Delphi Complete Works of Dio Chrysostom

by Dio Chrysostom

  The Eightieth Discourse: On Freedom

  You perhaps are surprised and consider it past all belief and a mark of one who is by no means of sound judgement if a person abandons all that most men view with serious regard and, as one might say, permits riches and fame and pleasures to drift downstream but goes about as neither farmer nor trader nor soldier nor general, nor as shoemaker or builder or physician or orator, nor as one engaged in any other customary occupation, but, on the other hand, comes and goes in this strange fashion and puts in an appearance in places where he has no business at all but rather where chance and impulse may lead him. [2] Council chambers and theatres and assemblies he has held in light esteem, and yet he conducts a popular assembly all by himself; the spectacles which attract his gaze are not dancers or singers or boxers or wrestlers, but buyers and strollers and talkers and fighters; sometimes all these receive his very strict attention, and he derives from them much more enjoyment than do boys at athletic contests and theatrical performances, although he does not come ahead of time or keep awake all night to get a seat or get crushed by the crowd; at other times on the contrary, he neither hears nor sees any single one of them, but ignores their existence, thinking of anything that suits his fancy and acting without fear.

  [3] As for myself, however, I regard it as a splendid and blessed state of being, if in the midst of slaves one can be a free man and in the midst of subjects be independent. To attain this state many wars were waged by the Lydians against the Phrygians and by the Phrygians against the Lydians, and many, too, by both Ionians and Dorians and, in fact, by all peoples, yet no one has ever, because he was enamoured of independence in the spiritual sense, undertaken to use his own personal laws; instead they all wrangle over the laws of Solon and Draco and Numa and Zaleucus, bent on following the one code but not the other, though, on the other hand, not even one of these law-givers had framed the sort of laws he should. Why, Solon himself, according to report, declared that he was proposing for the Athenians, not what satisfied himself, but rather what he assumed they would accept.

  [4] Evidently, therefore, he composed bad laws, if indeed he composed the laws which would satisfy bad men; but, for all that, even Solon himself used these laws, bad as they were and not satisfactory to himself. Clearly, then, not one of these law-givers had any claim to independence, nor did they exert themselves or wage war for the purpose of being free; on the contrary, after they had gathered within the compass of their city walls slavery without bound or limit, thereupon with ramparts and towers and missiles they tried to protect themselves against the chance that slavery might make its entry among them from without, just as if, when a ship’s seams have opened up and the hold is already taking water, one were to take measures of prevention and be concerned lest perchance the sea might sweep over from above. Accordingly, just as it is said that the Trojans for Helen’s sake endured siege and death, although she was not at Troy but in Egypt, just so has it been with these men — in behalf of their freedom they fought and struggled, when all the while they had no freedom.

  [5] Yet not only did these men of old profess to be enduring all things in defence of the laws, but even now men say that justice resides in whatever laws they themselves, luckless creatures that they are, may frame or else inherit from others like themselves. But the law which is true and binding and plain to behold they neither see nor make a guide for their life. So at noon, as it were, beneath the blazing sun, they go about with torches and flambeaux in their hands, ignoring the light of heaven but following smoke if it shows even a slight glint of fire. Thus, while the law of nature is abandoned and eclipsed with you, poor unfortunates that you are, tablets and statute books and slabs of stone with their fruitless symbols are treasured by you.

  [6] Again, while the ordinance of Zeus you transgressed long ago, the ordinance of this man or of that you make it your aim that no man shall transgress. Moreover, the curse which the Athenians established in connexion with Solon’s laws against all who should attempt to destroy them you fail to see is more valid touching the laws of Zeus, for it is wholly inevitable that he who attempts to nullify the ordinance of Zeus shall be an outlaw — except that in this instance children and kinsmen of the guilty are not included in the punishment, as they were at Athens; instead, each is held accountable for his own misfortune. Whoever, therefore, tries to rescue this ordinance as best he can and to guard his own conduct I for my part would never say is lacking in judgement.

