The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
him one of his greatest friends.
IV. But after some time, when he had returned to Scythia, and shown a
purpose to abrogate the existing institutions of his country, being
exceedingly earnest, in his fondness for Grecian customs, he was shot
by his brother while he was out hunting, and so he died, saying, “That
he was saved on account of the sense and eloquence which he had brought
from Greece, but slain in consequence of envy in his own family.”
Some, however, relate that he was slain while performing some Grecian
sacrificatory rites. And we have written this epigram on him:—
When Anacharsis to his land returned,
His mind was turn’d, so that he wished to make
His countrymen all live in Grecian fashion—
So, ere his words had well escaped his lips,
A winged arrow bore him to the Gods.
V. He said that a vine bore three bunches of grapes. The first the bunch
of pleasure; the second, that of drunkenness; the third, that of disgust.
He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were
skilful in a thing contend together; but those who have no such skill act
as judges of the contest. Being once asked how a person might be made not
fond of drinking, he said, “If he always keeps in view the indecorous
actions of drunken men.” He used also to say, that he marvelled how the
Greeks, who make laws against those who behave with insolence, honour
Athletæ because of their beating one another. When he had been informed
that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, he said, “That those
who sailed in one were removed by just that distance from death.” He used
to say that oil was a provocative of madness, “because Athletæ, when
anointed in the oil, attacked one another with mad fury.”
“How is it,” he used to say, “that those who forbid men to speak falsely,
tell lies openly in their vintners’ shops?” It was a saying of his, that
he “marvelled why the Greeks, at the beginning of a banquet, drink out of
small cups, but when they have drunk a good deal, then they turn to large
goblets.” And this inscription is on his statues—“Restrain your tongues,
your appetites, and your passions.” He was once asked if the flute was
known among the Scythians; and he said, “No, nor the vine either.” At
another time, the question was put to him, which was the safest kind of
vessel? and he said, “That which is brought into dock.” He said, too,
that the strangest things that he had seen among the Greeks was, that
“They left the smoke[17] in the mountains, and carried the wood down to
their cities.” Once, when he was asked, which were the more numerous, the
living or the dead? he said, “Under which head do you class those who are
at sea.” Being reproached by an Athenian for being a Scythian, he said,
“Well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your
country.” When he was asked what there was among men which was both good
and bad, he replied, “The tongue.” He used to say “That it was better
to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for
nothing.” Another saying of his was, that “The forum was an established
place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously.” Being once
insulted by a young man at a drinking party, he said, “O, young man, if
now that you are young you cannot bear wine, when you are old you will
have to bear water.”
VI. Of things which are of use in life, he is said to have been the
inventor of the anchor, and of the potter’s wheel.
VII. The following letter of his is extant:—
ANACHARSIS TO CRŒSUS
O king of the Lydians, I am come to the country of the Greeks, in order
to become acquainted with their customs and institutions; but I have
no need of gold, and shall be quite contented if I return to Scythia a
better man than I left it. However I will come to Sardis, as I think it
very desirable to become a friend of yours.
LIFE OF MYSON.
I. Myson, the son of Strymon, as Sosicrates states, quoting Hermippus as
his authority, a Chenean by birth, of some Œtæan or Laconian village,
is reckoned one of the seven wise men, and they say that his father was
tyrant of his country. It is said by some writers that, when Anacharsis
inquired if any one was wiser than he, the priestess at Delphi gave the
answer which has been already quoted in the life of Thales in reference
to Chilo:—
I say that Myson the Œtæan sage,
The citizen of Chen, is wiser far
In his deep mind than you.
And that he, having taken a great deal of trouble, came to the village,
and found him in the summer season fitting a handle to a plough, and he
addressed him, “O Myson, this is not now the season for the plough.”
“Indeed,” said he, “it is a capital season for preparing one;” but others
say, that the words of the oracle are the Etean sage, and they raise
the question, what the word Etean means. So Parmenides says, that it is
a borough of Laconia, of which Myson was a native; but Sosicrates, in
his Successions says, that he was an Etean on his father’s side, and a
Chenean by his mother’s. But Euthyphron, the son of Heraclides Ponticus,
says that he was a Cretan, for that Etea was a city of Crete.
II. And Anaxilaus says that he was an Arcadian. Hipponax also mentions
him, saying, “And Myson, whom Apollo stated to be the most prudent of
all men.” But Aristoxenus, in his Miscellanies, says that his habits were
not very different from those of Timon and Apemantus, for that he was
a misanthrope. And that accordingly he was one day found in Lacedæmon
laughing by himself in a solitary place, and when some one came up to him
on a sudden and asked him why he laughed when he was by himself, he said,
“For that very reason.” Aristoxenus also says that he was not thought
much of, because he was not a native of any city, but only of a village,
and that too one of no great note; and according to him, it is on account
of this obscurity of his that some people attribute his sayings and
doings to Pisistratus the tyrant, but he excepts Plato the philosopher,
for he mentions Myson in his Protagoras, placing him among the wise men
instead of Periander.
