what notion they have of it. Would they not answer, that it neither is a cause nor has a cause, that it is neither the whole nor a part that it is neither perfect nor imperfect, that it is neither animate nor inanimate, that it neither is moved nor rests nor subsists, that it is neither corporeal nor incorporeal; and that this and no other thing is meant by NOTHING? Since, then, they alone predicate that of the universe which all others do of NOTHING, it seems plain that they make the universe and NOTHING to be the same. Time must then be said to be nothing; the same also must be said of predicate, axiom, junction, conjunction, which terms they use more than any of the other philosophers, yet they say that they have no existence. But farther, to say that what is true has no being or subsistence but is comprehended, and that that is comprehensible and credible which no way partakes of the essence of being, — does not this exceed all absurdity?
[De comm. not. 31] But lest these things should seem to have too much of logical difficulty, let us proceed to such as pertain more to natural philosophy. Since, then, as themselves say,
[De comm. not. 31b] Jove is of all beginning, midst, and end,(See “Orphic Fragments,” vi. 10 (Herm.).)
[De comm. not. 31c] they ought chiefly to have applied themselves to remedy, redress, and reduce to the best order the conceptions concerning the gods, if there were in them anything confused or erroneous; or if not, to have left every one in those sentiments which they had from the laws and custom concerning the Divinity:-
[De comm. not. 31d] For neither now nor yesterday But always these things lived, No one knows from whence they came.(Sophocles, “Antigone,” 456.)
[De comm. not. 31e] But these men, having begun (as it were) “from Vesta” to disturb the opinions settled and received in every country concerning the gods, have not (to speak sincerely) left anything entire and uncorrupted. For what man is there or ever was, except these, who does not believe the Divinity to be immortal and eternal? Or what in the common anticipations is more unanimously chanted forth concerning the gods than such things as these: —
[De comm. not. 31f] There the blest gods eternally enjoy Their sweet delights;(“Odyssey,” vi. 46.)
[De comm. not. 31g] and again,
Both gods immortal, and earth-dwelling men;(“Iliad,” v. 442.)
[De comm. not. 31h] and again,
[De comm. not. 31i] Exempt from sickness and old age are they, And free from toil, and have escaped the stream Of roaring Acheron?(From Pindar.)
[De comm. not. 31j] One may perhaps light upon some nations so barbarous and savage as not to think there is a God; but there was never found any man who, believing a God, did not at the same time believe him immortal and eternal. Certainly, those who were called Atheists, like Theodorus, Diagoras, and Hippo, durst not say that the Divinity is corruptible, but they did not believe that there is anything incorruptible; not indeed admitting the subsistence of an incorruptibility, but keeping the notion of a God. But Chrysippus and Cleanthes, having filled (as one may say) heaven, earth, air, and sea with gods, have not yet made any one of all these gods immortal or eternal, except Jupiter alone, in whom they consume all the rest; so that it is no more suitable for him to consume others than to be consumed himself. For it is alike an infirmity to perish by being resolved into another, and to be saved by being nourished by the resolution of others into himself. Now these are not like other of their absurdities, gathered by argument from their suppositions or drawn by consequence from their doctrines; but they themselves proclaim it aloud in their writings concerning the gods, Providence, Fate, and Nature, expressly saying that all the other gods were born, and shall die by the fire, melting away, in their opinion, as if they were of wax or tin. It is indeed as much against common sense that God should be mortal as the man should be immortal; nay, indeed, I do not see what the difference between God and man will be, if God also is a reasonable and corruptible animal. For if they oppose us with this subtle distinction, that man is mortal, and God not mortal but corruptible, see what they get by it. For they will say either that God is at the same time both immortal and corruptible, or else that he neither is mortal nor immortal; the absurdity of which even those cannot exceed who set themselves industriously to devise positions repugnant to common sense. I speak of others; for these men have left no one of the absurdest things unspoken or unattempted.
[De comm. not. 31k] To these things Cleanthes, contending for the conflagration of the world, says, that the sun will make the moon and all the other stars like to himself, and will change them into himself. Indeed, if the stars, being gods, should contribute anything to the sun towards their own destruction by adding to its conflagration, it would be very ridiculous for us to make prayers to them for our salvation, and to think them the saviours of men, whose nature it is to accelerate their own corruption and dissolution.
[De comm. not. 32] And yet these men leave nothing unsaid against Epicurus, crying out, Fie, fie upon him, as confounding their presumption concerning God by taking away Providence; for God (they say) is presumed and understood to be not only immortal and happy, but also a lover of men and careful of them and beneficial to them, and herein they say true. Now if they who abolish Providence take away the preconception concerning God, what do they who say that the gods indeed have care of us, but deny them to be helpful to us, and make them not bestowers of good things but of indifferent ones, giving, to wit, not virtue, but wealth, health, children, and such like things, none of which is helpful, profitable, desirable, or available? Or shall we not rather think, that Epicurus does not take away the conceptions concerning the gods; but that these Stoics scoff at the gods and deride them, saying one is a god of fruits, another of marriage, another a physician, and another a diviner, while yet health, issue, and plenty of fruits are not good things, but indifferent things and unprofitable to those who have them?
[De comm. not. 33] The third point of the conception concerning the gods is, that the gods do in nothing so much differ from men as in happiness and virtue. But according to Chrysippus, they have not so much as this difference. For he says that Jupiter does not exceed Dion in virtue, but that Jupiter and Dion, being both wise, are equally aided by one another, when one comes into the motion of the other. For this and none else is the good which the gods do to men, and likewise men to the gods when they are wise. For they say, that a man who falls not short in virtue comes not behind them in felicity, and that he who, tormented with diseases and being maimed in the body, makes himself away, is equally happy with Jupiter the Saviour, provided he be but wise. But this man neither is nor ever was upon the earth; but there are infinite millions of men unhappy to the highest degree in the state and government of Jupiter, which is most excellently administered. Now what can be more against sense than that, when Jupiter governs exceedingly well, we should be exceedingly miserable? But if (which it is unlawful even to say) he would desire no longer to be a saviour, nor a deliverer, nor a protector, but the contrary to all these glorious appellations, there can no goodness be added to the things that are, either as to their multitude or magnitude, since, as these men say, all men live to the height miserably and wickedly, neither vice receiving addition, nor unhappiness increase.
[De comm. not. 34] Nor is this the worst; but they are angry with Menander for saying upon the stage,
[De comm. not. 34b] The chief beginning of men’s miseries Are things exceeding good;
[De comm. not. 34c] for that this is against sense. And yet they make God, who is good, the beginning of evils. “For matter,” they contend, “produced not any evil of itself; for it is without quality, and whatever differences it has, it has received them all from that which moves and forms it.” But that which moves and forms it is the reason dwelling in it, since matter is not made to move and form itself. So that of necessity evil, if it come by nothing, must have been produced from that which has no being; but if by some moving principle, from God. But if they think that Jupiter has not the command of his parts nor uses every one of them according to his reason, they speak against common sense, and imagine an animal, many of whose parts are not subservient to his will but use their own operations and actions, to which the whole gives no incitation nor begins their motion. For there is nothing which has life so ill compacted as that, against its will, its feet shall go, its tongue speak, its horns push, or its teeth bite. The most of which things God must of necessity suffer, if the wicked, being parts of him, do against his will lie, cheat, rob, and murder one another. But if, as Chrysippus says, the very least part cannot possibly behave itself otherwise than according to Jupiter’s pleasure, and if every living thing is so framed by Nature as to rest and move according as he inclines it and as he turns, stays, and disposes it,
[De comm. not. 34d] This saying is more impious than the first.(See Nauck’s “Tragic Fragments,” p. 704 (No. 345).)
[De comm. not. 34e] For it were more tolerable to say that many parts of Jupiter are, through his weakness and want of power, hurried on to do many absurd things against his nature and will, than that there is not any intemperance or wickedness of which Jupiter is not the cause. Moreover, since they affirm the world to be a city and the stars citizens, if this be so, there must be also tribes-men and magistrates, the sun must be some consul, and the evening star a praetor or mayor of a city. Now I know not whether any one that shall go about to disprove such things will not show himself more ridiculous than those who assert and affirm them.
[De comm. not. 35] Is it not therefore against sense to say that the seed is more and greater than that which is produced of it? For we see that Nature in all animals and plants, even those that are wild, has taken small, slender, and scarce visible things for principles of generation to the greatest. For it does not only from a grain of wheat produce an ear-bearing stalk, or a vine from the stone of a grape; but from a small berry or acorn which has escaped being eaten by the bird, kindling and setting generation on fire (as it were) from a little spark, it sends forth the stock of a bush, or the tall body of an oak, palm, or pine tree. Whence also they say that seed is in Greek called [Greek omitted], as it were, the [Greek omitted] or the WINDING UP of a great mass in a little compass; and that Nature has the name of [Greek omitted], as if it were the INFLATION [Greek omitted] and diffusion of reason and numbers opened and loosened by it. But now, in opposition to this, they hold that fire is the seed of the world, which shall after the conflagration change into seed the world, which will then have a copious nature from a smaller body and bulk, and possess an infinite space of vacuum filled by its increase; and the world being made, the form again recedes and settles, the matter being after the generation gathered and contracted into itself.
[De comm. not. 36] You may hear them and read many of their writings, in which they jangle with the Academics, and cry out against them as confounding all things with their paradox of indistinguishable identity, and as vehemently contending that there is but one quality in two substances. And yet there is no man who understands not this, and would not on the contrary think it wonderful and extremely strange if there should not in all time be found one kind of dove exactly and in all respects like to another dove, a bee to a bee, a grain of wheat to a grain of wheat, or (as the proverb has it) one fig to another. But these things are plainly against common sense which the Stoics say and feign, — that there are in one substance two individual qualities, and that the same substance, which has particularly one quality, when another quality is added, receives and equally conserves them both. For if there may be two, there may be also three, four, and five, and even more than you can name, in one and the same substance; I say not in its different parts, but all equally in the whole, though even infinite in number. For Chrysippus says, that Jupiter and the world are like to man, as is also Providence to the soul; when therefore the conflagration shall be, Jupiter, who alone of all the gods is incorruptible, will retire into Providence, and they being together, will both perpetually remain in the one substance of the ether.
[De comm. not. 37] But leaving now the gods, and beseeching them to give these Stoics common sense and a common understanding, let us look into their doctrines concerning the elements. It is against the common conceptions that one body should be the place of another, or that a body should penetrate through a body, neither of them containing any vacuity, but the full passing into the full, and in which there is no vacuity — but is full and has no place by reason of its continuity — receiving the mixture. But these men, not thrusting one thing into one, nor yet two or three or ten together, but jumbling all the parts of the world, being cut piecemeal, into any one thing which they shall first light on, and saying that the very least which is perceived by sense will contain the greatest that shall come unto it, boldly frame a new doctrine, proving themselves here, as in many other things, to be holding for their suppositions things repugnant to common sense.
[De comm. not. 37b] And presently upon this they are forced to admit into their discourse many monstrous and strange positions, mixing whole bodies with whole; of which this also is one, that three are four. For this others put as an example of those things which cannot be conceived even in thought. But to the Stoics it is a matter of truth, that when one cup of wine is mixed with two of water, if it is not to disappear and if the mixture is to be equalized, it must be spread through the whole and be confounded therewith, so as to make that which was one two by the equalization of the mixture. For the one remains, but is extended as much as two, and thus is equal to the double of itself. Now if it happens in the mixture with two to take the measure of two in the diffusion, this is together the measure both of three and four, — of three because one is mixed with two, and of four because, being mixed with two, it has an equal quantity with those with which it is mixed.
[De comm. not. 37c] Now this fine subtilty is a consequence of their putting bodies into a body, and so likewise is the unintelligibleness of the manner how one is contained in the other. For it is of necessity that, of bodies passing one into another by mixture, the one should not contain and the other be contained, nor the one receive and the other be received within; for this would not be a mixture, but a contiguity and touching of the superficies, the one entering in, and the other enclosing it without, and the rest of the parts remaining unmixed and pure, and so it would be merely many different things. But there being a necessity, according to their axiom of mixture, that the things which are mixed should be mingled one within the other, and that the same things should together be contained by being within, and by receiving contain the other, and that neither of them could possibly exist again as it was before, it comes to pass that both the subjects of the mixture mutually penetrate each other, and that there is not any part of either remaining separate, but that they are necessarily all filled with each other.
[De comm. not. 37d] Here now that famed leg of Arcesilaus comes in, with much laughter insulting over their absurdities; for if these mixtures are through the whole, what should hinder but that, a leg being cut off and putrefied and cast into the sea and diffused, not only Antigonus’s fleet (as Arcesilaus said) might sail through it, but also Xerxes’s twelve hundred ships, together with the Grecians’ three hundred galleys, might fight in it? For the progress will not henceforth fail, nor the lesser cease to be in the greater; or else the mixture will be at an end, and the extremity of it, touching where it shall end, will not pass through the whole, but will give over being mingled. But if the mixture is through the whole, the leg will not indeed of itself give the Greeks room for the sea-fight, for to this there is need of putrefaction and change; but if one glass or but one drop of wine shall fall from hence into the Aegean or Cretan Sea, it will pass into the Ocean or main Atlantic Sea, not lightly touching its superficies, but being spread quite through it in depth, breadth, and length. And this Chrysippus admits, saying immediately in his First Book of Natural Questions, that there is nothing to hinder one drop of wine from being mixed with the whole sea. And that we may not wonder at this, he says that this one drop will by mixtion extend through the whole world; than which I know not anything that can appear more absurd.
[De comm. not. 38] And this also is against sense, that there is not in the nature of bodies anything either supreme or first or last, in which the magnitude of the body may terminate; but that there is always some phenomenon beyond the body, still going on which carries the subject to infinity and undeterminateness. For one body cannot be imagined greater or less than another, if both of them may by their parts proceed IN INFINITUM; but the nature of inequality is taken away. For of things that are esteemed unequal, the one falls short in its last parts, and the other goes on and exceeds. Now if there is no inequality, it follows that there is no unevenness nor roughness of bodies; for unevenness is the inequality of the same superficies with itself, and roughness is an unevenness joined with hardness; neither of which is left us by those who terminate no body in its last part, but extend them all by the multitude of their parts unto an infinity. And yet is it not evident that a man consists of more parts than a finger, and the world of more than a man? This indeed all men know and understand, unless they become Stoics; but if they are once Stoics, they on the contrary say and think that a man has no more parts than a finger, nor the world than a man. For division reduces bodies to an infinity; and of infinites neither is more or less or exceeds in multitude, or the parts of the remainder will cease to be divided and to afford a multitude of themselves.
[De comm. not. 38b] LAMPRIAS. How then do they extricate themselves out of these difficulties?
[De comm. not. 38c] DIADUMENUS. Surely with very great cunning and courage. For Chrysippus says: “If we are asked, if we have any parts, and how many, and of what and how many parts they consist, we are to use a distinction, making it a position that the whole body is compacted of the head, trunk, and legs, as if that were all which is inquired and doubted of. But if they extend their interrogation to the last parts, no such thing is to be undertaken, but we are to say that they consist not of any certain parts, nor yet of so many, nor of infinite, nor of finite.” And I seem to myself to have used his very words, that you may perceive how he maintains the common notions, forbidding us to think of what or how many parts every body is compacted, and whether of infinite or finite. For if there were any medium between finite and infinite, as the indifferent is between good and evil, he should, by telling us what that is, have solved the difficulty. But if — as that which is not equal is presently understood to be unequal, and that which is not mortal to be immortal — we also understand that which is not finite to be immediately infinite, to say that a body consists of parts neither finite nor infinite is, in my opinion, the same thing as to affirm that an argument is compacted of positions neither true nor false. . . .
[De comm. not. 39] To this he with a certain youthful rashness adds, that in a pyramid consisting of triangles, the sides inclining to the juncture are unequal, and yet do not exceed one another in that they are greater. Thus does he keep the common notions. For if there is anything greater and not exceeding, there will be also something less and not deficient, and so also something unequal which neither exceeds nor is deficient; that is, there will be an unequal thing equal, a greater not greater, and a less not less. See it yet farther, in what manner he answered Democritus, inquiring philosophically and to the point, if a cone is divided by a plane parallel with its base, what is to be thought of the superficies of its segments, whether they are equal or unequal; for if they are unequal, they will render the cone uneven, receiving many steplike incisions and roughnesses; but if they are equal, the sections will be equal, and the cone will seem to have the same qualities as the cylinder, to wit, to be composed not of unequal but of equal circles; which is most absurd.
[De comm. not. 39b] Here, that he may convince Democritus of ignorance, he says, that the superficies are neither equal or unequal, but that the bodies are unequal, because the superficies are neither equal nor unequal. Indeed to assert this for a law, that bodies are unequal while the superficies are not unequal, is the part of a man who takes to himself a wonderful liberty of writing whatever comes into his head. For reason and manifest evidence, on the contrary, give us to understand, that the superficies of unequal bodies are unequal, and that the bigger the body is, the greater also is the superficies, unless the excess, by which it is the greater, is void of a superficies. For if the superficies of the greater bodies do not exceed those of the less, but sooner fail, a part of that body which has an end will be without an end and infinite. For if he says that he is compelled to this.
[De comm. not. 39c] For those rabbeted incisions, which he suspects in a cone, are made by the inequality of the body, and not of the superficies. It is ridiculous therefore not to reckon the superficies, and to leave the inequality in the bodies themselves. But to persist still in this matter, what is more repugnant to sense than the imagining of such things? For if we admit that one superficies is neither equal nor unequal to another, we may say also of magnitude and of number, that one is neither equal nor unequal to another; and this, not having anything that we can call or think to be a neuter or medium between equal and unequal. Besides, if there are superficies neither equal nor unequal, what hinders but there may be also circles neither equal nor unequal? For indeed these superficies of conic sections are circles. And if circles, why may not also their diameters be neither equal nor unequal?
[De comm. not. 39d] And if so, why not also angles, triangles, parallelograms, parallelopipeds, and bodies? For if the longitudes are neither equal nor unequal to one another, so will the weight, percussion, and bodies be neither equal nor unequal. How then dare these men inveigh against those who introduce vacuums, and suppose that there are indivisible atoms, and who say that motion and rest are not incompatible with each other, when they themselves affirm such axioms as these to be false: If any things are not equal to one another, they are unequal to one another; and the same things are not equal and unequal to one another? But when he says that there is something greater and yet not exceeding, it were worth the while to ask, whether these things quadrate with one another. For if they quadrate, how is either the greater? And if they do not quadrate, how can it be but the one must exceed and the other fall short? For if neither of these are true, the other both will and will not quadrate with the greater. For those who keep not the common conceptions must of necessity fall into such perplexities.
[De comm. not. 40] It is moreover against sense to say that nothing touches another; nor is this less absurd, that bodies touch one another, but touch by nothing. For they are necessitated to admit these things, who allow not the least parts of a body, but assume something before that which appears to touch, and never ceases to proceed still farther. What, therefore, these men principally object to the patrons of those indivisible bodies called atoms is this, that there is neither a touching of the whole by the whole, nor of the parts by the parts; for that the one makes not a touching but a mixture, and that the other is not possible, these individuals having no parts. How then do not they themselves fall into the same inconvenience, leaving no first or last part, whilst they say, that whole bodies mutually touch one another by a term or extremity and not by a part?
[De comm. not. 40b] But this term is not a body; therefore one body shall touch one another by that which is incorporeal, and again shall not touch, that which is incorporeal coming between them. And if it shall touch, the body shall both do and suffer something by that which is incorporeal. For it is the nature of bodies mutually to do and suffer, and to touch. But if the body has a touching by that which is incorporeal, it will have also a contact, and a mixture, and a coalition. Again, in these contacts and mixtures the extremities of the bodies must either remain, or not remain but be corrupted. Now both of these are against sense. For neither do they themselves admit corruptions and generations of incorporeal things; nor can there be a mixture and coalition of bodies retaining their own extremities. For the extremity determines and constitutes the nature of the body; and mixtions, unless the mutual laying of parts by parts are thereby understood, wholly confound all those that are mixed.
[De comm. not. 40c] And, as these men say, we must admit the corruption of extremities in mixtures, and their generation again in the separation of them. But this none can easily understand. Now by what bodies mutually touch each other, by the same they press, thrust, and crush each other. Now that this should be done or take place in things that are incorporeal, is impossible and not so much as to be imagined. But yet this they would constrain us to conceive. For if a sphere touch a plane by a point, it is manifest that it may be also drawn over the plane upon a point; and if the superficies of it is painted with vermilion, it will imprint a red line on the plane; and if it is fiery hot, it will burn the plane. Now for an incorporeal thing to color, or a body to be burned by that which is incorporeal, is against sense. But if we should imagine an earthen or glassy sphere to fall from on high upon a plane of stone, it were against reason to think it would not be broken, being struck against that which is hard and solid; but it would be more absurd that it should be broken, falling upon an extremity or point that is incorporeal. So that the presumptions concerning things incorporeal and corporeal are wholly disturbed, or rather taken away, by their joining to them many impossibilities.
[De comm. not. 41] It is also against common sense, that there should be a time future and past, but no time present; and that EREWHILE and LATELY subsist, but NOW is nothing at all. Yet this often befalls the Stoics, who admit not the least time between, nor will allow the present to be indivisible; but whatsoever any one thinks to take and understand as present, one part of that they say to be future, and the other part past; so that there is no part remaining or left of the present time: but of that which is said to be present, one part is distributed to the future, the other to the past. Therefore one of these two things follows: either that, holding there was a time and there will be a time, we must deny there is a time; or we must hold that there is a time present, part of which has already been and part will be, and say that of that which now is, one part is future and the other past; and that of NOW, one part is before and the other behind; and that now is that which is neither yet now nor any longer NOW; for that which is past is no longer now, and that which is to come is not yet NOW. And dividing thus the present, they must needs say of the year and of the day, that part of it was of the year or day past, and part will be of the year or day to come; and that of what is together, there is a part before and a part after. For no less are they perplexed, confounding together these terms, NOT YET and ALREADY and NO LONGER and NOW and NOT NOW. But all other men suppose, esteem, and think EREWHILE and AWHILE HENCE to be different parts of time from NOW, which is followed by the one and preceded by the other. But Archedemus, saying that now is the beginning and juncture of that which is past and that which is near at hand, has (as it seems) without perceiving it thereby destroyeth all time. For if NOW is no time, but only a term or extremity of time, and if every part of time is such as now, all time seems to have no parts, but to be wholly dissolved into terms, joints, and beginnings. But Chrysippus, desiring to show more artifice in his division, in his book of Vacuity and some others, says, that the past and future time are not, but have subsisted (or will subsist), and that the present only is; but in his third, fourth, and fifth books concerning Parts, he asserts, that of the present time one part is past, the other to come. Thus it comes to pass, that he divides subsisting time into non-subsisting parts of a subsisting total, or rather leaves nothing at all of time subsisting, if the present has no part but what is either future or past.
[De comm. not. 42] These men’s conception therefore of time is not unlike the grasping of water, which, the harder it is held, all the more slides and runs away. As to actions and motions, all evidence is utterly confounded. For if NOW is divided into past and future, it is of necessity that what is now moved partly has been moved and partly shall be moved, that the end and beginning of motion have been taken away, that nothing of any work has been done first, nor shall anything be last, the actions being distributed with time. For as they say that of present time, part is past and part to come; so of that which is doing, it will be said that part is done and part shall be done. When therefore had TO DINE, TO WRITE, TO WALK, a beginning, and when shall they have an end, if every one who is dining has dined and shall dine, and every one who is walking has walked and shall walk? But this is, as it is said, of all absurdities the most absurd, that if he who now lives has already lived and shall live, then to live neither had beginning nor shall have end; but every one of us, as it seems, was born without commencing to live, and shall die without ceasing to live. For if there is no last part, but he who lives has something of the present still remaining for the future, to say “Socrates shall live” will never be false so long as it shall be true to say “Socrates lives”; and so long also will it be false to say “Socrates is dead.” So that, if “Socrates shall live” is true in infinite parts of time, it will in no part of time be true to say “Socrates is dead.” And verily what end will there be of a work, and where will you terminate an action, if, as often as it is true to say “This is doing,” it is likewise true to say “This shall be doing”? For he will lie who shall say, there will be an end of Plato’s writing and disputing; since Plato will never give over writing and disputing, if it is never false to say of him who disputes that he shall dispute, and of him who writes that he shall write. Moreover, there will be no part of that which now is, but either has been or is to be, and is either past or future; but of what has been and is to be, of past and future, there is no sense; wherefore there is absolutely no sense of anything. For we neither see what is past and future, nor do we hear or have any other sense of what has been or is to be. Nothing, then, even what is present, is to be perceived by sense, if of the present, part is always future and part past, — if part has been and part is to be.
[De comm. not. 43] Now they indeed say, that Epicurus does intolerable things and violates the conceptions, in moving all bodies with equal celerity, and admitting none of them to be swifter than another. And yet it is much more intolerable and farther remote from sense, that nothing can be overtaken by another: —
[De comm. not. 43b] Not though Adrastus’s swift-footed steed Should chase the tortoise slow,
as the proverb has it. Now this must of necessity fall out, if things move according to PRIUS and POSTERIUS, and the intervals through which they pass are (as these men’s tenet is) divisible IN INFINITUM; for if the tortoise is but a furlong before the horse, they who divide this furlong in infinitum, and move them both according to PRIUS and POSTERIUS, will never bring the swiftest to the slowest; the slower always adding some interval divisible into infinite spaces. Now to affirm that, water being poured from a bowl or cup, it will never be all poured out, is it not both against common sense, and a consequence of what these men say? For no man can understand the motion according to PRIUS of things infinitely divisible to be consummated; but leaving always somewhat divisible, it will make all the effusion, all the running and flux of a liquid, motion of a solid, and fall of an heavy thing imperfect.
[De comm. not. 44] I pass by many absurdities of theirs, touching only such as are against sense. The dispute concerning increase is indeed ancient; for the question, as Chrysippus says, was put by Epicharmus. Now, whereas those of the Academy think that the doubt is not very easy and ready all of a sudden to be cleared, these men have mightily exclaimed against them, and accused them of taking away the fixed ideas, and yet themselves are so far from preserving the common notions, that they pervert even sense itself. For the discourse is simple, and these men grant the suppositions, — that all particular substances flow and are carried, some of them emitting forth somewhat from themselves, and others receiving things coming from elsewhere; and that the things to which there is made an accession or from which there is a decession by numbers and multitudes, do not remain the same, but become others by the said accessions, the substance receiving a change; and that these changes are not rightly called by custom increasings or diminutions, but it is fitter they should be styled generations and corruptions, because they drive by force from one state to another, whereas to increase and be diminished are passions of a body that is subject and permanent.
[De comm. not. 44b] These things being thus in a manner said and delivered, what would these defenders of evidence and canonical masters of common conceptions have? Every one of us (they say) is double, twin-like, and composed of a double nature; not as the poets feigned of the Molionidae, that they in some parts grow together and in some parts are separated, — but every one of us has two bodies, having the same color, the same figure, the same weight and place. . . . These things were never before seen by any man; but these men alone have discerned this composition, doubleness, and ambiguity, how every one of us is two subjects, the one substance, the other quality; and the one is in perpetual flux and motion, neither increasing nor being diminished nor remaining altogether; the other remains and increases and is diminished, and suffers all things contrary to the former, with which it is so concorporated, conjoined, and confounded, that it exhibits not any difference to be perceived by sense.
[De comm. not. 44c] Indeed, Lynceus is said to have penetrated stones and oaks with his sight; and a certain man sitting on a watch-tower in Sicily beheld the ships of the Carthaginians setting forth from their harbor, which was a day and a night’s sail from thence. Callicrates and Myrmecides are said to have made chariots that might be covered with the wings of a fly, and to have engraved verses of Homer on a sesame seed. But none ever discerned or discovered this diversity in us; nor have we perceived ourselves to be double, in one part always flowing, and in the other remaining the same from our birth even to our death. But I make the discourse more simple, since they make four subjects in every one, or rather every one of us to be four. But two are sufficient to show their absurdity. For if, when we hear Pentheus in the tragedy affirm that he sees two suns and two cities of Thebes, (Euripides, “Bacchae,” 918.) we say that he does not see, but that his sight is dazzled, he being transported and troubled in his head; why do we not bid those farewell, who assert not one city alone, but all men and animals, and all trees, vessels, instruments, and clothes, to be double and composed of two, as men who constrain us to dote rather than to understand? But this feigning other natures of subjects must perhaps be pardoned them; for there appears no other invention by which they can maintain and uphold the augmentations of which they are so fond.