  [7] But much more do I marvel at and pity you for the grievous and unlawful slavery under whose yoke you have placed your necks, for you have thrown about you not merely one set of fetters or two but thousands, fetters by which you are throttled and oppressed much more than are those who drag themselves along in chains and halters and shackles. For they have the chance of release or of breaking their bonds and fleeing, but you are always strengthening your bonds and making them more numerous and stronger. Moreover, merely because you do not see your bonds, do not think that these words of mine are false and untrustworthy; nay, consider Homer — who in your estimation is wisest of all — and what kind of bonds he says made Ares captive,

  Although the fleetest of the gods who hold

  Olympus, bonds like filmy spider-webs,

  Which no man e’en could see.

  [8] Then, think not that Ares, god that he was and mighty, was made captive by bonds so delicate and invisible withal, and yet that you yourselves, of all creatures the weakest, could never be made captive by means of bonds that are invisible but only by such as have been well made of steel and brass. Your bodies, to be sure, being solid and for the most part composed of earth, require bonds of that kind to master them; but since soul is invisible and delicate by nature, why might it not get bonds of like description? But you have made for yourselves stubborn, adamantine bonds, contriving them by any and every means, surpassing even Daedalus himself in your craft and in your eagerness to insure that every particle of your soul shall have been fettered and none of it be free or independent. [9] For what were the dungeon of the Cnossians and the crooked windings of the Labyrinth compared to the crookedness and the intricacy of folly? What was the Sicilian prison of the Athenian captives, who were cast into a sort of rocky pit? What was the Ceadas of the Spartans, or the ash-filled room that the Persians had, or, by Zeus, what were the cruel fathers of certain maidens, who, as the poets tell us,

  Immured them in prison cells of encircling bronze?

  But, methinks, I too am no longer acting sensibly in giving more space in my remarks to the misfortunes of mankind than to the disgraceful, odious slavery in which you all have been enslaved, a slavery from which men cannot escape by providing themselves with fine threads by the aid of a foolish maiden, as the famous Theseus is said to have escaped in safety from Crete — at least, I fancy, not unless Athena herself were to lend her aid and join in the rescue. [10] For if I should wish to name all the prisons and the bonds of witless, wretched human beings by means of which you have made yourselves prisoners, possibly you would think me an exceedingly disagreeable and sorry poet for composing tragedies on your own misfortunes. For it is not merely with bonds such as confine those whom you consider criminals — bonds about neck and arms and legs — but with a special bond for the belly and for each of the other parts that they have been made captive, and with a constraint which is both varied and complex; moreover, I believe that any one who had seen the spectacle would have been delighted by it and would exceedingly admire the conceit.

  [11] For first, I fancy, there comes to each a mistress who is in other respects harsh and ill-disposed and treacherous, but in appearance cheerful and with a smile for all,

  A smile of portent grim,

  and in her hands she bears fetters to match her nature, flowery and soft at first glance, such as those with which one might expect that kings or tyrants have been bound; yet nothing is more grievous than these bonds, nothing clings more closely and exerts more pressure. [12] After her there comes a second, bearing
a sort of collar of gold or silver. Having put this about their necks, she drags men in private station around every land and sea, yes, and kings as well, according to Hesiod, and she drags generals of cities to the gates, so as to open them and act the traitor. And yet she professes to be solicitous for these whom she destroys, and to be making them happy — just as once upon a time Cyrus bound Astyages with golden fetters, as being, evidently, solicitous for his grandfather!

