103 When Anacharsis, after roaming widely, came to Scythia,
He wished to persuade everyone to live according to Greek customs.
But when the word on his lips was still unachieved,
A winged arrow swiftly spirited him to the immortals.
It was he who said that the vine bears three clusters of grapes; the first is that of pleasure; the second that of drunkenness; and the third that of disgust. He said he found it astonishing that among the Greeks the skilled compete, but the amateurs judge. When asked how one could avoid becoming too fond of wine, he said, “By keeping before your eyes the disgraceful conduct of drunkards.” He used to say that he found it surprising that the Greek lawgivers penalize the violent, but reward athletes for striking one another. Upon learning the hull of a ship was four finger-breadths thick, he said that this was the distance that separated the passengers from death.
104,105 He said that olive oil was a drug that induces madness, because athletes, when they anoint themselves with it, are maddened against one another. Why, he said, do they prohibit lying and yet tell blatant falsehoods in their business dealings? He was astonished, he said, that the Greeks, to begin with, drink from small cups and, once they are sated, from large ones. His statues bear this inscription: “Bridle speech, gluttony, and lust.” When asked whether there are flute players in Scythia, he said, “No, nor even vines.”181 When asked which are the safest vessels, he said, “Those in dry dock.” And he said that the most astonishing thing he had seen in Greece was that they leave smoke on the mountains and convey the fuel into the city.182 When asked which are more numerous, the living or the dead, he said, “In which category, then, do you place those who are sailing?” When reproached by a native of Attica because he was a Scythian, he said, “In truth, my native land is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your native land.” When asked what among men is both good and bad, he said, “The tongue.” He said it was better to have one friend of great worth than many worth nothing. He defined the market as a place where men may deceive and defraud one another. Insulted by a drunken youth, he said, “Young man, if in youth you cannot hold your liquor, you will be a water carrier in old age.”
According to some, he invented for the needs of life the anchor and the potter’s wheel.
And he wrote the following letter:
Anacharsis to Croesus
I, O king of the Lydians, have come to the land of the Greeks to be instructed in their customs and pursuits. I have no need of gold, but am content to return to Scythia a better man. At any rate, I have come to Sardis, as I attach great importance to earning your esteem.
Myson
106 Myson, son of Strymnon—as Sosicrates says, on Hermippus’ authority—was a native of Chen, from a village in Oeta or Laconia,183 and is numbered among the Seven Sages. They say that his father was a tyrant. We are told by someone that when Anacharsis inquired whether anyone was wiser than he, the Pythian priestess184 gave the following response (which has been quoted in the life of Thales as her reply to a question from Chilon185):
I declare that one Myson of Chen, in Oeta,
Surpasses you in wise-heartedness.
107 His curiosity aroused, Anacharsis went to the village in summer and found Myson fitting a plow handle to a plow and said, “But Myson, it is not the season for a plow.” “Which is just the time,” Myson replied, “to repair it.” But others say that the oracle begins with the words, “I mean a certain Eteian,” and the people wonder, “Who’s this Eteius?”186 Parmenides says that Etis is the deme in Laconia to which Myson belonged. Sosicrates, in his Successions, says that his father was from Etis, his mother from Chen. Euthyphro, son of Heraclides of Pontus, says he was a Cretan; for Eteia is a town in Crete. Anaxilaus says he was an Arcadian.
Myson is mentioned by Hipponax, who says:
… And Myson, whom Apollo
Declared the wisest of all men.
108 Aristoxenus, in his Miscellaneous Notes, says that he was not very different from Timon and Apemantus,187 since he was a misanthrope. At any rate, he was seen in Lacedaemon laughing alone in a deserted place. When someone suddenly came up to him and asked why, with no one present, he was laughing, Myson replied, “It’s just for that reason.” Aristoxenus says that the reason he remained obscure is that he belonged not to a city, but to a village, and an unimportant one at that. Hence, because of his obscurity, some people (Plato the philosopher is the exception) attributed to Pisistratus what belonged to Myson. For Plato mentions him in the Protagoras,188 making him one of the Seven in place of Periander.
He used to say that we should not investigate facts based on arguments, but should investigate arguments based on facts. For the facts were not arranged to account for the arguments, but the arguments to account for the facts.
He died at the age of ninety-seven.
Epimenides
109 Epimenides, as Theopompus and many others say, was the son of Phaestius. Some, however, say that his father was Dosiadas, others Agesarchus. He was a native of Crete, from Cnossus, though he changed his appearance by letting his hair grow. Sent one day by his father to the country to find a sheep, he stepped out of the road at midday and fell asleep in a cave for fifty-seven years. Waking up after all that time, he searched for the sheep, thinking he had been asleep only a short time. When he did not find it he went to the farm; and finding that everything had changed and someone else was in possession, he returned to the town, utterly perplexed. And there, entering his own house, he found some people who asked him who he was. At last, after finding his younger brother, by then an old man, he learned the whole truth from him. He became celebrated throughout Greece, and was regarded as the man most loved by the gods.