[De comm. not. 45] But by what cause moved, or for the adorning of what other suppositions, they frame in a manner innumerable differences and forms of bodies in the soul, there is none can say, unless it be that they remove, or rather wholly abdicate and destroy, the common and usual notions, to introduce other foreign and strange ones. For it is very absurd that, making all virtues and vices — and with them all arts, memories, fancies, passions, impulses, and assents — to be bodies, they should affirm that they neither lie nor subsist in any subject, leaving them for a place one only hole, like a prick in the heart, where they crowd the principal part of the soul, enclosed with so many bodies, that a very great number of them lie hid even from those who think they can spare and distinguish them one from another. Nay that they should not only make them bodies, but also intelligent beings, and even a swarm of such creatures, not friendly or mild, but a multitude rebellious and having a hostile mind, and should so make of each one of us a park or menagerie or Trojan horse, or whatever else we may call their inventions, — this is the very height of contempt and contradiction to evidence and custom. But they say, that not only the virtues and vices, not only the passions, as anger, envy, grief, and maliciousness, not only comprehensions, fancies, and ignorances, not only arts, as shoemaking and working in brass, are animals; but besides these, also they make even the operations bodies and animals, saying that walking is an animal, as also dancing, supposing, saluting, and railing. The consequence of this is that laughing and weeping are also animals; and if so, then also are coughing, sneezing, groaning, spitting, blowing the nose, and other such like things sufficiently known. Neither have they any cause to take it ill that they are by reason, proceeding leisurely, reduced to this, if they shall call to mind how Chrysippus, in his First Book of Natural Questions, argues thus: “Is not night a body? And are not then the evening, dawning, and midnight bodies? Or is not a day a body? Is not then the first day of the month a body? And the tenth, the fifteenth, and the thirtieth, are they not bodies? Is not a month a body? Summer, autumn, and the year, are they not bodies?”
[De comm. not. 45b] These things they maintain against the common conceptions; but those which follow they hold also against their own, engendering that which is most hot by refrigeration, and that which is most subtile by condensation. For the soul, to wit, is a substance most hot and most subtile. But this they make by the refrigeration and condensation of the body, changing, as it were, by induration the spirit, which of vegetative is made animal. Moreover, they say that the sun became animated, his moisture changing into intellectual fire. Behold how the sun is imagined to be engendered by refrigeration! Xenophanes indeed, when one told him that he had seen eels living in hot water, answered, We will boil them then in cold. But if these men engender heat by refrigeration and lightness by condensation, it follows, they must also generate cold things by heat, thick things by dissolution, and heavy things by rarefaction, that so they may keep some proportion in their absurdity.
[De comm. not. 47] And do they not also determine the substance and generation of conception itself, even against the common conceptions? For conception is a certain imagination, and imagination an impression in the soul. Now the nature of the soul is an exhalation, in which it is difficult for an impression to be made because of its tenuity, and for which it is impossible to keep an impression it may have received. For its nutriment and generation, consisting of moist things, have continual accession and consumption. And the mixture of respiration with the air always makes some new exhalation which is altered and changed by the flux of the air coming from abroad and again going out. For one may more easily imagine that a stream of running water can retain figures, impressions, and images, than that a spirit can be carried in vapors and humors, and continually mingled with another idle and strange breath from without. But these men so far forget themselves, that, having defined the conceptions to be certain stored-up intelligences, and memoirs to be constant and habitual impressions, and having wholly fixed the sciences, as having stability and firmness, they presently place under them a basis and seat of a slippery substance, easy to be dissipated and in perpetual flux and motion.
[De comm. not. 48] Now the common conception of an element and principle, naturally imprinted in almost all men, is this, that it is simple, unmixed, and uncompounded. For that is not an element or principle which is mixed; but those things are so of which it is mixed. But these men, making God, who is the principle of all things, to be an intellectual body and a mind seated in matter, pronounce him to be neither simple nor uncompounded, but to be composed of and by another; matter being of itself indeed without reason and void of quality, and yet having simplicity and the propertv of a principle. If, then, God is not incorporeal and immaterial, he participates of matter as a principle. For if matter and reason are one and the same thing, they have not rightly defined matter to be reasonless; but if they are different things, then is God constituted of them both, and is not a simple but compound thing, having to the intellectual taken the corporeal from matter.
[De comm. not. 49] Moreover, calling these four bodies, earth, water, air, and fire, the first elements, they do (I know not how) make some of them simple and pure, and others compound and mixed. For they maintain that earth and water hold together neither themselves nor other things, but preserve their unity by the participation of air and force of fire; but that air and fire do both fortify themselves by their own strength, or being mixed with the other two, give them force, permanence, and subsistence. How, then, is either earth or water an element, if neither of them is either simple, or first or self-sufficient, but if each one wants somewhat from without to contain and keep it in its being? For they have not left so much as a thought of their substance; but this discourse concerning the earth has much confusion and uncertainty, when they say that it subsists of itself; for if the earth is of itself, how has it need of the air to fix and contain it? But neither the earth nor water can any more be said to be of itself; but the air, drawing together and thickening the matter, has made the earth, and again dissolving and mollifying it, has produced the water. Neither of these then is an element, since something else has contributed being and generation to them both.
[De comm. not. 50] Moreover, they say that subsistence and matter are subject to qualities, and do so in a manner define them; and again, they make the qualities to be also bodies. But these things have much perplexity. For if qualities have a peculiar substance, for which they both are and are called bodies, they need no other substance; for they have one of their own. But if they have under them in common only that which the Stoic school calls essence and matter, it is manifest they do but participate of the body; for they are not bodies. But the subject and recipient must of necessity differ from those things which it receives and to which it is subject. But these men see by halves; for they say indeed that matter is void of quality, but they will not call qualities immaterial. Now how can they make a body without quality, who understand no quality without a body? For the reason which joins a body to all quality suffers not the understanding to comprehend any body without some quality. Either, therefore, he who oppugns incorporeal quality seems also to oppugn unqualified matter; or separating the one from the other, he mutually parts them both. As for the reason which some pretend, that matter is called unqualified not because it is void of all quality, but because it has all qualities, it is most of all against sense. For no man calls that unqualified which is capable of every quality, nor that impassible which is by nature always apt to suffer all things, nor that immovable which is moved every way. And this doubt is not solved, that, however matter is always understood with quality, yet it is understood to be another thing and differing from quality.

## That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible

PLUTARCH, ZEUXIPPUS, THEON, ARISTODEMUS.
[Non posse 1] Epicurus’s great confidant and familiar, Colotes, set forth a book with this title to it, that according to the tenets of the other philosophers it is impossible to live. Now what occurred to me then to say against him, in the defence of those philosophers, hath been already put into writing by me. But since upon breaking up of our lecture several things have happened to be spoken afterwards in the walks in further opposition to his party, I thought it not amiss to recollect them also, if for no other reason, yet for this one, that those who will needs be contradicting other men may see that they ought not to run cursorily over the discourses and writings of those they would disprove, nor by tearing out one word here and another there, or by falling foul upon particular passages without the books, to impose upon the ignorant and unlearned.
[Non posse 2] Now as we were leaving the school to take a walk (as our manner is) in the gymnasium, Zeuxippus began to us: In my opinion, said he, the debate was managed on our side with more softness and less freedom than was fitting. I am sure, Heraclides went away disgusted with us, for handling Epicurus and Aletrodorus more roughly than they deserved. Yet you may remember, replied Theon, how you told them that Colotes himself, compared with the rhetoric of those two gentlemen, would appear the complaisantest man alive; for when they have raked together the lewdest terms of ignominy the tongue of man ever used, as buffooneries, trollings, arrogancies, whorings, assassinations, whining counterfeits, black-guards, and blockheads, they faintly throw them in the faces of Aristotle, Socrates, Pythagoras, Protagoras, Theophrastus, Heraclides, Hipparchus, and which not, even of the best and most celebrated authorities. So that, should they pass for very knowing men upon all other accounts, yet their very calumnies and reviling language would bespeak them at the greatest distance from philosophy imaginable. For emulation can never enter that godlike consort, nor such fretfulness as wants resolution to conceal its own resentments. Aristodemus then subjoined: Heraclides, you know, is a great philologist; and that may be the reason why he made Epicurus those amends for the poetic din (so, that party style poetry) and for the fooleries of Homer; or else, it may be, it was because Metrodorus had libelled that poet in so many books. But let us let these gentlemen pass at present, Zeuxippus, and rather return to what was charged upon the philosophers in the beginning of our discourse, that it is impossible to live according to their tenets. And I see not why we two may not despatch this affair betwixt us, with the good assistance of Theon; for I find this gentleman (meaning me) is already tired. Then Theon said to him,
[Non posse 2b] Our fellows have that garland from us won;
therefore, if you please,
Let’s fix another goal, and at that run.(“Odyssey,” xxii, 6)
[Non posse 2c] We will even prosecute them at the suit of the philosophers, in the following form: We’ll prove, if we can, that it is impossible to live a pleasurable life according to their tenets. Bless me! said I to him, smiling, you seem to me to level your foot at the very bellies of the men, and to design to enter the list with them for their lives, whilst you go about to rob them thus of their pleasure, and they cry out to you,
[Non posse 2d] “Forbear, we’re no good boxers, sir;
no, nor good pleaders, nor good senators, nor good magistrates either;
“Our proper talent is to eat and drink.”(“Odyssey,” viii, 246, 248)
[Non posse 2e] and to excite such tender and delicate motions in our bodies as may chafe our imaginations to some jolly delight or gayety.” And therefore you seem to me not so much to take off (as I may say) the pleasurable part, as to deprive the men of their very lives, while you will not leave them to live pleasurably. Nay then, said Theon, if you approve so highly of this subject, why do you not set in hand to it? By all means, said I, I am for this, and shall not only hear but answer you too, if you shall insist. But I must leave it to you to take the lead.
[Non posse 2f] Then, after Theon had spoken something to excuse himself, Aristodemus said: When we had so short and fair a cut to our design, how have you blocked up the way before us, by preventing us from joining issue with the faction at the very first upon the single point of propriety! For you must grant, it can be no easy matter to drive men already possessed that pleasure is their utmost good yet to believe a life of pleasure impossible to be attained. But now the truth is, that when they failed of living becomingly they failed also of living pleasurably; for to live pleasurably without living becomingly is even by themselves allowed inconsistent.
[Non posse 3] Theon then said: We may probably resume the consideration of that in the process of our discourse; in the interim we will make use of their concessions. Now they suppose their last good to lie about the belly and such other conveyances of the body as let in pleasure and not pain; and are of opinion, that all the brave and ingenious inventions that ever have been were contrived at first for the pleasure of the belly, or the good hope of compassing such pleasure, — as the sage Metrodorus informs us. By which, my good friend, it is very plain, they found their pleasure in a poor, rotten, and unsure thing, and one that is equally perforated for pains, by the very passages they receive their pleasures by; or rather indeed, that admits pleasure but by a few, but pain by all its parts. For the whole of pleasure is in a manner in the joints, nerves, feet, and hands; and these are oft the seats of very grievous and lamentable distempers, as gouts, corroding rheums, gangrenes, and putrid ulcers. And if you apply to yourself the exquisitest of perfumes or gusts, you will find but some one small part of your body is finely and delicately touched, while the rest are many times filled with anguish and complaints. Besides, there is no part of us proof against fire, sword, teeth, or scourges, or insensible of dolors and aches; yea, heats, colds, and fevers sink into all our parts alike. But pleasures, like gales of soft wind, move simpering, one towards one extreme of the body and another towards another, and then go off in a vapor. Nor are they of any long durance, but, as so many glancing meteors, they are no sooner kindled in the body than they are quenched by it. As to pain, Aeschylus’s Philoctetes affords us a sufficient testimony: —
[Non posse 3b] The cruel viper ne’er will quit my foot; Her dire envenomed teeth have there ta’en root.
[Non posse 3c] For pain will not troll off as pleasure doth, nor imitate it in its pleasing and tickling touches. But as the clover twists its perplexed and winding roots into the earth, and through its coarseness abides there a long time; so pain disperses and entangles its hooks and roots in the body, and continues there, not for a day or a night, but for several seasons of years, if not for some revolutions of Olympiads, nor scarce ever departs unless struck out by other pains, as by stronger nails. For who ever drank so long as those that are in a fever are a-dry? Or who was ever so long eating as those that are besieged suffer hunger? Or where are there any that are so long solaced with the conversation of friends as tyrants are racking and tormenting? Now all this is owing to the baseness of the body and its natural incapacity for a pleasurable life; for it bears pains better than it doth pleasures, and with respect to those is firm and hardy, but with respect to these is feeble and soon palled. To which add, that if we are minded to discourse on a life of pleasure, these men won’t give us leave to go on, but will presently confess themselves that the pleasures of the body are but short, or rather indeed but of a moment’s continuance; if they do not design to banter us or else speak out of vanity, when Metrodorus tells us, We many times spit at the pleasures of the body, and Epicurus saith, A wise man, when he is sick, many times laughs in the very extremity of his distemper.
[Non posse 3d] For Ithaca is no fit place For mettled steeds to run a race.(“Odyssey,” iv. 605.)
[Non posse 4] Neither can the joys of our poor bodies be smooth and equal; but on the contrary they must be coarse and harsh, and immixed with much that is displeasing and inflamed.
Zeuxippus then said: And do you not think then they take the right course to begin at the body, where they observe pleasure to have its first rise, and thence to pass to the mind as the more stable and sure part, there to complete and crown the whole?
[Non posse 4b] They do, by Jove, I said; and if, after removing thither they have indeed found something more consummate than before, a course too as well agreeing with nature as becoming men adorned with both contemplative and civil knowledge. But if after all this you still hear them cry out, and protest that the mind of man can receive no satisfaction or tranquillity from anything under Heaven but the pleasures of the body either in possession or expectance, and that these are its proper and only good, can you forbear thinking they make use of the soul but as a funnel for the body, while they mellow their pleasure by shifting it from one vessel to another, as they rack wine out of an old and leaky vessel into a new one and there let it grow old, and then imagine they have performed some extraordinary and very fine thing? True indeed, a fresh pipe may both keep and recover wine that hath thus been drawn off; but the mind, receiving but the remembrance only of past pleasure, like a kind of scent, retains that and no more.
[Non posse 4c] For as soon as it hath given one hiss in the body, it immediately expires, and that little of it that stays behind in the memory is but flat and like a queasy fume: as if a man should lay up and treasure in his fancy what he either ate or drank yesterday, that he may have recourse to that when he wants fresh fare. See now how much more temperate the Cyrenaics are, who, though they have drunk out of the same bottle with Epicurus, yet will not allow men so much as to practise their amours by candlelight, but only under the covert of the dark, for fear seeing should fasten too quick an impression of the images of such actions upon the fancy and thereby too frequently inflame the desire. But these gentlemen account it the highest accomplishment of a philosopher to have a clear and retentive memory of all the various figures, passions, and touches of past pleasure.
[Non posse 4d] We will not now say, they present us with nothing worthy the name of philosophy, while they leave the refuse of pleasure in their wise man’s mind, as if it could be a lodging for bodies; but that it is impossible such things as these should make a man live pleasurably, I think is abundantly manifest from hence. For it will not perhaps seem strange if I assert, that the memory of pleasure past brings no pleasure with it if it appeared but little in the very enjoyment, or to men of such abstinence as to account it for their benefit to retire from its first approaches; when even the most amazed and sensual admirers of corporeal delights remain no longer in their gaudy and pleasant humor than their pleasure lasts them. What remains is but an empty shadow and dream of that pleasure that hath now taken wing and is fled from them, and that serves but for fuel to foment their untamed desires.
[Non posse 4e] Like as in those that dream they are a-dry or in love, their unaccomplished pleasures and enjoyments do but excite the inclination to a greater keenness. Nor indeed can the remembrance of past enjoyments afford them any real contentment at all, but must serve only, with the help of a quick desire, to raise up very much of outrage and stinging pain out of the remains of a feeble and befooling pleasure. Neither doth it befit men of continence and sobriety to exercise their thoughts about such poor things, or to do what one twitted Carneades with, to reckon, as out of a diurnal, how oft they have lain with Hedia or Leontion, or where they last drank Thasian wine, or at what twentieth-day feast they had a costly supper. For such transport and captivatedness of the mind to its own remembrances as this is would show a detestable and bestial restlessness and raving towards the present and hoped-for acts of pleasure.
[Non posse 4f] And therefore I cannot but look upon the sense of these inconveniences as the true cause of their retiring at last to a freedom from pain and a firm state of body; as if living pleasurably could lie in bare imagining this either past or future to some persons. True indeed it is, “that a sound state of body and a good assurance of its continuing must needs afford a most transcending and solid satisfaction to all men capable of reasoning.”
[Non posse 5] But yet look first what work they make, while they course this same thing — whether it be pleasure, exemption from pain, or good health — up and down, first from the body to the mind, and then back again from the mind to the body, being compelled to return it to its first origin, lest it should run out and so give them the slip. Thus they place the pleasure of the body (as Epicurus says) upon the complacent joy in the mind, and yet conclude again with the good hopes that complacent joy hath in bodily pleasure. Indeed what wonder is it if, when the foundation shakes, the superstructure totter? Or that there should be no sure hope nor unshaken joy in a matter that suffers so great concussion and changes as continually attend a body exposed to so many violences and strokes from without, and having within it the origins of such evils as human reason cannot avert? For if it could, no understanding man would ever fall under stranguries, gripes, consumptions, or dropsies; with some of which Epicurus himself did conflict and Polyaenus with others, while others of them were the deaths of Neocles and Agathobulus. And this we mention not to disparage them, knowing very well that Pherecydes and Heraclitus, both very excellent persons, labored under very uncouth and calamitous distempers. We only beg of them, if they will own their own diseases and not by noisy rants and popular harangues incur the imputation of false bravery, either not to take the health of the whole body for the ground of their content, or else not to say that men under the extremities of dolors and diseases can yet rally and be pleasant. For a sound and hale constitution of body is indeed a thing that often happens, but a firm and steadfast assurance of its continuance can never befall an intelligent mind. But as at sea (according to Aeschylus)
[Non posse 5b] Night to the ablest pilot trouble brings,(Aechylus, “Suppliants,” 770.)
[Non posse 5c] and so will a calm too, for no man knows what will be, — so likewise is it impossible for a soul that dwells in a healthful body, and that places her good in the hopes she hath of that body, to perfect her voyage here without frights or waves. For man’s mind hath not, like the sea, its tempests and storms only from without it, but it also raises up from within far more and greater disturbances. And a man may with more reason look for constant fair weather in the midst of winter than for perpetual exemption from afflictions in his body. For what else hath given the poets occasion to term us ephemeral creatures, uncertain and unfixed, and to liken our lives to leaves that both spring and fall in the lapse of a summer, but the unhappy, calamitous, and sickly condition of the body, whose very utmost good we are warned to dread and prevent? For an exquisite habit, Hippocrates saith, is slippery and hazardous. And
[Non posse 5d] He that but now looked jolly, plump, and stout, Like a star shot by Jove, is now gone out;
[Non posse 5e] as it is in Euripides. And it is a vulgar persuasion, that very handsome persons, when looked upon, oft suffer damage by envy and an evil eye; for a body at its utmost vigor will through delicacy very soon admit of changes.
[Non posse 6] But now that these men are miserably unprovided for an undisturbed life, you may discern even from what they themselves advance against others. For they say that those who commit wickedness and incur the displeasure of the laws live in constant misery and fear, for, though they may perhaps attain to privacy, yet it is impossible they should ever be well assured of that privacy; whence the ever impending fear of the future will not permit them to have either complacency or assurance in their present circumstances. But they consider not how they speak all this against themselves. For a sound and healthy state of body they may indeed oftentimes possess, but that they should ever be well assured of its continuance is impossible; and they must of necessity be in constant disquiet and pain for the body with respect to futurity, never being able to reach that firm and steadfast assurance which they expect.
[Non posse 6b] But to do no wickedness will contribute nothing to our assurance; for it is not suffering unjustly but suffering in itself that is dismaying. Nor can it be a matter of trouble to be engaged in villanies one’s self, and not afflictive to suffer by the villanies of others. Neither can it be said that the tyranny of Lachares was less, if it was not more, calamitous to the Athenians, and that of Dionysius to the Syracusans, than they were to the tyrants themselves; for it was disturbing that made them be disturbed; and their first oppressing and pestering of others gave them occasion to expect to suffer ill themselves. Why should a man recount the outrages of rabbles, the barbarities of thieves, or the villanies of inheritors, or yet the contagions of airs and the concursions of seas, by which Epicurus (as himself writeth) was in his voyage to Lampsacus within very little of drowning?
[Non posse 7] The very composition of the body — it containing in it the matter of all diseases, and (to use a pleasantry of the vulgar) cutting thongs for the beast out of its own hide, I mean pains out of the body — is sufficient to make life perilous and uneasy, and that to the good as well as to the bad, if they have learned to set their complacence and assurance in the body and the hopes they have of it, and in nothing else; as Epicurus hath written, as well in many other of his discourses as in that of Man’s End. They therefore assign not only a treacherous and unsure ground of their pleasurable living, but also one in all respects despicable and little, if the escaping of evils be the matter of their complacence and last good. But now they tell us, nothing else can be so much as imagined, and nature hath no other place to bestow her good in but only that out of which her evil hath been driven; as Metrodorus speaks in his book against the Sophists.
[Non posse 7b] So that this single thing, to escape evil, he says, is the supreme good; for there is no room to lodge this good in where no more of what is painful and afflicting goes out. Like unto this is that of Epicurus, where he saith: The very essence of good arises from the escaping of bad, and a man’s recollecting, considering, and rejoicing within himself that this hath befallen him. For what occasions transcending joy (he saith) is some great impending evil escaped; and in this lies the very nature and essence of good, if a man consider it aright, and contain himself when he hath done, and not ramble and prate idly about it. Oh, the rare satisfaction and felicity these men enjoy, that can thus rejoice for having undergone no evil and endured neither sorrow nor pain! Have they not reason, think you, to value themselves for such things as these, and to speak as they are wont when they style themselves immortals and equals to gods? — and when, through the excessiveness and transcendency of the blessed things they enjoy, they rave even to the degree of whooping and hollowing for very satisfaction that, to the shame of all mortals, they have been the only men that could find out this celestial and divine good that lies in an exemption from all evil?
[Non posse 7c] So that their beatitude differs little from that of swine and sheep, while they place it in a mere tolerable and contented state, either of the body, or of the mind upon the body’s account. For even the more prudent and more ingenious sort of brutes do not esteem escaping of evil their last end; but when they have taken their repast, they are disposed next by fullness to singing, and they divert themselves with swimming and flying; and their gayety and sprightliness prompt them to entertain themselves with attempting to counterfeit all sorts of voices and notes; and then they make their caresses to one another, by skipping and dancing one towards another; nature inciting them, after they have escaped evil, to look after some good, or rather to shake off what they find uneasy and disagreeing, as an impediment to their pursuit of something better and more congenial.
[Non posse 8] For what we cannot be without deserves not the name of good; but that which claims our desire and preference must be something beyond a bare escape from evil. And so, by Jove, must that be too that is either agreeing or congenial to us, according to Plato, who will not allow us to give the name of pleasures to the bare departures of sorrows and pains, but would have us look upon them rather as obscure draughts and mixtures of agreeing and disagreeing, as of black and white, while the extremes would advance themselves to a middle temperament. But oftentimes unskilfulness and ignorance of the true nature of extreme occasions some to mistake the middle temperament for the extreme and outmost part. Thus do Epicurus and Metrodorus, while they make avoiding of evil to be the very essence and consummation of good, and so receive but as it were the satisfaction of slaves or of rogues newly discharged the jail, who are well enough contented if they may but wash and supple their sores and the stripes they received by whipping, but never in their lives had one taste or sight of a generous, clean, unmixed and unulcerated joy. For it follows not that, if it be vexatious to have one’s body itch or one’s eyes to run, it must be therefore a blessing to scratch one’s self, and to wipe one’s eye with a rag; nor that, if it be bad to be dejected or dismayed at divine matters or to be discomposed with the relations of hell, therefore the bare avoiding of all this must be some happy and amiable thing. The truth is, these men’s opinion, though it pretends so far to outgo that of the vulgar, allows their joy but a straight and narrow compass to toss and tumble in, while it extends it but to an exemption from the fear of hell, and so makes that the top of acquired wisdom which is doubtless natural to the brutes. For if freedom from bodily pain be still the same, whether it come by endeavor or by nature, neither then is an undisturbed state of mind the greater for being attained to by industry than if it came by nature. Though a man may with good reason maintain that to be the more confirmed habit of the mind which naturally admits of no disorder, than that which by application and judgment eschews it.
[Non posse 8b] But let us suppose them both equal; they will yet appear not one jot superior to the beasts for being unconcerned at the stories of hell and the legends of the gods, and for not expecting endless sorrows and everlasting torments hereafter. For it is Epicurus himself that tells us that, had our surmises about heavenly phenomena and our foolish apprehensions of death and the pains that ensue it given us no disquiet, we had not then needed to contemplate nature for our relief. For neither have the brutes any weak surmises of the gods or fond opinion about things after death to disorder themselves with; nor have they as much as imagination or notion that there is anything in these to be dreaded. I confess, had they left us the benign providence of God as a presumption, wise men might then seem, by reason of their good hopes from thence, to have something towards a pleasurable life that beasts have not. But now, since they have made it the scope of all their discourses of God that they may not fear him, but may be eased of all concern about him, I much question whether those that never thought at all of him have not this in a more confirmed degree than they that have learned to think he can do no harm. For if they were never freed from superstition, they never fell into it; and if they never laid aside a disturbing conceit of God, they never took one up. The like may be said as to hell and the future state. For though neither the Epicurean nor the brute can hope for any good thence; yet such as have no forethought of death at all cannot but be less amused and scared with what comes after it than they that betake themselves to the principle that death is nothing to us. But something to them it must be, at least so far as they concern themselves to reason about it and contemplate it; but the beasts are wholly exempted from thinking of what appertains not to them; and if they fly from blows, wounds, and slaughters, they fear no more in death than is dismaying to the Epicurean himself.
[Non posse 9] Such then are the things they boast to have attained by their philosophy. Let us now see what those are they deprive themselves of and chase away from them. For those diffusions of the mind that arise from the body, and the pleasing condition of the body, if they be but moderate, appear to have nothing in them that is either great or considerable; but if they be excessive, besides their being vain and uncertain, they are also importune and petulant; nor should a man term them either mental satisfactions or gayeties, but rather corporeal gratifications, they being at best but the simperings and effeminacies of the mind. But now such as justly deserve the names of complacencies and joys are wholly refined from their contraries, and are immixed with neither vexation, remorse, nor repentance; and their good is congenial to the mind and truly mental and genuine, and not superinduced. Nor is it devoid of reason, but most rational, as springing either from that in the mind that is contemplative and inquiring, or else from that part of it that is active and heroic. How many and how great satisfactions either of these affords us, no one can ever relate. But to hint briefly at some of them. We have the historians before us, which, though they find us many and delightful exercises, still leave our desire after truth insatiate and uncloyed with pleasure, through which even lies are not without their grace. Yea, tales and poetic fictions, while they cannot gain upon our belief, have something in them that is charming to us.
[Non posse 10] For do but think with yourself, with what a sting we read Plato’s “Atlantic” and the conclusion of the “Iliad,” and how we hanker and gape after the rest of the tale, as when some beautiful temple or theatre is shut up. But now the informing of ourselves with the truth herself is a thing so delectable and lovely as if our very life and being were for the sake of knowing. And the darkest and grimmest things in death are its oblivion, ignorance, and obscurity. Whence, by Jove, it is that almost all mankind encounter with those that would destroy the sense of the departed, as placing the very whole of their life, being, and satisfaction solely in the sensible and knowing part of the mind. For even the things that grieve and afflict us yet afford us a sort of pleasure in the hearing. And it is often seen that those that are disordered by what is told them, even to the degree of weeping, notwithstanding require the telling of it. So he in the tragedy who is told,
[Non posse 10b] Alas I now the very worst must tell,replies,I dread to hear it too, but I must hear.(Sophocles, “Pedipus Tyrannus,” 116 9, 117 0.)
But this may seem perhaps a sort of intemperateness of delight in knowing everything, and as it were a stream violently bearing down the reasoning faculty. But now, when a story that hath in it nothing that is troubling and afflictive treats of great and heroic enterprises with a potency and grace of style such as we find in Herodotus’s Grecian and in Xenophon’s Persian history, or in what,
[Non posse 10c] Inspired by heavenly gods, sage Homer sung,
[Non posse 10d] or in the Travels of Euxodus, the Foundations and Republics of Aristotle, and the Lives of Famous Men compiled by Aristoxenus; these will not only bring us exceeding much and great contentment, but such also as is clean and secure from repentance. And who could take greater satisfaction either in eating when a-hungry or drinking when a-dry amongst the Phaeacians, than in going over Ulysses’s relation of his own voyage and rambles? And what man could be better pleased with the embraces of the most exquisite beauty, than with sitting up all night to read over what Xenophon hath written of Panthea, or Aristobulus of Timoclea, or Theopompus of Thebe?