  [13] But it would be a huge undertaking to enumerate all the varieties of the fetters. Still, one variety deserves not to be overlooked, the most amazing of them all and the most complicated, one carried by the harshest mistress, a combination of gold and silver and all sorts of stones and pebbles and horns and tusks and shells of animals and, furthermore, purple dyes and countless other things, a sort of costly, marvellous necklace which she had contrived, imitating in it many patterns and forms — crowns and sceptres and diadems and lofty thrones — just as the over-subtle craftsmen in fashioning certain couches or doors or ceilings of houses contrive to make them appear something different from what they are; I mean, for example, making bosses on doors resemble heads of animals, and likewise with bosses on columns. [14] And, furthermore, in this collar are found noise and sound of every kind, both of clapping hands and of clucking tongues. So this collar, in turn, is placed about the necks of both demagogues and kings. But let us not ourselves be carried along too far by our simile, as if actually following a word-phantom, as Homer caused Achilles to go a long way off in following the phantom of Agenor. This will suffice.

  ENCOMIUM ON HAIR

  Translated by J. W. Cohoon

  Synesius’ Encomium on Baldness: Dio of the golden tongue has composed a discourse entitled An Encomium on Hair, which is a work of such brilliance that the inevitable result of the speech is to make a bald man feel ashamed. For the speech joins forces with nature; and by nature we all desire to be beautiful, an ambition whose realization is greatly assisted by the hair to which from boyhood nature has accustomed us. In my own case, for example, even when the dreadful plague was just beginning and a hair fell off, I was smitten to my inmost heart, and when the attack was pressed with greater vigour, hair after hair dropping out, and ultimately even two or three together, and the war was being waged with fury, my head becoming utterly ravaged, then indeed I thought myself to be the victim of more grievous injury than the Athenians suffered at the hands of Archidamus when he cut down the trees of the Acharnians, and presently, without my so intending, I was turned into a Euboean, one of the tribe which the poet marshalled against Troy “with flowing locks behind.”

  At this stage what god, what spirit, did I pass by without arraignment? I even set myself to composing a eulogy of Epicurus, not that I held the same views about the gods as he, but rather because I aimed to make them smart for it to the best of my poor powers. For I said, “Where are the tokens of their providence in treating the individual contrary to his deserts? For what crime of mine dooms me to appear less comely in women’s eyes? It is nothing terrible if I am to appear so to the women of the neighbourhood — for so far as love is concerned I might with fullest justice lay claim to the prize for continence, even against Bellerophon — but even a mother, yes, even sisters, I am told, attach some importance to the beauty of their men. And Parysatis made this plain by growing cold toward Artaxerxes who was king because of Cyrus who was beautiful.”

  Thus, then, I cried aloud in indignation, and I made no light matter of my misfortune. But when time had made it more familiar and reason, too, entering as contender, rose up to give battle against my suffering, and when little by little that suffering was yielding ground, then at last for these reasons I was more at ease and beginning to recover; but now this very Dio has caused the flood of my distress to flow afresh, and it has returned to attack me in company with an advocate. But against two adversaries, as the saying is, not even Heracles could contend, since when the Molionidae fell upon him from ambush he did not endure the attack. Nay, even in his struggle with the Hydra, though for a time they were locked in single combat, yet when the crab came to her aid Heracles might even have cried quits, had he not enlisted Iolaüs against them as ally. I too, methinks, have had much the same experience at the hands of Dio, though I have no nephew Iolaüs. Once more, therefore, quite forgetful of myself and my reasonings, I am composing laments, mourning my lost head of hair.

  But since you are the most excellent of bald-heads and are apparently a man of mettle, seeing that you do not even give a thought to your misfortune but, when pease porridge has been served and an inspection of foreheads is in progress, even call attention to yourself, as if priding yourself, forsooth, upon some blessing, therefore endure with patience Dio’s discourse and, as the saying goes, keep your heart in obedience, just as Odysseus when confronted with the misconduct of the women remained undaunted; so do you too endeavour to be undismayed by Dio. Ah, but you couldn’t. What’s that you say? You will indeed be able? Well then, listen. But there is no need to unroll the parchment; instead I will recite the speech myself. For in fact it does not contain many lines; yet it is a polished composition, and its beauty lingers in my memory, so that not even if I wished to do so could I forget.

