But when I enter into these details regarding philosophers, let no one think I am speaking with a view to the outward appearance and the label. For as sensible men do not judge wine from the jar in which it is stored — for often you will find in an excellent jar the spoiled wine of the taverns — so also they do not judge the man of cultivation by his dress. [12] Yet I am not surprised that most men are deceived by such a thing as that. For example, the suitors pitted Odysseus against Irus because of their dress, supposing the two to be no different. But one of the philosophers who lived a short time ago has well said that it made Ismenias especially angry that the pipers at funerals should be called flautists, though that is not quite the same thing, it seems to me. For the pipers at funerals do no harm to the dead nor do they annoy them, whereas some of those who profess to be philosophers really do many grievous things. [13] However, the function of the real philosopher is nothing else than to rule over human beings. But if a man, alleging that he is not competent, is reluctant to administer his own city when it wishes him to do so and calls upon him, it is as if some one should refuse to treat his own body, though professing to be a physician, and yet should readily treat other men in return for money or honours, just as if his health were a smaller recompense than another kind; or again, it is as if some one who claimed to be an able trainer of athletes or a teacher of letters should be willing to teach the sons of others, but should send his own son to some one else of less standing; or as if some one who neglected his own parents should be ready to prefer the parents of others, provided he found them to be more wealthy or more distinguished than his own. [14] For it is neither more righteous nor, by Heaven, more pleasant to disdain those who are related by ties of blood and then to be of service to those who are not relatives at all.
Very well, the conclusion to be drawn from these remarks is that the philosopher should hold office, since you wish it. However, you may be sure that, if there were not some insuperable obstacle, I should not be waiting to be asked but should myself be asking, yes, entreating you. For this too is a mark of those who are noble and sound-minded, that a man should rule his fellow citizens, himself announcing his candidacy and being grateful for his election instead of depreciating the honour, or even making it a dishonour. [15] What, then, is the insuperable obstacle in the present instance? I think I deserve to be believed in everything else whereof I speak — for in my opinion I have never deceived you in anything, nor have I in the past said one thing and meant another — yet I have always had too many engagements, and against my own inclination I have thus far been prevented from abandoning them. And now it is no longer possible at all, practically speaking. For it is not to my interest, and possibly not to yours either, that I should tarry here. Therefore I beg to decline my election. For I feel sure that I should not have had to submit to investigation, but that, just as previously you elected me unanimously by acclamation when you suspected I was willing to take office, you would have done the same now too. However, I am not so minded; but while I know that in order to hold office I should not have been obliged to call upon you, yet in order to be excused from holding office I am not ashamed to be calling upon you.
THE FIFTIETH DISCOURSE: REGARDING HIS PAST RECORD, SPOKEN BEFORE THE COUNCIL
This Discourse is really earlier in date than Or. , though the interval between the two is presumably very brief. In the one Dio disclaims the ambition to become archon, announcing his intention to leave Prusa (50.7), in the other he declines that office in an election already in progress, referring to his departure as to an event of the immediate future (49.15). The projected journey is referred to briefly also in the opening sentence of Or. . A possible explanation of the reason for the journey and for the repeated postponement of it is suggested in the Introduction to Or. .
Our Discourse affords no sure clue as to the reason for the meeting of the Council. It may have been a regular session of that body, though we learn (§ 10) that Dio had been charged with having interfered with its convening. At all events the setting for this defence of his past record was highly dramatic. The presiding officer must have been his own son (τὸν υἰὸν τοῦτον, § 5), to whose recent election as archon Dio seems to refer at the close of Or. . Dio himself was a member of the Council, for in § 10 he is at some pains to explain why he has not been in attendance upon earlier sessions.
Arnim argues with some plausibility that, when on a previous occasion Dio had declined election as archon, he had engineered the substitution of his son for that position. We do not know the precise age of the son at the time of his election, but the reference to his inexperience (Or. 48.17) leads us to suppose that he was young for the highest office in the state, and that supposition is confirmed by the concluding sentence of the present Discourse as emended by Capps. What more natural, then, than that Dio’s enemies should have spread the report that the son was merely a cat’s paw for the father, and that, while evading the responsibilities of office, Dio was exercising all its prerogatives — πάντα ἁπλῶς νομίζουσι τὰ τῆς ἀρχῆς γίγνεσθαι κατὰ τὴν ἐμὴν γνώμην, § 10? Against that rumour Dio offers the favourite Greek argument of probability, pointing to his previous record and claiming that it would be inconsistent, especially for one of his age, to refrain from exercising the prerogatives of a member of the Council, while at the same time trying to usurp the functions of its presiding officer. The fact that shortly thereafter he was put up as a candidate for that office suggests either that his arguments or his flattery or both had silenced the opposition or else that his foes were really a very small minority. There is in these Bithynian addresses abundant testimony to his popularity and influence at Prusa.