[Non posse 11] But now these appertain all solely to the mind. But they chase away from them the delights that accrue from the mathematics also. Though the satisfactions we receive from history have in them something simple and equal; but those that come from geometry, astronomy, and music inveigle and allure us with a sort of nimbleness and variety, and want nothing that is tempting and engaging; their figures attracting us as so many charms, whereof whoever hath once tasted, if he be but competently skilled, will run about chanting that in Sophocles,
[Non posse 11b] I’m mad; the Muses with new rage inspire me.I’ll mount the hill; my lyre, my numbers fire me.(From the “Thamyras” of Sophocles, Frag. 225)
[Non posse 11c] Nor doth Thamyras break out into poetic raptures upon any other score; nor, by Jove, Euxodus, Aristarchus, or Archimedes. And when the lovers of the art of painting are so enamoured with the charmingness of their own performances, that Nicias, as he was drawing the Evocation of Ghosts in Homer, often asked his servants whether he had dined or no, and when King Ptolemy had sent him threescore talents for his piece, after it was finished, he neither would accept the money nor part with his work; what and how great satisfactions may we then suppose to have been reaped from geometry and astronomy by Euclid when he wrote his Dioptrics, by Philippus when he had perfected his demonstration of the figure of the moon, by Archimedes when with the help of a certain angle he had found the sun’s diameter to make the same part of the largest circle that that angle made of four right angles, and by Apollonius and Aristarchus who were the inventors of some other things of the like nature? The bare contemplating and comprehending of all these now engender in the learners both unspeakable delights and a marvellous height of spirit. And it doth in no wise beseem me, by comparing with these the fulsome debauchees of victualling-houses and stews, to contaminate Helicon and the Muses, —
[Non posse 11d] Where swain his flock ne’er fed, Nor tree by hatchet bled.(Euripides, “Hippolytus,” 75.)
[Non posse 11e] But these are the verdant and untrampled pastures of ingenious bees; but those are more like the mange of lecherous boars and he-goats. And though a voluptuous temper of mind be naturally erratic and precipitate, yet never any yet sacrificed an ox for joy that he had gained his will of his mistress; nor did any ever wish to die immediately, might he but once satiate himself with the costly dishes and comfits at the table of his prince. But now Eudoxus wished he might stand by the sun, and inform himself of the figure, magnitude, and beauty of that luminary, though he were, like Phaethon, consumed by it. And Pythagoras offered an ox in sacrifice for having completed the lines of a certain geometric diagram; as Apollodotus tells us,
[Non posse 11f] When the famed lines Pythagoras devised, For which a splendid ox he sacrificed.
[Non posse 11g] Whether it was that by which he showed that the line that regards the right angle in a triangle is equivalent to the two lines that contain that angle, or the problem about the area of the parabolic section of a cone. And Archimedes’s servants were forced to hale him away from his draughts, to be anointed in the bath; but he notwithstanding drew the lines upon his belly with his strigil. And when, as he was washing (as the story goes of him), he thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero’s crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool, he leaped up as one possessed or inspired, crying, “I have found it;” which after he had several times repeated, he went his way. But we never yet heard of a glutton that exclaimed with such vehemence, “I have eaten,” or of an amorous gallant that ever cried, “I have kissed,” among the many millions of dissolute debauchees that both this and preceding ages have produced. Yea, we abominate those that make mention of their great suppers with too luscious a gust, as men overmuch taken with mean and abject delights. But we find ourselves in one and the same ecstasy with Eudoxus, Archimedes, and Hipparchus; and we readily give assent to Plato when he saith of the mathematics, that while ignorance and unskilledness make men despise them, they still thrive notwithstanding by reason of their charmingness, in despite of contempt.
[Non posse 12] These then so great and so many pleasures, that run like perpetual springs and rills, these men decline and avoid; nor will they permit those that put in among them so much as to take a taste of them, but bid them hoist up the little sails of their paltry cock-boats and fly from them. Nay, they all, both he and she philosophers, beg and entreat Pythocles, for dear Epicurus’s sake, not to affect or make such account of the sciences called liberal. And when they cry up and defend one Apelles, they write of him that he kept himself clean by refraining himself all along from the mathematics. But as to history — to pass over their aversedness to other kinds of compositions — I shall only present you with the words of Metrodorus, who in his treatise of the Poets writes thus: Wherefore let it never disturb you, if you know not either what side Hector was of, or the first verses in Homer’s Poem, or again what is in its middle. But that the pleasures of the body spend themselves like the winds called Etesian or Anniversary, and utterly determine when once age is past its vigor, Epicurus himself was not insensible; and therefore he makes it a problematic question, whether a sage philosopher, when he is an old man and disabled for enjoyment, may not still be recreated with having handsome girls to feel and grope him, being not, it seems, of the mind of old Sophocles, who thanked God he had at length escaped from this kind of pleasure, as from an untamed and furious master. But, in my opinion, it would be more advisable for these sensual lechers, when they see that age will dry up so many of their pleasures, and that, as Euripides saith,
[Non posse 12b] Dame Venus is to ancient men a foe,(Euripides, “Aeolus,” Frag. 23.)
[Non posse 12c] in the first place to collect and lay up in store, as against a siege, these other pleasures, as a sort of provision that will not impair and decay; that then, after they have celebrated the venereal festivals of life, they may spend a cleanly after-feast in reading over the historians and poets, or else in problems of music and geometry. For it would never have come into their minds so much as to think of these purblind and toothless gropings and spurtings of lechery, had they but learned, if nothing more, to write comments upon Homer or Euripides, as Aristotle, Heraclides, and Dicaerchus did. But I verily persuade myself that their neglecting to take care for such provisions as these, and finding all the other things they employed themselves in (as they use to say of virtue) but insipid and dry, and being wholly set upon pleasure, and the body no longer supplying them with it, give them occasion to stoop to do things both mean and shameful in themselves and unbecoming their age; as well when they refresh their memories with their former pleasures and serve themselves of old ones (as it were) long since dead and laid up in pickle for the purpose, when they cannot have fresh ones, as when again they offer violence to nature by suscitating and inflaming in their decayed bodies, as in cold embers, other new ones equally senseless, they having not, it seems, their minds stored with any congenial pleasure that is worth the rejoicing at.
[Non posse 13] As to the other delights of the mind, we have already treated of them, as they occurred to us. But their aversedness and dislike to music, that affords us so great delights and such charming satisfactions, a man could not forget if he would, by reason of the inconsistency of what Epicurus saith, when he pronounceth in his book called his Doubts that his wise man ought to be a lover of public spectacles and to delight above any other man in the music and shows of the Bacchanals; and yet he will not admit of music problems or of the critical inquiries of philologists, no, not so much as at a compotation. Yea, he advises such princes as are lovers of the Muses rather to entertain themselves at their feasts either with some narration of military adventures or with the importune scurrilities of drolls and buffoons, than to engage in disputes about music or in questions of poetry.
[Non posse 13b] For this very thing he had the face to write in his treatise of Monarchy, as if he were writing to Sardanapalus, or to Nanarus ruler of Babylon. For neither would a Hiero nor an Attalus nor an Archelaus be persuaded to make a Euripides, a Simonides, a Melanippides, a Crates, or a Diodotus rise up from their tables, and to place such scaramuchios in their rooms as a Cardax, an Agrias, or a Callias, or fellows like Thrasonides and Thrasyleon, to make people disorder the house with hollowing and clapping. Had the great Ptolemy, who was the first that formed a consort of musicians, but met with these excellent and royal admonitions, would he not, think you, have thus addressed himself to the Samians: —
[Non posse 13c] O Muse, whence art thou thus maligned?
For certainly it can never belong to any Athenian to be in such enmity and hostility with the Muses. But
[Non posse 13d] No animal accurst by Jove Music’s sweet charms can ever love.(Pindar, “Pythian,” i. 25.)
[Non posse 13e] What sayest thou now, Epicurus? Wilt thou get thee up betimes in the morning, and go to the theatre to hear the harpers and flutists play? But if a Theophrastus discourse at the table of Concords, or an Aristoxenus of Varieties, or if an Aristophanes play the critic upon Homer, wilt thou presently, for very dislike and abhorrence, clap both thy hands upon thy ears? And do they not hereby make the Scythian king Ateas more musical than this comes to, who, when he heard that admirable flutist Ismenias, detained then by him as a prisoner of war, playing upon the flute at a compotation, swore he had rather hear his own horse neigh? And do they not also profess themselves to stand at an implacable and irreconcilable defiance with whatever is generous and becoming? And indeed what do they ever embrace or affect that is either genteel or regardable, when it hath nothing of pleasure to accompany it? And would it not far less affect a pleasurable way of living, to abhor perfumes and odors, like beetles and vultures, than to shun and abhor the conversation of learned, critics and musicians? For what flute or harp ready tuned for a lesson, or
[Non posse 13f] What sweetest concerts e’er with artful noise, Warbled by softest tongue and best tuned voice,
[Non posse 13g] ever gave Epicurus and Metrodorus such content as the disputes and precepts about concerts gave Aristotle, Theophrastus, Hieronymus, and Dicaerchus? And also the problems about flutes, rhythms, and harmonies; as, for instance, why the longer of two flutes of the same longitude should speak flatter? — why, if you raise the pipe, will all its notes be sharp; and flat again, if you depress it? — and why, when clapped to another, will it sound flatter; and sharper again, when taken from it? — why also, if you scatter chaff or dust about the orchestra of a theatre, will the sound be deadened? — and why, when one would have set up a bronze Alexander for a frontispiece to a stage at Pella, did the architect advise to the contrary, because it would spoil the actors’ voices? and why, of the several kinds of music, will the chromatic diffuse and the harmonic compose the mind?
[Non posse 14] But now the several humors of poets, their differing turns and forms of style, and the solutions of their difficult places, have conjoined with a sort of dignity and politeness somewhat also that is extremely agreeable and charming; insomuch that to me they seem to do what was once said by Xenophon, to make a man even forget the joys of love, so powerful and overcoming is the pleasure they bring us. In this investigation these gentlemen have not the least share, nor do they so much as pretend or desire to have any. But while they are sinking and depressing their contemplative part into the body, and dragging it down by their sensual and intemperate appetites, as by so many weights of lead, they make themselves appear little better than hostlers or graziers that still ply their cattle with hay, straw, or grass, looking upon such provender as the properest and meetest food for them.
[Non posse 14b] And is it not even thus they would swill the mind with the pleasures of the body, as hogherds do their swine, while they will not allow it can be gay any longer than it is hoping, experiencing, or remembering something that refers to the body; but will not have it either to receive or seek for any congenial joy or satisfaction from within itself? Though what can be more absurd and unreasonable than — when there are two things that go to make up the man, a body and a soul, and the soul besides hath the perogative of governing — that the body should have its peculiar, natural, and proper good, and the soul none at all, but must sit gazing at the body and simper at its passions, as if she were pleased and affected with them, though indeed she be all the while wholly untouched and unconcerned, as having nothing of her own to choose, desire, or take delight in?
[Non posse 15] For they should either pull off the vizor quite, and say plainly that man is all body (as some of them do, that take away all mental being), or, if they will allow us to have two distinct natures, they should then leave to each its proper good and evil, agreeable and disagreeable; as we find it to be with our senses, each of which is peculiarly adapted to its own sensible, though they all very strangely intercommune one with another. Now the intellect is the proper sense of the mind; and therefore that it should have no congenial speculation, movement, or affection of its own, the attaining to which should be matter of complacency to it, is the most irrational thing in the world, if I have not, by Jove, unwittingly done the men wrong, and been myself imposed upon by some that may perhaps have calumniated them. Then I said to him: If we may be your judges, you have not; yea, we must acquit you of having offered them the least indignity; and therefore pray despatch the rest of your discourse with assurance.
[Non posse 15b] How! said I, and shall not Aristodemus then succeed me, if you are tired out yourself? Aristodemus said: With all my heart, when you are as much tired as he is; but since you are yet in your vigor, pray make use of yourself, my noble friend, and don’t think to pretend weariness. Theon then replied: What is yet behind, I must confess, is very easy; it being but to go over the several pleasures contained in that part of life that consists in action. Now themselves somewhere say that there is far more satisfaction in doing than in receiving good; and good may be done many times, it is true, by words, but the most and greatest part of good consists in action, as the very name of beneficence tells us and they themselves also attest. For you may remember, continued he, we heard this gentleman tell us but now what words Epicurus uttered, and what letters he sent to his friends, applauding and magnifying Metrodorus, — how bravely and like a spark he quitted the city and went down to the port to relieve Mithrus the Syrian, — and this, though Metrodorus did not then do anything at all.
[Non posse 15c] What and how great then may we presume the pleasures of Plato to have been, when Dion by the measures he gave him deposed the tyrant Dionysius and set Sicily at liberty? And what the pleasures of Aristotle, when he rebuilt his native city Stagira, then levelled with the ground, and brought back its exiled inhabitants? And what the pleasures of Theophrastus and of Phidias, when they cut off the tyrants of their respective countries? For what need a man recount to you, who so well know it, how many particular persons they relieved, not by sending them a little wheat or a measure of meal (as Epicurus did to some of his friends), but by procuring restoration to the banished, liberty to the imprisoned, and restitution of wives and children to those that had been bereft of them? But a man could not, if he were willing, pass by the sottish stupidity of the man who, though he tramples under foot and vilifies the great and generous actions of Themistocles and Miltiades, yet writes these very words to his friends about himself: “You have given a very gallant and noble testimony of your care of me in the provision of corn you have made for me, and have declared your affection to me by signs that mount to the very skies.” So that, should a man but take that poor parcel of corn out of the great philosopher’s epistle, it might seem to be the recital of some letter of thanks for the delivery or preservation of all Greece or of the commons of Athens.
[Non posse 16] We will now forbear to mention that Nature requires very large and chargeable provisions to be made for accomplishing the pleasures of the body; nor can the height of delicacy be had in black bread and lentil pottage. But voluptuous and sensual appetites expect costly dishes, Thasian wines, perfumed unguents, and varieties of pastry works,
[Non posse 16b] And cakes by female hands wrought artfully, Well steep’d in th’ liquor of the gold-wing’d bee;
[Non posse 16c] and besides all this, handsome young lassies too, such as Leontion, Boidion, Hedia, and Nicedion, that were wont to roam about in Epicurus’s philosophic garden. But now such joys as suit the mind must undoubtedly be grounded upon a grandeur of actions and a splendor of worthy deeds, if men would not seem little, ungenerous, and puerile, but on the contrary, bulky, firm, and brave. But for a man to be elated by happiness, as Epicurus is, like sailors upon the festivals of Venus, and to vaunt himself that, when he was sick of an ascites, he notwithstanding called his friends together to certain collations and grudged not his dropsy the addition of good liquor, and that, when he called to remembrance the last words of Neocles, he was melted with a peculiar sort of joy intermixed with tears, — no man in his right senses would call these true joys or satisfactions. Nay, I will be bold to say that, if such a thing as that they call a sardonic or grinning laughter can happen to the mind, it is to be found in these artificial and crying laughters. But if any will needs have them still called by the name of joys and satisfactions, let him but yet think how far they are exceeded by the pleasures that here ensue: —
[Non posse 16d] Our counsels have proud Sparta’s glory clipt;and Stranger, this is his country Rome’s great star;
[Non posse 16e] and again this,
I know not which to guess thee, man or god.
[Non posse 16f] Now when I set before my eyes the brave achievements of Thrasybulus and Pelopidas, of Aristides engaged at Platea and Miltiades at Marathon, I am here constrained with Herodotus to declare it my opinion, that in an active state of life the pleasure far exceeds the glory. And Epaminondas herein bears me witness also, when he saith (as is reported of him), that the greatest satisfaction he ever received in his life was that his father and mother had lived to see the trophy set up at Leuctra when himself was general. Let us then compare with Epaminondas’s Epicurus’s mother, rejoicing that she had lived to see her son cooping himself up in a little garden, and getting children in common with Polyaenus upon the strumpet of Cyzicus. As for Metrodorus’s mother and sister, how extravagantly rejoiced they were at his nuptials appears by the letters he wrote to his brother in answer to his; that is, out of his own books. Nay, they tell us bellowing that they have not only lived a life of pleasure, but also exult and sing hymns in the praise of their own living. Though, when our servants celebrate the festivals of Saturn or go in procession at the time of the rural bacchanals, you would scarcely brook the hollowing and din they make, if the intemperateness of their joy and their insensibleness of decorum should make them act and speak such things as these: —
[Non posse 16g] Lean down, boy! why dost sit I let’s tope like mad! Here’s belly-timber store; ne’er spare it, lad. Straight these huzza like wild. One fills up drink; Another plaits a wreath, and crowns the brinkO’ th’ teeming bowl. Then to the verdant bays All chant rude carols in Apollo’s praise; While one the door with drunken fury smites, Till he from bed his loving consort frights.
[Non posse 16h] And are not Metrodorus’s words something like to these when he writes to his brother thus: It is none of our business to preserve the Greeks, or to get them to bestow garlands upon us for our wit, but to eat well and drink good wine, Timocrates, so as not to offend but pleasure our stomachs. And he saith again, in some other place in the same epistles: How gay and how assured was I, when I had once learned of Epicurus the true way of gratifying my stomach; for, believe me, philosopher Timocrates, our prime good lies at the stomach.
[Non posse 17] In brief, these men draw out the dimensions of their pleasures like a circle, about the stomach as a centre. And the truth is, it is impossible for those men ever to participate of generous and princely joy, such as enkindles a height of spirit in us and sends forth to all mankind an unmade hilarity and calm serenity, that have taken up a sort of life that is confined, unsocial, inhuman, and uninspired towards the esteem of the world and the love of mankind. For the soul of man is not an abject, little, and ungenerous thing, nor doth it extend its desires (as polyps do their claws) unto eatables only, — yea, these are in an instant of time taken off by the least plenitude, but when its efforts towards what is brave and generous and the honors and caresses that accrue therefrom are now in their consummate vigor this life’s duration cannot limit them, but the desire of glory and the love of mankind grasp at whole eternity, and wrestle with such actions and charms as bring with them an ineffable pleasure, and such as good men, though never so fain, cannot decline, they meeting and accosting them on all sides and surrounding them about, while their being beneficial to many occasions joy to themselves.
[Non posse 17b] As he passes through the throngs in the city, All gaze upon him as some deity.(“Odyssey,” viii. 173.)
[Non posse 17c] For he that can so affect and move other men as to fill them with joy and rapture, and to make them long to touch him and salute him, cannot but appear even to a blind man to possess and enjoy very extraordinary satisfactions in himself. And hence it comes that such men are both indefatigable and undaunted in serving the public, and we still hear some such words from them
[Non posse 17d] Thy father got thee for the common good;and Let’s not give off to benefit mankind.
[Non posse 17e] But what need I instance in those that are consummately good? For if to one of the middling rank of bad men, when he is just a-dying, he that hath the power over him (whether his god or prince) should but allow one hour more, upon condition that, after he hath spent that either in some generous action or in sensual enjoyment, he should then presently die, who would in this time choose rather to accompany with Lais or drink Ariusion wine, than to despatch Archias and restore the Athenians to their liberties? For my part I believe none would. For I see that even common sword-players, if they are not utter brutes and savages, but Greek born, when they are to enter the list, though there be many and very costly dishes set before them, yet take more content in employing their time in commanding their poor wives to some of their friends, yea, and in conferring freedom on their slaves, than in gratifying their stomachs. But should the pleasures of the body be allowed to have some extraordinary matter in them, this would yet be common to men of action and business.
[Non posse 17f] For they can eat good meat, and red wine drink,(See “Iliad,” v. 341.)
aye, and entertain themselves with their friends, and perhaps with a greater relish too, after their engagements and hard services, — as did Alexander and Agesilaus, and (by Jove) Phocion and Epaminondas too, — than these gentlemen who anoint themselves by the fireside, and are gingerly rocked about the streets in sedans. Yea, those make but small account of such pleasures as these, as being comprised in those greater ones. For why should a man mention Epaminondas’s denying to sup with one, when he saw the preparations made were above the man’s estate, but frankly saying to his friend, “I thought you had intended a sacrifice and not a debauch,” when Alexander himself refused Queen Ada’s cooks, telling her he had better ones of his own, to wit, travelling by night for his dinner, and a light dinner for his supper, and when Philoxenus writing to him about some handsome boys, and desiring to know of him whether he would have him buy them for him, was within a small matter of being discharged his office for it? And yet who might better have them than he? But as Hippocrates saith that of two pains the lesser is forgot in the greater, so the pleasures that accrue from action and the love of glory, while they cheer and refresh the mind, do by their transcendency and grandeur obliterate and extinguish the inferior satisfactions of the body.
[Non posse 18] If, then, the remembering of former good things (as they affirm) be that which most contributes to a pleasurable living, not one of us will then credit Epicurus when he, tells us that, while he was dying away in the midst of the strongest agonies and distempers, he yet bore himself up with the memory of the pleasures he formerly enjoyed. For a man may better see the resemblance of his own face in a troubled deep or a storm, than a smooth and smiling remembrance of past pleasure in a body tortured with such lancing and rending pains. But now the memories of past actions no man can put from him that would. For did Alexander, think you, (or indeed could he possibly) forget the fight at Arbela? Or Pelopidas the tyrant Leontiadas? Or Themistocles the engagement at Salamis? For the Athenians to this very day keep an annual festival for the battle at Marathon, and the Thebans for that at Leuctra; and so, by Jove, do we ourselves (as you very well know) for that which Daiphantus gained at Hyampolis, and all Phocis is filled with sacrifices and public honors.
[Non posse 18b] Nor is there any of us that is better satisfied with what himself hath either eaten or drunk than he is with what they have achieved. It is very easy then to imagine what great content, satisfaction, and joy accompanied the authors of these actions in their lifetime, when the very memory of them hath not yet after five hundred years and more lost its rejoicing power. The truth is, Epicurus himself allows there are some pleasures derived from fame. And indeed why should he not, when he himself had such a furious lechery and wriggling after glory as made him not only to disown his masters and scuffle about syllables and accents with his fellow-pedant Democritus (whose principles he stole verbatim), and to tell his disciples there never was a wise man in the world besides himself, but also to put it in writing how Colotes performed adoration to him, as he was one day philosophizing, by touching his knees, and that his own brother Neocles was used from a child to say, “There neither is, nor ever was in the world, a wiser man than Epicurus,” and that his mother had just so many atoms within her as, when coming together, must have produced a complete wise man?
[Non posse 19] May not a man then — as Callicratidas once said of the Athenian admiral Conon, that he whored the sea as well say of Epicurus that he basely and covertly forces and ravishes Fame, by not enjoying her publicly but ruffling and debauching her in a corner? For as men’s bodies are oft necessitated by famine, for want of other food, to prey against nature upon themselves, a like mischief to this does vainglory create in men’s minds, forcing them, when they hunger after praise and cannot obtain it from other men, at last to commend themselves. And do not they then that stand so well affected towards applause and fame themselves own they cast away very extraordinary pleasures, when they decline, magistrature, public offices, and the favor and confidences of princes, from whom Democritus once said the grandest blessings of human life are derived?
[Non posse 19b] For he will never induce any mortal to believe, that he that could so highly value and please himself with the attestation of his brother Neocles and the adoration of his friend Colotes would not, were he clapped by all the Greeks at the Olympiads, go quite out of his wits and even hollow for joy, or rather indeed be elated in the manner spoken of by Sophocles,
[Non posse 19c] Puffed like the down of a gray-headed thistle.
[Non posse 19d] If it be a pleasing thing then to be of a good fame, it is on the contrary afflictive to be of an ill one; and it is most certain that nothing in the world can be more infamous than want of friendship, idleness, atheism, debauchery, and negligence. Now these are looked upon by all men except themselves as inseparable companions of their party. But unjustly, some one may say. Be it so then; for we consider not now the truth of the charge, but what fame and reputation they are of in the world. And we shall forbear at present to mention the many books that have been written to defame them, and the blackening decrees made against them by several republics; for that would look like bitterness. But if the answers of oracles, the providence of the gods, and the tenderness and affection of parents to their issue, — if civil policy, military order, and the office of magistracy be things to be looked upon as deservedly esteemed and celebrated, it must of necessity then be allowed also, that they that tell us it is none of their business to preserve the Greeks, but they must eat and drink so as not to offend but pleasure their stomachs, are base and ignominious persons, and that their being reputed such must needs extremely humble them and make their lives untoward to them, if they take honor and a good name for any part of their satisfaction.
[Non posse 20] When Theon had thus spoken, we thought good to break up our walk to rest us awhile (as we were wont to do) upon the benches. Nor did we continue any long space in our silence at what was spoken; for Zeuxippus, taking his hint from what had been said, spake to us: Who will make up that of the discourse which is yet behind? For it hath not yet received its due conclusion; and this gentleman, by mentioning divination and providence, did in my opinion suggest as much to us; for these people boast that these very things contribute in no way to the providing of their lives with pleasure, serenity, and assurance; so that there must be something said to these too. Aristodemus subjoined then and said: As to pleasure, I think there hath been enough said already to evince that, supposing their doctrine to be successful and to attain its own design, it yet doth but ease us of fear and a certain superstitious persuasion but helps us not to any comfort or joy from the gods at all; nay, while it brings us to such a state as to be neither disquieted nor pleased with them, it doth but render us in the same manner affected towards them as we are towards the Scythians or Hyrcanians, from whom we look for neither good nor harm.
[Non posse 20b] But if something more must be added to what hath been already spoken, I think I may very well take it from themselves. And in the first place, they quarrel extremely with those that would take away all sorrowing, weeping, and sighing for the death of friends, and tell them that such unconcernedness as arrives to an insensibility proceeds from some other worse cause, to wit, inhumanity, excessive vainglory, or prodigious fierceness, and that therefore it would be better to be a little concerned and affected, yea, and to liquor one’s eyes and be melted, with other pretty things of the like kind, which they use artificially to affect and counterfeit, that they may be thought tender and loving-hearted people. For just in this manner Epicurus expressed himself upon the occasion of the death of Hegesianax, when he wrote to Dositheus the father and to Pyrson the brother of the deceased person; for I fortuned very lately to run over his epistles.
[Non posse 20c] And I say, in imitation of them, that atheism is no less an evil than inhumanity and vainglory, and into this they would lead us who take away with God’s anger the comfort we might derive from him. For it would be much better for us to have something of the unsuiting passion of dauntedness and fear conjoined and intermixed with our sentiments of a deity, than while we fly from it, to leave ourselves neither hope, content, nor assurance in the enjoyment of our good things nor any recourse to God in our adversity and misfortunes.
[Non posse 21] We ought, it is true, to remove superstition from the persuasion we have of the gods, as we would the gum from our eyes; but if that be impossible, we must not root out and extinguish with it the belief which the most have of the gods; nor is that a dismaying and sour one either, as these gentlemen feign, while they libel and abuse the blessed Providence, representing her as a witch or as some fell and tragic fury. Yea, I must tell you, there are some in the world that fear God in an excess, for whom yet it would not be better not so to fear him. For, while they dread him as a governor that is gentle to the good and severe to the bad, and are by this one fear, which makes them not to need many others, freed from doing ill and brought to keep their wickedness with them in quiet and (as it were) in an enfeebled languor, they come hereby to have less disquiet than those that indulge the practice of it and are rash and daring in it, and then presently after fear and repent of it. Now that disposition of mind which the greater and ignorant part of mankind, that are not utterly bad, are of towards God, hath, it is very true, conjoined with the regard and honor they pay him, a kind of anguish and astonished dread, which is also called superstition; but ten thousand times more and greater is the good hope, the true joy, that attend it, which both implore and receive the whole benefit of prosperity and good success from the gods only. And this is manifest by the greatest tokens that can be; for neither do the discourses of those that wait at the temples, nor the good times of our solemn festivals, nor any other actions or sights more recreate and delight us than what we see and do about the gods ourselves, while we assist at the public ceremonies, and join in the sacred balls, and attend at the sacrifices and initiations. For the mind is not then sorrowful depressed, and heavy, as if she were approaching certain tyrants or cruel torturers; but on the contrary, where she is most apprehensive and fullest persuaded the divinity is present, there she most of all throws off sorrows, tears, and pensiveness, and lets herself loose to what is pleasing and agreeable, to the very degree of tipsiness, frolic, and laughter. In amorous concerns, as the poet said once,
[Non posse 21b] When old man and old wife think of love’s fires, Their frozen breasts will swell with new desires;
[Non posse 21c] but now in the public processions and sacrifices not only the old man and the old wife, nor yet the poor and mean man only, but also
[Non posse 21d] The dusty thick-legged drab that turns the mill,
[Non posse 21e] and household-slaves and day-laborers, are strangely elevated and transported with mirth and joviality. Rich men as well as princes are used at certain times to make public entertainments and to keep open houses; but the feasts they make at the solemnities and sacrifices, when they now apprehend their minds to approach nearest the divinity, have conjoined with the honor and veneration they pay him a much more transcending pleasure and satisfaction. Of this, he that hath renounced God’s providence hath not the least share; for what recreates and cheers us at the festivals is not the store of good wine and roast meat, but the good hope and persuasion that God is there present and propitious to us, and kindly accepts of what we do. From some of our festivals we exclude the flute and garland; but if God be not present at the sacrifice, as the solemnity of the banquet, the rest is but unhallowed, unfeast-like, and uninspired. Indeed the whole is but ungrateful and irksome to such a man; for he asks for nothing at all, but only acts his prayers and adorations for fear of the public, and utters expressions contradictory to his philosophy. And when he sacrifices, he stands by and looks upon the priest as he kills the offering but as he doth upon a butcher; and when he hath done, he goes his way, saying with Menander,
[Non posse 21f] To bribe the gods I sacrificed my best, But they ne’er minded me nor my request.