110,111 When the Athenians were afflicted with a pestilence, the Pythian priestess advised them to purify the city. They sent a ship to Crete, under the command of Nicias, son of Niceratus, to appeal to Epimenides for help. And on his arrival, in the forty-seventh Olympiad,189 he purified their city and brought the pestilence to an end in the following way. Taking sheep, some black and some white, he brought them to the Areopagus.190 From there he let them go wherever they liked, having ordered those who followed them to note the place where each sheep lay down, and to offer a sacrifice to the local deity; and thus he brought the evil to an end. And that is why even today one may find altars in the Athenian demes that bear no name, memorials of that atonement. But according to others, he said that the cause of the pestilence was the Cylonian pollution,191 and showed them how to rid themselves of it. And consequently two young men, Cratinus and Ctesibius, were put to death and the pestilence was brought to an end. The Athenians voted him a talent of money and a ship to convey him back to Crete. But he did not accept the money; and he created a friendship and a military alliance between the Cnossians and the Athenians.
Epimenides Performing Sacrifices for the City of Athens, by Amico Aspertini, sixteenth century.
Shortly after returning home he died, as Phlegon says in his work On Longevity, having lived 157 years; but according to the Cretans, 299 years. Xenophanes of Colophon, however, says he heard that Epimenides lived to the age of 154.
112 He wrote poems, The Birth of the Curetes and Corybantes, a Theogony in five thousand verses, and The Building of the Argo and Jason’s Voyage to Colchis in six thousand five hundred verses. He also wrote prose works: On Sacrifices, On the Cretan Constitution, and On Minos and Rhadamanthys in four thousand lines.192 He founded in Athens the temple of the Revered Goddesses, as Lobon of Argos says in his work On Poets. He is said to have been the first to purify houses and fields and to found temples. There are some who say that he did not go to sleep, but that he withdrew for a time, occupied in gathering roots.
There is a letter he is supposed to have written to Solon the lawgiver containing the constitution that Minos193 established for the Cretans. But Demetrius of Magnesia, in his work On Poets and Writers of the Same Name,194 tries to prove that the letter is late and that
it was not written in the Cretan dialect but in Attic, and in New Attic at that. But I have found another letter that runs as follows:
113 Epimenides to Solon
Courage, my friend. For if Pisistratus had attacked the Athenians when they were still serfs and not in possession of good laws,195 he would have held power forever, after enslaving the citizens. But as it is, he is trying to enslave men who are not cowardly; men who with pain and shame remember the warning of Solon, and will not tolerate rule by a tyrant. But even if Pisistratus himself keeps the city under his thumb, I do not expect that his power will pass to his children. For it is hard for men who have lived in freedom under the best laws to be slaves. As for you, do not wander, but come to me in Crete. For here the monarch will pose you no danger. But if some of his friends fall in with you on your travels, I fear that something terrible may happen to you.
114 Such is his letter. But Demetrius says that some have reported that he received a special kind of food from the Nymphs and kept it in a cow’s hoof; and that he assimilated this food a little at a time, produced no excrement, and was never seen to eat. Timaeus mentions him in his second book. Some say that the Cretans sacrifice to him as to a god; for they say that he was exceptionally
115 Theopompus in his Marvels says that when Epimenides was building the temple of the Nymphs, a voice broke forth from the sky saying, “Epimenides, build a temple not for the Nymphs, but for Zeus.” And he predicted for the Cretans the defeat of the Lacedemonians by the Arcadians, as has been mentioned; and the Lacedemonians were indeed defeated at Orchomenus.
And he grew old over the course of days equal in number to the years during which he had slept. For this is also reported by Theopompus. Myronianus in his Parallels says that the Cretans called him Cures. The Lacedemonians guard his body among themselves in obedience to an oracle, as Sosibius the Laconian says.
There have been two other men named Epimenides: the genealogist and the author who wrote about Rhodes in the Doric dialect.
Pherecydes
116 Pherecydes, son of Babys, was a native of Syros, as Alexander says in his Successions, and a student of Pittacus. Theopompus says that he was the first to write about nature and the gods.
Many marvelous tales are told about him. When he was walking along the beach in Samos and saw a ship running with a fair wind, he said that it would soon sink; and down it went before his eyes. And while drinking water that had been drawn up from a well he predicted that on the third day there would be an earthquake; and that is what happened. As he was leaving Olympia, he advised Perilaus, his host in Messene, to emigrate with his household; but Perilaus did not obey him, and Messene was captured.
117,118,119 He urged the Lacedemonians to honor neither gold nor silver, as Theopompus says in his Marvels. He told them that Heracles had given him this command in a dream; and on that same night Heracles ordered the kings to obey Pherecydes. But some connect these stories with Pythagoras. Hermippus says that in the course of a war between Ephesus and Magnesia (in which he wanted the Ephesians to prevail), he inquired of a passerby where he came from. When the man replied, “From Ephesus,” Pherecydes said, “Then drag me by the legs and set me in the territory of Magnesia, and announce to your countrymen that after the victory they should bury me where they find me. And tell them Pherecydes has laid this command upon them.” The man delivered the message. And the next day the Ephesians attacked and conquered the Magnesians; and they buried Pherecydes where he had died and honored him magnificently.198 According to others, he went to Delphi and hurled himself from Mount Corycus.199 But Aristoxenus, in his work On Pythagoras and His Disciples, says that he died a natural death and was buried by Pythagoras in Delos. Others say that he died from a disease caused by vermin. And when Pythagoras visited and asked how he was, he poked his finger out the door and said, “My skin makes it clear.” Ever since, among the learned, the expression is understood to imply a negative condition; those who use it in a positive sense are using it incorrectly. He said that the gods’ word for table is thuoros, or that which takes care of offerings.200
Andron of Ephesus says that there were two natives of Syros named Pherecydes, the one an astronomer, the other a theologian and the son of Babys, with whom Pythagoras studied. Eratosthenes, however, says that there was only one Pherecydes of Syros, the other Pherecydes being an Athenian genealogist.
