113. Stilpo, a citizen of Megara in Greece, was a pupil of some of the followers of Euclides, although others make him a pupil of Euclides himself, and furthermore of Thrasymachus of Corinth, who was the friend of Ichthyas, according to Heraclides. And so far did he excel all the rest in inventiveness and sophistry that nearly the whole of Greece was attracted to him and joined the school of Megara. On this let me cite the exact words of Philippus the Megarian philosopher: “for from Theophrastus he drew away the theorist Metrodorus and Timagoras of Gela, from Aristotle the Cyrenaic philosopher, Clitarchus, and Simmias; and as for the dialecticians themselves, he gained over Paeonius from Aristides; Diphilus of Bosphorus, the son of Euphantus, and Myrmex, the son of Exaenetus, who had both come to refute him, he made his devoted adherents.” 114. And besides these he won over Phrasidemus the Peripatetic, an accomplished physicist, and Alcimus the rhetorician, the first orator in all Greece; Crates, too, and many others he got into his toils, and, what is more, along with these, he carried off Zeno the Phoenician.
He was also an authority on politics.
He married a wife, and had a mistress named Nicarete, as Onetor has somewhere stated. He had a profligate daughter, who was married to his friend Simmias of Syracuse. And, as she would not live by rule, some one told Stilpo that she was a disgrace to him. To this he replied, “Not so, any more than I am an honour to her.”
115. Ptolemy Soter, they say, made much of him, and when he had got possession of Megara, offered him a sum of money and invited him to return with him to Egypt. But Stilpo would only accept a very moderate sum, and he declined the proposed journey, and removed to Aegina until Ptolemy set sail. Again, when Demetrius, the son of Antigonus, had taken Megara, he took measures that Stilpo’s house should be preserved and all his plundered property restored to him. But when he requested that a schedule of the lost property should be drawn up, Stilpo denied that he had lost anything which really belonged to him, for no one had taken away his learning, while he still had his eloquence and knowledge.
116. And conversing upon the duty of doing good to men he made such an impression on the king that he became eager to hear him. There is a story that he once used the following argument concerning the Athena of Phidias: “Is it not Athena the daughter of Zeus who is a goddess?” And when the other said “Yes,” he went on, “But this at least is not by Zeus but by Phidias,” and, this being granted, he concluded, “This then is not a god.” For this he was summoned before the Areopagus; he did not deny the charge, but contended that the reasoning was correct, for that Athena was no god but a goddess; it was the male divinities who were gods. However, the story goes that the Areopagites ordered him to quit the city, and that thereupon Theodorus, whose nickname was Θεός, said in derision, “Whence did Stilpo learn this? and how could he tell whether she was a god or a goddess?” But in truth Theodorus was most impudent, and Stilpo most ingenious.
117. When Crates asked him whether the gods take delight in prayers and adorations, he is said to have replied, “Don’t put such a question in the street, simpleton, but when we are alone!” It is said that Bion, when he was asked the same question whether there are gods, replied:
Will you not scatter the crowd from me, O much-enduring elder?
In character Stilpo was simple and unaffected, and he could readily adapt himself to the plain man. For instance, when Crates the Cynic did not answer the question put to him and only insulted the questioner, “I knew,” said Stilpo, “that you would utter anything rather than what you ought.” 118. And once when Crates held out a fig to him when putting a question, he took the fig and ate it. Upon which the other exclaimed, “O Heracles, I have lost the fig,” and Stilpo remarked, “Not only that but your question as well, for which the fig was payment in advance.” Again, on seeing Crates shrivelled with cold in the winter, he said, “You seem to me, Crates, to want a new coat,” i.e. to be wanting in sense as well. And the other being annoyed replied with the following burlesque:
And Stilpo I saw enduring toilsome woes in Megara, where men say that the bed of Typhos is. There he would ever be wrangling, and many comrades about him, wasting time in the verbal pursuit of virtue.
119. It is said that at Athens he so attracted the public that people would run together from the workshops to look at him. And when some one said, “Stilpo, they stare at you as if you were some strange creature.” “No, indeed,” said he, “but as if I were a genuine man.” And, being a consummate master of controversy, he used to demolish even the ideas, and say that he who asserted the existence of Man meant no individual; he did not mean this man or that. For why should he mean the one more than the other? Therefore neither does he mean this individual man. Again, “vegetable” is not what is shown to me, for vegetable existed ten thousand years ago. Therefore this is not vegetable. The story goes that while in the middle of an argument with Crates he hurried off to buy fish, and, when Crates tried to detain him and urged that he was leaving the argument, his answer was, “Not I. I keep the argument though I am leaving you; for the argument will remain, but the fish will soon be sold.”
120. Nine dialogues of his are extant written in frigid style, Moschus , Aristippus or Callias , Ptolemy , Chaerecrates , Metrocles , Anaximenes , Epigenes , To his Daughter , Aristotle . Heraclides relates that Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school, was one of Stilpo’s pupils; Hermippus that Stilpo died at a great age after taking wine to hasten his end.
I have written an epitaph on him also:
Surely you know Stilpo the Megarian; old age and then disease laid him low, a formidable pair. But he found in wine a charioteer too strong for that evil team; he quaffed it eagerly and was borne along.
He was also ridiculed by Sophilus the Comic poet in his drama The Wedding :
What Charinus says is just Stilpo’s stoppers.
121. Crito was a citizen of Athens. He was most affectionate in his disposition towards Socrates, and took such care of him that none of his wants were left unsupplied. Further, his sons Critobulus, Hermogenes, Epigenes and Ctesippus were pupils of Socrates. Crito too wrote seventeen dialogues which are extant in a single volume under the titles:
That men are not made good by instruction.
Concerning superfluity.
What is expedient, or The Statesman.
Of Beauty.
On Doing Ill.
On Tidiness.
On Law.
Of that which is Divine.
On Arts.
Of Society.
Of Wisdom.