The Fiftieth Discourse: Regarding his Past Record, spoken before the Council
My friends, I admired you even ere this, as indeed it was to be expected that a man of fairness and no fool would cherish that element in his native city which is most sensible and trustworthy; on the other hand, to rank others ahead of you is as if a man who professed to be patriotic were to delight in the private houses and workshops in his city, but to regard with more indifference the market-place, the town-hall, the council-chamber, and the other sacrosanct places; or as if, by Heaven, a Spartan were to be fond of the common people, but were to hold in low esteem the kings and ephors and elders, men by far superior to all others in prudence, men by whose efforts the city as a whole was being preserved. [2] Again, take the Athenians, who had the most democratic government in the world and gave the most numerous privileges to the masses and the people’s party; they never had any demagogue, not even the notorious Hyperbolus or Cleon, so audacious as to regard the Areopagus or the Council of the Six Hundred with less reverence than the common people. But if I am continually referring to the Spartans and Athenians, let the carping critics pardon me, because I am judging you worthy of such comparisons and because in addressing Greeks, as I take to be the case, I deem it appropriate not to refer to any others than Greeks of the first rank.
[3] However that may be, let this be your evidence of my goodwill toward you, as well as of my trust in you, that I come before you with assurance neither because I rely upon some political club nor because I have among you some familiar friends; moreover, I believe I should stand as high with you as any man, obviously because I have based my confidence upon my friendship toward all and my goodwill toward all, and not upon my being elected to be an influential or formidable person or seeking to be favoured for such a reason. On the other hand, if I did pity the commons at the time when they were subjects for pity, and if I tried my best to ease their burdens, this is no sign that I am on more friendly terms with them than with you. We know that, in the case of the body, it is always the ailing part which we treat, and that we devote more attention to the feet than to the eyes, if the feet are in pain and have been injured while the eyes are in sound condition. [4] Again, if I have said that the commons were subjects for pity, let no one assume that I mean they have
been treated unfairly and illegally, for we also pity persons who are subjected by physicians to surgery or cautery, although such treatment is for their recovery, and since their mothers and fathers alike weep over them, although they know that they are being benefited.
However, as I was saying, though I admired you even ere this, before ever I had had sufficient experience of your disposition, now certainly, I swear to you by all the gods, I for my part not only judge the Council worthy of respect and affection, but am even amazed at your power and truthfulness and independence. [5] Moreover, I have conducted myself in such a way that, while I have, as I think, repaid the people in full to the best of my ability as a citizen, yet to you I am still indebted, and I could never outdo your benevolence toward me. And in fact that expression which was used by one of the orators of old which was considered to contain a certain excess of flattery, namely, “I might with good reason carry the commons around with me in my eyes,” I could justly use with reference to you. And what is more, this son of mine, if he is sensible and prudent, I believe will dedicate his whole life to your service and consult your welfare no less than I do.
[6] “What had happened,” some one will say, “and what experience of the gentlemen have you had, that you are so extravagant in your language?” Possibly it is an inspiration which has come to me spontaneously, a spiritual impulse of that sort in your direction; but one thing at any rate I would have you know clearly — that I cannot cherish or favour with my eloquence either commons or Council or man, be he satrap or prince or tyrant, without first praising them to myself and approving the character of their spirit. But in your case, practically every time there has been a test of your disposition, I see you have never displayed any injustice or double-dealing or baseness or fickleness or insensibility or yielding to clamour or annoyance. [7] And so I might say with assurance, that, while you have had excellent leaders, you have had none as excellent as you deserve, no, not even my father or my grandfather of days gone by, nor the forebears of the rest of you, all good men and deserving of honour as they were.
And let no one imagine that I am trying through oratory to force my way into the presidency of the Council; for I am leaving Prusa for a variety of reasons — and you must believe that this time at least I speak the truth and perhaps not for the sake of special profit or any self-indulgence; indeed I have not been able to hide my purpose. [8] Besides, there is no fear that I may ever be thought guilty of flattering you, since I did not flatter the hateful tyrant or utter a single ignoble or servile word, at a time when many were glad to save their lives by any deed or word at all. On the contrary, your way of doing things seems to me to be grand, yes, superhuman. For, while I do not know with absolute precision what you are like in private life — though I believe you to be superior to most people — I do know that as a corporate body, whenever you gather here, or, it may be, in the Assembly, you have never said or thought anything base or servile, and that entreaty has no weight with you, nor promises, nor threats — supposing of course there is any one so low as to try to prevail by threats. But why should I not speak my mind — as if the philosopher had to confine himself to exposing what is bad and concealing what is better, or as if the truth were beneficial only in connexion with evils, instead of no less so in connexion with good things because it is laudatory!