[Non posse 21g] For so Epicurus would have us arrange ourselves, and neither to envy nor to incur the hatred of the common herd by doing ourselves with disgust what others do with delight. For, as Evenus saith,
[Non posse 21h] No man can love what he is made to do.
[Non posse 21i] For which very reason they think the superstitious are not pleased in their minds but in fear while they attend at the sacrifices and mysteries; though they themselves are in no better condition, if they do the same things our of fear, and partake not either of as great good hope as the others do, but are only fearful and uneasy lest they should come to be discovered as cheating and abusing the public, upon whose account it is that they compose the books they write about the gods and the divine nature,
[Non posse 21j] Involved, with nothing truly said. But all around enveloped;
hiding out of fear the real opinions they contain.
[Non posse 22] And now, after the two former ranks of ill and common men, we will in the third place consider the best sort and most beloved of the gods, and what great satisfactions they receive from their clean and generous sentiments of the deity, to wit, that he is the prince of all good things and the parent of all things brave, and can no more do an unworthy thing than he can be made to suffer it. For he is good, and he that is good can upon no account fall into envy, fear, anger, or hatred; neither is it proper to a hot thing to cool, but to heat; nor to a good thing to do harm. Now anger is by nature at the farthest distance imaginable from complacency, and spleenishness from placidness, and animosity and turbulence from humanity and kindness. For the latter of these proceed from generosity and fortitude, but the former from impotency and baseness. The deity is not therefore constrained by either anger or kindnesses; but that is because it is natural to it to be kind and aiding, and unnatural to be angry and hurtful. But the great Jove, whose mansion is in heaven, is the first that descends downwards and orders all things and takes the care of them. But of the other gods one is surnamed the Distributor, and another the Mild, and a third the Averter of Evil. And according to Pindar,
[Non posse 22b] Phoebus was by mighty Jove designed Of all the gods to be to man most kind.
[Non posse 22c] And Diogenes saith, that all things are the gods’, and friends have all things common, and good men are the gods’ friends; and therefore it is impossible either that a man beloved of the gods should not he happy, or that a wise and a just man should not be beloved of the gods. Can you think then that they that take away Providence need any other chastisement, or that they have not a sufficient one already, when they root out of themselves such vast satisfaction and joy as we that stand thus affected towards the deity have? Metrodorus, Polyaenus, and Aristobulus were the confidence and rejoicing of Epicurus; the better part of whom he all his lifetime either attended upon in their sicknesses or lamented at their deaths. As did Lycurgus, when he was saluted by the Delphic prophetess,
[Non posse 22d] Dear friend to heavenly Jove and all the gods.
[Non posse 23] And did Socrates when he believed that a certain divinity was used out of kindness to discourse him, and Pindar when he heard Pan sing one of the sonnets he had composed, but a little rejoice, think you? Or Phormio, when he thought he had treated Castor and Pollux at his house? Or Sophocles, when he entertained Aesculapius, as both he himself believed, and others too, that thought the same with him by reason of the apparition that then happened? What opinion Hermogenes had of the gods is well worth the recounting in his very own words. “For these gods,” saith he, “who know all things and can do all things, are so friendly and loving to me that, because they take care of me, I never escape them either by night or by day, wherever I go or whatever I am about. And because they know beforehand what issue everything will have, they signify it to me by sending angels, voices, dreams, and presages.” Very amiable things must those be that come to us from the gods; but when these very things come by the gods too, this is what occasions vast satisfaction and unspeakable assurance, a sublimity of mind and a joy that, like a smiling brightness, doth as it were gild over our good things with a glory. But now those that are persuaded otherwise obstruct the very sweetest part of their prosperity, and leave themselves nothing to turn to in their adversity; but when they are in distress, look only to this one refuge and port, dissolution and insensibility; just as if in a storm or tempest at sea, some one should, to hearten the rest, stand up and say to them: Gentlemen, the ship hath never a pilot in it, nor will Castor and Pollux come themselves to assuage the violence of the beating waves or to lay the swift careers of the winds; yet I can assure you there is nothing at all to be dreaded in all this, for the vessel will be immediately swallowed up by the sea, or else will very quickly fall off and be dashed in pieces against the rocks. For this is Epicurus’s way of discourse to persons under grievous distempers and excessive pains. Dost thou hope for any good from the gods for thy piety? It is thy vanity; for the blessed and incorruptible Being is not constrained by either angers or kindnesses. Dost thou fancy something better after this life than what thou hast here? Thou dost but deceive thyself; for what is dissolved hath no sense, and that which hath no sense is nothing to us. Aye; but how comes it then, my good friend, that you bid me eat and be merry? Why, by Jove, because he that is in a great storm cannot be far off a shipwreck; and your extreme danger will soon land you upon Death’s strand. Though yet a passenger at sea, when he is got off from a shattered ship, will still buoy himself up with some little hope that he may drive his body to some shore and get out by swimming; but now the poor soul, according to these men’s philosophy,
[Non posse 23b] Is ne’er more seen without the hoary main.(“Odyssey,” v. 410.)
[Non posse 23c] Yea, she presently evaporates, disperses, and perishes, even before the body itself; so that it seems her great and excessive rejoicing must be only for having learned this one sage and divine maxim, that all her misfortunes will at last determine in her own destruction, dissolution, and annihilation.
[Non posse 24] But (said he, looking upon me) I should be impertinent, should I say anything upon this subject, when we have heard you but now discourse so fully against those that would persuade us that Epicurus’s doctrine about the soul renders men more disposed and better pleased to die than Plato’s doth. Zeuxippus therefore subjoined and said: And must our present debate be left then unfinished because of that? Or shall we be afraid to oppose that divine oracle to Epicurus? No, by no means, I said; and Empedocles tells us that
[Non posse 24b] What’s very good claims to be heard twice.
[Non posse 24c] Therefore we must apply ourselves again to Theon; for I think he was present at our former discourse; and besides, he is a young man, and needs not fear being charged by these young gentlemen with having a bad memory.
[Non posse 25] Then Theon, like one constrained, said: Well then, if you will needs have me to go on with the discourse, I will not do as you did, Aristodemus. For you were shy of repeating what this gentleman spoke, but I shall not scruple to make use of what you have said; for I think indeed you did very well divide mankind into three ranks; the first of wicked and very bad men, the second of the vulgar and common sort, and the third of good and wise men. The wicked and bad sort then, while they dread any kind of divine vengeance and punishment at all, and are by this deterred from doing mischief, and thereby enjoy the greater quiet, will live both in more pleasure and in less disturbance for it. And Epicurus is of opinion that the only proper means to keep men from doing ill is the fear of punishments. So that we should cram them with more and more superstition still, and raise up against them terrors, chasms, frights, and surmises, both from heaven and earth, if their being amazed with such things as these will make them become the more tame and gentle. For it is more for their benefit to be restrained from criminal actions by the fear of what comes after death, than to commit them and then to live in perpetual danger and fear.
[Non posse 26] As to the vulgar sort, besides their fear of what is in hell, the hope they have conceived of an eternity from the tales and fictions of the ancients, and their great desire of being, which is both the first and the strongest of all, exceed in pleasure and sweet content of mind that childish dread. And therefore, when they lose their children, wives, or friends, they would rather have them be somewhere and still remain, though in misery, than that they should be quite destroyed, dissolved, and reduced to nothing. And they are pleased when they hear it said of a dying person, that he goes away or departs, and such other words as intimate death to be the soul’s remove and not destruction. And they sometimes speak thus:
[Non posse 26b] But I’ll even there think on my dearest friend;(“Iliad,” xxii. 390.)
[Non posse 26c] and thus: —
[Non posse 26d] What’s your command to Hector? Let me know; And to your dear old Priam shall I go?(Euripides, “Hecuba,” 422.)
[Non posse 26e] And (there arising hereupon an erroneous deviation) they are the better pleased when they bury with their departed friends such arms, implements, or clothes as were most familiar to them in their lifetime; as Minos did the Cretan flutes with Glaucus,
[Non posse 26f] Made of the shanks of a dead brindled fawn.
[Non posse 26g] And if they do but imagine they either ask or desire anything of them, they are glad when they give it them. Thus Periander burnt his queen’s attire with her, because he thought she had asked for it and complained she was a-cold. Nor doth an Aeacus, an Ascalaphus, or an Acheron much disorder them whom they have often gratified with balls, shows, and music of every sort. But now all men shrink from that face of death which carries with it insensibility, oblivion, and extinction of knowledge, as being dismal, grim, and dark. And they are discomposed when they hear it said of any one, he is perished, or he is gone or he is no more; and they show great uneasiness when they hear such words as these: —
[Non posse 26h] Go to the wood-clad earth he must, And there lie shrivelled into dust, And ne’er more laugh or drink, or hear The charming sounds of flute or lyre;
[Non posse 26i] and these: —
[Non posse 26j] But from our lips the vital spirit fled Returns no more to wake the silent dead.(“Iliad,” ix. 408.)
[Non posse 27] Wherefore they must needs cut the very throats of them that shall with Epicurus tell them, We men were born once for all, and we cannot be born twice, but our not being must last forever. For this will bring them to slight their present good as little, or rather indeed as nothing at all compared with everlastingness, and therefore to let it pass unenjoyed and to become wholly negligent of virtue and action, as men disheartened and brought to a contempt of themselves, as being but as it were of one day’s continuance and uncertain, and born for no considerable purpose. For insensibility, dissolution, and the conceit that what hath no sense is nothing to us, do not at all abate the fear of death, but rather help to confirm it; for this very thing is it that nature most dreads, —
[Non posse 27b] But may you all return to mould and wet,(Ibid. vii. 99.)
[Non posse 27c] to wit, the dissolution of the soul into what is without knowledge or sense. Now, while Epicurus would have this to be a separation into atoms and void, he doth but further cut off all hope of immortality; to compass which (I can scarce refrain from saying) all men and women would be well contented to be worried by Cerberus, and to carry water into the tub full of holes, so they might but continue in being and not be exterminated. Though (as I said before) there are not very many that stand in fear of these things, they being but the tenets of old women and the fabulous stories of mothers and nurses, — and even they that do fear them yet believe that certain rites of initiation and purgation will relieve them, by which after they are cleansed they shall play and dance in hell forever, in company with those that have the privilege of a bright light, clear air, and the use of speech, — yet to be deprived of living disturbs all both young and old. We
[Non posse 27d] Impatient love the light that shines on earth,(Euripides, “Hippolytus,” 193)
as Euripides saith. Nor are we easy or without regret when we hear this: —
[Non posse 27e] Him speaking thus th’ eternal brightness leaves, Where night the wearied steeds of day receives.
[Non posse 28] And therefore it is very plain that with the belief of immortality they take away the sweetest and greatest hopes the vulgar sort have. And what shall we then think they take away from the good and those that have led pious and just lives, who expect no ill after dying, but on the contrary most glorious and divine things? For, in the first place, athletes are not used to receive the garland before they have performed their exercises, but after they have contested and proved victorious; in like manner is it with those that are persuaded that good men have the prize of their conquests after this life is ended; it is marvellous to think to what a pitch of grandeur their virtue raises their spirits upon the contemplation of those hopes, among the which this is one, that they shall one day see those men that are now insolent by reason of their wealth and power, and that foolishly flout at their betters, undergo just punishment. In the next place, none of the lovers of truth and the contemplation of being have here their fill of them; they having but a watery and puddled reason to speculate with, as it were, through the fog and mist of the body; and yet they still look upwards like birds, as ready to take their flight to the spacious and bright region, and endeavor to make their souls expedite and light from things mortal, using philosophy as a study for death. Thus I account death a truly great and accomplished good thing; the soul being to live there a real life, which here lives not a waking life, but suffers things most resembling dreams. If then (as Epicurus saith) the remembrance of a dead friend be a thing every way complacent; we may easily from thence imagine how great a joy they deprive themselves of who think they do but embrace and pursue the phantoms and shades of their deceased familiars, that have in them neither knowledge nor sense, but who never expect to be with them again, or to see their dear father and dear mother and sweet wife, nor have any hopes of that familiarity and dear converse they have that think of the soul with Pythagoras, Plato, and Homer. Now what their sort of passion is like to was hinted at by Homer, when he threw into the midst of the soldiers, as they were engaged, the shade of Aeneas, as if he had been dead, and afterwards again presented his friends with him himself,
[Non posse 28b] Coming alive and well, as brisk as ever;
at which, he saith,
They all were overjoyed.(“Iliad,” v. 514 and 515)
[Non posse 28c] And should not we then, — when reason shows us that a real converse with persons departed this life may be had, and that he that loves may both feel and be with the party that affects and loves him, — relinquish these men that cannot so much as cast off all those airy shades and outside barks for which they are all their time in lamentation and fresh afflictions?
[Non posse 29] Moreover, they that look upon death as the commencement of another and better life, if they enjoy good things, are the better pleased with them, as expecting much greater hereafter; but if they have not things here to their minds, they do not much grumble at it, but the hopes of those good and excellent things that are after death contain in them such ineffable pleasures and expectances, that they wipe off and wholly obliterate every defect and every offence from the mind, which, as on a road or rather indeed in a short deviation out of the road, bears whatever befalls it with great ease and indifference. But now, as to those to whom life ends in insensibility and dissolution, — death brings to them no removal of evils, though it is afflicting in both conditions, yet is it more so to those that live prosperously than to such as undergo adversity? For it cuts the latter but from an uncertain hope of doing better hereafter; but it deprives the former of a certain good, to wit, their pleasurable living. And as those medicinal potions that are not grateful to the palate but yet necessary give sick men ease, but rake and hurt the well; just so, in my opinion, doth the philosophy of Epicurus; it promises to those that live miserably no happiness in death, and to those that do well an utter extinction and dissolution of the mind, while it quite obstructs the comfort and solace of the grave and wise and those that abound with good things, by throwing them down from a happy living into a deprivation of both life and being. From hence then it is manifest, that the contemplation of the loss of good things will afflict us in as great a measure as either the firm hope or present enjoyment of them delights us.
[Non posse 30] Yea, themselves tell us, that the thought of future dissolution leaves them one most assured and complacent good, freedom from anxious surmises of incessant and endless evils, and that Epicurus’s doctrine effects this by stopping the fear of death through the soul’s dissolution. If then deliverance from the expectation of infinite evils be a matter of greatest complacence, how comes it not to be afflictive to be bereft of eternal good things and to miss of the highest and most consummate felicity? For not to be can be good for neither condition, but is on the contrary both against nature and ungrateful to all that have a being. But those being eased of the evils of life through the evils of death have, it is very true, the want of sense to comfort them, while they, as it were, make their escape from life. But, on the other hand, they that change from good things to nothing seem to me to have the most dismaying end of all, it putting a period to their happiness. For Nature doth not fear insensibility as the entrance upon some new thing, but because it is the privation of our present good things. For to declare that the destruction of all that we call ours toucheth us not is untrue for it toucheth us already by the very anticipation. And insensibility afflicts not those that are not, but those that are, when they think what damage they shall sustain by it in the loss of their being and in being suffered never to emerge from nothingness. Wherefore it is neither the dog Cerberus nor the river Cocytus that has made our fear of death boundless; but the threatened danger of not being, representing it as impossible for such as are once extinct to shift back again into being. For we cannot be born twice, and our not being must last forever; as Epicurus speaks. For if our end be in not being, and that be infinite and unalterable, then hath privation of good found out an eternal evil, to wit, a never ending insensibleness. Herodotus was much wiser, when he said that God, having given men a taste of the delights of life, seems to be envious, (Herodotus, vii. 46) and especially to those that conceit themselves happy, to whom pleasure is but a bait for sorrow, they being but permitted to taste of what they must be deprived of. For what solace or fruition or exultation would not the perpetual injected thought of the soul’s being dispersed into infinity, as into a certain huge and vast ocean, extinguish and quell in those that found their amiable good and beatitude in pleasure? But if it be true (as Epicurus thinks it is) that most men die in very acute pain, then is the fear of death in all respects inconsolable; it bringing us through evils unto a deprivation of good.
[Non posse 31] And yet they are never wearied with their brawling and dunning of all persons to take the escape of evil for a good, no longer to repute privation of good for an evil. But they still confess what we have asserted, that death hath in it nothing of either good hope or solace, but that all that is complacent and good is then wholly extinguished; at which time those men look for many amiable, great, and divine things, that conceive the minds of men to be unperishable and immortal, or at least to go about in certain long revolutions of times, being one while upon earth and another while in heaven, until they are at last dissolved with the universe and then, together with the sun and moon, sublimed into an intellective fire. So large a field and one of so great pleasures Epicurus wholly cuts off, when he destroys (as hath been said) the hopes and graces we should derive from the gods, and by that extinguishes both in our speculative capacity the desire of knowledge, and in our active the love of glory, and confines and abases our nature to a poor narrow thing, and that not cleanly neither, to wit, the content the mind receives by the body, as if it were capable of no higher good than the escape of evil.

## Reply to Colotes, in defence of other philosophers - Adversus Colotem

[Adv. Col. 1] Colotes, whom Epicurus was wont diminutively and by way of familiarity or fondness to call Colotaras and Colotarion, composed, O Saturninus, and published a little book which he entitled, “That according to the opinions of the other philosophers one cannot so much as live.” This was dedicated to King Ptolemy. Now I suppose that it will not be unpleasant for you to read, when set down in writing, what came into my mind to speak against this Colotes, since I know you to be a lover of all elegant and honest treatises, and particularly of such as regard the science of antiquity, and to esteem the bearing in memory and having (as much as possible may be) in hand the discourses of the ancient sages to be the most royal of all studies and exercises.
[Adv. Col. 2] Not long since, therefore, as this book was being read, Aristodemus of Aegium, a familiar friend of ours (whom you well know to be one of the Academy, and not a mere thyrsus-bearer, but one of the most frantic celebrators of Plato’s name), did, I know not how, keep himself contrary to his custom very still all the while, and patiently gave ear to it even to the end. But the reading was scarce well over when he said: Well, then, whom shall we cause to rise up and fight against this man, in defence of the philosophers? For I am not of Nestor’s opinion, who, when the most valiant of those nine warriors that presented themselves to enter into combat was to be chosen, committed the election to the fortune of a lot.
[Adv. Col. 2b] Yet, answered I, you see he so disposed himself in reference to the lot, that the choice might pass according to the arbitrament of the wisest man;
[Adv. Col. 2c] And th’ lot drawn from the helmet, as they wished, On Ajax fell.
[Adv. Col. 2d] But yet since you command me to make the election,
[Adv. Col. 2e] How can I think a better choice to make Than the divine Ulysses?(“Iliad,” vii. 182; x. 243.)
[Adv. Col. 2f] Consider therefore, and be well advised, in what manner you will chastise this man.
But you know, replied Aristodemus, that Plato, when highly offended with his boy that waited on him, would not himself beat him, but requested Speusippus to do it for him, saying that he himself was angry. As much therefore may I say to you; Take this fellow to you, and treat him as you please; for I am in a fit of choler.
[Adv. Col. 2g] When therefore all the rest of the company desired me to undertake this office; I must then, said I, speak, since it is your pleasure. But I am afraid that I also shall seem more vehemently transported than is fitting against this book, in the defending and maintaining Socrates against the rudeness, scurrility, and insolence of this man; who, because Socrates affirmed himself to know nothing certainly, instead of bread (as one would say) present him hay, as if he were a beast, and asks him why he puts meat into his mouth and not into his ear. And yet perhaps some would make but a laughing matter of this, considering the mildness and gentleness of Socrates; “but for the whole host of the Greeks,” that is, of the other philosophers, amongst which are Democritus, Plato, Stilpo, Empedocles, Parmenides, and Melissus, who have been basely traduced and reviled by him, it were not only a shame to be silent, but even a sacrilege in the least point to forbear or recede from freedom of speech in their behalf, who have advanced philosophy to that honor and reputation it has gotten.
[Adv. Col. 2h] And our parents indeed have, with the assistance of the gods, given us our life; but to live well comes to us from reason, which we have learned from the philosophers, which favors law and justice, and restrains our concupiscence. Now to live well is to live sociably, friendly, temperately, and justly; of all which conditions they leave us not one, who cry out that man’s sovereign good lies in his belly, and that they would not purchase all the virtues together at the expense of a cracked farthing, if pleasure were totally and on every side removed from them. And in their discourses concerning the soul and the gods, they hold that the soul perishes when it is separated from the body, and that the gods concern not themselves in our affairs. Thus the Epicureans reproach the other philosophers, that by their wisdom they bereave man of his life; whilst the others on the contrary accuse them of teaching men to live degenerately and like beasts.
[Adv. Col. 3] Now these things are scattered here and there in the writings of Epicurus, and dispersed through all his philosophy. But this Colotes, by having extracted from them certain pieces and fragments of discourses, destitute of any arguments whatever to render them credible and intelligible, has composed his book, being like a shop or cabinet of monsters and prodigies; as you better know than any one else, because you have always in your hands the works of the ancients. But he seems to me, like the Lydian, to open not only one gate against himself, but to involve Epicurus also in many and those the greatest doubts and difficulties. For he begins with Democritus, who receives of him an excellent and worthy reward for his instruction; it being certain that Epicurus for a long time called himself a Democritean, which as well others affirm, as Leonteus, a principal disciple of Epicurus, who in a letter which he writ to Lycophron says, that Epicurus honored Democritus, because he first attained, though a little at a distance, the right and sound understanding of the truth, and that in general all the treatise concerning natural things was called Democritean, because Democritus was the first who happened upon the principles and met with the primitive foundations of Nature. And Metrodorus says openly of philosophy, If Democritus had not gone before and taught the way, Epicurus had never attained to wisdom. Now if it be true, as Colotes holds, that to live according to the opinions of Democritus is not to live, Epicurus was then a fool in following Democritus, who led him to a doctrine which taught him not to live.
[Adv. Col. 4] Now the first thing he lays to his charge is, that, by supposing everything to be no more individual than another, he wholly confounds human life. But Democritus was so far from having been of this opinion, that he opposed Protagoras the philosopher who asserted it, and writ many excellent arguments concluding against him, which this fine fellow Colotes never saw nor read, nor yet so much as dreamed of; but deceived himself by misunderstanding a passage which is in his works, where he determines that [Greek omitted] is no more than [Greek omitted], naming in that place the body by [Greek omitted], and the void by [Greek omitted], and meaning that the void has its own proper nature and subsistence, as well as the body.
[Adv. Col. 4b] But he who is of opinion that nothing has more of one nature than another makes use of a sentence of Epicurus, in which he says that all the apprehensions and imaginations given us by the senses are true. For if of two saying, the one, that the wine is sour, and the other, that it is sweet, neither of them shall be deceived by his sensation, how shall the wine be more sour than sweet? And we may often see that some men using one and the same bath find it to be hot, and others find it to be cold; because those order cold water to be put into it, as these do hot. It is said that, a certain lady going to visit Berenice, wife to King Deiotarus, as soon as ever they approached each other, they both immediately turned their backs, the one, as it seemed, not being able to bear the smell of perfume, nor the other of butter. If, then, the sense of one is no truer than the sense of another, it is also probable, that water is no more cold than hot, nor sweet ointment or butter better or worse scented one than the other. For if any one shall say that it seems the one to one, and the other to another, he will, before he is aware, affirm that they are both the one and the other.
[Adv. Col. 5] And as for these symmetries and proportions of the pores, or little passages in the organs of the senses, about which they talk so much, and those different mixtures of seeds, which, they say, being dispersed through all savors, odors, and colors, move the senses of different persons to perceive different qualities, do they not manifestly drive them to this, that things are no more of one nature than another? For to pacify those who think the sense is deceived and lies because they see contrary events and passions in such as use the same objects, and to solve this objection, they teach, — that when almost everything was confused and mixed up together, since it has been arranged by Nature that one thing shall fit another thing, it was not the contact or the apprehension of the same quality nor were all parts affected in the same way by what was influencing them. But those only coalesced with anything to which they had a characteristic, symmetrical in a corresponding proportion; so that they are in error so obstinately to insist that a thing is either good or bad, white or not white, thinking to establish their own senses by destroying those of others; whereas they ought neither to combat the senses, — because they all touch some quality, each one drawing from this confused mixture, as from a living and large fountain, what is suitable and convenient, — nor to pronounce of the whole, by touching only the parts, nor to think that all ought to be affected after one and the same manner by the same thing, seeing that one is affected by one quality and faculty of it, and another by another. Let us investigate who those men are which bring in this opinion that things are not more of one quality than another, if they are not those who affirm that every sensible object is a mixture, compounded of all sorts of qualities, like a mixture of new wine fermenting, and who confess that all their rules are lost and their faculty of judging quite gone, if they admit any sensible object that is pure and simple, and do not make each one thing to be many?
[Adv. Col. 6] See now to this purpose, what discourse and debate Epicurus makes Polyaenus to have with him in his Banquet concerning the heat of wine. For when he asked, “Do you, Epicurus, say, that wine does not heat?” some one answered, “It is not universally to be affirmed that wine heats.” And a little after: “For wine seems not to be universally a heater; but such a quantity may be said to heat such a person.” And again subjoining the cause, to wit, the compressions and disseminations of the atoms, and having alleged their commixtures and conjunctions with others when the wine comes to be mingled in the body, he adds this conclusion: “It is not universally to be said that wine is endued with a faculty of heating; but that such a quantity may heat such a nature and one so disposed, while such a quantity to such a nature is cooling. For in such a mass there are such natures and complexions of which cold might be composed, and which, united with others in proper measure, would yield a refrigerative virtue. Wherefore some are deceived, who say that wine is universally a heater; and others, who say that it is universally a cooler.” He then who says that most men are deceived and err, in holding that which is hot to be heating and that which is cold to be cooling, is himself in an error, unless he should allow that his assertion ends in the doctrine that one thing is not more of one nature than another. He farther adds afterwards that oftentimes wine entering into a body brings with it thither neither a calefying nor refrigerating virtue, but, the mass of the body being agitated and disturbed, and a transposition made of the parts, the heat-effecting atoms being assembled together do by their multitude cause a heat and inflammation in the body, and sometimes on the contrary disassembling themselves cause a refrigeration.
[Adv. Col. 7] But it is moreover wholly evident, that we may employ this argument to all those things which are called and esteemed bitter, sweet, purging, dormitive, and luminous, not any one of them having an entire and perfect quality to produce such effects, nor to act rather than to be acted on when they are in the bodies, but being there susceptible, of various temperatures and differences. For Epicurus himself, in his Second Book against Theophrastus, affirming that colors are not connatural to bodies, but are engendered there according to certain situations and positions with respect to the sight of man, says: “For this reason a body is no more colored than destitute of color.” And a little above he writes thus, word for word: “But apart from this, I know not how a man may say that those bodies which are in the dark have color; although very often, an air equally dark being spread about them, some distinguish diversities of colors, others perceive them not through the weakness of their sight. And moreover, going into a dark house or room, we at our first entrance see no color, but after we have stayed there awhile, we do. Wherefore we are to say that every body is not more colored than not colored. Now, if color is relative and has its being in regard to something else, so also then is white, and so likewise blue; and if colors are so, so also are sweet and bitter. So that it may truly be affirmed of every quality, that it cannot more properly be said to exist than not to exist. For to those who are in a certain manner disposed, they will be; but to those who are not so disposed, they will not be.” Colotes therefore has bedashed and bespattered himself and his master with that dirt, in which he says those lie who maintain that things are not more of one quality than another.
[Adv. Col. 8] But is it in this alone, that this excellent man shows himself —
To others a physician, whilst himself Is full of ulcers?(Euripides, Frag. 107 1.)
[Adv. Col. 8b] No indeed; but yet much farther in his second reprehension, without any way minding it, he drives Epicurus and Democritus out of this life. For he affirms that the statement of Democritus — that the atoms are to the senses color by a certain human law or ordinance, that they are by the same law sweetness, and by the same law concretion — is at war with our senses, and that he who uses this reason and persists in this opinion cannot himself imagine whether he is living or dead. I know not how to contradict this discourse; but this I can boldly affirm, that this is as inseparable from the sentences and doctrines of Epicurus as they say figure and weight are from atoms. For what is it that Democritus says? “There are substances, in number infinite, called atoms (because they cannot be divided), without difference, without quality, and passibility, which move, being dispersed here and there, in the infinite voidness; and that when they approach one another, or meet and are conjoined, of such masses thus heaped together, one appears water, another fire, another a plant, another a man; and that all things are thus properly atoms (as he called them), and nothing else; for there is no generation from what does not exist; and of those things which are nothing can be generated, because these atoms are so firm, that they can neither change, alter, nor suffer; wherefore there cannot be made color of those things which are without color, nor nature or soul of those things which are without quality and impassible.” Democritus then is to be blamed, not for confessing those things that happen upon his principles, but for supposing principles upon which such things happen.