Protagoras, or The Statesman.
On Letters.
Of Poetry.
Of Learning.
On Knowing, or On Science.
What is Knowledge.
122. Simon was a citizen of Athens and a cobbler. When Socrates came to his workshop and began to converse, he used to make notes of all that he could remember. And this is why people apply the term “leathern” to his dialogues. These dialogues are thirty-three in number, extant in a single volume:
Of the Gods.
Of the Good.
On the Beautiful.
What is the Beautiful.
On the Just: two dialogues.
Of Virtue, that it cannot be taught.
Of Courage: three dialogues.
On Law.
On Guiding the People.
Of Honour.
Of Poetry.
On Good Eating.
On Love.
On Philosophy.
On Knowledge.
On Music.
On Poetry.
What is the Beautiful
123. On Teaching.
On the Art of Conversation
Of Judging.
Of Being.
Of Number.
On Diligence.
On Efficiency.
On Greed.
On Pretentiousness.
On the Beautiful
Others are:
On Deliberation.
On Reason, or On Expediency.
On Doing Ill.
He was the first, so we are told, who introduced the Socratic dialogues as a form of conversation. When Pericles promised to support him and urged him to come to him, his reply was, “I will not part with my free speech for money.”
124. There was another Simon, who wrote treatises On Rhetoric ; another, a physician, in the time of Seleucus Nicanor; and a third who was a sculptor.
Glaucon was a citizen of Athens. Nine dialogues of his are extant in a single volume:
Phidylus.
Euripides.
Amyntichus.
Euthias.
Lysithides.
Aristophanes.
Cephalus.
Anaxiphemus.
Menexenus.
There are also extant thirty-two others, which are considered spurious.
Simmias was a citizen of Thebes. Twenty-three dialogues of his are extant in a single volume:
On Wisdom.
On Reasoning.
On Music.
On Verses.
Of Courage.
On Philosophy.
Of Truth.
On Letters.
On Teaching.
On Art.
On Government.
Of that which is becoming.
Of that which is to be chosen and avoided.
On Friendship.
On Knowledge.
Of the Soul.
On a Good Life.
Of that which is possible.
On Money.
On Life.
What is the beautiful.
On Diligence.
On Love.
125. Cebes was a citizen of Thebes. Three dialogues of his are extant:
The Tablet.
The Seventh Day.
Phrynichus.
Menedemus belonged to Phaedo’s school; he was the son of Clisthenes, a member of the clan called the Theopropidae, of good family, though a builder and a poor man; others say that he was a scenepainter and that Menedemus learnt both trades. Hence, when he had proposed a decree, a certain Alexinius attacked him, declaring that the philosopher was not a proper person to design either a scene or a decree. When Menedemus was dispatched by the Eretrians to Megara on garrison duty, he paid a visit to Plato at the Academy and was so captivated that he abandoned the service of arms. 126. Asclepiades of Phlius drew him away, and he lived at Megara with Stilpo, whose lectures they both attended.
Thence they sailed to Elis, where they joined Anchipylus and Moschus of the school of Phaedo. Down to their time, as was stated in the Life of Phaedo, the school was called the Elian school. Afterwards it was called the Eretrian school, from the city to which my subject belonged.
It would appear that Menedemus was somewhat pompous. Hence Crates burlesques him thus:
Asclepiades the sage of Phlius and the Eretrian bull;
and Timon as follows:
A puffing, supercilious purveyor of humbug.
127. He was a man of such dignity that, when Eurylochus of Casandrea was invited by Antigonus to court along with Cleïppides, a youth of Cyzicus, he declined the invitation, being afraid that Menedemus would hear of it, so caustic and outspoken was he. When a young gallant would have taken liberties with him, he said not a word but picked up a twig and drew an insulting picture on the ground, until all eyes were attracted and the young man, perceiving the insult, made off. When Hierocles, who was in command of the Piraeus, walked up and down along with him in the shrine of Amphiaraus, and talked much of the capture of Eretria, he made no other reply beyond asking him what Antigonus’s object was in treating him as he did.
128. To an adulterer who was giving himself airs he said, “Do you not know that, if cabbage has a good flavour, so for that matter has radish?” Hearing a youth who was very noisy, he said, “See what there is behind you.” When Antigonus consulted him as to whether he should go to a rout, he sent a message to say no more than this, that he was the son of a king. When a stupid fellow related something to him with no apparent object, he inquired if he had a farm. And hearing that he had, and that there was a large stock of cattle on it, he said, “Then go and look after them, lest it should happen that they are ruined and a clever farmer thrown away.” To one who inquired if the good man ever married, he replied, “Do you think me good or not?” The reply being in the affirmative, he said, “Well, I am married.” 129. Of one who affirmed that there were many good things, he inquired how many, and whether he thought there were more than a hundred. Not being able to curb the extravagance of some one who had invited him to dinner, he said nothing when he was invited, but rebuked his host tacitly by confining himself to olives. However, on account of this freedom of speech he was in great peril in Cyprus with his friend Asclepiades when staying at the court of Nicocreon. For when the king held the usual monthly feast and invited these two along with the other philosophers, we are told that Menedemus said that, if the gathering of such men was a good thing, the feast ought to have been held every day; if not, then it was superfluous even on the present occasion. 130. The tyrant having replied to this by saying that on this day he had the leisure to hear philosophers, he pressed the point still more stubbornly, declaring, while the feast was going on, that any and every occasion should be employed in listening to philosophers. The consequence was that, if a certain flute-player had not got them away, they would have been put to death. Hence when they were in a storm in the boat Asclepiades is reported to have said that the fluteplayer through good playing had proved their salvation when the free speech of Menedemus had been their undoing.