III. It used to be a common saying of his that men ought not to seek for
things in words, but for words in things; for that things are not made on
account of words, but that words are put together for the sake of things.
IV. He died when he had lived ninety-seven years.
LIFE OF EPIMENIDES.
I. Epimenides, as Theopompus and many other writers tell us, was the son
of a man named Phædrus, but some call him the son of Dosiadas; and others
of Agesarchus. He was a Cretan by birth, of the city of Gnossus; but
because he let his hair grow long, he did not look like a Cretan.
II. He once, when he was sent by his father into the fields to look for a
sheep, turned out of the road at mid-day and lay down in a certain cave
and fell asleep, and slept there fifty-seven years; and after that, when
he awoke, he went on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been
taking a short nap; but as he could not find it he went on to the field
and there he found everything changed, and the estate in another person’s
possession, and so he came back again to the city in great perplexity,
and as he was going into his own house he met some people who asked him
who he was, until at last he found his younger brother who had now
become an old man, and from him he learnt all the truth.
III. And when he was recognized he was considered by the Greeks as
a person especially beloved by the Gods, on which account when the
Athenians were afflicted by a plague, and the priestess at Delphi
enjoined them to purify their city, they sent a ship and Nicias the son
of Niceratus to Crete, to invite Epimenides to Athens; and he, coming
there in the forty-sixth Olympiad, purified the city and eradicated
the plague for that time; he took some black sheep and some white ones
and led them up to the Areopagus, and from thence he let them wherever
they chose, having ordered the attendants to follow them, and wherever
any one of them lay down they were to sacrifice him to the God who was
the patron of the spot, and so the evil was stayed; and owing to this
one may even now find in the different boroughs of the Athenians altars
without names, which are a sort of memorial of the propitiation of the
Gods that then took place. Some said that the cause of the plague was
the pollution contracted by the city in the matter of Cylon, and that
Epimenides pointed out to the Athenians how to get rid of it, and that in
consequence they put to death two young men, Cratinus and Ctesibius, and
that thus the pestilence was put an end to.
III. And the Athenians passed a vote to give him a talent and a ship to
convey him back to Crete, but he would not accept the money, but made a
treaty of friendship and alliance between the Gnossians and Athenians.
IV. And not long after he had returned home he died, as Phlegon relates
in his book on long-lived people, after he had lived a hundred and
fifty-seven years; but as the Cretans report he had lived two hundred and
ninety-nine; but as Xenophones the Colophonian, states that he had heard
it reported, he was a hundred and fifty-four years old when he died.
V. He wrote a poem of five thousand verses on the Generation and Theogony
of the Curetes and Corybantes, and another poem of six thousand five
hundred verses on the building of the Argo and the expedition of Jason to
Colchis.
VI. He also wrote a treatise in prose on the Sacrifices in Crete, and
the Cretan Constitution, and on Minos and Rhadamanthus, occupying four
thousand lines.
VI. Likewise he built at Athens the temple which is there dedicated to
the venerable goddesses, as Lobon the Augur says in his book on Poets;
and he is said to have been the first person who purified houses and
lands, and who built temples.
VII. There are some people who assert that he did not sleep for the
length of time that has been mentioned above, but that he was absent
from his country for a considerable period, occupying himself with the
anatomisation and examination of roots.
VIII. A letter of his is quoted, addressed to Solon the lawgiver, in
which he discusses the constitution which Minos gave the Cretans. But
Demetrius the Magnesian, in his treatise on Poets and Prose writers of
the same name as one another, attempts to prove that the letter is a
modern one, and is not written in the Cretan but in the Attic dialect,
and the new Attic too.
IX. But I have also discovered another letter of his which runs thus:—
EPIMENIDES TO SOLON.
Be of good cheer, my friend; for if Pisistratus had imposed his laws on
the Athenians, they being habituated to slavery and not accustomed to
good laws previously, he would have maintained his dominion for ever,
succeeding easily in enslaving his fellow countrymen; but as it is, he
is lording it over men who are no cowards, but who remember the precepts
of Solon and are indignant at their bonds, and who will not endure the
supremacy of a tyrant. But if Pisistratus does possess the city to-day,
still I have no expectation that the supreme power will ever descend to
his children. For it is impossible that men who have lived in freedom and
in the enjoyment of most excellent laws should be slaves permanently; but
as for yourself, do not you go wandering about at random, but come and
visit me, for here there is no supreme ruler to be formidable to you; but
if while you are wandering about any of the friends of Pisistratus should
fall in with you, I fear you might suffer some misfortune.
He then wrote thus:—
X. But Demetrius says that some writers report that he used to receive
food from the nymphs and keep it in a bullock’s hoof; and that eating it
in small quantities he never required any evacuations, and was never