The book written by Pherecydes of Syros survives; it begins thus: “Zeus and Cronos and Chthonia existed always; and Chthonia received the name Ge because Zeus gave her earth (ge) as a gift of honor.” His sundial is also preserved on the island of Syros.
Duris, in the second book of his Seasons, says that the following verses were inscribed on his tomb:
120 The sum of all wisdom has been mine; but tell my friend Pythagoras,
If any more existed, that he is the foremost
Among all the Greeks. I speak no lie.
Ion of Chios says about him:
So endowed was this man with courage and modesty,
That even in death his soul lives a happy life,
If the sage Pythagoras has truly seen
And learned from all men their thoughts.
121 There is also my own poem in the Pherecratean meter:201
The renowned Pherecydes,
To whom Syros once gave birth—
His former beauty lost,
Consumed, they say, by lice—
Bade them place him straightaway
Upon Magnesian ground,
That he might give victory
To the brave citizens of Ephesus.
For there was an oracle, known only to him,
Which commanded this.
And he died among them.
Thus it would be true to say:
If anyone is truly wise,
He is useful both while he lives
And when he is no more.
He lived in the fifty-ninth Olympiad.202 He wrote the following letter:
122 Pherecydes to Thales203
May you die well when your time has come. Disease has overtaken me since I received your letter. I was ridden with lice and racked by fever. I have therefore ordered my servants, after they bury me, to bring you what I have written. If you and the other sages approve of it, make it public as it is; if, on the other hand, you do not approve it, do not make it public. For the work did not yet satisfy me. The facts are not firmly established and I do not claim to have discovered the truth, but only what can be said when discoursing about the gods. The rest must be thought out, for everything is conjectural. Pressed harder by my illness, I did not allow any of the doctors or my friends to enter my room. But when they stood at the door and asked how I was, I passed my finger through the keyhole and showed them that I was devoured by the evil. And I told them to come tomorrow to the burial of Pherecydes.
These are the men who were called the Sages. Some include the tyrant Pisistratus. We must speak of the philosophers,204 beginning with Ionian philosophy, which was inaugurated by Thales, whose student was Anaximander.
1 Here, as often in the writings of ancient Greek authors, “barbarian” (barbaros) means simply “non-Greek.”
2 A caste of priests who were skilled in astronomy, astrology, and other arts. Their association with occult powers comes down to us in the word “magic.”
3 Diogenes uses “Chaldaeans” here to refer to Eastern mystics associated with magic and numerology. (The same name can refer to a Mesopotamian nation that became absorbed into other populations during the first millennium BC.)
4 Indian religious ascetics, dubbed Gymnosophists by Greeks who ob
served them exposing themselves to the elements.
5 Little is known about these Semnotheoi (or “Revered Gods”), who are not heard of elsewhere. The Druids were the priestly caste of the Celts.
6 The Magicus, a now lost work that evidently featured a magus as its main speaker, is here falsely attributed to Aristotle. In fact, it was a pseudo-Aristotelian work of the Hellenistic era.
7 No Phoenician philosopher named Ochus is known elsewhere, though a very ancient thinker named Mochus is credited by Posidonius with an atomic theory. The Phoenicians, originating in what is now Lebanon, established trading posts and colonies throughout the Mediterranean; the Greeks credited them with many inventions, including writing.
8 Herodotus (Histories 4.94–96) reports that Zamolxis (whom he calls Salmoxis, according to most manuscripts) was a deity of the Thracian Getae, who dwelled north of the Aegean in what is now largely southern Bulgaria.
9 Atlas is more commonly known as the god charged with holding up the vault of heaven, but some in the ancient world speculated that he had originally been a human being celebrated for knowledge of astronomy (see Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.3.8). Since Mt. Atlas, associated with the upright figure of Atlas, is located in Libya, Diogenes assumes this mortal version of Atlas was a Libyan.
10 In the traditional Greek pantheon, Hephaestus was the god of fire and metalworking, not at all a philosophic figure; but the Greeks also associated him with Egyptian Ptah, a divinity of wisdom as well as crafts.
11 Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, became ruler of Egypt in 332 BC.
12 Diogenes appears to have derived these numbers from an Egyptian source and to have mistakenly converted lunar months into years, giving a time span many times longer than what was intended. If the reverse conversion is performed, the numbers of (average) lunar and solar eclipses are very nearly correct.
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers Page 7