He shirked work, it is said, and was indifferent to the fortunes of his school. At least no order could be seen in his classes, and no circle of benches; but each man would listen where he happened to be, walking or sitting, Menedemus himself behaving in the same way. 131. In other respects he is said to have been nervous and careful of his reputation; so much so that, when Menedemus himself and Asclepiades were helping a man who had formerly been a builder to build a house, whereas Asclepiades appeared stripped on the roof passing the mortar, Menedemus would try to hide himself as often as he saw anyone coming. After he took part in public affairs, he was so nervous that, when offering the frankincense, he would actually miss the censer. And once, when Crates stood about him and attacked him for meddling in politics, he ordered certain men to have Crates locked up. But Crates none the less watched him as he went by and, standing on tiptoe, called him a pocket Agamemnon and Hegesipolis.
132. He was also in a way rather superstitious. At all events once, when he was at an inn with Asclepiades and had inadvertently eaten some meat which had been thrown away, he turned sick and pale when he learnt the fact, until Asclepiades rebuked him, saying that it was not the meat which disturbed him but merely his suspicion of it. In all other respects he was magnanimous and liberal. In his habit of body, even in old age, he was as firm and sunburnt in appearance as any athlete, being stout and always in the pink of condition; in stature he was wellproportioned, as may be seen from the statuette in the ancient Stadium at Eretria. For it represents him, intentionally no doubt, almost naked, and displays the greater part of his body.
133. He was fond of entertaining and used to collect numerous parties about him because Eretria was unhealthy; amongst these there would be parties of poets and musicians. He welcomed Aratus also and Lycophron the tragic poet, and Antagoras of Rhodes, but, above all, he applied himself to the study of Homer and, next, the Lyric poets; then to Sophocles, and also to Achaeus, to whom he assigned the second place as a writer of satiric dramas, giving Aeschylus the first. Hence he quoted against his political opponents the following lines:
Ere long the swift is overtaken by the feeble,
And the eagle by the tortoise,
134. which are from the Omphale , a satiric drama of Achaeus. Therefore it is a mistake to say that he had read nothing except the Medea of Euripides, which some have asserted to be the work of Neophron of Sicyon.
He despised the teachers of the school of Plato and Xenocrates as well as the Cyrenaic philosopher Paraebates. He had a great admiration for Stilpo; and on one occasion, when he was questioned about him, he made no other answer than that he was a gentleman. Menedemus was difficult to see through, and in making a bargain it was difficult to get the better of him. He would twist and turn in every direction, and he excelled in inventing objections. He was a great controversialist, according to Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers . In particular he was fond of using the following argument: “Is the one of two things different from the other?” “Yes.” “And is conferring benefits different from the good?” “Yes.” “Then to confer benefits is not good.”
135. It is said that he disallowed negative propositions, converting them into affirmatives, and of these he admitted simple propositions only, rejecting those which are not simple, I mean hypothetical and complex propositions. Heraclides declares that, although in his doctrines he was a Platonist, yet he made sport of dialectic. So that, when Alexinus once inquired if he had left off beating his father, his answer was, “Why, I was not beating him and have not left off”; and upon Alexinus insisting that he ought to have cleared up the ambiguity by a plain “Yes” or “No,” “It would be absurd,” he said, “for me to conform to your rules when I can stop you on the threshold.” And when Bion persistently ran down the soothsayers, Menedemus said he was slaying the slain.
136. On hearing some one say that the greatest good was to get all you want, he rejoined, “To want the right things is a far greater good.” Antigonus of Carystus asserts that he never wrote or composed anything, and so never held firmly by any doctrine. He adds that in discussing questions he was so pugnacious that he would only retire after he had been badly mauled. And yet, though he was so violent in debate, he was as mild as possible in his conduct. For instance, though he made sport of Alexinus and bantered him cruelly, he was nevertheless very kind to him, for, when his wife was afraid that on her journey she might be set upon and robbed, he gave her an escort from Delphi to Chalcis.
137. He was a very warm friend, as is shown by his affection for Asclepiades, which was hardly inferior to the devotion shown by Pylades. But, Asclepiades being the elder, it was said that he was the playwright and Menedemus the actor. They say that once, when Archipolis had given them a cheque for half a talent, they stickled so long over the point as to whose claim came second that neither of them got the money. It is said that they married a mother and her daughter; Asclepiades married the daughter and Menedemus the mother. But after the death of his own wife, Asclepiades took the wife of Menedemus; and afterwards the latter, when he became head of the state, married a rich woman as his second wife. Nevertheless, as they kept one household, Menedemus entrusted his former wife with the care of his establishment. 138. However, Asclepiades died first at a great age at Eretria, having lived with Menedemus economically, though they had ample means. Some time afterwards a favourite of Asclepiades, having come to a party and being refused admittance by the pupils, Menedemus ordered them to admit him, saying that even now, when under the earth, Asclepiades opened the door for him. It was Hipponicus the Macedonian and Agetor of Lamia who were their chief supporters; the one gave each of the two thirty minae, while Hipponicus furnished Menedemus with two thousand drachmae with which to portion his daughters. There were three of them according to Heraclides, his children by a wife who was a native of Oropus.
139. He used to give his parties in this fashion: he would breakfast beforehand with two or three friends and stay until it was late in the day. And in the next place some one would summon the guests who had arrived and who had themselves already dined, so that, if anyone came too soon, he would walk up and down and inquire from those who came out of the house what was on the table and what o’clock it was. If then it was only vegetables or salt fish, they would depart; but if there was meat, they would enter the house. In the summer time a rush mat was put upon each couch, in winter time a sheepskin. The guest brought his own cushion. The loving-cup which was passed round was no larger than a pint cup. The dessert consisted of lupins or beans, sometimes of ripe fruit such as pears, pomegranates, a kind of pulse, or even dried figs. 140. All of these facts are mentioned by Lycophron in his satiric drama entitled Menedemus , which was composed as a tribute to him. Here is a specimen of it:
And after a temperate feast the modest cup was passed round with discretion, and their dessert was temperate discourse for such as cared to listen.
