The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Select one worthy object,
So shall you best the endless prate of silly men reprove.—
And the following are quoted as sayings of his:—“God is the most ancient
of all things, for he had no birth: the world is the most beautiful of
things, for it is the work of God: place is the greatest of things, for
it contains all things: intellect is the swiftest of things, for it runs
through everything: necessity is the strongest of things, for it rules
everything: time is the wisest of things, for it finds out everything.”
He said also that there was no difference between life and death. “Why,
then,” said some one to him, “do not you die?” “Because,” said he, “it
does make no difference.” A man asked him which was made first, night or
day, and he replied, “Night was made first by one day.” Another man asked
him whether a man who did wrong, could escape the notice of the Gods.
“No, not even if he thinks wrong,” said he. An adulterer inquired of him
whether he should swear that he had not committed adultery. “Perjury,”
said he, “is no worse than adultery.” When he was asked what was very
difficult, he said, “To know one’s self.” And what was easy, “To advise
another.” What was most pleasant? “To be successful.” To the question,
“What is the divinity?” he replied, “That which has neither beginning
nor end.” When asked what hard thing he had seen, he said, “An old man
a tyrant.” When the question was put to him how a man might most easily
endure misfortune, he said, “If he saw his enemies more unfortunate
still.” When asked how men might live most virtuously and most justly,
he said, “If we never do ourselves what we blame in others.” To the
question, “Who was happy?” he made answer. “He who is healthy in his
body, easy in his circumstances, and well-instructed as to his mind.” He
said that men ought to remember those friends who were absent as well as
those who were present, and not to care about adorning their faces, but
to be beautified by their studies. “Do not,” said he, “get rich by evil
actions, and let not any one ever be able to reproach you with speaking
against those who partake of your friendship. All the assistance that
you give to your parents, the same you have a right to expect from your
children.” He said that the reason of the Nile overflowing was, that
its streams were beaten back by the Etesian winds blowing in a contrary
direction.
X. Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, says, that Thales was born in the
first year of the thirty-fifth Olympiad; and he died at the age of
seventy-eight years, or according to the statement of Sosicrates, at the
age of ninety, for he died in the fifty-eighth Olympiad, having lived in
the time of Crœsus, to whom he promised that he would enable him to pass
the Halys without a bridge, by turning the course of the river.
XI. There have also been other men of the name of Thales, as Demetrius
of Magnesia says, in his Treatise on People and Things of the same name;
of whom five are particularly mentioned, an orator of Calatia of a very
affected style of eloquence; a painter of Sicyon, a great man; the third
was one who lived in very ancient times, in the age of Homer and Hesiod
and Lycurgus; the fourth is a man who is mentioned by Duris in his work
on Painting; the fifth is a more modern person, of no great reputation,
who is mentioned by Dionysius in his Criticisms.
XII. But this wise Thales died while present as a spectator at a
gymnastic contest, being worn out with heat and thirst and weakness, for
he was very old, and the following inscription was placed on his tomb:—
You see this tomb is small—but recollect,
The fame of Thales reaches to the skies.
I have also myself composed this epigram on him in the first book of my
epigrams or poems in various metres:—
O mighty sun, our wisest Thales sat
Spectator of the games, when you did seize upon him;
But you were right to take him near yourself,
Now that his aged sight could scarcely reach to heaven.
XIII. The apophthegm, “know yourself.” is his; though Antisthenes in
his Successions, says that it belongs to Phemonoe, but that Chilo
appropriated it as his own.
XIV. Now concerning the seven, (for it is well here to speak of them
all together,) the following traditions are handed down. Damon the
Cyrenæan, who wrote about the philosophers, reproaches them all, but
most especially the seven. And Anaximenes says, that they all applied
themselves to poetry. But Dicæarchus says, that they were neither wise
men nor philosophers, but merely shrewd men, who had studied legislation.
And Archetimus, the Syracusian, wrote an account of their having a
meeting at the palace of Cypselus, at which he says that he himself was
present. Ephorus says that they all except Thales met at the court of
Crœsus. And some say that they also met at the Pandionium,[8] and at
Corinth, and at Delphi. There is a good deal of disagreement between
different writers with respect to their apophthegms, as the same one is
attributed by them to various authors. For instance there is the epigram:—
Chilo, the Spartan sage, this sentence said:
Seek no excess—all timely things are good.
There is also a difference of opinion with respect to their number.
Leander inserts in the number instead of Cleobulus and Myson, Leophantus
Gorsias, a native of either Lebedos or Ephesus; and Epimenides, the
Cretan; Plato, in his Protagoras, reckons Myson among them instead
of Periander. And Ephorus mentions Anacharsis in the place of Myson;
some also add Pythagoras to the number. Dicæarchus speaks of four, as
universally agreed upon, Thales, Bias, Pittacus, and Solon; and then
enumerates six more, of whom we are to select three, namely, Aristodemus,
Pamphilus, Chilo the Lacedæmonian, Cleobulus, Anacharsis, and Periander.