  Dio’s Encomium on Hair:º “Having arisen at dawn and having addressed the gods, as is my wont, I proceeded to attend to my hair; for in truth my health, as it happened, was rather feeble and my hair had been too long neglected. At any rate, most of it had become quite matted and tangled, as happens with the knots of wool that dangle about the legs of sheep — though these, of course, are far more stubborn, having been twisted together out of strands that are finer.

  “Well, my hair was a wild and grievous sight to behold, and it was proving difficult to get it loosened up, and most of it threatened to tear out and resisted my efforts. Accordingly it occurred to me to praise the hair-lovers, who, being beauty-lovers and prizing their locks most of all, attend to them in no casual manner, but keep a sort of reed always in the hair itself, wherewith they comb it whenever they are at leisure; moreover — the most unpleasant thing of all — while sleeping on the ground they are careful never to let their hair touch the earth, placing a small prop of wood beneath their head so as to keep it as far as possible from the earth, and they are more concerned to keep their hair clean than they are to enjoy sweet sleep. The reason, it would seem, is that hair makes them both beautiful and at the same time terrifying, while sleep, however sweet it be, makes them both sluggish and devoid of caution.

  “And it seems to me that the Spartans, too, do not disregard a matter of such importance, for on that memorable occasion, on their arrival before the great and terrible battle, at a time when they alone among the Greeks were to withstand the attack of the Great King, three hundred in number as they were, they sat down and dressed their locks. And Homer, too, methinks, believed that sort of thing deserved fullest attention. At least he does not often praise his beauties for their eyes, nor does he think that by so doing he will best set forth their beauty. Accordingly, he praises the eyes of none of his heroes except Agamemnon, just as he praises the rest of his body also; moreover, he applies the term ‘flashing-eyed,’ not to the Greeks alone, but just as much to Agamemnon himself, using the epithet common to the Greeks in general; on the other hand, he praises everybody for his hair. First of all take Achilles, of whom he says,

  She seized Peleides by his flaxen hair,

  then Menelaüs, whom he calls ‘blonde’ for his hair. And Hector’s hair he mentions in these words,

  And all about his blue-black tresses swept.

  Indeed, on the death of Euphorbus, the most beautiful of the Trojans, Homer mourned nothing else of his, for he said,

  His locks, so like the Graces’, were wet with blood,

  His braids with gold and silver tightly claspt.

  The same is true of Odysseus, when the poet wishes to exhibit him rendered beautiful by Athena; at any rate he says,

  Blue-black his locks had grown.
/>   And again of the same person,

  Down from his head she caused the curly locks

  To fall, like bloom of hyacinth.

  “Moreover, the adornment afforded by the hair, to judge by Homer, seems to be more suited to the men than to the women. At any rate, when descanting on feminine beauty, he is not found to mention hair so often; for even with the gods he praises the female deities in different fashion — for it is ‘golden Aphroditê’ and ‘great-eyed Hera’ and ‘Thetis of the silver feet’ — but with Zeus he praises most of all his hair:

  And toward her streamed the god’s ambrosial locks.”

  There you have the words of Dio.

  FRAGMENTS

  Translated by J. W. Cohoon

  CONTENTS

  SAYINGS

  DOMESTIC AFFAIRS

  MISCELLANEOUS

  LETTERS

  1. TO RUFUS

  2. TO RUFUS

  3. TO EUSEBIUS

  4. TO THE SAME

  5. TO SABINIANUS

  SAYINGS

  [1] A Spartan woman, when her son had been lamed on the field of battle and was chafing on that account, remarked, “Grieve not, my child, for at every step you will be reminded of your own valour.”

  [2] “Reproof,” Diogenes was wont to say, “is another’s blessing.”

  [3] One of the youths who were disciples of Diogenes, when questioned by him, remained silent. But Diogenes remarked, “Do you not believe that it is to be expected of the same man that he should know, not only what he should say and when, but also what he should refrain from saying and before whom?”