At first he was despised, being called a cynic and a humbug by the Eretrians. But afterwards he was greatly admired, so much so that they entrusted him with the government of the state. He was sent as envoy to Ptolemy and to Lysimachus, being honoured wherever he went. He was, moreover, envoy to Demetrius, and he caused the yearly tribute of two hundred talents which the city used to pay Demetrius to be reduced by fifty talents. And when he was accused to Demetrius of intriguing to hand over the city to Ptolemy, he defended himself in a letter which commences thus: 141. “Menedemus to King Demetrius, greeting. I hear that a report has reached you concerning me.” There is a tradition that one Aeschylus who belonged to the opposite party had made these charges against him. He seems to have behaved with the utmost dignity in the embassy to Demetrius on the subject of Oropus, as Euphantus relates in his Histories . Antigonus too was much attached to him and used to proclaim himself his pupil. And when he vanquished the barbarians near the town of Lysimachia, Menedemus moved a decree in his honour in simple terms and free from flattery, beginning thus: 142. “On the motion of the generals and the councillors – Whereas King Antigonus is returning to his own country after vanquishing the barbarians in battle, and whereas in all his undertakings he prospers according to his will, the senate and the people have decreed . . .”
On these grounds, then, and from his friendship for him in other matters, he was suspected of betraying the city to Antigonus, and, being denounced by Aristodemus, withdrew from Eretria and stayed awhile in Oropus in the temple of Amphiaraus. And, because some golden goblets were missing from the temple, he was ordered to depart by a general vote of the Boeotians, as is stated by Hermippus; and thereupon in despair, after a secret visit to his native city, he took with him his wife and daughters and came to the court of Antigonus, where he died of a broken heart.
143. Heraclides tells quite another story, that he was made councillor of the Eretrians and more than once saved the city from a tyranny by calling in Demetrius – so then he would not be likely to betray the city to Antigonus, but was made the victim of a false charge; that he betook himself to Antigonus and was anxious to regain freedom for his country; that, as Antigonus would not give way, in despair he put an end to his life by abstaining from food for seven days. The account of Antigonus of Carystus is similar. With Persaeus alone he carried on open warfare, for it was thought that, when Antigonus was willing for Menedemus’s sake to restore to the Eretrians their democracy, Persaeus prevented him. 144. Hence on one occasion over the wine Menedemus refuted Persaeus in argument and said, amongst other things, “Such he is as a philosopher but, as a man, the worst of all that are alive or to be born hereafter.”
According to the statement of Heraclides he died in his seventy-fourth year. I have written the following epigram upon him:
I heard of your fate, Menedemus, how, of your own free will, you expired by starving yourself for seven days, a deed right worthy of an Eretrian, but unworthy of a man; but despair was your leader and urged you on.
These then are the disciples of Socrates or their immediate successors. We must now pass to Plato, the founder of the Academy, and his successors, so far as they were men of reputation.
1. Plato was the son of Ariston and a citizen of Athens. His mother was Perictione (or Potone), who traced back her descent to Solon. For Solon had a brother, Dropides; he was the father of Critias, who was the father of Callaeschrus, who was the father of Critias, one of the Thirty, as well as of Glaucon, who was the father of Charmides and Perictione. Thus Plato, the son of this Perictione and Ariston, was in the sixth generation from Solon. And Solon traced his descent to Neleus and Poseidon. His father too is said to be in the direct line from Codrus, the son of Melanthus, and, according to Thrasylus, Codrus and Melanthus also trace their descent from Poseidon.
2. Speusippus in the work entitled Plato’s Funeral Feast , Clearchus in his Encomium on Plato , and Anaxilaïdes in his second book On Philosophers , tell us that there was a story at Athens that Ariston made violent love to Perictione, then in her bloom, and failed to win her; and that, when he ceased to offer violence, Apollo appeared to him in a dream, whereupon he left her unmolested until her child was born.
Apollodorus in his Chronology fixes the date of Plato’s birth in the 88th Olympiad, on the seventh day of the month Thargelion, the same day on which the Delians say that Apollo himself was born. He died, according to Hermippus, at a wedding feast, in the first year of the 108th Olympiad, in his eightyfirst year. 3. Neanthes, however, makes him die at the age of eighty-four. He is thus seen to be six years the junior of Isocrates. For Isocrates was born in the archonship of Lysimachus, Plato in that of Ameinias, the year of Pericles’ death. He belonged to the deme Collytus, as is stated by Antileon in his second book On Dates . He was born, according to some, in Aegina, in the house of Phidiades, the son of Thales, as Favorinus states in his Miscellaneous History , for his father had been sent along with others to Aegina to settle in the island, but returned to Athens when the Athenians were expelled by the Lacedaemonians, who championed the Aeginetan cause. That Plato acted as choregus at Athens, the cost being defrayed by Dion, is stated by Athenodorus in the eighth book of a work entitled Walks . 4. He had two brothers, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a sister, Potone, who was the mother of Speusippus.
He was taught letters in the school of Dionysius, who is mentioned by him in the Rivals . And he learnt gymnastics under Ariston, the Argive wrestler. And from him he received the name of Plato on account of his robust figure, in place of his original name which was Aristocles, after his grandfather, as Alexander informs us in his Successions of Philosophers . But others affirm that he got the name Plato from the breadth of his style, or from the breadth of his forehead, as suggested by Neanthes. Others again affirm that he wrestled in the Isthmian Games – this is stated by Dicaearchus in his first book On Lives – 5. and that he applied himself to painting and wrote poems, first dithyrambs, afterwards lyric poems and tragedies. He had, they say, a weak voice; this is confirmed by Timotheus the Athenian in his book On Lives. It is stated that Socrates in a dream saw a cygnet on his knees, which all at once put forth plumage, and flew away after uttering a loud sweet note. And the next day Plato was introduced as a pupil, and thereupon he recognized in him the swan of his dream.