[Adv. Col. 8c] For he should not have supposed immutable principles; or having supposed them, he should have seen that the generation of all quality is taken away; but having seen the absurdity, to deny it is most impudent. But Epicurus says, that he supposes the same principles with Democritus, but that he says not that color, sweet, white, and other qualities, are by law and ordinance. If therefore NOT TO SAY is the same as NOT TO CONFESS, he does merely what he is wont to do. For it is as when, taking away divine Providence, he nevertheless says that he leaves piety and devotion towards the gods; and when, choosing friendship for the sake of pleasure, that he suffers most grievous pains for his friends; and supposing the universe to be infinite, that he nevertheless takes not away high and low. . . . Indeed having taken the cup, one may drink what he pleases, and return the rest.
[Adv. Col. 8d] But in reasoning one ought chiefly to remember this wise apothegm, that where the principles are not necessary, the ends and consequences are necessary. It was not then necessary for him to suppose or (to say better) to steal from Democritus, that atoms are the principles of the universe; but having supposed this doctrine, and having pleased and glorified himself in the first probable and specious appearances of it, he must afterwards also swallow that which is troublesome in it, or must show how bodies which have not any quality can bring all sorts of qualities to others only by their meetings and joining together. As — to take that which comes next to hand — whence does that which we call heat proceed, and how is it engendered in the atoms, if they neither had heat when they came, nor are become hot after their being joined together? For the one presupposes that they had some quality, and the other that they were fit to receive it. And you affirm, that neither the one nor the other must be said to be congruous to atoms, because they are incorruptible.
[Adv. Col. 9] How then? Do not Plato, Aristotle, and Xenocrates produce gold from that which is not gold, and stone from that which is not stone, and many other things from the four simple first bodies? Yes indeed; but with those bodies immediately concur also the principles for the generation of everything, bringing with them great contributions, that is, the first qualities which are in them; then, when they come to assemble and join in one the dry with the moist, the cold with the hot, and the solid with the soft, — that is, active bodies with such as are fit to suffer and receive every alteration and change, — then is generation wrought by passing from one temperature to another. Whereas the atom, being alone, is alone, is deprived and destitute of all quality and generative faculty, and when it comes to meet with the others, it can make only a noise and sound because of its hardness and firmness, but nothing more. For they always strike and are stricken, not being able by this means to compose or make an animal, a soul, or a nature, nay, not so much as a mass or heap of themselves; for that as they beat upon one another, so they fly back again asunder.
[Adv. Col. 10] But Colotes, as if he were speaking to some ignorant and unlettered king, again attacks Empedocles for expressing the same thought: —
[Adv. Col. 10b] I’ve one thing more to say. ‘Mongst mortals there No Nature is; nor that grim thing men fear So much, called death. There only happens firstA mixture, and mixt things asunder burst Again, when them disunion does befall. And this is that which men do Nature call.
[Adv. Col. 10c] For my part, I do not see how this is repugnant and contrary to life or living, especially amongst those who hold that there is no generation of that which is not, nor corruption of that which is, but that the assembling and union of the things which are is called generation, and their dissolution and disunion named corruption and death. For that he took Nature for generation, and that this is his meaning, he has himself declared, when he opposed Nature to death. And if they neither live nor can live who place generation in union and death in disunion, what else do these Epicureans? Yet Empedocles, gluing, (as it were) and conjoining the elements together by heats, softnesses, and humidifies, gives them in some sort a mixtion and unitive composition; but these men who hunt and drive together the atoms, which they affirm to be immutable and impassible, compose nothing proceeding from them, but indeed make many and continual percussions of them.
[Adv. Col. 10d] For the interlacement, hindering the dissolution, more and more augments the collision and concussion; so that there is neither mixtion nor adhesion and conglutination, but only a discord and combat, which according to them is called generation. And if the atoms do now recoil for a moment by reason of the shock they have given, and then return again after the blow is past, they are above double the time absent from one another, without either touching or approaching, so as nothing can be made of them, not even so much as a body without a soul. But as for sense, soul, understanding, and prudence, there is not any man who can in the least conceive or imagine how it is possible they should be made in a voidness, and atoms which neither when separate and apart have any quality, nor any passion or alteration when they are assembled and joined together, especially seeing this their meeting together is not an incorporation or congress, making a mixture or coalition, but rather percussions and repercussions. So that, according to the doctrine of these people, life is taken away, and the existence of an animal denied, since they posit principles void, impassible, godless, and soulless, and such as cannot allow or receive any mixture or commingling whatever.
[Adv. Col. 11] How then is it, that they admit and allow Nature, soul, and living creature? Even in the same manner as they do an oath, prayer, and sacrifice, and the adoration of the gods. Thus they adore by word and mouth, only naming and feigning that which by their principles they totally take away and abolish. If now they call that which is born Nature, and that which is engendered generation, — as those who are accustomed to call wood wood-work and the voices that accord and sound together symphony, — whence came it into his mind to object these words against Empedocles? “Why,” says he, “do we tire ourselves in taking such care of ourselves, in desiring and longing after certain things, and shunning and avoiding others? For we neither are ourselves, nor do we live by making use of others.” But be of good cheer, my dear little Colotes, may one perhaps say to him: there is none who hinders you from taking care of yourself by teaching that the nature of Colotes is nothing else but Colotes himself, or who forbids you to make use of things (now things with you are pleasures) by showing that there is no nature of tarts and marchpanes, of sweet odors, or of venereal delights, but that there are tarts, marchpanes, perfumes, and women. For neither does the grammarian who says that the “strength of Hercules” is Hercules himself deny the being of Hercules; nor do those who say that symphonies and roofings are but absolute derivations affirm that there are neither sounds nor timbers; since also there are some who, taking away the soul and intelligence, do not yet seem to take away either living or being intelligent.
[Adv. Col. 11b] And when Epicurus says that the nature of things is to be found in bodies and their place, do we so comprehend him as if he meant that Nature were something else than the things which are, or as if he insinuated that it is merely the things which are, and nothing else? — as, to wit, he is wont to call voidness itself the nature of voidness, and the universe, by Jupiter, the nature of the universe. And if any one should thus question him; What sayst thou, Epicurus, that this is voidness, and that the nature of voidness? No, by Jupiter, would he answer; but this transference of names is in use by law and custom. I grant it is. Now what has Empedocles done else, but taught that Nature is nothing else save that which is born, and death no other thing but that which dies? But as the poets very often, forming as it were an image, say thus in figurative language,
[Adv. Col. 11c] Strife, tumult, noise, placed by some angry god, Mischief, and malice there had their abode;(“Iliad,” xvii. 525.)
[Adv. Col. 11d] so do some authors attribute generation and corruption to things that are contracted together and dissolved. But so far has he been from stirring and taking away that which is, or contradicting that which evidently appears, that he casts not so much as one single word out of the accustomed use; but taking away all figurative fraud that might hurt or endamage things, he again restored the ordinary and useful signification to words in these verses:-
[Adv. Col. 11e] When from mixed elements we sometimes seeA man produced, sometimes a beast, a tree, Or bird, this birth and geniture we name; But death, when this so well compacted frame And juncture is dissolved.
[Adv. Col. 11f] And yet I myself say that Colotes, though he alleged these verses,did not understand that Empedocles took not away men, beasts,trees, or birds, which he affirmed to be composed of the elementsmixed together; and that, by teaching how much they are deceivedwho call this composition Nature and life, and this dissolutionunhappy destruction and miserable death, he did not abrogate theusing of the customary expressions in this respect.
[Adv. Col. 12] And it seems to me, indeed, that Empedocles did not aim in this place at the disturbing the common manner of expression, but that he really, as it has been said, had a controversy about generation from things that have no being, which some call Nature. Which he manifestly shows by these verses: —
[Adv. Col. 12b] Fools, and of little thought, we well may deem Those, who so silly are as to esteem That what ne’er was may now engendered be,And that what is may perish utterly.
[Adv. Col. 12c] For these are the words of one who cries loud enough to those which have ears, that he takes not away generation, but procreation from nothing; nor corruption, but total destruction that is, reduction to nothing. For to him who would not so savagely and foolishly but more gently calumniate, the following verses might give a colorable occasion of charging Empedocles with the contrary, when he says: —
[Adv. Col. 12d] No prudent man can e’er into his mind Admit that, whilst men living here on earth(Which only life they call) both fortunes find, They being have, but that before the birth They nothing were, nor shall be when once dead.
[Adv. Col. 12e] For these are not the expressions of a man who denies those thatare born to be, but rather of him who holds those to be that arenot yet born or that are already dead. And Colotes also does notaltogether accuse him of this, but says that according to hisopinion we shall never be sick, never wounded. But how is itpossible, that he who affirms men to have being both before theirlife and after their death, and during their life to find bothfortunes (or to be accompanied both by good and evil), should notleave them the power to suffer? Who then are they, O Colotes, thatare endued with this privilege never to be wounded, never to besick? Even you yourselves, who are composed of atoms and voidness,neither of which, you say, has any sense. Now there is no greathurt in this; but the worst is, you have nothing left that cancause you pleasure, seeing an atom is not capable to receive thosethings which are to effect it, and voidness cannot be affectedby them.
[Adv. Col. 13] But because Colotes would, immediately after Democritus, seem to inter and bury Parmenides, and I have passed over and a little postponed his defence, to bring in between them that of Empedocles, as seeming to be more coherent and consequent to the first reprehensions, let us now return to Parmenides. Him, then, does Colotes accuse of having broached and set abroad certain shameful and villanous sophistries; and yet by these his sophisms he has neither rendered friendship less honorable, nor voluptuousness or the desire of pleasures more audacious and unbridled. He has not taken from honesty its attractive property or its being venerable or recommendable of itself, nor has he disturbed the opinions we ought to have of the gods. And I do not see how, by saying that the All (or the universe) is one, he hinders or obstructs our living. For when Epicurus himself says that the All is infinite, that it is neither engendered nor perishable, that it can neither increase nor be diminished, he speaks of the universe as of one only thing. And having in the beginning of his treatise concerning this matter said, that the nature of those things which have being consists of bodies and of vacuum, he makes a division (as it were) of one thing into two parts, one of which has in reality no subsistence, being, as you yourselves term it, impalpable, void, and incorporeal; so that by this means, even with you also, all comes to be one; unless yon desire, in speaking of voidness, to use words void of sense, and to combat the ancients, as if you were fighting against a shadow.
[Adv. Col. 13b] But these atomical bodies, you will say, are, according to the opinion of Epicurus, infinite in number, and everything which appears to us is composed of them. See now, therefore, what principles of generation you suppose, infinity and voidness; one of which, to wit, voidness, is inactive, impassible, and incorporeal; the other, to wit, infinity, is disorderly, unreasonable, and unintelligible, dissolving and confounding itself, because it cannot for its multitude be contained, circumscribed, or limited. But Parmenides has neither taken away fire, nor water, nor precipices, nor yet cities (as Colotes says) which are inhabited as well in Europe as in Asia; since he has both constructed an order of the world, and mixing the elements, to wit, light and dark, does of them and by them arrange and finish all things that appear in the world. For he has written very largely of the earth, heaven, sun, moon, and stars, and has spoken of the generation of man; and being, as he was, an ancient author in physiology, and one who in writing sought to save his own and not to destroy another’s doctrine, he has overlooked none of the essential things in Nature. Moreover, Plato, and before him Socrates himself, understood that in Nature there is one part subject to opinion, and another subject to intelligence. As for that which is subject to opinion, it is always unconstant, wandering, and carried away with several passions and changes, liable to diminution and increase, and to be variously disposed to various men, and not always appearing after one manner even to the same individual. But as to the intelligible part, it is quite of another kind,
[Adv. Col. 13c] Constant, entire, and still engenerable,
as himself says, always like to itself, and perdurable in its being.
[Adv. Col. 13d] Here Colotes, sycophant-like, catching at his expressions and drawing the discourse from things to words, flatly affirms that Parmenides in one word destroys the existence of all things by supposing ENS (or that which is) to be one. But, on the contrary, he takes away neither the one nor the other part of Nature; but rendering to each of them what belongs to it and is convenient for it, he places the intelligible in the idea of one and of “that which is,” calling it ENS because it is eternal and incorruptible, and one because it is always like itself and admits no diversity. And as for that part which is sensible, he places it in the rank of uncertain, disorderly, and always moving. Of which two parts, we may see the distinct judgment: —
[Adv. Col. 13e] One certain truth and sincere knowledge is,
[Adv. Col. 13f] as regarding that which is intelligible, and always alike and of the same sort;
[Adv. Col. 13g] The other does on men’s opinions rest, Which breed no true belief within our breast,
[Adv. Col. 13h] because it is conversant in things which receive all sorts of changes, passions, and inequalities. Now how he could have left sense and opinion, if he had not also left any sensible and opinable object, it is impossible for any man to say. But because to that which truly IS it appertains to continue in its being, and because sensible things sometimes are, sometimes are not, continually passing from one being to another and perpetually changing their state, he thought they required some other name than that of ENTIA, or things which always are. This speech therefore concerning ENS (or that which is), that it should be but one, is not to take away the plurality of sensible things, but to show how they differ from that which is intelligible. Which difference Plato in his discussion of Ideas more fully declaring, has thereby afforded Colotes an opportunity of cavilling.
[Adv. Col. 14] Therefore it seems not unfitting to me to take next into our consideration, as it were all in a train, what he has also said against him. But first let us contemplate a little the diligence — together with the manifold and profound knowledge — of this our philosopher, who says, that Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, and all the Peripateties have followed these doctrines of Plato. For in what corner of the uninhabitable world have you, O Colotes, written your book, that, composing all these accusations against such personages, you never have lighted upon their works, nor have taken into your hands the books of Aristotle concerning Heaven and the Soul, nor those of Theophrastus against the Naturalists, nor the Zoroaster of Heraclides, nor his books of Hell, nor that of Natural Doubts and Difficulties, nor the book of Dicaearchus concerning the Soul; in all which books they are in the highest degree contradictory and repugnant to Plato about the principal and greatest points of natural philosophy? Nay, Strato himself, the very head and prince of the other Peripatetics, agrees not in many things with Aristotle, and holds opinions altogether contrary to Plato, concerning motion, the understanding, the soul, and generation. In fine, he says that the world is not an animal, and that what is according to Nature follows what is according to Fortune; for that Chance gave the beginning, and so every one of the natural effects was afterwards finished.
[Adv. Col. 14b] Now as to the ideas, — for which he quarrels with Plato, — Aristotle, by moving this matter at every turn, and alleging all manner of doubts concerning them, in his Ethics, in his Physics, and in his Exoterical Dialogues seems to some rather obstinately than philosophically to have disputed against these doctrines, as having proposed to himself the debasing and undervaluing of Plato’s philosophy; so far he was from following it. What an impudent rashness then is this, that having neither seen nor understood what these persons have written and what were their opinions, he should go and devise such things as they never imagined; and persuading himself that he reprehends and refutes others, he should produce a proof, written with his own hand, arguing and convincing himself of ignorance, licentiousness, and shameful impudence, in saying that those who contradict Plato agree with him, and that those who oppose him follow him.
[Adv. Col. 15] Plato, says he, writes that horses are in vain by us considered horses, and men men. And in which of Plato’s commentaries has he found this hidden? For as to us, we read in all his books, that horses are horses, that men are men, and that fire is by him esteemed fire, because he holds that every one of these things is sensible and subject to opinion. But this Colotes, as if he were not a hair’s breadth distance from wisdom, takes it to be one and the same thing to say, “Man is not” and “Man is a NON ENS.”
[Adv. Col. 15b] Now to Plato there seems to be a wonderful great difference between not being at all and being a NON ENS; because the first imports an annihilation and abolishment of all substance, and the other shows the diversity there is between that which is participated and that which participates. Which diversity those who came after distinguished only into the difference of genus and species, and certain common and proper qualities or accidents, as they are called, but ascended no higher, falling into more logical doubts and difficulties. Now there is the same proportion between that which is participated and that which participates, as there is between the cause and the matter, the original and the image, the faculty and the result. Wherein that which is by itself and always the same principally differs from that which is by another and never remains in one and the same manner; because the one never was nor ever shall be non-existent, and is therefore totally and essentially an ENS; but to the other that very being, which it has not of itself but happens to take by participation from another, does not remain firm and constant, but it goes out of it by its imbecility, — the matter always gliding and sliding about the form, and receiving several functions and changes in the image of the substance, so that it is continually moving and shaking. As therefore he who says that the image of Plato is not Plato takes not away the sense and substance of the image, but shows the difference of that which is of itself from that which is only in regard to some other, so neither do they take away the nature, use, or sense of men, who affirm that every one of us, by participating in a certain common substratum, that is, in the idea, is become the image of that which afforded the likeness for our generation. For neither does he who says that a red-hot iron is not fire, or that the moon is not the sun, but, as Parmenides has it,
[Adv. Col. 15c] A torch which round the earth by night Does bear about a borrowed light,
[Adv. Col. 15d] take away therefore the use of iron, or the nature of the moon. But if he should deny it to be a body, or affirm that it is not illuminated, he would then contradict the senses, as one who admitted neither body, animal, generation, nor sense. But he who by his opinion imagines that these things subsist only by participation, and reflects how far remote and distant they are from that which always is and which communicates to them their being, does not reject the sensible, but affirms that the intelligible is; nor does he take away and abolish the results which are wrought and appear in us; but he shows to those who follow him that there are other things, firmer and more stable than these in respect of their essence, because they are neither engendered, nor perish, nor suffer anything; and he teaches them, more purely touching the difference, to express it by names, calling these [Greek omitted] or [Greek omitted] (THINGS THAT HAVE BEING), and those [Greek omitted] or FIENTIA (THINGS ENGENDERED). And the same also usually befalls the moderns; for they deprive many — and those great things — of the appellation of ENS or BEING; such as are voidness, time, place, and simply the entire genus of things spoken, in which are comprised all things true. For these things, they say, are not ENTIA but SOME THINGS; and they perpetually treat of them in their lives and in their philosophy, as of things having subsistence and existence.
[Adv. Col. 16] But I would willingly ask this our fault-finder, whether themselves do not in their affairs perceive this difference, by which some things are permanent and immutable in their substances, — as they say of their atoms, that they are at all times and continually after one and the same manner, because of their impassibility and hardness, — but that all compound things are fluxible, changeable, generated, and perishing; forasmuch as infinite images are always departing and going from them, and infinite others as it is probable, repair to them from the ambient air, filling up what was diminished from the mass, which is much diversified and transvasated, as it were, by this change, since those atoms which are in the very bottom of the said mass can never cease stirring and reciprocally beating upon one another; as they themselves affirm. There is then in things such a diversity of substance. But Epicurus is in this wiser and more learned than Plato, that he calls them all equally ENTIA, — to wit, the impalable voidness, the solid and resisting body, the principles, and the things composed of them, — and thinks that the eternal participates of the common substance with that which is generated, the immortal with the corruptible, and the natures that are impassible, perdurable, unchangeable, and that can never fall from their being, with those which have their essence in suffering and changing, and can never continue in one and the same state. But though Plato had with all the justness imaginable deserved to be condemned for having offended in this, yet should he have been sentenced by these gentlemen, who use Greek more elegantly and discourse more correctly than he, only as having confounded the terms, and not as having taken away the things and driven life from us, because he named them FIENTIA (or things engendered), and not ENTIA (things that have being), as these men do.
[Adv. Col. 17] But because we have passed over Socrates, who should have come next after Parmenides, we must now turn back our discourse to him. Him therefore has Colotes begun at the very first to remove, as the common proverb has it, from the sacred line; and having mentioned how Chaerephon brought from Delphi an oracle, well known to us all, concerning Socrates, he says thus: “Now as to this narration of Chaerephon’s, because it is odious and entirely sophistical, we will overpass it.” Plato, then, that we may say nothing of others, is also odious, who has committed it to writing; and the Lacedaemonians are yet more odious, who keep the oracle of Lycurgus amongst their most ancient and most authentic inscriptions. The oracle also of Themistocles, by which he persuaded the Athenians to quit their town, and in a naval fight defeated the barbarous Xerxes, was a sophistical fiction.
[Adv. Col. 17b] Odious also were all the ancient legislators and founders of Greece who established the most part of their temples, sacrifices, and solemn festivals by the answer of the Pythian Oracle. But if the oracle brought from Delphi concerning Socrates, a man ravished with a divine zeal to virtue, by which he is styled and declared wise, is odious, fictitious, and sophistical, by what name shall we call your cries, noises, and shouts, your applauses, adorations and canonizations, with which you extol and celebrate him who incites and exhorts you to frequent and continual pleasures? For thus has he written in his epistle to Anaxarchus: “I for my part incite and call you to continual pleasures, and not to vain and empty virtues, which have nothing but turbulent hopes of uncertain fruits.” And yet Metrodorus, writing to Timarchus, says: “Let us do some extraordinarily excellent thing, not suffering ourselves to be plunged in reciprocal affections, but retiring from this low and terrestrial life, and elevating ourselves to the truly holy and divinely revealed ceremonies and mysteries of Epicurus.” And even Colotes himself, hearing one day Epicurus discoursing of natural things, fell suddenly at his feet and embraced his knees, as Epicurus himself, glorying in it, thus writes: “For as if you had adored what we were then saying, you were suddenly taken with a desire, proceeding not from any natural cause, to come to us, prostrate yourself on the ground, embrace our knees, and use all those gestures to us which are ordinarily practised by those who adore and pray to the gods.
[Adv. Col. 17c] So that you made us also,” says he, “reciprocally sanctify and adore you.” Those, by Jupiter, well deserve to be pardoned, who say, they would willingly give any money for a picture in which should be presented to the life this fine story of one lying prostrate at the knees and embracing the legs of another, who mutually again adores him and makes his devout prayers to him. Nevertheless this devout service, how well soever it was ordered and composed by Colotes, received not the condign fruit he expected; for he was not declared wise; but it was only said to him: Go they ways, and walk immortal; and understand that we also are in like manner immortal.
[Adv. Col. 18] These men, knowing well in their consciences that they have used such foolish speeches, have had such motions, and such passions, dare nevertheless call others odious. And Colotes, having shown us these fine first-fruits and wise positions touching the natural senses, — that we eat meat, and not hay or forage; and that when rivers are deep and great, we pass them in boats, but when shallow and easily fordable, on foot, — cries out, “You use vain and arrogant speeches, O Socrates; you say one thing to those who come to discourse with you, and practise another.” Now I would fain know what these vain and arrogant speeches of Socrates were, since he ordinarily said that he knew nothing, that he was always learning, and that he went inquiring and searching after the truth. But if, O Colotes, you had happened on such expressions of Socrates as are those which Epicurus writ to Idomeneus, “Send me then the first-fruits for the entertainment of our sacred body, for ourself and for our children: for so it comes upon me to speak;” what more arrogant and insolent words could you have used? And yet that Socrates spake otherwise than he lived, you have wonderful proofs in his gests at Delium, at Potidaea, in his behavior during the time of the Thirty Tyrants, towards Archelaus, towards the people of Athens, in his poverty, and in his death. For are not these things beseeming and answerable to the doctrine of Socrates? They would indeed, good sir, have been indubitable testimonies to show that he acted otherwise than he taught, if, having proposed pleasure for the end of life, he had led such a life as this.
[Adv. Col. 19] Thus much for the calumnies he has uttered against Socrates. Colotes besides perceives not that he is himself found guilty of the same offences in regard to theory and practice which he objects against Socrates. For this is one of the sentences and propositions of Epicurus, that none but the wise man ought irrevocably and unchangeably to be persuaded of anything. Since then Colotes, even after those adorations he performed to Epicurus, became not one of the sages, let him first make these questions and interrogatories his own: How is it that being hungry he eats meat and not hay, and that he puts a robe about his body and not about a pillar, since he is not indubitably persuaded either that a robe is a robe or that meat is meat? But if he not only does these things, but also passes not over rivers, when they are great and high, on foot, and flies from wolves and serpents, not being irrevocably persuaded that any of these things is such as it seems, but yet doing everything according to what appears to him; so likewise the opinion of Socrates concerning the senses was no obstacle to him, but that he might in like manner make use of things as they appeared to him. For it is not likely that bread appeared bread and hay hay to Colotes, because he had read those holy rules of Epicurus which came down from heaven, while Socrates on account of his vanity imagined that hay was bread and bread hay. For these wise men use better opinions and reasons than we; but to have sense, and to receive an impression from objects as they appear, is common as well to the ignorant as to the wise, as proceeding from causes where there needs not the discourse of reason. And the proposition which affirms that the natural senses are not perfect, nor certain enough to cause an entire belief, hinders not that everything may appear to us; but leaving us to make use of our senses in our actions according to that which appears, it permits us not so to give credit to them as if they were exactly true and without error. For it is sufficient that in what is necessary and commodious for use there is nothing better. But as for the science and knowledge which the soul of a philosopher desires to have concerning everything, the senses have it not.
[Adv. Col. 20] But as to this, Colotes will farther give us occasion to speak of it hereafter, for he brings this objection against several others. Furthermore, whereas he profusely derides and despises Socrates for asking what man is, and in a youthful bravery (as he terms it) affirming that he was ignorant of it, it is manifest that he himself, who scoffs at it, never so much as thought of this matter; but Heraclitus on the contrary, as having done some great and worthy thing, said, I have been seeking myself. And of the sentences that were written in Apollo’s temple at Delphi, the most excellent and most divine seems to have been this, Know thyself. And this it was which gave Socrates an occasion and beginning of doubting and inquiring into it, as Aristotle says in his Platonics. And yet this appears to Colotes ridiculous and fit to be scoffed at. And I wonder that he derides not also his master himself, who does as much whenever he writes concerning the substance of the soul and the creation of man. For if that which is compounded of both, as they themselves hold, — of the body, to wit, and the soul, — is man, he who searches into the nature of the soul consequently also searches into the nature of man, beginning from his chiefest principle. Now that the soul is very difficult to be comprehended by reason, and altogether incomprehensible by the exterior senses, let us not learn from Socrates, who is a vainglorious and sophistical disputer, but let us take it from these wise men, who, having forged and framed the substance of the soul of somewhat hot, spiritual, and aerial, as far as to the faculties of the flesh, by which she gives heat, softness and strength to the body, proceed not to that which is the principal, but give over faint and tired by the way. For that by which she judges, remembers, loves, hates, — in a word, that which is prudent and rational, is, — say they, made afterwards of I know not what nameless quality. Now we well know, that this nameless thing is a confession of their shameful ignorance, whilst they pretend they cannot name what they are not able to understand or comprehend. But let this, as they say, be pardoned them. For it seems not to be a light and easy matter, which every one can at the first attempt find out and attain to, but has retired itself to the bottom of some very remote place, and there lies obscurely concealed. So that there is not, amongst so many words and terms as are in use, any one that can explain or show it. Socrates therefore was not a fool or blockhead for seeking and searching what himself was; but they are rather to be thought shallow coxcombs, who inquire after any other thing before this, the knowledge of which is so necessary and so hard to find. For how could he expect to gain the knowledge of other things, who has not been able to comprehend the principal element even of himself?
[Adv. Col. 21] But granting a little to Colotes, that there is nothing so vain, useless, and odious as the seeking into one’s self, let us ask him, what confession of human life is in this, and how it is that a man cannot continue to live, when he comes once thus to reason and discourse in himself: “Go to now, what am I? Am I a composition, made up of soul and body; or rather a soul, serving itself and making use of the body, as an horseman using his horse is not a subject composed of horse and man? Or is every one of us the principal part of the soul, by which we understand, infer, and act; and are all the other parts, both of soul and body, only organs and utensils of this power? Or, to conclude, is there no proper substance of the soul at all apart, but is only the temperature and complexion of the body so disposed, that it has force and power to understand and live?” But Socrates does not by these questions overthrow human life, since all natural philosophers treat of the same matter. But those perhaps are the monstrous questions and inquiries that turn everything upside down, which are in Phaedrus, (Plato, “Phaedrus,” p. 230 A.) where he says, that every one ought to examine and consider himself, whether he is a savage beast, more cautelous, outrageous, and furious than ever was the monster Typhon; or on the contrary, an animal more mild and gentle, partaking by Nature of a certain divine portion, and such as is free from pride. Now by these discourses and reasonings he overturns not the life of man, but drives from it presumption and arrogance, and those haughty and extravagant opinions and conceits he has of himself. For this is that monster Typhon, which your teacher and master has made to be so great in you by his warring against the gods and divine men.
[Adv. Col. 22] Having done with Socrates and Plato, he next attacks Stilpo. Now as for those his true doctrines and good discourses, by which he managed and governed himself, his country, his friends, and such kings and princes as loved him and esteemed him, he has not written a word; nor yet what prudence and magnanimity was in his heart, accompanied with meekness, moderation, and modesty. But having made mention of one of those little sentences he was wont in mirth and raillery to object against the sophisters, he does, without alleging any reason against it or solving the subtlety of the objection, stir up a terrible tragedy against Stilpo, saying that the life of man is subverted by him, inasmuch as he affirms that one thing cannot be predicated of another. “For how,” says he, “shall we live, if we cannot style a man good, nor a man a captain, but must separately name a man a man, good good, and a captain a captain; nor can say ten thousand horsemen, or a fortified town, but only call horsemen horsemen, and ten thousand ten thousand, and so of the rest?” Now what man ever was there that lived the worse for this? Or who is there that, hearing this discourse, does not immediately perceive and understand it to be the speech of a man who rallies gallantly, and proposes to others this logical question for the exercise of their wits? It is not, O Colotes, a great and dangerous scandal not to call any man good, or not to say ten thousand horsemen; but not to call God God, and not to believe him to be God, — as you and the rest do, who will not confess that there is a Jupiter presiding over generation, or a Ceres giving laws, or a Neptune nourishing the plants, — it is this separation of names that is pernicious, and fills our life with audaciousness and an atheistical contempt of the gods. When you pluck from the gods the names and appellations that are tied to them, you abolish also the sacrifices, mysteries, processions, and feasts. For to whom shall we offer the sacrifices preceding the tilling of the ground? To whom those for the obtaining of preservation? How shall we celebrate the Phosphoria or torch-festivals, the Bacchanals, and the ceremonies that go before marriage, if we admit neither Bacchantes, gods of light, gods who protect the sown field, nor preservers of the state? For this it is that touches the principal and greatest points, being an error in things, — not in words, in the structure of propositions, or use of terms.
