A Cabinet Of Greek Curiosities

by J. C. McKeown

  Empedocles of Acragas, the pre-Socratic philosopher who established the influential theory of the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water), once attended a banquet at which the symposiarch ordered the guests either to drink or to have their wine poured over their heads. Empedocles made no protest at the time, but the next day he had both the host and the symposiarch condemned in court and executed. This was the beginning of his career in politics (Timaeus frg. 134).

  Forfeits at drunken symposia sometimes get out of hand—ordering stutterers to sing, bald men to comb their hair, or lame men to dance on a greased wineskin. To make fun of Agapestor, the Academic philosopher, who had a withered leg, all the drinkers were required either to drain their wine cups while standing on their right legs or pay a fine. But when it was Agapestor’s turn to set a forfeit, he ordered everyone to drink the way they saw him drinking. Then he put his weak leg into a narrow pot and drained his wine cup. Everyone else tried to do the same, but without success, and so they paid the fine (Plutarch Table Talk 621e).

  The Seleucid king Antiochus VIII Grypus (Hook Nose) used to give lavish banquets at which each guest had to get up on a camel and drink his wine, after which he was given the camel, the trappings on the camel, and the slave that looked after it (Posidonius frg. 72a).

  A drunk arrives at a symposium straight from his bed, where he has been sleeping off the previous night’s excesses…. There, with his eyes dimmed by alcoholic tears, he can scarcely recognize the other drunks. One guest is taunting his neighbor for no good reason; another wants to fall asleep but is forced to stay awake; another is spoiling for a quarrel; another wants to avoid a fuss and go home, but is kept there by the doorkeeper with blows, under orders from his master to stop him leaving; yet another guest has been thrown out and is supported by his slave as he totters off, dragging his cloak through the mud (Rutilius Rufus On Figures 2.7, drawing on Lyco of Troas, head of the Peripatetic school in the 3rd century B.C.).

  Antiochus VIII.

  Eggs hatch when birds incubate them, but sometimes they hatch spontaneously in the ground, as in Egypt, with the mother birds burying them in manure heaps. It is said that there was once a serious drinker in Syracuse who used to put eggs under the mat he was reclining on and then keep drinking steadily until he hatched them (Aristotle History of Animals 559a).

  To ensure against drunkenness, even when drinking much wine:

  Roast and eat a goat’s lung

  or, before eating anything else, eat five or seven bitter almonds

  or eat some raw cabbage

  or wear a garland of ground-pine branches

  or, while taking your first cup, recite this line of Homer: “Three times from the Idaean mountains counselor Zeus thundered” [Iliad 8.170; it is not clear why this line might be thought to have special power].

  (Farm Work 7.31)

  Life without celebration is a long road without an inn (Democritus frg. 230).

  If a cucumber is bitter, just throw it away…. Don’t go on to complain “Why do such things exist in the world?”

  (Marcus Aurelius Meditations 8.50).

  II

  CHILDREN AND EDUCATION

  The breeding of children is a self-inflicted grief

  (Ps.-Menander Sayings 70).

  A mother’s love is always stronger than a father’s, for she knows the children are hers; he only thinks they are his (Euripides frg. 1015).

  A famous letter (Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 744) from an anxious expectant father in Roman Egypt, dated June 17, 1 B.C. (i.e., about the same time as King Herod’s massacre of the innocents, St. Matthew 2:16–18) includes the following lines:

  Greetings from Hilarion to his dear Alis, and to his dear Berous and Apollonarion. We are still in Alexandria. Don’t worry if I stay here when everyone else returns home. Please look after our little child. As soon as we are paid I shall send you the money. If—please god!–you have a baby, let it live if it is a boy, but expose it if it is a girl. You told Aphrodisias “Don’t forget me.” How could I forget you? So please don’t worry.

  People used to take a pot full of honey with a sponge blocking the aperture and put it in children’s mouths to keep them quiet and to stop them from crying to be fed (Scholion to Aristophanes Acharnians 463).

  When a child puts his hand into a clay pot with a narrow neck to get the figs and nuts in it, what happens is that, if he fills his hand full, he cannot get them out of the pot, and starts crying, but, he can get them out if he lets go of a few of them. You should likewise give up your desires: do not want many things, and you will get what you do want (Epictetus Discourses 3.9).

  King Agesilaus of Sparta was exceptionally fond of children. It is said that he used to play with his children by getting astride a stick as if it were a horse. When one of his friends spotted him playing this way, Agesilaus asked him not to tell anyone until he had children of his own (Plutarch Life of Agesilaus 25). The same story is told about Socrates.

  In the game called “Bronze Fly,” one child is blindfolded with a ribbon, and then the others turn him around. He shouts, “I’ll hunt the bronze fly,” and the others reply “You’ll hunt it, but you won’t catch it,” and they hit him with strips of papyrus until he catches one of them (Pollux Onomasticon 9.123).