At first he used to study philosophy in the Academy, and afterwards in the garden at Colonus (as Alexander states in his Successions of Philosophers ), as a follower of Heraclitus. Afterwards, when he was about to compete for the prize with a tragedy, he listened to Socrates in front of the theatre of Dionysus, and then consigned his poems to the flames, with the words:
Come hither, O fire-god, Plato now has need of thee.
6. From that time onward, having reached his twentieth year (so it is said), he was the pupil of Socrates. When Socrates was gone, he attached himself to Cratylus the Heraclitean, and to Hermogenes who professed the philosophy of Parmenides. Then at the age of twenty-eight, according to Hermodorus, he withdrew to Megara to Euclides, with certain other disciples of Socrates. Next he proceeded to Cyrene on a visit to Theodorus the mathematician, thence to Italy to see the Pythagorean philosophers Philolaus and Eurytus, and thence to Egypt to see those who interpreted the will of the gods; and Euripides is said to have accompanied him thither. There he fell sick and was cured by the priests, who treated him with sea-water, and for this reason he cited the line:
The sea doth wash away all human ills.
7. Furthermore he said that, according to Homer, beyond all men the Egyptians were skilled in healing. Plato also intended to make the acquaintance of the Magians, but was prevented by the wars in Asia. Having returned to Athens, he lived in the Academy, which is a gymnasium outside the walls, in a grove named after a certain hero, Hecademus, as is stated by Eupolis in his play entitled Shirkers :
In the shady walks of the divine Hecademus.
Moreover, there are verses of Timon which refer to Plato:
Amongst all of them Plato was the leader, a big fish, but a sweet-voiced speaker, musical in prose as the cicala who, perched on the trees of Hecademus, pours forth a strain as delicate as a lily.
8. Thus the original name of the place was Hecademy, spelt with e. Now Plato was a friend of Isocrates. And Praxiphanes makes them converse about poets at a country-seat where Plato was entertaining Isocrates. And Aristoxenus asserts that he went on service three times, first to Tanagra, secondly to Corinth, and thirdly at Delium, where also he obtained the prize of valour. He mixed together doctrines of Heraclitus, the Pythagoreans and Socrates. In his doctrine of sensible things he agrees with Heraclitus, in his doctrine of the intelligible with Pythagoras, and in political philosophy with Socrates.
9. Some authorities, amongst them Satyrus, say that he wrote to Dion in Sicily instructing him to purchase three Pythagorean books from Philolaus for 100 minae. For they say he was well off, having received from Dionysius over eighty talents. This is stated by Onetor in an essay upon the theme, “Whether a wise man will make money.” Further, he derived great assistance from Epicharmus the Comic poet, for he transcribed a great deal from him, as Alcimus says in the essays dedicated to Amyntas, of which there are four. In the first of them he writes thus:
“It is evident that Plato often employs the words of Epicharmus. Just consider. Plato asserts that the object of sense is that which never abides in quality or quantity, but is ever in flux and change. 10. The assumption is that the things from which you take away number are no longer equal nor determinate, nor have they quantity or quality. These are the things to which becoming always, and being never, belongs. But the object of thought is something constant from which nothing is subtracted, to which nothing is added. This is the nature of the eternal things, the attribute of which is to be ever alike and the same. And indeed Epicharmus has expressed himself plainly about objects of sense and objects of thought.
a. But gods there always were; never at any time were they wanting, while things in this world are always alike, and are brought about through the same agencies.
b. Yet it is said that Chaos was the first-born of the gods.
a. How so? If indeed there was nothing out of which, or into which, it could come first.
b. What! Then did nothing come first after all?
a. No, by Zeus, nor second either, 11. at least of the things which we are thus talking about now; on the contrary, they existed from all eternity. . . .
a. But suppose some one chooses to add a single pebble to a heap containing either an odd or an even number, whichever you please, or to take away one of those already there; do you think the number of pebbles would remain the same?
b. Not I.
a. Nor yet, if one chooses to add to a cubit-measure another length, or cut off some of what was there already, would the original measure still exist?
b. Of course not.
a. Now consider mankind in this same way. One man grows, and another again shrinks; and they are all undergoing change the whole time. But a thing which naturally changes and never remains in the same state must ever be different from that which has thus changed. And even so you and I were one pair of men yesterday, are another to-day, and again will be another to-morrow, and will never remain ourselves, by this same argument.”
12. Again, Alcimus makes this further statement: “There are some things, say the wise, which the soul perceives through the body, as in seeing and hearing; there are other things which it discerns by itself without the aid of the body. Hence it follows that of existing things some are objects of sense and others objects of thought. Hence Plato said that, if we wish to take in at one glance the principles underlying the universe, we must first distinguish the ideas by themselves, for example, likeness, unity and plurality, magnitude, rest and motion; next we must assume the existence of 13. beauty, goodness, justice and the like, each existing in and for itself; in the third place we must see how many of the ideas are relative to other ideas, as are knowledge, or magnitude, or ownership, remembering that the things within our experience bear the same names as those ideas because they partake of them; I mean that things which partake of justice are just, things which partake of beauty are beautiful. Each one of the ideas is eternal, it is a notion, and moreover is incapable of change. Hence Plato says that they stand in nature like archetypes, and that all things else bear a resemblance to the ideas because they are copies of these archetypes. Now here are the words of Epicharmus about the good and about the ideas:
14. a. Is flute-playing a thing?
b. Most certainly.
a. Is man then flute-playing?
b. By no means.
a. Come, let me see, what is a flute-player? Whom do you take him to be? Is he not a man?
b. Most certainly.
a. Well, don’t you think the same would be the case with the good? Is not the good in itself a thing? And does not he who has learnt that thing and knows it at once become good? For, just as he becomes a flute-player by learning flute-playing, or a dancer when he has learnt dancing, or a plaiter when he has learnt plaiting, in the same way, if he has learnt anything of the sort, whatever you like, he would not be one with the craft but he would be the craftsman.