[Adv. Col. 22b] Now if these are the things that disturb and subvert human life, who are there that more offend in speech than you? For you take utterly away the whole category of namable things, which constitute the substance of language; and leave only words and their accidental objects, while you take away in the meantime the things particularly signfied by them, by which are wrought disciplines, doctrines, preconceptions, intelligences, inclination, and assent, which you hold to be nothing at all.
[Adv. Col. 23] But as for Stilpo, thus his reasoning proceeds. “If of a man we predicate good, and of an horse running, the predicate or thing predicated is not the same with the subject or that of which it is predicated, but the essential definition of man is one, and of good another. And again, to be a horse differs from to be running. For being asked the definition of the one and of the other, we do not give the same for them both; and therefore those err who predicate the one of the other. For if good is the same with man, and to run the same with a horse, how is good affirmed also of food and medicine, and again (by Jupiter) to run of a lion and a dog? But if the predicate is different, then we do not rightly say that a man is good, and a horse runs.” Now if Stilpo is in this exorbitant and grossly mistaken, not admitting any copulation of such things as are in the subject, or affirmed of the subject, with the subject itself; but holding that every one of them, if it is not absolutely one and the same thing with that to which it happens or of which it is spoken, ought not to be spoken or affirmed of it, — no, not even as an accident; it is nevertheless manifest, that he was only offended with some words, and opposed the usual and accustomed manner of speaking, and not that he overthrew man’s life, and turned his affairs upside down.
[Adv. Col. 24] Colotes, then, having got rid of the old philosophers, turns to those of his own time, but without naming any of them; though he would have done better either to have reproved by name these moderns, as he did the ancients, or else to have named neither of them. But he who has so often employed his pen against Socrates, Plato, and Parmenides, evidently demonstrates that it is through cowardice he dares not attack the living, and not for any modesty or reverence, of which he showed not the least sign to those who were far more excellent than these. But his meaning is, as I suspect, to assault the Cyrenaics first, and afterwards the Academics, who are followers of Arcesilaus. For it was these who doubted of all things; but those, placing the passions and imaginations in themselves, were of opinion that the belief proceeding from them is not sufficient for the assuring and affirming of things but, as if it were in the siege of a town, abandoning what is without, they have shut themselves up in the passions, using only it seems, and not asserting it is, of things without. And therefore they cannot, as Colotes says of them, live or have the use of things. And then speaking comically of them, he adds: “These deny that there is a man, a horse, a wall; but say that they themselves (as it were) become walls, horses, men,” or “take on the images of walls, horses, or men.” In which he first maliciously abuses the terms, as caluminators are usually wont to do. For though these things follow from the sayings of the Cyrenaics, yet he ought to have declared the fact as they themselves teach it. For they affirm that things then become sweet, bitter, lightsome, or dark, when each thing has in itself the natural unobstructed operation of one of these impressions. But if honey is said to be sweet, an olive-branch bitter, hail cold, wine hot, and the nocturnal air dark, there are many beasts, things, and men that testify the contrary. For some have an aversion for honey, others feed on the branches of the olive-tree; some are scorched by hail, others cooled with wine; and there are some whose sight is dim in the sun but who see well by night. Wherefore opinion, containing itself within these sensations, remains safe and free from error; but when it goes forth and attempts to be curious in judging and pronouncing concerning exterior things, it often deceives itself, and opposes others, who from the same objects receive contrary sensations and different imaginations.
[Adv. Col. 25] And Colotes seems properly to resemble those young children who are but beginning to learn their letters. For, being accustomed to learn them where they see them in their own horn-books and primers, when they see them written anywhere else, they doubt and are troubled; so those very discourses, which he praises and approves in the writings of Epicurus, he neither understands nor knows again, when they are spoken by others. For those who say that the sense is truly informed and moulded when there is presented one image round and another broken, but nevertheless permit us not to pronounce that the tower is round and the oar broken, confirm their own sensations and imaginations, but they will not acknowledge and confess that the things without are so affected. But as the Cyrenaics must say that they are imprinted with the figure of a horse or of a wall, but refuse to speak of the horse or the wall; so also it is necessary to say that the sight is imprinted with a figure round or with three unequal sides, and not that the tower is in that manner triangular or round.
[Adv. Col. 25b] For the image by which the sight is affected is broken; but the oar whence that image proceeds is not broken. Since, then, there is a difference between the sensation and the external subject, the belief must either remain in the sensation, or else — if it maintains the being in addition to the appearing — be reproved and convinced of untruth. And whereas they cry out and are offended in behalf of the sense, because the Cyrenaics say not that the thing without is hot, but that the effect made on the sense is such; is it not the same with what is said touching the taste, when they say that the thing without is not sweet, but that some function and motion about the sense is such? And for him who says that he has received the apprehension of an human form, but perceives not whether it is a man, whence has he taken occasion so to say? Is it not from those who affirm that they receive an apprehension of a bowed figure and form, but that the sight pronounces not that the thing which was seen is bowed or round, but that a certain image of it is such?
[Adv. Col. 25c] Yes, by Jupiter, will some one say; but I, going near the tower or touching the oar, will pronounce and affirm that the one is straight and the other has many angles and faces; but he, when he comes near it, will confess that it seems and appears so to him, and no more. Yes, certainly, good sir, and more than this, when he sees and observes the consequence, that every imagination is equally worthy of belief for itself, and none for another; but that they are all in like condition. But this your opinion is quite lost, that all the imaginations are true and none false or to be disbelieved, if you think that these ought to pronounce positively of that which is without, but those you credit no farther than that they are so affected. For if they are in equal condition as to their being believed, when they are near or when they are far off, it is just that either upon all of them, or else not upon these, should follow the judgment pronouncing that a thing is.
[Adv. Col. 25d] But if there is a difference in the being affected between those that are near and those that are far off, it is then false that one sense and imagination is not more express and evident than another. Therefore those they call attestations and counter-attestations are nothing to the sense, but are concerned only with opinion. So, if they would have us following these to pronounce concerning exterior things, making being a judgment of opinion, and what appears an affection of sense, they transfer the judicature from which is totally true to that which often fails.
[Adv. Col. 26] But how full of trouble and contradictions in respect of one another these things are, what need is there to say at present? But the reputation of Arcesilaus, who was the best beloved and most esteemed of all the philosophers in his time, seems to have been no small eyesore to Epicurus; who says of him that delivering nothing peculiar to himself or of his own invention, he imprinted in illiterate men the opinion and esteem of his being very knowing and learned. Now Arcesilaus was so far from desiring any glory by being a bringer-in of new opinions, and from arrogating to himself those of the ancients, that the sophisters of that time blamed him for attributing to Socrates, Plato, Parmenides, and Heraclitus the doctrines concerning the retention of assent, and the incomprehensibility of things; having no need so to do, but only that he might strengthen them and render them recommendable by ascribing them such illustrious personages. For this, therefore, thanks to Colotes, and to every one who declares that the academic doctrine was from a higher times derived to Arcesilaus. Now as for retention of assent and the doubting of all things, not even those who have much labored in the manner, and strained themselves to compose great books and large treatises concerning it, were ever able to stir it; but bringing at last out of the Stoa itself the cessation from all actions, as the Gorgon to frighten away the objections that came against them, they were at last quite tired and gave over. For they could not, what attempts and stirs soever they made, obtain so much from the instinct by which the appetite is moved to act, as to suffer itself to be called an assent, or to acknowledge sense for the origin and principle of its propension, but it appeared of its own accord to present itself to act, as having no need to be joined with anything else. For against such adversaries the combat and dispute is lawful and just. And
[Adv. Col. 26b] Such words as you have spoke, the like you may Expect to hear.(“Iliad,” xx. 250.)
[Adv. Col. 26c] For to speak to Colotes of instinct and consent is, I suppose, all one as to play on the harp before an ass. But to those who can give ear and conceive, it is said that there are in the soul three sorts of motions, — the imaginative, the appetitive, and the consenting. As to the imaginative or the apprehension, it cannot be taken away, though one would. For one cannot, when things approach, avoid being informed and (as it were) moulded by them, and receiving an impression from them. The appetite, being stirred up by the imaginative, effectually moves man to that which is proper and agreeable to his nature, just as when there is made a propension. and inclination in the principal and reasonable part. Now those who withhold their assent and doubt of all things take not away this, but make use of the appetition or instinct naturally conducting every man to that which seems convenient for him. What, then, is the only thing that they shun? That in which is bred falsehood and deceit, — that is, opining, and haste in giving consent, — which is a yielding through weakness to that which appears, and has not any true utility. For action stands in need of two things, to wit, the apprehension or imagination of what is agreeable to Nature, and the instinct or appetition driving to that which is so imagined; of which, neither the one nor the other is repugnant to the retention of assent. For reason withdraws us from opinion, and not from appetition or imagination. When, therefore, that which is delectable seems to us to be proper for us, there is no need of opinion to move and carry us to it, but appetition immediately exerts itself, which is nothing else but the motion and inclination of the soul.
[Adv. Col. 27] It is their own axiom, that a man must only have sense and be flesh and blood and pleasure will appear to be good. Wherefore also it will seem good to him who withholds his assent. For he also participates of sense, and is made of flesh and blood, and as soon as he has conceived an imagination of good, desires it and does all things that it may not escape from him; but as much as possibly he can, he will keep himself with that which is agreeable to his nature, being drawn by natural and not by geometrical constraints. For these goodly, gentle, and tickling motions of the flesh are, without any teacher, attractive enough of themselves — even as these men forget not to say — to draw even him who will not in the least acknowledge and confess that he is softened and rendered pliable by them. “But how comes it to pass,” perhaps you will say, “that he who is thus doubtful and withholds his assent hastens not away to the mountain, instead of going to the bath? Or that, rising up to go forth into the market-place, he runs not his head against the wall, but takes his way directly to the door?” Do you ask this, who hold all the senses to be infallible, and the apprehensions of the imagination certain and true? It is because the bath appears to him not a mountain, but a bath; and the door seems not a wall, but a door; and the same is to be said of every other thing. For the doctrine of retention does not pervert the sense, nor by absurd passions and motions work in it an alteration disturbing the imaginative faculty; but it only takes away opinions, and for the rest, makes use of other things according to their nature.
[Adv. Col. 27b] But it is impossible, you will say, not to consent to things that are evident; for to deny such things as are believed is more absurd than neither to deny nor affirm. Who then are they that call in question things believed, and contend against things that are evident? They who overthrow and take away divination, who say that there is not any government of Divine Providence, who deny the sun and the moon — to whom all men offer sacrifices and whom they honor and adore — to be animated. And do not you take away that which is apparent to all the world, that the young are contained in the nature of their parents? Do you not, contrary to the sense of all men, affirm that there is no medium between pleasure and pain, saying that not to be in pain is to be in the fruition of pleasure, that not to do is to suffer, and that not to rejoice is to be grieved?
[Adv. Col. 28] But to let pass all the rest, what is more evident and more generally believed by all men, than that those who are seized with melancholy distempers, and whose brain is troubled and whose wits are distracted, do, when the fit is on them and their understanding altered and transported, imagine that they see and hear things which they neither see nor hear? Whence they frequently cry out: —
[Adv. Col. 28b] Women in black arrayed bear in their hands, To burn mine eyes, torches and fiery brands.
[Adv. Col. 28c] And again: —
[Adv. Col. 28d] See, in her arms she holds my mother dear.(Euripides, “Iphigenia in Tauris,” 289.)
[Adv. Col. 28e] These, and many other illusions more strange and tragical than these, — resembling those mormos and bugbears which they themselves laugh at and deride, as they are described by Empedocles to be, “with sinuous feet and undeveloped hands, bodied like ox and faced like man,” — with certain other prodigious and unnatural phantoms, these men have gathered together out of dreams and the alienations of distracted minds, and affirm that none of them is a deception of the sight, a falsity, or inconsistence; but that all these imaginations are true, being bodies and figures that come from the ambient air. What thing then is there so impossible in Nature as to be doubted of, if it is possible to believe such reveries as these? For these men, supposing that such things as never any mask-maker, potter, designer of wonderful images, or skilful and all-daring painter durst join together, to deceive or make sport for the beholders, are seriously and in good earnest existent, — nay, which is more, affirming that, if they are not really so, all firmness of belief, all certainty of judgment and truth, is forever gone, — do by these their suppositions and affirmations cast all things into obscurity, and bring fears into our judgments, and suspicions into our actions, — if the things which we apprehend, do, are familiarly acquainted with, and have at hand are grounded on the same imagination and belief with these furious, absurd, and extravagant fancies.
[Adv. Col. 28f] For the equality which they suppose to be in all apprehensions rather derogates from the credit of such as are usual and rational, than adds any belief to those that are unusual and repugnant to reason. Wherefore we know many philosophers who would rather and more willingly grant that no imagination is true than that all are so, and that would rather simply disbelieve all the men they never had conversed with, all the things they had not experimented, and all the speeches they had not heard with their own ears, than persuade themselves that any one of these imaginations, conceived by these frantic, fanatical, and dreaming persons, is true. Since then there are some imaginations which may, and others which may not be rejected, it is lawful for us to retain our assent concerning them, though there were no other cause but this discordance, which is sufficient to work in us a suspicion of things, as having nothing certain and assured, but being altogether full of obscurity and perturbation.
[Adv. Col. 28g] For in the disputes about the infinity of worlds and the nature of atoms and individuums and their inclinations, although they trouble and disturb very many, there is yet this comfort, that none of all these things that are in question is near us, but rather every one of them is far remote from sense. But as to this diffidence, perplexity, and ignorance concerning sensible things and imaginations, found even in our eyes, our ears, and our hands, what opinion does it not shock? What consent does it not turn upside down? For if men neither drunk, intoxicated, nor otherwise disturbed in their senses, but sober, sound in mind, and professedly writing of the truth and of the canons and rules by which to judge it, do in the most evident passions and motions of the senses set down either that which has no existence for true, or that which is existent for false, it is not strange that a man should be silent about all things, but rather that he assent to anything; nor is it incredible that he should have no judgment about things which appear, but rather that he should have contrary judgments.
[Adv. Col. 28h] For it is less to be wondered, that a man should neither affirm the one nor the other but keep himself in a mean between two opposite things, than that he should set down things repugnant and contrary to one another. For he that neither affirms nor denies, but keeps himself quiet, is less repugnant to him who affirms an opinion than he who denies it, and to him who denies an opinion than he who affirms it. Now if it is possible to withhold one’s assent concerning these things, it is not impossible also concerning others, at least according to your opinion, who say that one sense does not exceed another, nor one imagination another.
[Adv. Col. 29] The doctrine then of retaining the assent is not, as Colotes thinks, a fable or an invention of rash and light-headed young men who please themselves in babbling and prating; but a certain habit and disposition of men who desire to keep themselves from falling into error, not leaving the judgment at a venture to such suspected and inconstant senses, nor suffering themselves to be deceived by those who hold that in doubtful matters things which do not appear to the senses are credible and ought to be believed, when they see so great obscurity and uncertainty in things which do appear. But the infinity you assert is a fable, and so indeed are the images you dream of: and he breeds in young men rashness and self-conceitedness who writ of Pythocles, not yet eighteen years of age, that there was not in all Greece a better or more excellent nature, that he admirably well expressed his convictions, and that he was in other respects behaved like a women, — praying that all these extraordinary endowments of the young man might not work him hatred and envy. But these are sophists and arrogant, who write so impudently and proudly against great and excellent personages. I confess indeed, that Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus and Democritus contradicted those who went before them; but never durst any man besides Colotes set forth with such an insolent title as this against all at once.
[Adv. Col. 30] Whence it comes to pass that, like to such as have offended some Divinity, confessing his fault, he says thus towards the end of His book: “Those who have established laws and ordinances and instituted monarchies and other governments in towns and cities, have placed human life in great repose and security and delivered it from many troubles; and if any one should go about to take this away, we should lead the life of savage beasts, and should be every one ready to eat up one another as we meet.” For these are the very words of Colotes, though neither justly nor truly spoken. For if any one, taking away the laws, should leave us nevertheless the doctrines of Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Heraclitus, we should be far from mutually devouring one another and leading the life of beasts. For we should fear dishonest things, and should for honesty alone venerate justice, the gods our superiors, and magistrates, believing that we have spirits and daemons who are the guardians and superintendents of human life, esteeming all the gold that is upon and within the earth not to be equivalent to virtue; and doing that willingly by reason, as Xenocrates says, which we now do by force and through fear of the law. When then will our life become savage, uncivilized, and bestial? When, the laws being taken away, there shall be left doctrines inciting men to pleasure; when the world shall bethought not to be ruled and governed by Divine Providence; when those men shall be esteemed wise who spit at honesty if it is not joined with pleasure; and when such discourses and sentences as these shall be scoffed at and derided: —
[Adv. Col. 30b] For Justice has an eye which all things sees;
and again: —
God near us stands, and views whate’er we do;
[Adv. Col. 30c] and once more: “God, as antiquity has delivered to holding the beginning, middle, and end of the universe, makes a direct line, walking according to Nature. After him follows Justice, a punisher of those who have been deficient in their duties by transgressing the divine law.”
[Adv. Col. 30d] For they who contemn these things as if they were fables, and think that the sovereign good of man consists about the belly, and in those other passages by which pleasure is admitted, are such as stand in need of the law, and fear, and stripes, and some king, prince, or magistrate, having in his hand the sword of justice; to the end that they may not devour their neighbors through their gluttony, rendered confident by their atheistical impiety. For this is the life of brutes, because brute beasts know nothing better nor more honest than pleasure, understand not the justice of the gods, nor revere the beauty of virtue; but if Nature has bestowed on them any point of courage, subtlety, or activity, they make use of it for the satisfaction of their fleshly pleasure and the accomplishment of their lusts. And the sapient Metrodorus believes that this should be so, for he says: “All the fine, subtle, and ingenious inventions of the soul have been found out for the pleasure and delight of the flesh, or for the hopes of attaining to it and enjoying it, and every act which tends not to this end is vain and unprofitable.” The laws being by such discourses and philosophical reasons as these taken away, there wants nothing to a beast-like life but lions’ paws, wolves’ teeth, oxen’s paunches, and camels’ necks; and these passions and doctrines do the beasts themselves, for want of speech and letters, express by their bellowings, neighings, and brayings, all their voice being for their belly and the pleasure of their flesh, which they embrace and rejoice in either present or future; unless it be perhaps some animal which naturally takes delight in chattering and garrulity.
[Adv. Col. 31] No sufficient praise therefore or equivalent to their deserts can be given those who, for the restraining of such bestial passions, have set down laws, established policy and government of state, instituted magistrates and ordained good and wholesome laws. But who are they that utterly confound and abolish this? Are they not those who withdraw themselves and their followers from all part in the government? Are they not those who say that the garland of tranquillity and a reposed life are far more valuable than all the kingdoms and principalities in the world? Are they not those who declare that reigning and being a king is a mistaking the path and straying from the right way of felicity? And they write in express terms: “We are to treat how a man may best keep and preserve the end of Nature, and how he may from the very beginning avoid entering of his own free will and voluntarily upon offices of magistracy, and government over the people.” And yet again, these other words are theirs: “There is no need at all that a man should tire out his mind and body to preserve the Greeks, and to obtain from them a crown of wisdom; but to eat and drink well, O Timocrates, without prejudicing, but rather pleasing the flesh.” And yet in the constitution of laws and policy, which Colotes so much praises, the first and most important article is the belief and persuasion of the gods.
[Adv. Col. 31b] Wherefore also Lycurgus heretofore consecrated the Lacedaemonians, Numa the Romans, the ancient Ion the Athenians, and Deucalion universally all the Greeks, through prayers, oaths, oracles, and omens, making them devout and affectionate to the gods by means of hopes and fears at once. And if you will take the pains to travel through the world, you may find towns and cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without houses, without wealth, without money, without theatres and places of exercise; but there was never seen nor shall be seen by man any city without temples and gods, or without making use of prayers, oaths, auguries, and sacrifices for the obtaining of blessings and benefits, and the averting of curses and calamities. Nay, I am of opinion, that a city might sooner be built without any ground to fix it on, than a commonweal be constituted altogether void of any religion and opinion of the gods, — or being constituted, be preserved.
[Adv. Col. 31c] But this, which is the foundation and ground of all laws, do these men, not going circularly about, nor secretly and by enigmatical speeches, but attacking it with the first of their most principal opinions. directly subvert and overthrow; and then afterwards, as if they were haunted by the Furies, they come and confess that they have grievously offended in thus taking away the laws, and confounding the ordinances of justice and policy, that they may not be capable of pardon. For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human; but to impute to others the errors and offences they commit themselves, how can any one declare what it is, if he forbears to give it the name it deserves?
[Adv. Col. 32] For if, in writing against Antidorus or Bion the sophister, he had made mention of laws, policy, order, and justice, might not either of them have said to him, as Electra did to her mad brother Orestes: —
[Adv. Col. 32b] Lie still at ease, poor wretch; keep in thy bed,(Euripides, “Orestes,” 258.)
[Adv. Col. 32c] and there cherish thy bit of body, leaving those to expostulate and find fault with me who have themselves lived the life of a citizen and householder? Now such are all those whom Colotes has reviled and railed at in his book. Amongst whom, Democritus in his writings advises and exhorts to the learning of the science of politics, as being the greatest of all, and to the accustoming one’s self to bear fatigues, by which men attain to great wealth and honor. And as for Parmenides, he beautified and adorned his native country with most excellent laws which he there established, so that even to this day the officers every year, when they enter first on the exercise of their charges, are obliged to swear that they will observe the laws and ordinances of Parmenides. Empedocles brought to justice some of the principal of his city, and caused them to be condemned for their insolent behavior and embezzling of the public treasure, and also delivered his country from sterility and the plague — to which calamities it was before subject — by immuring and stopping up the holes of certain mountains, whence there issued an hot south wind, which overspread all the plain country and blasted it.
[Adv. Col. 32d] And Socrates, after he was condemned, when his friends offered him, if he pleased, an opportunity of making his escape, absolutely refused to make use of it, that he might maintain the authority of the laws, choosing rather to die unjustly than to save himself by disobeying the laws of his country. Melissus, being captain general of his country, vanquished the Athenians in a battle at sea. Plato left in his writings excellent discourses concerning the laws, government, and policy of a commonweal; and yet he imprinted much better in the hearts and minds of his disciples and familiars, which caused Sicily to be freed by Dion, and Thrace to be set at liberty by Pytho and Heraclides, who slew Cotys. Chabrias also and Phocion, those two great generals of the Athenians, came out of the Academy. As for Epicurus, he indeed sent certain persons into Asia to chide Timocrates, and caused him to be removed out of the king’s palace, because he had offended his brother Metrodorus; and this is written in their own books.
[Adv. Col. 32e] But Plato sent of his disciples and friends, Aristonymus to the Arcadians, to set in order their commonweal, Phormio to the Eleans, and Menedemus to the Pyrrhaeans. Eudoxus gave laws to the Cnidians, and Aristotle to the Stagirites, who were both of them the intimates of Plato. And Alexander the Great demanded of Xenocrates rules and precepts for reigning well. And he who was sent to the same Alexander by the Grecians dwelling in Asia, and who most of all inflamed and stimulated him to embrace and undertake the war against the barbarian king of Persia, was Delius the Ephesian, one of Plato’s familiars. Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides, having attempted to kill the tyrant Demylus, and failing in his design, maintained the doctrine of Parmenides, like pure and fine gold tried in the fire, that there is nothing which a magnanimous man ought to dread but dishonor, and that there are none but children and women, or effeminate and women-hearted men, who fear pain. For, having with his own teeth bitten off his tongue, he spit it in the tyrant’s face.
[Adv. Col. 33] But out of the school of Epicurus, and from among those who follow his doctrine, I will not ask what tyrant-killer has proceeded, nor yet what man valiant and victorious in feats of arms, what lawgiver, what prince, what counsellor, or what governor of the people; neither will I demand, who of them has been tormented or has died for supporting right and justice. But which of all these sages has for the benefit and service of his country undertaken so much as one voyage at sea, gone of an embassy, or expended a sum of money? What record is there extant of one civil action in matter of government, performed by any of you? And yet, because Metrodorus went down one day from the city as far as the haven of Piraeus, taking a journey of forty stadia to assist Mithres a Syrian, one of the king of Persia’s court who had been arrested and taken prisoner, he writ of it to every one and in all his letters, Epicurus also highly magnifying and extolling this wonderful voyage. What value then, think you, would they have put upon it, if they had done such an act as Aristotle did, who procured the restoration and rebuilding of Stagira, the town of his nativity, after it had been destroyed by King Philip? Or as Theophrastus, who twice delivered his city, when possessed and held by tyrants? Would not the river Nile sooner have given over to bear the paper-reed, than they have been weary of writing their brave exploits?
[Adv. Col. 33b] And it is not the greatest dishonor, that, of so many sects of philosophers as have existed, they alone should enjoy the benefits that are in cities, without having ever contributed to them anything of their own; but far more serious is it that, while there are not even any tragical or comical poets who do not always endeavor to do or say some good thing or other in defence of the laws and policy these men, if peradventure they write, write of policy, that we may not concern ourselves in the government of the commonweal, — of rhetoric, that we may not perform an act of eloquence, — and of royalty, that we may shun the living and conversing with kings. Nor do they ever name any of those great personages who have intermeddled in civil affairs, but only to scoff at them and abolish their glory. Thus they say that Epaminondas had something of good, but that infinitesimal, or [Greek omitted], for that is the very word they use. They moreover call him iron-hearted, and ask what ailed him that he went marching his army through all Peloponnesus, and why he did not rather keep himself quiet at home with a garland on his head, employed only in cherishing and making much of his body. But methinks I ought not in this place to omit what Metrodorus writ in his book of Philosophy, when, utterly abjuring all meddling in the management of the state, he said thus: “Some, through an excess of vanity and arrogance, have so deep a comprehension into the business of it, that in discussing the precepts of good life and virtue, they allow themselves to be carried away with the very same desires as were Lycurgus and Solon.” What is this? Was it then vanity and abundance of vanity, to set free the city of Athens, to render Sparta well-policied and governed by wholesome laws, that young men might do nothing licentiously, nor get children upon common courtesans and whores, and that riches, delights, intemperance, and dissolution might no longer bear sway and have command in cities, but law and justice? For these were the desires of Solon. To this Metrodorus, by way of scorn and contumely, adds this conclusion: “It is then very well beseeming a native born gentleman to laugh heartily, as at other men, so especially at these Solons and Lycurguses. “But such a one, O Metrodorus, is not a gentleman, but a servile and dissolute person, and deserves to be scourged, not with that whip which is for free-born persons, but with that scourge made with ankle-bones, with which those eunuch sacrificers called Galli were wont to be chastised, when they failed of performing their duty in the ceremonies and sacrifices of the Goddess Cybele, the great Mother of the Gods.
[Adv. Col. 34] But that they made war not against the lawgivers but against the laws themselves, one may hear and understand from Epicurus. For in his questions, he asks himself, whether a wise man, being assured that it will not be known, will do anything that the laws forbid. To which he answers: “That is not so easy to settle simply,” — that is “I will do it indeed, but I am not willing to confess it.” And again, I suppose writing to Idomeneus, he exorts him not to make his life a slave to the laws or to the options of men, unless it be to avoid the trouble they prepare, by the scourge and chastisement, so near at hand. If those who abolish laws, governments, and polices of men subvert and destroy human life, and if Metrodorus and Epicurus do this, by dehorting and withdrawing their friends from concerning themselves in public affairs, by hating those who intermeddle in them, by reviling the first most wise lawgivers, and by advising contempt of the laws provided there is no fear and danger of the whip punishment. I do not see that Colotes has brought so many false accusations against the other philosophers as he has alleged and advanced true ones against the writings and doctrines of Epicurus.

## Is “live unknown” a wise precept?

[De lat. viv. 1] 1.IT IS SURE, he that said it had no mind to live concealed, for he spoke it out of a design of being taken notice of for his very saying it, as if he saw deeper into things than every vulgar eye, and of purchasing to himself a reputation, how unjustly soever, by inveigling others into obscurity and retirement. But the poet says right:
[De lat. viv. 1b] •I hate the man who makes pretence to wit,
•Yet in his own concerns waives using it.