  Lawgivers who try to legislate against children’s screaming tantrums are misguided, for such behavior helps them grow and is healthy physical exercise. Exertion like this helps children in the same way as retaining the breath strengthens those who are in training (Aristotle Politics 1336a).

  Of all creatures, the boy is the hardest to handle. Since the fountain of reason is not yet properly adjusted in him, he is crafty, sly, and the most obstreperous of animals. He therefore has to be held in check with many bridles, as it were (Plato Laws 808d).

  Life expectancy being so low, the Greeks felt the need for a word specifically denoting a child with both parents still alive: ἀμφιθαλής (amphithales, meaning literally “blooming on both sides”).

  In Persia, a boy is not shown to his father until he is five years old. Before then, he lives with the women. The rationale is that, should he die while he is being reared, he will not cause his father any grief. I think this is a good custom (Herodotus Histories 1.136). Surprisingly little is known about Herodotus’s personal life; might his final comment here reflect his own experience?

  Children are born with resemblances to their parents not only in congenital features but also in acquired characteristics. There have been cases of children born with the outline of a scar where their parents have scars, and there was a child at Chalcedon with an indistinct birthmark showing the same letter with which his father had been branded on the arm (Aristotle On the Generation of Animals 721b). Some people deduced from this that semen is formed in all parts of the father’s body. The same phenomenon was thought to occur in plants: If you scratch letters on a nut and plant it, the tree that grows from it will bear nuts with the same letters (Ps.-Alexander Problems 5.1).

  Lycurgus could see the misguided arrogance in the way people breed their bitches and mares with the best pedigree sires, either paying their owners for the breeding or asking for it as a favor; on the other hand, they lock up their wives and keep guard over them, insisting that they have children with themselves alone, even if they are witless, or too old, or sickly (Plutarch Life of Lycurgus 15).

  EDUCATION

  Children need distractions. Since they can’t stay still, the rattle is a fine invention; people give it to little children so that they don’t break anything in the house. A rattle suits infants, and for older children education is equivalent to a rattle (Aristotle Politics 1340b).

  There are three types of student: the golden, the silver, and the bronze. The golden student pays and learns, the silver student pays but does not learn, the bronze student learns but does not pay (Bion of Borysthenes frg. 78).

  Large numbers of people, mad keen to recruit pupils for the various schools, were always lurking at the Piraeus docks, lyi
ng in wait for newcomers, but the captain took all his passengers straight on to Athens, … where he knocked at the door of his old friend, the sophist Prohaeresius, and presented him with enough students to fill a school, at a time when wars were being fought to enroll even just one or two young boys (Eunapius Lives of the Sophists 10.1).

  A 4th-century B.C. terra-cotta pig-shaped rattle.

  Why is it that we are more sensible when we grow older, but learn more quickly when we are younger? (Ps.-Aristotle Problems 955b).

  Education is a possession that cannot be taken away from anyone (Ps.-Menander Sayings 2).

  Aristotle used to say that education was an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers 5.19).

  When the people of Mytilene gained control of the sea, they punished those of their allies who had revolted from them by not allowing their children to learn to read and write or to have any education at all; for they regarded a life of uncultured ignorance as the severest of all punishments (Aelian Miscellaneous History 7.15).

  Even if education has no other merits, attending school at least keeps pupils who have any sense of decency away from wrongdoing, whether by day or by night (Plutarch frg. 159).

  Advice on listening to lectures, however pointless they may be:

  • Sit up straight, without lolling or sprawling.

  • Look straight at the speaker in an attitude of active interest.

  • Maintain a calm and inscrutable expression, free not only from arrogance and impatience, but also from any other thoughts and preoccupations.

  • Do not frown superciliously or look disgusted.

  • Do not let your eyes wander.

  • Do not shift about in your seat or cross your legs.

  • Do not nod, or whisper, or smile to anyone.

  (Plutarch On Listening to Lectures 45c)

  When Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse (ruled 367–357 and 346–344 B.C.) was sent into exile, he taught children in Corinth, for he was quite incapable of living without exerting power (Cicero Tusculan Disputations 3.27).

  Without flogging, no one can be educated (Ps.-Menander Sayings 573).

  They say that, whenever he taught anyone anything, Protagoras told the student to fix a price he thought the instruction was worth, and he would accept that amount (Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1164a). Diogenes Laertius, however, reports that Protagoras was the first sophist to demand payment from his students, fixing his fee at a hundred minae [ten thousand drachmas, an astronomical amount, equivalent in the mid-5th century B.C. to payment for service on an Athenian jury for thirty thousand days] (Lives of the Philosophers 9.52).

  If boys had the chance to make fun of their teachers and insult them, there is nothing they would rather do (Dio Chrysostom On Personal Appearance 10).

  When the Socratic philosopher Antisthenes saw the Thebans giving themselves airs after they had defeated the Spartans at the Battle of Leuctra [in 371 B.C.], he said they were just like little boys prancing around after thrashing their tutor (Plutarch Life of Lycurgus 30).