15. Now Plato in conceiving his theory of Ideas says: Since there is such a thing as memory, there must be ideas present in things, because memory is of something stable and permanent, and nothing is permanent except the ideas. `For how,’ he says, `could animals have survived unless they had apprehended the idea and had been endowed by Nature with intelligence to that end? As it is, they remember similarities and what their food is like, which shows that animals have the innate power of discerning what is similar. And hence they perceive others of their own kind.’ How then does Epicharmus put it?
16. Wisdom is not confined, Eumaeus, to one kind alone, but all living creatures likewise have understanding. For, if you will study intently the hen among poultry, she does not bring forth the chicks alive, but sits clucking on the eggs and wakens life in them. As for this wisdom of hers, the true state of the case is known to Nature alone, for the hen has learnt it from herself.
And again:
It is no wonder then that we talk thus and are pleased with ourselves and think we are fine folk. For a dog appears the fairest of things to a dog, an ox to an ox, an ass to an ass, and verily a pig to a pig.”
17. These and the like instances Alcimus notes through four books, pointing out the assistance derived by Plato from Epicharmus. That Epicharmus himself was fully conscious of his wisdom can also be seen from the lines in which he foretells that he will have an imitator:
And as I think – for when I think anything I know it full well – that my words will some day be remembered; some one will take them and free them from the metre in which they are now set, nay, will give them instead a purple robe, embroidering it with fine phrases; and, being invincible, he will make every one else an easy prey.
18. Plato, it seems, was the first to bring to Athens the mimes of Sophron which had been neglected, and to draw characters in the style of that writer; a copy of the mimes, they say, was actually found under his pillow. He made three voyages to Sicily, the first time to see the island and the craters of Etna: on this occasion Dionysius, the son of Hermocrates, being on the throne, forced him to become intimate with him. But when Plato held forth on tyranny and maintained that the interest of the ruler alone was not the best end, unless he were also pre-eminent in virtue, he offended Dionysius, who in his anger exclaimed, “You talk like an old dotard.” “And you like a tyrant,” rejoined Plato. 19. At this the tyrant grew furious and at first was bent on putting him to death; then, when he had been dissuaded from this by Dion and Aristomenes, he did not indeed go so far but handed him over to Pollis the Lacedaemonian, who had just then arrived on an embassy, with orders to sell him into slavery.
And Pollis took him to Aegina and there offered him for sale. And then Charmandrus, the son of Charmandrides, indicted him on a capital charge according to the law in force among the Aeginetans, to the effect that the first Athenian who set foot upon the island should be put to death without a trial. This law had been passed by the prosecutor himself, according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History . But when some one urged, though in jest, that the offender was a philosopher, the court acquitted him. There is another version to the effect that he was brought before the assembly and, being kept under close scrutiny, he maintained an absolute silence and awaited the issue with confidence. The assembly decided not to put him to death but to sell him just as if he were a prisoner of war.
20. Anniceris the Cyrenaic happened to be present and ransomed him for twenty minae – according to others the sum was thirty minae – and dispatched him to Athens to his friends, who immediately remitted the money. But Anniceris declined it, saying that the Athenians were not the only people worthy of the privilege of providing for Plato. Others assert that Dion sent the money and that Anniceris would not take it, but bought for Plato the little garden which is in the Academy. Pollis, however, is stated to have been defeated by Chabrias and afterwards to have been drowned at Helice, his treatment of the philosopher having provoked the wrath of heaven, as Favorinus says in the first book of his Memorabilia . 21. Dionysius, indeed, could not rest. On learning the facts he wrote and enjoined upon Plato not to speak evil of him. And Plato replied that he had not the leisure to keep Dionysius in his mind.
The second time he visited the younger Dionysius, requesting of him lands and settlers for the realization of his republic. Dionysius promised them but did not keep his word. Some say that Plato was also in great danger, being suspected of encouraging Dion and Theodotas in a scheme for liberating the whole island; on this occasion Archytas the Pythagorean wrote to Dionysius, procured his pardon, and got him conveyed safe to Athens. The letter runs as follows:
“Archytas to Dionysius, wishing him good health.
22. “We, being all of us the friends of Plato, have sent to you Lamiscus and Photidas in order to take the philosopher away by the terms of the agreement made with you. You will do well to remember the zeal with which you urged us all to secure Plato’s coming to Sicily, determined as you were to persuade him and to undertake, amongst other things, responsibility for his safety so long as he stayed with you and on his return. Remember this too, that you set great store by his coming, and from that time had more regard for him than for any of those at your court. If he has given you offence, it behoves you to behave with humanity and restore him to us unhurt. By so doing you will satisfy justice and at the same time put us under an obligation.”
23. The third time he came to reconcile Dion and Dionysius, but, failing to do so, returned to his own country without achieving anything. And there he refrained from meddling with politics, although his writings show that he was a statesman. The reason was that the people had already been accustomed to measures and institutions quite different from his own. Pamphila in the twenty-fifth book of her Memorabilia says that the Arcadians and Thebans, when they were founding Megalopolis, invited Plato to be their legislator; but that, when he discovered that they were opposed to equality of possessions, he refused to go. There is a story that he pleaded for Chabrias the general when he was tried for his life, although no one else at Athens would do so, 24. and that, on this occasion, as he was going up to the Acropolis along with Chabrias, Crobylus the informer met him and said, “What, are you come to speak for the defence? Don’t you know that the hemlock of Socrates awaits you?” To this Plato replied, “As I faced dangers when serving in the cause of my country, so I will face them now in the cause of duty for a friend.”
He was the first to introduce argument by means of question and answer, says Favorinus in the eighth book of his Miscellaneous History ; he was the first to explain to Leodamas of Thasos the method of solving problems by analysis; and the first who in philosophical discussion employed the terms antipodes, element, dialectic, quality, oblong number, and, among boundaries, the plane superficies; also divine providence.