[De lat. viv. 1c] For they tell us of one Philoxenus the son of Eryxis, and Gnatho the Sicilian, who were so over greedy after any dainties set before them, that they would blow their nose in the dish, whereby, turning the stomachs of the other guests, they themselves went away fuller crammed with the rarities. Thus fares it with all those whose appetite is always lusting and insatiate after glory. They bespatter the repute of others, as their rivals in honor, that they themselves may advance smoothly to it and without a rub. They do like watermen, who look astern while they row the boat ahead, still so managing the strokes of the oar that the vessel may make on to its port. So these men who recommend to us such kind of precepts row hard after glory, but with their face another way. To what purpose else need this have been said? — why committed to writing and handed down to posterity? Would he live incognito to his contemporaries, who is so eager to be known to succeeding ages?
[De lat. viv. 2] 2. But besides, doth not the thing itself sound ill, to bid you keep all your lifetime out of the world’s eye, as if you had rifled the sepulchres of the dead, or done such like detestable villany which you should hide for? What! is it grown a crime to live, unless you can keep all others from knowing you do so? For my part, I should pronounce that even an ill-liver ought not to withdraw himself from the converse of others. No; let him be known, let him be reclaimed, let him repent; so that, if you have any stock of virtue, let it not lie unemployed, or if you have been viciously bent, do not by flying the means continue unreclaimed and uncured. Point me out therefore and distinguish me the man to whom you adopt this admonition. If to one devoid of sense, goodness, or wit, it is like one that should caution a person under a fever or raving madness not to let it be known where he is, for fear the physicians should find him, but rather to skulk in some dark corner, where he and his diseases may escape discovery. So you who labor under that pernicious, that scarce curable disease, wickedness, are by parity of reason bid to conceal your vices, your envyings, your superstitions, like some disorderly or feverous pulse, for fear of falling into the hands of them who might prescribe well to you and set you to rights again. Whereas, alas! in the days of remote antiquity, men exhibited the sick to public view, when every charitable passenger who had labored himself under the like malady, or had experienced a remedy on them that did, communicated to the diseased all the receipts he knew; thus, say they, skill in physic was patched up by multiplied experiments, and grew to a mighty art. At the same rate ought all the infirmities of a dissolute life, all the irregular passions of the soul, to be laid open to the view of all, and undergo the touch of every skilful hand, that all who examine into the temper may be able to prescribe accordingly. For instance, doth anger transport you? The advice in that case is, Shun the occasions of it. Doth jealousy torment you? Take this or that course. Art thou love-sick? It hath been my own case and infirmity to be so too; but I saw the folly of it, I repented, I grew wiser. But for those that lie, denying, hiding, mincing, and palliating their vices, it makes them but take the deeper dye, it rivets their faults into them.
[De lat. viv. 3] 3. Again, if on the other hand this advice be calculated for the owners of worth and virtue, if they must be condemned to privacy and live unknown to the world, you do in effect bid Epaminondas lay down his arms, you bid Lycurgus rescind his laws, you bid Thrasybulus spare the tyrants, in a word, you bid Pythagoras forbear his instructions, and Socrates his reasonings and discourses; nay, you lay injunctions chiefly upon yourself, Epicurus, not to maintain that epistolary correspondence with your Asiatic friends, not to entertain your Egyptian visitants, not to be tutor to the youth of Lampsacus, not to present and send about your books to women as well as men, out of an ostentation of some wisdom in yourself more than vulgar, not to leave such particular directions about your funeral. And in fine, to what purpose, Epicurus, did you keep a public table? Why that concourse of friends, that resort of fair young men, at your doors? Why so many thousand lines so elaborately composed and writ upon Metrodorus, Aristobulus, and Chaeredemus, that death itself might not rob us of them; if virtue must be doomed to oblivion, art to idleness and inactivity, philosophy to silence, and all a man’s happiness must be forgotten?
[De lat. viv. 4] 4. But if indeed, in the state of life we are under, you will needs seclude us from all knowledge and acquaintance with the world (as men shut light from their entertainments and drinking-bouts, for which they set the night apart), let it be only such who make it the whole business of life to heap pleasure upon pleasure; let such live recluses all their days. Were I, in truth, to wanton away my days in the arms of your miss Hedeia, or spend them with Leontium, another dear of yours, — were I to bid defiance to virtue, or to place all that’s good in the gratification of the flesh or the ticklings of a sensual pleasure, — these accursed actions and rites would need darkness and an eternal night to veil them; and may they ever be doomed to oblivion and obscurity. But what should they hide their heads for, who with regard to the works of nature own and magnify a God, who celebrate his justice and providence, who in point of morality are due observers of the law, promoters of society and community among all men, and lovers of the public-weal, and who in the administration thereof prefer the common good before private advantage? Why should such men cloister up themselves, and live recluses from the world? For would you have them out of the way, for fear they should set a good example, and allure others to virtue out of emulation of the precedent? If Themistocles’s valor had been unknown at Athens, Greece had never given Xerxes that repulse. Had not Camillus shown himself in defence of the Romans, their city Rome had no longer stood. Sicily had not recovered her liberty, had Plato been a stranger to Dion. Truly (in my mind) to be known to the world under some eminent character not only carries a reputation with it, but makes the virtues in us become practical like light, which renders us not only visible but useful to others. Epaminondas, during the first forty years of his life, in which no notice was taken of him, was an useless citizen to Thebes; but afterwards, when he had once gained credit and the government amongst the Thebans, he both rescued them from present destruction, and freed even Greece herself from imminent slavery, exhibiting (like light, which is in its own nature glorious, and to others beneficial at the same time) a valor seasonably active and serviceable to his country, yet interwoven with his own laurels. For
[De lat. viv. 4b] Virtue, like finest brass, by use grows bright.
[De lat. viv. 4c] And not our houses alone, when (as Sophocles has it) they stand long untenanted, run the faster to ruin; but men’s natural parts, lying unemployed for lack of acquaintance with the world, contract a kind of filth or rust and craziness thereby. For sottish ease, and a life wholly sedentary and given up to idleness, spoil and debilitate not only the body but the soul too. And as close waters shadowed over by bordering trees, and stagnated in default of springs to supply current and motion to them, become foul and corrupt; so, methinks, is it with the innate faculties of a dull unstirring soul, — whatever usefulness, whatever seeds of good she may have latent in her, yet when she puts not these powers into action, when once they stagnate, they lose their vigor and run to decay.
[De lat. viv. 5] 5. See you not how on night’s approach a sluggish drowsiness oft-times seizes the body, and sloth and inactiveness surprise the soul, and she finds herself heavy and quite unfit for action? Have you not then observed how a man’s reason (like fire scarce visible and just going out) retires into itself, and how by reason of its inactivity and dulness it is gently agitated by divers fantastical imaginations, so that nothing remains but some obscure indications that the man is alive.
[De lat. viv. 5b] •But when the orient sun brings back the day,
•It chases night and dreamy sleep away.
[De lat. viv. 5c] It doth, as it were, bring the world together again, and with his returned light call up and excite all mankind to thought and action; and, as Democritus tells us, men setting themselves every new-spring day to endeavors of mutual beneficence and service one towards another, as if they were fastened in the straitest tie together, do all of them, some from one, some from another quarter of the world, rouse up and awake to action.
[De lat. viv. 6] 6. For my own part, I am fully persuaded that life itself, and our being born at the rate we are, and the origin we share in common with all mankind, were vouchsafed us by God to the intent we should be known to one another. It is true, whilst man, in that little part of him, his soul, lies struggling and scattered in the vast womb of the universe, he is an obscure and unknown being; but, when once he gets hither into this world and puts a body on, he grows illustrious, and from an obscure becomes a conspicuous being; from an hidden, an apparent one. For knowledge does not lead to essence (or being), as some maintain; but the essence of things rather conducts us into the knowledge and understanding thereof. For the birth or generation of individuals gives not any being to them which they had not before, but brings that individual into view; as also the corruption or death of any creature is not its annihilation or reduction into mere nothing, but rather a sending the dissolved being into an invisible state. Hence is it that many persons (conformably to their ancient country laws), taking the Sun to be Apollo, gave him the names of Delius and Pythius (that is, conspicuous and known). But for him, be he either God or Daemon, who hath dominion over the opposite portion, the infernal regions, they call him Hades (that is, invisible),
[De lat. viv. 6b] Emperor of gloomy night and lazy sleep,
[De lat. viv. 6c] for that at our death and dissolution we pass into a state of invisibility and beyond the reach of mortal eyes. I am indeed of opinion, that the ancients called man Phos (that is, light), because from the affinity of their natures strong desires are bred in mankind of continually seeing and being seen to each other. Nay, some philosophers hold the soul itself to be essentially light; which they would prove by this among other arguments, that nothing is so insupportable to the mind of man as ignorance and obscurity. Whatever is destitute of light she avoids, and darkness, the harbor of fears and suspicions, is uneasy to her; whereas, on the other hand, light is so delicious, so desirable a thing, that without that, and wrapped in darkness, none of the delectables in nature are pleasing to her. This makes all our very pleasures, all our diversions and enjoyments, charming and grateful to us, like some universal relishing ingredients mixed with the others to make them palatable. But he that casts himself into obscure retirements, he that sits surrounded in darkness and buries himself alive, seems, in my mind, to repine at his own birth and grudge he ever had a being.
[De lat. viv. 7] 7. And yet it is certain, in the regions prepared for pious souls, they conserve not only an existence in (or agreeable to) nature, but are encircled with glory.
[De lat. viv. 7b] •There the sun with glorious ray,
•Chasing shady night away,
•Makes an everlasting day;
•Where souls in fields of purple roses play;
•Others in verdant plains disport,
•Crowned with trees of every sort,
•Trees that never fruit do bear,
•But always in the blossom are.
[De lat. viv. 7c] The rivers there without rude murmurs gently glide, and there they meet and bear each other company, passing away their time in commemorating and running over things past and present.
[De lat. viv. 7d] A third state there is of them who have led vicious and wicked lives, which precipitates souls into a kind of hell and miserable abyss,
[De lat. viv. 7e] •Where sluggish streams of sable night
•Spout floods of darkness infinite.
[De lat. viv. 7f] This is the receptacle of the tormented; here lie they hid under the veils of eternal ignorance and oblivion. For vultures do not everlastingly gorge themselves upon the liver of a wicked man, exposed by angry Gods upon the earth, as poets fondly feign of Prometheus. For either rottenness or the funeral pile hath consumed that long ago. Nor do the bodies of the tormented undergo (as Sisyphus is fabled to do) the toil and pressure of weighty burdens;
[De lat. viv. 7g] For strength no longer flesh and bone sustains.
[De lat. viv. 7h] There are no reliques of the body in dead men which stripes and tortures can make impressions on; but in very truth the sole punishment of ill-livers is an inglorious obscurity, or a final abolition, which through oblivion hurls and plunges them into deplorable rivers, bottomless seas, and a dark abyss, involving all in uselessness and inactivity, absolute ignorance and obscurity, as their last and eternal doom.

## On music

ONESICRATES, SOTERICHUS, LYSIAS.
1. The wife of Phocion the just was always wont to maintain that her chiefest glory consisted in the warlike achievements of her husband. For my part, I am of opinion that all my glory, not only that peculiar to myself, but also what is common to all my familiar friends and relations, flows from the care and diligence of my master that taught me learning. For the most renowned performances of great commanders tend only to the preservation of some few private soldiers or the safety of a single city or nation, but make neither the soldiers nor the citizens nor the people any thing the better. But true learning, being the essence and body of felicity and the source of prudence, we find to be profitable and beneficial, not only to one house or city or nation, but to all the race of men. Therefore by how much the more the benefit and advantage of learning transcends the profits of military performances, by so much the more is it to be remembered and mentioned, as most worthy your study and esteem.
2. For this reason, upon the second day of the Saturnalian festival, the famous Onesicrates invited certain persons, the best skilled in music, to a banquet; by name Soterichus of Alexandria, and Lysias, one of those to whom he gave a yearly pension. After all had done and the table was cleared, — To dive, said he, most worthy friends, into the nature and reason of the human voice is not an argument proper for this merry meeting, as being a subject that requires a more sober scrutiny. But because our chiefest grammarians define the voice to be a percussion of the air made sensible to the ear, and for that we were yesterday discoursing of Grammar, — which is an art that can give the voice form and shape by means of letters, and store it up in the memory as a magazine, — let us consider what is the next science to this which may be said to relate to the voice. In my opinion, it must be music. For it is one of the chiefest and most religious duties belonging to man, to celebrate the praise of the Gods, who gave to him alone the most excelling advantage of articulate discourse, as Homer has observed in the following verses: —
•With sacred hymns and songs that sweetly please,
•The Grecian youth all day the Gods appease;
•Their lofty paeans bright Apollo hears,
•And still the charming sounds delight his ears.
Now then, you that are of the grand musical chorus, tell your friends, who was the first that brought music into use; what time has added for the advantage of the science; who have been the most famous of its professors; and lastly, for what and how far it may be beneficial to mankind.
3. This the scholar propounded; to which Lysias made reply. Noble Onesicrates, said he, you desire the solution of a hard question, that has been by many already proposed. For of the Platonics the most, of the Peripatetic philosophers the best, have made it their business to compile several treatises concerning the ancient music and the reasons why it came to lose its pristine perfection. Nay, the very grammarians and musicians themselves who arrived to the height of education have expended much time and study upon the same subject, whence has arisen great variety of discording opinions among the several writers. Heraclides in his Compendium of Music asserts, that Amphion, the son of Jupiter and Antiope, was the first that invented playing on the harp and lyric poesy, being first instructed by his father; which is confirmed by a small manuscript, preserved in the city of Sicyon, wherein is set down a catalogue of the priests, poets, and musicians of Argos. In the same age, he tells us, Linus the Euboean composed several elegies; Anthes of Anthedon in Boeotia was the first author of hymns, and Pierus of Pieria the first that wrote in the praise of the Muses. Philammon also, the Delphian, set forth in verse a poem in honor of the nativity of Latona, Diana, and Apollo, and was the first that instituted dancing about the temple of Delphi. Thamyras, of Thracian extraction, had the best voice and the neatest manner of singing of any of his time; so that the poets feigned him to be a contender with the Muses. He is said to have described in a poem the Titans’ war against the Gods. There was also Demodocus the Corcyraean, who is said to have written the Destruction of Troy, and the Nuptials of Vulcan and Venus; and then Phemius of Ithaca composed a poem, entitled The Return of those who came back with Agamemnon from Troy. Not that any of these stories before cited were complied in a style like prose without metre; they were rather like the poems of Stesichorus and other ancient lyric poets, who composed in heroic verse and added a musical accompaniment. The same Heraclides writes that Terpander, the first that instituted the lyric nomes, set verses of Homer as well as his own to music according to each of these nomes, and sang them at public trials of skill. He also was the first to give names to the lyric nomes. In imitation of Terpander, Clonas, an elegiac and epic poet, first instituted nomes for flute-music, and also the songs called Prosodia. And Polymnestus the Colophonian in later times used the same measure in his compositions.
4. Now the measures appointed by these persons, noble Onesicrates, in reference to such songs as are to be sung to the flutes or pipes, were distinguished by these names, — Apothetus, Elegiac, Comarchius, Schoenion, Cepion, Tenedius, and Trimeles (or of three parts).
To these succeeding ages added another sort, which were called Polymnastia. But the measures set down for those that played and sung to the harp, being the invention of Terpander, were much more ancient than the former. To these he gave the several appellations of Boeotian, Aeolian, Trochaean, the Acute, Cepion, Terpandrian, and Tetraoedian. And Terpander made preludes to be sung to the lyre in heroic verse. Besides, Timotheus testifies how that the lyric nomes were anciently appropriated to epic verses. For Timotheus merely intermixed the dithyrambic style with the ancient nomes in heroic measure, and thus sang them, that he might not seem to make too sudden an innovation upon the ancient music. But as for Terpander, he seems to have been the most excellent composer to the harp of his age, for he is recorded to have been four times in succession a victor at the Pythian games. And certainly he was one of the most ancient musicians in the world; for Glaucus the Italian in his treatise of the ancient poets and musicians asserts him to have lived before Archilochus, affirming him to be the second next to those that first invented wind-music.
5. Alexander in his Collections of Phrygia says, that Olympus was the first that brought into Greece the manner of touching the strings with a quill; and next to him were the Idaean Dactyli; Hyagnis was the first that sang to the pipe; after him his son Marsyas, then Olympus; that Terpander imitated Homer in his verses and Orpheus in his musical compositions; but that Orpheus never imitated any one, since in his time there were none but such as composed to the pipe, which was a manner quite different from that of Orpheus. Clonas, a composer of nomes for flute-music, and somewhat later than Terpander, as the Arcadians affirm, was born in Tegea or, as the Boeotians allege, at Thebes. After Terpander and Clonas flourished Archilochus; yet there are some writers who affirm, that Ardalus the Troezenian taught the manner of composing to wind-music before Clonas. There was also the poet Polymnestus, the son of Meles the Colophonian, who invented the Polymnestian measures. They farther write that Clonas invented the nomes Apothetus and Schoenion. Of Polymnestus mention is made by Pindar and Alcman, both lyric poets; but of several of the lyric nomes said to be instituted by Terpander they make Philammon (the ancient Delphian) author.
6. Now the music appropriated to the harp, such as it was in the time of Terpander, continued in all its simplicity, till Phrynis grew into esteem. For it was not the ancient custom to make lyric poems in the present style, or to intermix measures and rhythms. For in each nome they were careful to observe its own proper pitch; whence came the expression nome (from νόμος, law), because it was unlawful to alter the pitch appointed for each one. At length, falling from their devotion to the Gods, they began to sing the verses of Homer and other poets. This is manifest by the proems of Terpander. Then for the form of the harp, it was such as Cepion, one of Terpander’s scholars, first caused to be made, and it was called the Asian harp, because the Lesbian harpers bordering upon Asia always made use of it. And it is said that Periclitus, a Lesbian by birth, was the last harper who won a prize by his skill, which he did at one of the Spartan festivals called Carneia; but he being dead, that succession of skilful musicians, which had so long continued among the Lesbians, expired. Some there are who erroneously believe that Hipponax was contemporary with Terpander, when it is plain that Hipponax lived after Periclitus.
7. Having thus discoursed of the several nomes appropriated to the stringed as well as to the wind instruments, we will now speak something in particular concerning those peculiar to the wind instruments. First they say, that Olympus, a Phrygian player upon the flute, invented a certain nome in honor of Apollo, which he called Polycephalus, or of many heads. This Olympus, they say, was descended from the first Olympus, the scholar of Marsyas, who invented several forms of composition in honor of the Gods; and he, being a boy beloved of Marsyas, and by him taught to play upon the flute, first brought into Greece the laws of harmony. Others ascribe the Polycephalus to Crates, the scholar of Olympus; though Pratinas will have Olympus the younger to be the author of it. The Harmatian nome is also said to be invented by Olympus, the scholar of Marsyas. This Marsyas was by some said to be called Masses; which others deny, not allowing him any other name but that of Marsyas, the son of that Hyagnis who invented the art of playing upon the pipe. But that Olympus was the author of the Harmatian nome is plainly to be seen in Glaucus’s treatise of the ancient poets; and that Stesichorus of Himera imitated neither Orpheus nor Terpander nor Antilochus nor Thales, but Olympus, and that he made use of the Harmatian nome and the dactylic dance, which some rather apply to the Orthian mood, while others aver it to have been the invention of the Mysians, for that some of the ancient pipers were Mysians.
8. There was also another mood in use among the ancients, called Cradias, which Hipponax says Mimnermus always delighted in. For formerly they that played upon the flute sang also elegies at the same time set to notes. Which the description of the Panathenaea concerning the musical combat makes manifest. Among the rest, Sacadas of Argos set several odes and elegies to music, he himself being also a good flute-player and thrice a victor at the Pythian games. Of him Pindar makes mention. Now whereas in the time of Polymnestus and Sacadas there existed three musical moods, the Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian, it is said that Sacadas composed a strophe in every one of those moods, and then taught the choruses to sing the first after the Dorian manner, the second according to the Phrygian, and the third after the Lydian manner; and this nome was called Trimeres (or threefold) by reason of the shifting of the moods, although in the Sicyonian catalogue of the poets Clonas is said to be the inventor of this name.
9. Music then received its first constitution from Terpander at Sparta. Of the second constitution, Thaletas the Gortinean, Xenodamus the Cytherean, Xenocritus the Locrian, Polymnestus the Colophonian, and Sacadas the Argive were deservedly acknowledged to be the authors. For these, having introduced the Gymnopaediae into Lacedaemon, settled the so-called Apodeixeis (or Exhibitions) among the Arcadians, and the Endymatia in Argos. Now Thaletas, Xenodamus, and Xenocritus, and their scholars, were poets that addicted themselves altogether to making of paeans; Polymnestus was all for the Orthian or military strain, and Sacadas for elegies. Others, and among the rest Pratinas, affirm Xenodamus to have been a maker of songs for dances (Hyporchemes), and not of paeans; and a tune of Xenodamus is preserved, which plainly appears to have been composed for a dance. Now that a paean differs from a song made for a dance is manifest from the poems of Pindar, who made both.
10. Polymnestus also composed nomes for flute-music; but in the Orthian nome he made use of his lyric vein, as the students in harmony declare. But in this we cannot be positive, because we have nothing of certainty concerning it from antiquity; and whether Thaletas of Crete was a composer of hymns is much doubted. For Glaucus, asserting Thaletas to be born after Archilochus, says that he imitated the odes of Archilochus, only he made them longer, and used the Paeonic and Cretic rhythm, which neither Archilochus nor Orpheus nor Terpander ever did; for Thaletas learned these from Olympus, and became a good poet besides. As for Xenocritus the Locrian from Italy, it is much questioned whether he was a maker of paeans or not, as being one that always took heroic subjects with dramatic action for his verses, for which reason some there were who called his arguments Dithyrambic. Moreover, Glaucus asserts Thaletas to have preceded him in time.
11. Olympus, by the report of Aristoxenus, is supposed by the musicians to have been the inventor of the enharmonic species of music; for before him there was no other than the diatonic and chromatic. And it is thought that the invention of the enharmonic species was thus brought to pass: for that Olympus before altogether composing and playing in the diatonic species, and having frequent occasion to shift to the diatonic parhypate, sometimes from the paramese and sometimes from the mese, skipping the diatonic lichanos, he found the beauty that appeared in the new character; and thus, admiring a conjunction or scheme so agreeable to proportion, he made this new species in the Doric mood. For now he held no longer to what belonged either to the diatonic or to the chromatic, but he was already come to the enharmonic. And the first foundations of enharmonic music which he laid were these: in enharmonics the first thing that appears is the spondiasmus, to which none of the divisions of the tetrachord seems properly to belong, unless any one will take the more intense spondiasmus to be diatonic. But he that maintained this would maintain a falsehood and an absurdity in harmony; a falsehood, because it would be less by a diesis than is required by the leading note; an absurdity in harmony, because, even if we should place the proper nature of the more intense spondiasmus in the simple chromatic, it would then come to pass, that two double tones would follow in order, the one compounded, the other uncompounded. For the thick enharmonic now used in the middle notes does not seem to be the invention of the fore-mentioned author. But this is more easily understood by hearing any musician play in the ancient style; for then you shall find the semi-tone in the middle parts to be uncompounded.
These were the beginnings of enharmonic music; afterwards the semitone was also divided, as well in the Phrygian as Lydian moods. But Olympus seems to have advanced music by producing something never known or heard of before, and to have gained to himself the honor of being the most excellent, not only in the Grecian but in all other music.
12. Let us now proceed to rhythms; for there were several varieties of these, as well in musical as in rhythmical composition. And here Terpander, among all those novelties with which he adorned music, introduced an elegant manner, that gave it much life. After him, beside the Terpandrian, which he did not relinquish, Polymnestus brought in use another of his own, retaining however the former elegant manner, as did also Thaletas and Sacadas. Other innovations were also made by Alkman and Stesichorus, who nevertheless receded not from the ancient forms. But Crexus, Timotheus, and Philoxenus, and those other poets of the same age, growing more arrogant and studious of novelty, affected those other manners now called Philanthropic and Thematic. For now the fewness of strings and the plainness and majesty of the old music are looked upon as absolutely out of date.
13. And now, having discoursed to the best of my ability of the ancient music and the first inventors of it, and how succeeding ages brought it to more and more perfection, I shall make an end, and give way to my friend Soterichus, not only greatly skilled in music but in all the rest of the sciences. For we have always labored rather on the practical than the contemplative part. Which when Lysias had said, he forbare speaking any farther; but then Soterichus thus began.
14. Most noble Onesicrates, said he, since you have engaged us to speak our knowledge concerning the most venerable excellencies of music, which is most pleasing to the Gods, I cannot but approve the learning of our master Lysias, and his great memory in reciting all the inventors of the ancient music, and those who have written concerning it. But I must needs say, that he has given us this account, trusting only to what he has found recorded. We on the other side have not heard of any man that was the inventor of the benefits of music, but of the God Apollo, adorned with all manner of virtue. The flute was neither the invention of Marsyas nor Olympus nor Hyagnis; nor was the harp Apollo’s invention only, but as a God he was the inventor of all the music both of the flute and harp. This is manifest from the dances and sacrifices which were solemnized to Apollo, as Alcaeus and others in their hymns relate. His statue also placed in the Temple of Delos holds in his right hand a bow; at his left the Graces stand, with every one a musical instrument in her hands, one carrying a harp, another a flute, another with a shepherd’s pipe set to her lips. And that this is no conceit of mine appears from this, that Anticles and Ister have testified the same in their commentaries upon these things. And the statue is reported to be so ancient, that the artificers were said to have lived in the time of Hercules. The youth also that carries the Tempic laurel into Delphi is accompanied by one playing upon the flute. And the sacred presents of the Hyperboreans were sent of old to Delos, attended with flutes, pipes, and harps. Some have thought that the God himself played upon the flute, as the best of lyrics, Alcman, relates. Corinna also asserts that Apollo was by Minerva taught to pipe. Venerable is therefore music altogether, as being the invention of the Gods.
15. The ancients made use of it for its worth, as they did all other beneficial sciences. But our men of art, contemning its ancient majesty, instead of that manly, grave, heaven-born music, so acceptable to the Gods, have brought into the theatres a sort of effeminate musical tattling, mere sound without substance; which Plato utterly rejects in the third book of his commonwealth, refusing the Lydian harmony as fit only for lamentations. And they say that this was first instituted for doleful songs. Aristoxenus, in his first book of music, tells us how that Olympus sang an elegy upon the death of Python in the Lydian mood, though some will have Menalippides to be the author of that song. Pindar, in his paean on the nuptials of Niobe, asserts that the Lydian harmony was first used by Anthippus. Others affirm, that Torebus was the first that made use of that sort of harmony; among the rest, Dionysius the iambic writer.
16. The mixed Lydian moves the affections, and is fit for tragedies. This mood, as Aristoxenus alleges, was invented by Sappho, from whom the tragedians learned it and joined it with the Doric. The one becomes a majestic, lofty style, the other mollifies and stirs to pity; both which are the properties of tragedy. The history of music, however, made Pythoclides the flute-player to be the author of it; and Lysis reports that Lamprocles the Athenian, finding that the diazeuxis (or separation of two tetrachords) was not where almost all others thought it had been, but toward the treble, made such a scheme as is now from paramese to the highest hypate. But for the softer Lydian, being contrary to the mixed Lydian and like the Ionian, they say it was invented by Damon the Athenian.
17. But as for those sorts of harmony, the one being sad and doleful, the other loose and effeminate, Plato deservedly rejected them, and made choice of the Dorian, as more proper for sober and warlike men; not being ignorant, however (as Aristoxenus discourses in his second book of music), that there might be something advantageous in the rest to a circumspect and wary commonwealth. For Plato gave much attention to the art of music, as being the hearer of Draco the Athenian and Metellus the Agrigentine; but considering, as we have intimated before, that there was much more majesty in the Dorian mood, it was that he preferred. He knew moreover that Alcman, Pindar, Simonides, and Bacchylides had composed several Parthenia in the Doric mood; and that several Prosodia (or supplications to the Gods), several hymns and tragical lamentations, and now and then love verses, were composed to the same melody. But he contented himself with such songs as were made in honor of Mars or Minerva, or else such as were to be sung at solemn offerings, called Spondeia. For these he thought sufficient to fortify and raise the mind of a sober person; not being at all ignorant in the mean time of the Lydian and Ionian, of which he knew the tragedians made use.
18. Moreover, the ancients well understood all the sorts of styles, although they used but few. For it was not their ignorance that confined them to such narrow instruments and so few strings; nor was it out of ignorance that Olympus and Terpander and those that came after them would not admit of larger instruments and more variety of strings. This is manifest from the poems of Olympus and Terpander and all those that were their imitators. For, being plain and without any more than three strings, these so far excelled those that were more numerously strung, insomuch that none could imitate Olympus’s play; and they were all inferior to him when they betook themselves to their polychords.