Some add Acusilaus of Argos, the son of Cabas, or Scabras. But Hermippus,
in his Treatise on the Wise Men says that there were altogether
seventeen, out of whom different authors selected different individuals
to make up the seven. These seventeen were Solon, Thales, Pittacus, Bias,
Chilo, Myson, Cleobulus, Periander, Anacharsis, Acusilaus, Epimenides,
Leophantus, Pherecydes, Aristodemus, Pythagoras, Lasus the son of
Charmantides, or Sisymbrinus, or as Aristoxenus calls him the son of
Chabrinus, a citizen of Hermione, and Anaxagoras. But Hippobotus in his
Description of the Philosophers enumerates among them Orpheus, Linus,
Solon, Periander, Anacharsis, Cleobulus, Myson, Thales, Bias, Pittacus,
Epicharmus, and Pythagoras.
XV. The following letters are preserved as having been written by Thales:—
THALES TO PHERECYDES.
I hear that you are disposed, as no other Ionian has been, to discourse
to the Greeks about divine things, and perhaps it will be wiser of you to
reserve for your own friends what you write rather than to entrust it to
any chance people, without any advantage. If therefore it is agreeable to
you, I should be glad to become a pupil of yours as to the matters about
which you write; and if you invite me I will come to you to Syros; for
Solon the Athenian and I must be out of our senses if we sailed to Crete
to investigate the history of that country, and to Egypt for the purpose
of conferring with the priests and astronomers who are to be found there,
and yet are unwilling to make a voyage to you; for Solon will come
too, if you will give him leave, for as you are fond of your present
habitation you are not likely to come to Ionia, nor are you desirous of
seeing strangers; but you rather, as I hope, devote yourself wholly to
the occupation of writing. We, on the other hand, who write nothing,
travel over all Greece and Asia.
THALES TO SOLON.
XVI. If you should leave Athens it appears to me that you would find
a home at Miletus among the colonists of Athens more suitably than
anywhere else, for here there are no annoyances of any kind. And if you
are indignant because we Milesians are governed by a tyrant, (for you
yourself hate all despotic rulers), still at all events you will find it
pleasant to live with us for your companions. Bias has also written to
invite you to Priene, and if you prefer taking up your abode in the city
of the Prieneans, then we ourselves will come thither and settle near you.
LIFE OF SOLON.
I. Solon the son of Execestides, a native of Salamis, was the first
person who introduced among the Athenians, an ordinance for the
lowering[9] of debts; for this was the name given to the release of the
bodies and possessions of the debtors. For men used to borrow on the
security of their own persons, and many became slaves in consequence of
their inability to pay; and as seven talents were owed to him as a part
of his paternal inheritance when he succeeded to it, he was the first
person who made a composition with his debtors, and who exhorted the
other men who had money owing to them to do likewise, and this ordinance
was called σεισάχθεια; and the reason why is plain. After that he enacted
his other laws, which it would take a long time to enumerate; and he
wrote them on wooden revolving tablets.
II. But what was his most important act of all was, when there had been
a great dispute about his native land Salamis, between the Athenians and
Megarians, and when the Athenians had met with many disasters in war,
and had passed a decree that if any one proposed to the people to go to
war for the sake of Salamis he should be punished with death, he then
pretended to be mad and putting on a crown rushed into the market place,
and there he recited to the Athenians by the agency of a crier, the
elegies which he had composed, and which were all directed to the subject
of Salamis, and by these means he excited them; and so they made war
again upon the Megarians and conquered them by means of Solon. And the
elegies which had the greatest influence on the Athenians were these:—
Would that I were a man of Pholegandros,[10]
Or small Sicinna,[11] rather than of Athens:
For soon this will a common proverb be,
That’s an Athenian who won’t fight for Salamis.
And another was:—
Let’s go and fight for lovely Salamis,
And wipe off this our present infamy.
He also persuaded them to take possession of the Thracian Chersonesus,
and in order that it might appear that the Athenians had got possession
of Salamis not by force alone, but also with justice, he opened some
tombs, and showed that the corpses buried in them were all turned towards
the east, according to the Athenian fashion of sepulture; likewise the
tombs themselves all looked east, and the titles of the boroughs to which
the dead belonged were inscribed on them, which was a custom peculiar to
the Athenians. Some also say that it was he who added to the catalogue of
Homer, after the lines:—
With these appear the Salaminian bands,
Whom Telamon’s gigantic son commands—
These other verses:—
In twelve black ships to Troy they steer their course,
And with the great Athenians join their force.[12]
III. And ever after this time the people was willingly obedient to him,
and was contented to be governed by him; but he did not choose to be
their ruler, and moreover, as Sosicrates relates, he, as far as in him
lay, hindered also his relative Pisistratus from being so, when he saw
that he was inclined to such a step. Rushing into one of the assemblies
armed with a spear and shield, he forewarned the people of the design
of Pisistratus, and not only that but told them that he was prepared to
assist them; and these were his words: “Ye men of Athens, I am wiser
than some of you, and braver than others. Wiser than those of you who do
not perceive the treachery of Pisistratus; and braver than those who are