25. He was also the first philosopher who controverted the speech of Lysias, the son of Cephalus, which he has set out word for word in the Phaedrus , and the first to study the significance of grammar. And, as he was the first to attack the views of almost all his predecessors, the question is raised why he makes no mention of Democritus. Neanthes of Cyzicus says that, on his going to Olympia, the eyes of all the Greeks were turned towards him, and there he met Dion, who was about to make his expedition against Dionysius. In the first book of the Memorabilia of Favorinus there is a statement that Mithradates the Persian set up a statue of Plato in the Academy and inscribed upon it these words: “Mithradates the Persian, the son of Orontobates, dedicated to the Muses a likeness of Plato made by Silanion.”
26. Heraclides declares that in his youth he was so modest and orderly that he was never seen to laugh outright. In spite of this he too was ridiculed by the Comic poets. At any rate Theopompus in his Hedychares says:
There is not anything that is truly one, even the number two is scarcely one, according to Plato.
Moreover, Anaxandrides in his Theseus says:
He was eating olives exactly like Plato.
Then there is Timon who puns on his name thus:
As Plato placed strange platitudes.
27. Alexis again in the Meropis :
You have come in the nick of time. For I am at my wits’ end and walking up and down, like Plato, and yet have discovered no wise plan but only tired my legs.
And in the Ancylion :
You don’t know what you are talking about: run about with Plato, and you’ll know all about soap and onions.
Amphis, too, in the Amphicrates says:
a. And as for the good, whatever that be, that you are likely to get on her account, I know no more about it, master, than I do of the good of Plato.
b. Just attend.
28. And in the Dexidemides :
O Plato, all you know is how to frown with eyebrows lifted high like any snail.
Cratinus, too, in The False Changeling :
a. Clearly you are a man and have a soul.
b. In Plato’s words, I am not sure but suspect that I have.
And Alexis in the Olympiodorus :
a. My mortal body withered up, my immortal part sped into the air.
b. Is not this a lecture of Plato’s?
And in the Parasite :
Or, with Plato, to converse alone.
Anaxilas, again, in the Botrylion , and in Circe and Rich Women , has a gibe at him.
29. Aristippus in his fourth book On the Luxury of the Ancients says that he was attached to a youth named Aster, who joined him in the study of astronomy, as also to Dion who has been mentioned above, and, as some aver, to Phaedrus too. His passionate affection is revealed in the following epigrams which he is said to have written upon them:
Star-gazing Aster, would I were the skies,
To gaze upon thee with a thousand eyes.
And another:
Among the living once the Morning Star,
Thou shin’st, now dead, like Hesper from afar.
30. And he wrote thus upon Dion:
Tears from their birth the lot had been
Of Ilium’s daughters and their queen.
By thee, O Dion, great deeds done
New hopes and larger promise won.
Now here thou liest gloriously,
How deeply loved, how mourned by me.
31. This, they say, was actually inscribed upon his tomb at Syracuse.
Again, it is said that being enamoured of Alexis and Phaedrus, as before mentioned, he composed the following lines:
Now, when Alexis is of no account, I have said no more than this. He is fair to see, and everywhere all eyes are turned upon him. Why, my heart, do you show the dogs a bone? And then will you smart for this hereafter? Was it not thus that we lost Phaedrus?
He is also credited with a mistress, Archeanassa, upon whom he wrote as follows:
I have a mistress, fair Archeanassa of Colophon, on whose very wrinkles sits hot love. O hapless ye who met such beauty on its first voyage, what a flame must have been kindled in you!
32. There is another upon Agathon:
While kissing Agathon, my soul leapt to my lips, as if fain, alas! to pass over to him.
And another:
I throw an apple to you and, if indeed you are willing to love me, then receive it and let me taste your virgin charms. But if you are otherwise minded, which heaven forbid, take this very apple and see how short-lived all beauty is.
And another:
An apple am I, thrown by one who loves you. Nay, Xanthippe, give consent, for you and I are both born to decay.
33. It is also said that the epigram on the Eretrians, who were swept out of the country, was written by him:
We are Eretrians by race, from Euboea, and lie near Susa. How far, alas, from our native land!
And again:
Thus Venus to the Muses spoke:
Damsels, submit to Venus’ yoke,
Or dread my Cupid’s arms.
Those threats, the virgins nine replied,
May weigh with Mars, but we deride
Love’s wrongs, or darts, or charms.
And again:
A certain person found some gold,
Carried it off and, in its stead,
Left a strong halter, neatly rolled.
The owner found his treasure fled,
And, daunted by his fortune’s wreck,
Fitted the halter to his neck.
34. Further, Molon, being his enemy, said, “It is not wonderful that Dionysius should be in Corinth, but rather that Plato should be in Sicily.” And it seems that Xenophon was not on good terms with him. At any rate, they have written similar narratives as if out of rivalry with each other, a Symposium , a Defence of Socrates , and their moral treatises or Memorabilia . Next, the one wrote a Republic , the other a Cyropaedia . And in the Laws Plato declares the story of the education of Cyrus to be a fiction, for that Cyrus did not answer to the description of him. And although both make mention of Socrates, neither of them refers to the other, except that Xenophon mentions Plato in the third book of his Memorabilia . 35. It is said also that Antisthenes, being about to read publicly something that he had composed, invited Plato to be present. And on his inquiring what he was about to read, Antisthenes replied that it was something about the impossibility of contradiction. “How then,” said Plato, “can you write on this subject?” thus showing him that the argument refutes itself. Thereupon he wrote a dialogue against Plato and entitled it Sathon . After this they continued to be estranged from one another. They say that, on hearing Plato read the Lysis , Socrates exclaimed, “By Heracles, what a number of lies this young man is telling about me!” For he has included in the dialogue much that Socrates never said.