[9] “But did you, then,” some one will ask, “rise to your feet merely to deliver a eulogy of the Council?” And what is there shocking in that, provided the eulogy be true? However, this eulogy of mine, in case you are clearly unlike what is said of you, is not a eulogy of you, but rather an accusation of the speaker. Still, for all that, I should not have delivered any such speech at all if I had not been very much hurt, as I was once before, on hearing that I am compromising your position. And this explains why I have defended myself, not disdaining to make a defence — why should I? — nor judging it to be beneath me. For while it is humiliating to make a defence before a dozing judge, as the saying goes, and also, by Heaven, before a malicious and rascally tyrant, to do so before fellow citizens and kinsmen and friends whom one regards as fair-minded is not humiliating, but reasonable and just. So not only was my conduct correct on that former occasion, but it is much more so now that I know you better. [10] For I learn — and there has been a flood of talk of that kind — that some have believed the charge that I blocked the assembling of the Council; indeed I have heard also that they believe that absolutely every act of the government takes place to suit my wishes. But as for me, while I do not rob my son of one thing, I mean his unwillingness to do anything within his own control against my wishes or in any other way than guessing at my opinion too, nevertheless I swear I never gave him any orders at all — I mean orders on public matters — though for one who is a father to advise what seems to him to be preferable does have the status of an order. Moreover, because of this suspicion of which I have spoken, for some time past I have not attended the sessions of the Council. For to have deemed him worthy of municipal activities as being competent by now to be a Councillor and to administer the commonwealth, but meanwhile actually to try to make him a private citizen and to rob him of the authority which is legally his — this, I say, is from any point of view neither reasonable nor yet fair for men of my age.
THE FIFTY-FIRST DISCOURSE: IN REPLY TO DIODORUS
Of the Diodorus mentioned in the title of the present Discourse we know absolutely nothing. Dio supplies no clues in the speech itself. In fact, he does not address him directly. Consequently we may infer that the name rests upon reliable tradition. It would appear that the man in question had just made a speech in Assembly lauding some citizen of Prusa. It is plain from § 8 that this citizen had effected certain reforms in connexion with the ephebes. Diodorus may have moved — or seconded — a resolution to give him wider jurisdiction of similar character (cf. § 6). Dio followed him with this brief speech, whose purpose is both to register his own approval of the proposal and at the same time to cast suspicion upon the sincerity of the previous speaker.
If we are left in the dark as to Diodorus, we are in almost equal darkness as to the unnamed recipient of the city’s favour. Arnim states confidently that he is Dio’s son. This is possible, but the speech provides no proof of the assumption. On the contrary, the speaker exhibits remarkable self-restraint, if we are to think of him as the father of the person who is receiving signal honours. Most of his remarks are devoted to the merits of his city, and when he does refer to the man whom that city is honouring, it is by means of a colourless τούτου or τούδε. In fact, the rather satirical tone of the opening sentence in § 2, the grudging acknowledgement at the beginning of § 4, and the possible suggestion of hasty judgement contained in the clause εὐθὺς ἡγεισθε καὶ ὑμᾶς ἀμείνους δύνασθαι ποιεῖν (§ 8), give the impression that Dio was not enthusiastic over the task before him.
The Fifty-first Discourse: In Reply to Diodorus
My friends, it strikes me as exceedingly surprising when a man who does not approve of some one or does not like him nevertheless rises to praise him in a speech, and on occasion enters into a long eulogy, one very carefully composed. For such a person has on his conscience all that is most disgraceful — envy, meanness of spirit, and, worst of all, servility. Not inappropriately, at any rate, is that term used for it by the ancients in the verse
A slave’s word this thou hast spoken.
Aye, how could that man be other than a slave, who in the presence of so many people acts at variance with his own thoughts — and that too, not with frankness, but with premeditation and cold calculation — and indulges in frequent flattery and admiration of a person whom he does not like? Indeed that is to put it mildly!
[2] As a matter of fact, you know, no doubt, that with us everybody lauds everybody; and so I rejoice with you and count you fortunate if we all are so fond of everybody — for this is the natural inference! However, I wish that, just as it is possible to hear many eulogies in meeting
s of the Council and of the Assembly, so also it might be in the market-place and the other places where men come together. But as it is, the words which are spoken are thus or thus in keeping with the place, and, just like those who are training themselves in the schools, we too try our hands at both sides of the question. Therefore, if a stranger attends a meeting of the Assembly, he will imagine that ours is a city of heroes, as it were, or sages; whereas if he bursts into the market-place — there is no need to tell what kind of people he will think us, for you know that yourselves. [3] “What then,” some one will exclaim, “have you taken the floor to censure those who praise?” Not so, by Heaven, but in order that, if possible, we may demonstrate our love of humanity and of nobility, not here alone, but in every place and on every occasion.
Delphi Complete Works of Dio Chrysostom Page 69