  Libanius was a 4th-century A.D. sophist and teacher of rhetoric, from a family that had fallen on relatively hard times. (He himself survived being struck by a bolt of lightning while reading Aristophanes’s Acharnians.) He resisted both the onset of Christianity and the corrupting effects of Latin literature. Despite the following outbursts on the difficulties of schoolteaching, not only was he very influential, but he also had rather an endearing personality, as appears here and there in his vast surviving works:

  The students nod to each other about charioteers, or mime-actors, or horses, or dancers, or about some gladiatorial fight; some just stand there like blocks of stone, others pick their noses … Anything is preferable to paying attention to their teacher (Oration 3.12).

  A schoolteacher is a slave not just to his pupils, but also to all their many attendants, and to their fathers, and to their mothers, and to their nurses, and to their grandfathers. If he doesn’t turn his young pupils into the sons of gods (no matter if they are blockheads) by overcoming their nature by his art, all sorts of accusations pour in against him from every side (Oration 25.46).

  You, my students, would rather handle snakes than touch your work books (Oration 35.13).

  Make sure that your son has books. If he has no books, he is like someone trying to learn archery without a bow (Letter 428).

  To this day Agathius has caused no trouble either to the teachers or to the other students. I am always happy to see him come into the classroom and enjoy hearing his declamations. Some of the other students are quite good at declaiming, but are so surly and so proud of the way they cause disruptions that I curse myself for being a teacher whenever they show up for class (Letter 1165 [from a school report]).

  When Gelon [who became tyrant of Gela and Syracuse in the early 5th century B.C.] was still a little boy, a wolf came into the school where he was sitting and snatched his writing tablet. Gelon ran out after the wolf and his tablet, just before an earthquake shook the school to its foundations, killing all the other children and their teacher (Timaeus frg. 95).

  A teacher wanted to have a sleep and, since he had no pillow, he told his slave to give him an earthenware pot instead. When the slave said that pots are hard, he told him to fill it with feathers (Philogelos Joke Book 21).

  A teacher with a country home many miles away knocked the number seven from the milestone to bring the house closer to the city (Philogelos Joke Book 60).

  While he was going up a steep hill on his way back home, a teacher said with surprise: “When I came this way before, the road went downhill; how come it’s suddenly changed now and goes uphill?” (Philogelos Joke Book 88).

  Everyone was amazed at how similar two twin brothers were, but a teacher said, “This one isn’t as much like that one as that one is like this one” (Philogelos Joke Book 101).

  When asked how the educated differed from the uneducated, Aristotle said, “In the same way as the living are different from the dead” (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers 5.19).

  The root of education is bitter, but the fruit is sweet

  (Isocrates frg. 19).

  III

  WOMEN

  It is reasonable that men who were cowardly or criminal should be born again as women

  (Plato Timaeus 90e).

  Women had very little public life in Greek society and were appallingly undervalued. This chapter might almost better have been entitled “Misogyny.” Consider the following selection of Sayings, attributed to the comic poet Menander:

  • A woman knows nothing except what she wants to know.

  • Don’t trust your life to a woman.

  • It isn’t easy to find a good woman.

  • It’s better to bury a woman than to marry her.

  • Don’t trust a woman even when she’s dead.

  • A woman who flatters you wants something.

  • Even women can behave reasonably.

  • Sea, fire, and woman as the third evil.

  • A bad woman is a treasure store of bad things.

  • A woman is the wildest of all wild animals.

  • When there’s no woman around, nothing bad happens to a man.

  • A woman is silver-coated dirt.

  One type of woman god created from a long-bristled sow. Everything in her house lies in disorder, stained with mud, rolling around on the floor, while she herself, unwashed, sits on the dunghill in unwashed clothes and grows fat (Semonides frg. 7.2–6; the first of ten types of women, nearly all of which are very negatively portrayed).

  An octopus on a 4th-century B.C. coin from Syracuse.

  The people of Mytilene [her hometown on the island of Lesbos] honor Sappho, even though she is a woman (Aristotle Rhetoric 1398b).

  As she danced, the girl threw up twelve hoops one after the other, judging just how high to throw them so that she could catch them in time to the music. Socrates said, “The girl’s performance is
just one of many proofs that women are not naturally inferior to men; they lack only sense and strength.” … Then a round board studded with swords fixed upright was brought in, and the dancer leaped in and out of the circle of swords. The audience was afraid she might get hurt, but she performed confidently and without being harmed (Xenophon Symposium 2.8).

  Women should marry when they are about eighteen years old, and men at thirty-seven, since that is when they are in the prime of life, and they will both grow old together when their time for child production is over (Aristotle Politics 1335a).

  Women are more compassionate than men, more easily moved to tears. But they are also more prone to envy, grumbling, criticizing, aggression, depression, pessimism, shamelessness, deceit, trickery, resentment. They are more wakeful than men, more hesitant, harder to rouse to action, and they need less food. Men are braver than women, and more ready to help others. Mollusks demonstrate this difference: when a female cuttlefish is struck by a trident, the male helps her, but if a male is struck, the female flees (Aristotle History of Animals 608b).