19. Then again, that the ancients did not through ignorance abstain from the third string in the spondaic style, their use of it in play makes apparent. For had they not known the use of it, they would never have struck it in harmony with parhypate; but the elegancy and gravity that attended the spondaic style by omitting the third string induced them to transfer the music to paranete. The same reason may serve for nete; for this in play they struck in concord to mese, but in discord to paranete, although in song it did not seem to them proper to the slow spondaic motion. And not only did they do this, but they did the same with nete of the conjunct heptachords; for in play they struck it in concord to mese and lichanos, and in discord to paranete and parhypate; but in singing those touches were no way allowable, as being ungrateful to the ear and shaming the performer. As certain it is from the Phrygians that Olympus and his followers were not ignorant of the third string; for they made use of it not only in pulsation, but in their hymns to the Mother of the Gods and several other Phrygian songs. Nor is it less apparent, with regard to the ὑπάται, that they never abstained for want of skill from that tetrachord in the Dorian mood; indeed in other moods they knowingly made use of it, but removed it from the Dorian mood to preserve its elegant gravity.
20. The same thing was done also by the tragedians. For the tragedians have never to this day used either the chromatic or the enharmonic scale; while the lyre, many generations older than tragedy, used them from the very beginning. Now that the chromatic was more ancient than the enharmonic is plain. For we must necessarily account it of greater antiquity, according to the custom and use of men themselves; otherwise it cannot be said that any of the differences and distinctions were ancienter the one than the other. Therefore, if any one should allege that Aeschylus or Phrynichus abstained from the chromatic out of ignorance, would he not be thought to maintain a very great absurdity? Such a one might as well aver that Pancrates lay under the same blindness, who avoided it in most, but made use of it in some things; therefore he forebore not out of ignorance, but judgment, imitating Pindar and Simonides and that which is at present called the ancient manner.
21. The same may be said of Tyrtaeus the Mantinean, Andreas the Corinthian, Thrasyllus the Phliasian, and several others, who, as we well know, abstained by choice from the chromatic, from transition, from the increased number of strings, and many other common forms of rhythms, tunes, diction, composition, and expression. Telephanes of Megara was so great an enemy to the pipe made of reed (called syrinx), that he would not suffer the instrument maker to join it to the flute (pipe made of wood or horn), and chiefly for that reason forbore to go to the Pythian games. In short, if a man should be thought to be ignorant of that which he makes no use of, there would be found a great number of ignorant persons in this age. For we see that the admirers of the Dorian composition make no use of the Antiginedian; the followers of the Antiginedian reject the Dorian; and other musicians refuse to imitate Timotheus, being almost all bewitched with the trifles and the idle poems of Polyidus. On the other side, if we dive into the business of variety and compare antiquity with the present times, we shall find there was great variety then, and that frequently made use of. For then the variation of rhythm was more highly esteemed, and the change of their manner of play more frequent. We are now lovers of fables, they were then lovers of rhythm. Plain it is therefore, that the ancients did not refrain from broken measures out of ignorance, but out of judgment. And yet what wonder is this, when there are so many other things necessary to human life which are not unknown, though not made use of by those who have no occasion to use them? But they are refused, and the use of them is altogether neglected, as not being found proper on many occasions.
22. Having already shown that Plato neither for want of skill nor for ignorance blamed all the other moods and casts of composition, we now proceed to show that he really was skilled in harmony. For in his discourse concerning the procreation of the soul, inserted into Timaeus, he has made known his great knowledge in all the sciences, and of music among the rest, in this manner: “After this,” saith he, “he filled up the double and treble intervals, taking parts from thence, and adding them to the midst between them, so that there were in every interval two middle terms.” This proem was the effect of his experience in music, as we shall presently make out. The means from whence every mean is taken are three, arithmetical, enharmonical, geometrical. Of these the first exceeds and is exceeded in number, the second in proportion, the third neither in number nor proportion. Plato therefore, desirous to show the harmony of the four elements in the soul, and harmonically also to explain the reason of that mutual concord arising from discording and jarring principles, undertakes to make out two middle terms of the soul in every interval, according to harmonical proportion. Thus in a musical octave there happen to be two middle distances, whose proportion we shall explain. As for the octaves, they keep a double proportion between their two extremes. For example, let the double arithmetical proportion be 6 and 12, this being the interval between the ὑπάτη μέσων and the νήτη διεζευγμένων; 6 therefore and 12 being the two extremes, the former note contains the number 6, and the latter 12. To these are to be added the intermediate numbers, to which the extremes must hold the proportion, the one of one and a third, and the other of one and a half. These are the numbers 8 and 9. For as 8 contains one and a third of 6, so 9 contains one and a half of 6; thus you have one extreme. The other is 12, containing 9 and a third part of 9, and 8 and half 8. These then being the numbers between 6 and 12, and the interval of the octave consisting of a diatessaron and diapente, it is plain that the number 8 belongs to mese, and the number 9 to paramese; which being so, it follows that hypate is to mese as paramese to nete of the disjunct tetrachords; for it is a fourth from the first term to the second of this proportion, and the same interval from the third term to the fourth. The same proportion will be also found in the numbers. For as 6 is to 8, so is 9 to 12; and as 6 is to 9, so is 8 to 12. For 8 is one and a third part of 6, and 12 of 9; while 9 is one and a half part of 6, and 12 of 8. What has been said may suffice to show how great was Plato’s zeal and learning in the liberal sciences.
23. Now that there is something of majesty, something great and divine in music, Aristotle, who was Plato’s scholar, thus labors to convince the world: “Harmony,” saith he, “descended from heaven, and is of a divine, noble, and angelic nature; but being fourfold as to its efficacy, it has two means, — the one arithmetical, the other enharmonical. As for its members, its dimensions, and its excesses of intervals, they are best discovered by number and equality of measure, the whole art being contained in two tetrachords.” These are his words. The body of it, he saith, consists of discording parts, yet concording one with another; whose means nevertheless agree according to arithmetical proportion. For the upper string being fitted to the lowest in the ratio of two to one produces a perfect diapason. Thus, as we said before, nete consisting of twelve units, and hypate of six, the paramese accords with hypate according to the sesquialter proportion, and has nine units, whilst mese has eight units. So that the chiefest intervals through the whole scale are the diatessaron (which is the proportion of 4:3), the diapente (which is the proportion of 3:2), and the diapason (which is the proportion of 2:1); while the proportion of 9:8 appears in the interval of a tone. With the same inequalities of excess or diminution, all the extremes are differenced one from another, and the means from the means, either according to the quantity of the numbers or the measure of geometry; which Aristotle thus explains, observing that nete exceeds mese by a third part of itself, and hypate is exceeded by paramese in the same proportion, so that the excesses stand in proportion. For by the same parts of themselves they exceed and are exceeded; that is, the extremes (nete and hypate) exceed and are exceeded by mese and paramese in the same proportions, those of 4:3 and of 3:2. Now these excesses are in what is called harmonic progression. But the distances of nete from mese and of paramese from hypate, expressed in numbers, are in the same proportion (12:8 = 9:6); for paramese exceeds mese by one-eighth of the latter. Again, nete is to hypate as 2:1; paramese to hypate as 3:2; and mese to hypate as 4:3. This, according to Aristotle, is the natural constitution of harmony, as regards its parts and its numbers.
24. But, according to natural philosophy, both harmony and its parts consist of even, odd, and also even-odd. Altogether it is even, as consisting of four terms; but its parts and proportions are even, odd, and even-odd. So nete is even, as consisting of twelve units; paramese is odd, of nine; mese even, of eight; and hypate even-odd, of six (i.e., 2×3). Whence it comes to pass, that music — herself and her parts — being thus constituted as to excesses and proportion, the whole accords with the whole, and also with each one of the parts.
25. But now as for the senses that are created within the body, such as are of celestial and heavenly extraction, and which by divine assistance affect the understanding of men by means of harmony, — namely, sight and hearing, — do by the very light and voice express harmony. And others which are their attendants, so far as they are senses, likewise exist by harmony; for they perform none of their effects without harmony; and although they are inferior to the other two, they are not independent of them. Nay, those two also, since they enter into human bodies at the very same time with God himself, claim by reason a vigorous and incomparable nature.
26. Manifest from hence therefore it is, why the ancient Greeks, with more reason than others, were so careful to teach their children music. For they deemed it requisite by the assistance of music to form and compose the minds of youth to what was decent, sober, and virtuous; believing the use of music beneficially efficacious to incite to all serious actions, especially to the adventuring upon warlike dangers. To which purpose they made use of pipes or flutes when they advanced in battle array against their enemies; like the Lacedaemonians, who upon the same occasion caused the Castorean melody to be played before their battalions. Others inflamed their courage with harps, playing the same sort of harmony when they went to look danger in the face, as the Cretans did for a long time. Others, even to our own times, continue to use the trumpet. The Argives made use of flutes at their wrestling matches called Stheneia; which sort of sport was first instituted in honor of Danaus, but afterwards consecrated to Jupiter Sthenius, or Jupiter the Mighty. And now at this day it is the custom to make use of flutes at the games called Pentathla, although there is now nothing exquisite or antique, nothing like what was customary among men of old time, like the song composed by Hierax for this very game; still, even though it is sorry stuff and nothing exquisite, it is accompanied by flute-music.
27. But among the more ancient Greeks, music in theatres was never known, for they employed their whole musical skill in the worship of the Gods and the education of youth; at which time, there being no theatres erected, music was yet confined within the walls of their temples, as being that with which they worshipped the supreme Deity and sang the praises of virtuous men. And it is probable that the word θέατϱον, at a later period, and θεωϱεῖν (to behold) much earlier, were derived from θεός (God). But in our age is such another face of new inventions, that there is not the least remembrance or care of that use of music which related to education; for all our musicians make it their business to court the theatre Muses, and study nothing but compositions for the stage.
28. But some will say, Did the ancients invent nothing themselves? Yes, say I, they did invent, but their inventions were grave and decent. For they who have written the history of music attribute to Terpander the addition of the Dorian nete, which before was not in use. Even the whole Mixolydian mood is a new invention. Such were also the Orthian manner of melody with Orthian rhythms, and also the Trochaeus Semantus. And if we believe Pindar, Terpander was the inventor of the Scolion (or roundelay). Archilochus also invented the rhythmic composition of the iambic trimeter, the change to rhythms of different character, the melo-dramatic delivery, and the accompaniment proper to each of these. He is also presumed to be the author of epodes, tetrameters, the Cretic and the prosodiac rhythms, and the augmentation of the heroic verse. Some make him author also of the elegiac measure, as likewise of the extending the iambic to the paeon epibatus, the prolonged and heroic to the prosodiac and Cretic. And Archilochus is first said to have taught how iambics could be partly recited to the stroke of the lyre and partly sung; from him the tragedians learned it, and from them Crexus took it, and made use of it in dithyrambics. It is thought that he invented also playing on the lyre at intervals in the song, whereas the ancients played only during the singing.
29. Of the Hypolydian mood they make Polymnestus the inventor, and the first that taught the lowering and raising of the voice (ἔϰλυσις and ἐϰβολή). To the same Olympus to whom they also ascribe the first invention of Grecian and well-regulated nomic music they attribute likewise the finding out the enharmonic music, the prosodiac measure to which is composed the hymn to Mars, and the chorean measure which he used in the hymns to the Mother of the Gods. Some report him to be the author also of the bacchius. And every one of the ancient songs show that this is so. But Lasus of Hermione, transferring the rhythms to suit the dithyrambic time, and making use of an instrument with many notes, made an absolute innovation upon the ancient music, by the use of more notes, and those more widely distributed.
Aristophanes the comic poet, making mention of Philoxenus, complains of his introducing lyric verses among the cyclic choruses, where he brings in Music thus speaking: —
•He filled me with discordant measures airy,
•Wicked Hyperbolaei and Niglari;
•And to uphold the follies of his play,
•Like a lank radish bowed me every way.
Other comedians have since set forth the absurdity of those who have been slicers and manglers of music.
31. Now that the right moulding or ruin of ingenuous manners and civil conduct lies in a well-grounded musical education, Aristoxenus has made apparent. For, of those that were contemporary with him, he gives an account of Telesias the Theban, who in his youth was bred up in the noblest excellences of music, and moreover studied the works of the most famous lyrics, Pindar, Dionysius the Theban, Lamprus, Pratinas, and all the rest who were accounted most eminent; who played also to perfection upon the flute, and was not a little industrious to furnish himself with all those other accomplishments of learning; but being past the prime of his age, he was so bewitched with the theatre’s new fangles and the innovations of multiplied notes, that despising those noble precepts and that solid practice to which he had been educated, he betook himself to Philoxenus and Timotheus, and among those delighted chiefly in such as were most depraved with diversity of notes and baneful innovation. And yet, when he made it his business to make verses and labor both ways, as well in that of Pindar as that of Philoxenus, he could have no success in the latter. And the reason proceeded from the truth and exactness of his first education.
32. Therefore, if it be the aim of any person to practise music with skill and judgment, let him imitate the ancient manner; let him also adorn it with those other sciences, and make philosophy his tutor, which is sufficient to judge what is in music decent and useful. For music being generally divided into three parts, diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonie, it behooves one who comes to learn music to understand poetry, which uses these three parts, and to know how to express his poetical inventions in proper musical form.
First therefore we are to consider that all musical learning is a sort of habituation, which does not teach the reason of her precepts at one and the same time to the learner. Moreover, we are to understand that to such an education there is not requisite an enumeration of its several divisions, but every one learns by chance what either the master or scholar, according to the authority of the one and the liberty of the other, has most affection for. But the more prudent sort reject this chance-medley way of learning, as the Lacedaemonians of old, the Mantineans, and Pallenians, who, making choice either of one single method or else but very few styles, used only that sort of music which they deemed most proper to regulate the inclinations of youths.
33. This will be apparent, if any one shall examine every one of the parts, and see what is the subject of their several contemplations. For harmony takes cognizance of intervals, systems, classes of harmonious sounds, notes, tones, and systematical transmutations. Farther than this it goes not. And therefore it would be in vain to enquire of harmony, whether the poet have rightly and (so to speak) musically chosen the Dorian for the beginning, the mixed Lydian and Dorian for the end, or the Hypophrygian and Phrygian for the middle. For the industry of harmony reaches not to these, and it is defective in many other things, as not understanding the force and extent of elegant aptness and proper concinnity. Neither did ever the chromatic or enharmonic species arrive to such force of aptitude as to discover the nature and genius of the poem; for that is the work of the poet.
It is as plain, that the sound of the system is different from the sound of the descant sung in the same system; which, however, does not belong to the consideration of harmonical studies. There is the same to be said concerning rhythms, for no rhythm can claim to itself the force of perfect aptitude. For we call a thing apt and proper when we consider the nature of it. The reason of this, we say, is either a certain plain and mixed composure, or both; like the enharmonic species of Olympus, by him set in the Phrygian mood and mixed with the paeon epibatos, which rendered the beginning of the key naturally elegant in what is called the nome of Minerva. For having made choice of his key and measure, he only changed the paeon epibatos for the trochee, which produced his enharmonic species. However, the enharmonic species and Phrygian tone remaining together with the whole system, the elegancy of the character was greatly altered.
For that which was called harmony in the nome of Minerva was quite another thing from that in the introduction. He then that has both judgment as well as skill is to be accounted the most accurate musician. For he that understands the Dorian mood, not being able withal to discern by his judgment what is proper to it and when it is fit to be made use of, shall never know what he does; nay, he shall quite mistake the nature and custom of the key. Indeed it is much questioned among the Dorians themselves, whether the enharmonic composers be competent judges of the Dorian songs. The same is to be said concerning the knowledge of rhythm. For he that understands a paeon may not understand the proper use of it, though he know the measure of which it consists. Because it is much doubted among those that make use of paeons, whether the bare knowledge make a man capable to determine concerning the proper use of those rhythms; or, as others say, whether it aspire to presume so far.
Therefore it behooves that person to have two sorts of knowledge, who will undertake to judge of what is proper and what improper; first, of the custom and manner of elegancy for which such a composition was intended, and next of those things of which the composition consists. And thus, that neither the bare knowledge of harmony, nor of rhythm, nor of any other things that singly by themselves are but a part of the whole body of music, is sufficient to judge and determine either of the one or the other, what has been already said may suffice to prove.
34. [Now then, there being three species into which all harmony is divided, equal in the magnitude of systems or intervals and force of notes and tetrachords, we find that the ancients never disputed about any more than one; for they never troubled themselves with the chromatic or diatonic, but differed only about the enharmonic; and there no farther than about the great interval called the diapason. The further subdivision indeed caused some little variance, but they nearly all agreed that harmony itself is but one. ] Therefore he must never think to be a true artist in the understanding and practice of music, who advances no farther than the single knowledge of this or that particular: but it behooves him to trace through all the particular members of it, and so to be master of the whole body, by understanding how to mix and join all the divided members. For he that understands only harmony is confined to a single manner. Wherefore, in short, it is requisite that the sense and understanding concur in judging the parts of music; and that they should neither be too hasty, like those senses which are rash and forward, nor too slow, like those which are dull and heavy; though it may happen sometimes, through the inequality of Nature, that the same senses may be too slow and too quick at the same time. Which things are to be avoided by a sense and judgment that would run an equal course.
35. For there are three things at least that at the same instant strike the ear, — the note, the time, and the word or syllable. By the note we judge of the harmony, by the time of the rhythm, and by the word of the matter or subject of the song. As these proceed forth altogether, it is requisite the sense should give them entrance at the same moment. But this is certain, where the sense is not able to separate every one of these and consider the effects of each apart, there it can never apprehend what is well or what is amiss in any. First therefore let us discourse concerning coherence. For it is necessary that coherence accompany the discerning faculty. For judgment of good or bad is not to be made from notes disjoined, broken time, and shattered words, but from coherence. For there is in practice a certain commixture of parts which commonly are not compounded. So much as to coherence.
36. We are next to consider whether the masters of music are sufficiently capable of being judges of it. Now I aver the negative. For it is impossible to be a perfect musician and a good judge of music by the knowledge of those things that seem to be but parts of the whole body, as by excellency of hand upon the instrument, or singing readily at first sight, or exquisiteness of the ear, so far as this extends to the understanding of harmony and time. Neither does the knowledge of time and harmony, pulsation or elocution, or whatever else falls under the same consideration, perfect their judgment. Now for the reasons why a musician cannot gain a perfect judgment from any of these, we must endeavor to make them clear. First then it must be granted that, of things about which judgment is to be made, some are perfect and others imperfect. Those things which are perfect are the compositions in general, whether sung or played, and the expression of those, whether upon the instruments or by the voice, with the rest of the same nature. The imperfect are the things to these appertaining, and for whose sake they are made use of. Such are the parts of expression. A second reason may be found in poetry, with which the case is the same. For a man that hears a consort of voices or instruments can judge whether they sing or play in tune, and whether the language be plain or not. But every one of these are only parts of instrumental and vocal expression; not the end itself, but for the sake of the end. For by these and things of the same nature shall the elegancy of elocution be judged, whether it be proper to the poem which the performer undertakes to sing. The same is to be said of the several passions expressed in the poetry.
37. The ancients now made principal account of the moral impression, and therefore preferred that fashion of the antique music which was grave and least affected. Therefore the Argives are said to have punished deviation from the ancient music, and to have imposed a fine upon such as first adventured to play with more than seven strings, and to introduce the Mixolydian mood. Pythagoras, that grave philosopher, rejected the judging of music by the senses, affirming that the virtue of music could be appreciated only by the intellect. And therefore he did not judge of music by the ear, but by the harmonical proportion, and thought it sufficient to fix the knowledge of music within the compass of the diapason.
38. But our musicians nowadays have so utterly exploded the most noble of all the moods, which the ancients greatly admired for its majesty, that hardly any among them make the least account of enharmonic distances. And so negligent and lazy are they grown, as to believe the enharmonic diesis to be too contemptible to fall under the apprehension of sense, and they therefore exterminate it out of their compositions, deeming those to be triflers that have any esteem for it or make use of the mood itself. For proof of which they think they bring a most powerful argument, which rather appears to be the dulness of their own senses; as if whatever fled their apprehensions were to be rejected as useless and of no value. And then again they urge that its magnitude cannot be perceived through its concord, like that of the semitone, tone, and other distances; not understanding, that at the same time they throw out the third, fifth, and seventh, of which the one consists of three, the other of five, and the last of seven dieses. And on the same principle all the intervals that are odd should be rejected as useless, inasmuch as none of them is perceptible through concord; and this would include all which by means of even the smallest diesis are measured by odd numbers. Whence it necessarily follows, that no division of the tetrachord would be of use but that which is to be measured by all even intervals, as in the syntonic diatonic, and in the toniaean chromatic.
39. But these opinions are not only contrary to appearance, but repugnant one to another. For they themselves chiefly make use of those divisions of tetrachords in which most of the intervals are either unequal or irrational. To which purpose they always soften both lichanos and paranete, and lower even some of the standing sounds by an irrational interval, bringing the trite and paranete to approach them. And especially they applaud the use of those systems in which most of the intervals are irrational, by relaxing not only those tones which are by nature movable, but also some which are properly fixed; as it is plain to those that rightly understand these things.
40. Now for the advantages that accrue to men from the use of music, the famous Homer has taught it us, introducing Achilles, in the height of his fury toward Agamemnon, appeased by the music which he learned from Chiron, a person of great wisdom. For thus says he: —
•Amused at ease, the god-like man they found,
•Pleased with the solemn harp’s harmonious sound.
•The well-wrought harp from conquered Thebe came;
•Of polished silver was its costly frame.
•With this he soothes his angry soul, and sings
•The immortal deeds of heroes and of kings.
Learn, says Homer, from hence the true use of music. For it became Achilles, the son of Peleus the Just, to sing the famous acts and achievements of great and valiant men. Also, in teaching the most proper time to make use of it, he found out a profitable and pleasing pastime for one’s leisure hours. For Achilles, being both valiant and active, by reason of the disgust he had taken against Agamemnon withdrew from the war. Homer therefore thought he could not do better than by the laudable incitements of music and poetry to inflame the hero’s courage for those achievements which he afterwards performed. And this he did, calling to mind the great actions of former ages. Such was then the ancient music, and such the advantages that made it profitable. To which end and purpose we read that Hercules, Achilles, and many others made use of it; whose master, wisest Chiron, is recorded to have taught not only music, but morality and physic.
41. In brief therefore, a rational person will not blame the sciences themselves, if any one make use of them amiss, but will adjudge such a failing to be the error of those that abuse them. So that whoever he be that shall give his mind to the study of music in his youth, if he meet with a musical education, proper for the forming and regulating his inclinations, he will be sure to applaud and embrace that which is noble and generous, and to rebuke and blame the contrary, as well in other things as in what belongs to music. And by that means he will become clear from all reproachful actions, for now having reaped the noblest fruit of music, he may be of great use, not only to himself but to the commonwealth: while music teaches him to abstain from every thing indecent both in word and deed, and to observe decorum, temperance, and regularity.
42. Now that those cities which were governed by the best laws took care always of a generous education in music, many testimonies may be produced. But for us it shall suffice to have instanced Terpander, who appeased a sedition among the Lacedaemonians, and Thaletas the Cretan, of whom Pratinas writes that, being sent for by the Lacedaemonians by advice of the oracle, he freed the city from a raging pestilence. Homer tells that the Grecians stopped the fury of another noisome pestilence by the power and charms of the same noble science: —
•With sacred hymns and songs that sweetly please,
•The Grecian youth all day the Gods appease.
•Their lofty paeans bright Apollo hears,
•And still the charming sounds delight his ears.
These verses, most excellent master, I thought requisite to add as the finishing stone to my musical discourse, which were by you cited before to show the force of harmony. For indeed the chiefest and sublimest end of music is the graceful return of our thanks to the Gods, and the next is to purify and bring our minds to a sober and harmonious temper. Thus, said Soterichus, most excellent master, I have given you what may be called an encyclic discourse of music.
43. Nor was Soterichus a little admired for what he had spoken, as one that both by his countenance and speech had shown his zeal and affection for that noble science. After all, said Onesicrates, I must needs applaud this in both of you, that you have kept within your own spheres and observed your proper limits. For Lysias, not insisting any further, undertook only to show us what was necessary to the making a good hand, as being an excellent performer himself. But Soterichus has feasted us with a discovery of the benefit, the theory, the force, and right end of music. But one thing I think they have willingly left for me to say; for I cannot think them guilty of so much bashfulness that they should be ashamed to bring music into banquets, where certainly, if anywhere, it cannot but be very useful, which Homer also confirms to be true: —
Song and the merry dance, the joy of feasts.
Not that I would have any one believe from these words, that Homer thought music useful only for pleasure and delight, there being a profounder meaning concealed in the verse. For he brought in music to be present at the banquets and revels of the ancients, as believing it then to be of greatest use and advantage to repel and mitigate the inflamming power of the wine. To which our Aristoxenus agrees, who alleges that music was introduced at banquets for this reason, that as wine intemperately drunk weakens both the body and mind, so music by its harmonious order and symmetry assuages and reduces them to their former constitution. And therefore it was that Homer reports that the ancients made use of music at their solemn festivals.
44. But for all this, my most honored friends, methinks you have forgot the chiefest thing of all, and that which renders music most majestic. For Pythagoras, Archytas, Plato, and many others of the ancient philosophers, were of opinion, that there could be no motion of the world or rolling of the spheres without the assistance of music, since the Supreme Deity created all things harmoniously. But it would be unseasonable now to enter upon such a discourse, especially at this time, when it would be absurd for Music to transgress her highest and most musical office, which is to give the laws and limits of time and measure to all things. Therefore after he had sung a paean, and offered to Saturn and his offspring, with all the other Gods and the Muses, he dismissed the company.
No one will attempt to study this treatise on music, without some previous knowledge of the principles of Greek music, with its various moods, scales, and combinations of tetrachords. The whole subject is treated by Boeckh, De Metris Pindari (in Vol. I. 2 of his edition of Pindar); and more at length in Westphal’s Harmonik und Melopöie der Griechen (in Rossbach and Westphal’s Metrik, Vol. II. 1).
An elementary explanation of the ordinary scale and of the names of the notes (which are here retained without any attempt at translation) may be of use to the reader.
The most ancient scale is said to have had only four notes, corresponding to the four strings of the tetrachord. But before Terpander’s time two forms of the heptachord (with seven strings) were already in use. One of these was enlarged to an octachord (with eight strings) by adding the octave (called νήτη). This addition is ascribed to Terpander by Plutarch (§ 28); but he is said to have been unwilling to increase the number of strings permanently to eight, and to have therefore omitted the string called τρίτη, thus reducing the octachord again to a heptachord. The notes of the full octachord in this form, in the ordinary diatonic scale, are as follows: —
•1. ὑπάτη e
•2. παρυπάτη f
•3. λιχανός g
•4. μέση a
•5. παραμέση b
•6. τρίτη c
•7. παρανήτη d
•8. νήτη e (octave)
The note called ὑπάτη (hypate, or highest) is the lowest in tone, being named from its position. So νήτη or νεάτη (nete, or lowest) is the highest in tone.
The other of the two heptachords mentioned above contained the octave, but omitted the παραμέση and had other changes in the higher notes. The scale is as follows: —
•1. ὑπάτη e
•2. παρυπάτη f
•3. λιχανός g
•4. μέση a
•5. τρίτη b
•6. παρανήτη c
•7. νήτη d
This is not to be confounded with the reduced octachord of Terpander. This heptachord includes two tetrachords so united that the lowest note of one is identical with the highest note of the other; while the octachord includes two tetrachords entirely separated, with each note distinct. The former connection is called κατὰ συναϕήν, the latter κατὰ διάζευξιν. Of the eight notes of the octachord, the first four (counting from the lowest), ὑπάτη, παρυπάτη, λιχανός, and μέση, are the same in the heptachord; παραμέση is omitted in the heptachord; while τρίτη, παρανήτη, and νήτη in the heptachord are designated as τρίτη συνημμένων, παρανήτη συνημμένων, and νήτη συνημμένων, to distinguish them from the notes of the same name in the octachord, which sometimes have the designation διεζευγμένων, but generally are written simply τρίτη, &c.
These simple scales were enlarged by the addition of higher and lower notes, four at the bottom of the scale (i.e. before ὑπάτη), called προσλαμβανόμενος, ὑπάτη ὑπατῶν, παρυπάτη ὑπατῶν, λιχανός ὑπατῶν; and three at the top (above νήτη), called νήτη, παρανήτη, τρίτη, each with the designation ὑπερβολαίων. The lowest three notes of the ordinary octachord are here designated by μέσων, when the simple names are not used. Thus a scale of fifteen notes was made; and we have one of eighteen by including the two classes of τρίτη, παρανήτη, and νήτη designated by συνημμένων and διεζευγμένων.
The harmonic intervals, discovered by Pythagoras, are the Octave (διὰ πασῶν), with its ratio of 2:1; the Fifth (διὰ πέντε), with its ratio of 3:2 (λόγος ἡμιόλιος or Sesquialter); the Fourth (διὰ τεσσάρων), with its ratio of 4:3 (λόγος ἐπίτριτος or Sesquiterce); and the Tone (τόνος), with its ratio of 9:8 (λόγος ἐπόγδοος or Sesquioctave). (G.)