36. Plato was also on bad terms with Aristippus. At least in the dialogue Of the Soul he disparages him by saying that he was not present at the death of Socrates, though he was no farther off than Aegina. Again, they say that he showed a certain jealousy of Aeschines, because of his reputation with Dionysius, and that, when he arrived at the court, he was despised by Plato because of his poverty, but supported by Aristippus. And Idomeneus asserts that the arguments used by Crito, when in the prison he urges Socrates to escape, are really due to Aeschines, and that Plato transferred them to Crito because of his enmity to Aeschines.
37. Nowhere in his writings does Plato mention himself by name, except in the dialogue On the Soul and the Apology . Aristotle remarks that the style of the dialogues is half-way between poetry and prose. And according to Favorinus, when Plato read the dialogue On the Soul , Aristotle alone stayed to the end; the rest of the audience got up and went away. Some say that Philippus of Opus copied out the Laws , which were left upon waxen tablets, and it is said that he was the author of the Epinomis . Euphorion and Panaetius relate that the beginning of the Republic was found several times revised and rewritten, and the Republic itself Aristoxenus declares to have been nearly all of it included in the Controversies of Protagoras. 38. There is a story that the Phaedrus was his first dialogue. For the subject has about it something of the freshness of youth. Dicaearchus, however, censures its whole style as vulgar.
A story is told that Plato once saw some one playing at dice and rebuked him. And, upon his protesting that he played for a trifle only, “But the habit,” rejoined Plato, “is not a trifle.” Being asked whether there would be any memoirs of him as of his predecessors, he replied, “A man must first make a name, and he will have no lack of memoirs.” One day, when Xenocrates had come in, Plato asked him to chastise his slave, since he was unable to do it himself because he was in a passion. 39. Further, it is alleged that he said to one of his slaves, “I would have given you a flogging, had I not been in a passion.” Being mounted on horseback, he quickly got down again, declaring that he was afraid he would be infected with horse-pride. He advised those who got drunk to view themselves in a mirror; for they would then abandon the habit which so disfigured them. To drink to excess was nowhere becoming, he used to say, save at the feasts of the god who was the giver of wine. He also disapproved of over-sleeping. At any rate in the Laws he declares that 40. “no one when asleep is good for anything.” He also said that the truth is the pleasantest of sounds. Another version of this saying is that the pleasantest of all things is to speak the truth. Again, of truth he speaks thus in the Laws : “Truth, O stranger, is a fair and durable thing. But it is a thing of which it is hard to persuade men.” His wish always was to leave a memorial of himself behind, either in the hearts of his friends or in his books. He was himself fond of seclusion according to some authorities.
His death, the circumstances of which have already been related, took place in the thirteenth year of the reign of King Philip, as stated by Favorinus in the third book of his Memorabilia , and according to Theopompus honours were paid to him at his death by Philip. But Myronianus in his Parallels says that Philo mentions some proverbs that were in circulation about Plato’s lice, implying that this was the mode of his death. 41. He was buried in the Academy, where he spent the greatest part of his life in philosophical study. And hence the school which he founded was called the Academic school. And all the students there joined in the funeral procession. The terms of his will were as follows:
“These things have been left and devised by Plato: the estate in Iphistiadae, bounded on the north by the road from the temple at Cephisia, on the south by the temple of Heracles in Iphistiadae, on the east by the property of Archestratus of Phrearrhi, on the west by that of Philippus of Chollidae: this it shall be unlawful for anyone to sell or alienate, but it shall be the property of the boy Adeimantus to all intents and purposes: 42. the estate in Eiresidae which I bought of Callimachus, bounded on the north by the property of Eurymedon of Myrrhinus, on the south by the property of Demostratus of Xypete, on the east by that of Eurymedon of Myrrhinus, and on the west by the Cephisus; three minae of silver; a silver vessel weighing 165 drachmas; a cup weighing 45 drachmas; a gold signet-ring and earring together weighing four drachmas and three obols. Euclides the lapidary owes me three minae. I enfranchise Artemis. I leave four household servants, Tychon, Bictas, Apollonides and Dionysius. 43. Household furniture, as set down in the inventory of which Demetrius has the duplicate. I owe no one anything. My executors are Leosthenes, Speusippus, Demetrius, Hegias, Eurymedon, Callimachus and Thrasippus.”
Such were the terms of his will. The following epitaphs were inscribed upon his tomb:
Here lies the god-like man Aristocles, eminent among men for temperance and the justice of his character. And he, if ever anyone, had the fullest meed of praise for wisdom, and was too great for envy.
Next:
44. Earth in her bosom here hides Plato’s body, but his soul hath its immortal station with the blest, Ariston’s son, whom every good man, even if he dwell afar off, honours because he discerned the divine life.
And a third of later date:
a. Eagle, why fly you o’er this tomb? Say, is your gaze fixed upon the starry house of one of the immortals?
b. I am the image of the soul of Plato, which has soared to Olympus, while his earth-born body rests in Attic soil.
45. There is also an epitaph of my own which runs thus:
If Phoebus did not cause Plato to be born in Greece, how came it that he healed the minds of men by letters? As the god’s son Asclepius is a healer of the body, so is Plato of the immortal soul.
And another on the manner of his death:
Phoebus gave to mortals Asclepius and Plato, the one to save their souls, the other to save their bodies. From a wedding banquet he has passed to that city which he had founded for himself and planted in the sky.
Such then are his epitaphs.
46. His disciples were Speusippus of Athens, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, Aristotle of Stagira, Philippus of Opus, Hestiaeus of Perinthus, Dion of Syracuse, Amyclus of Heraclea, Erastus and Coriscus of Scepsus, Timolaus of Cyzicus, Euaeon of Lampsacus, Python and Heraclides of Aenus, Hippothales and Callippus of Athens, Demetrius of Amphipolis, Heraclides of Pontus, and many others, among them two women, Lastheneia of Mantinea and Axiothea of Phlius, who is reported by Dicaearchus to have worn men’s clothes. Some say that Theophrastus too attended his lectures. Chamaeleon adds Hyperides the orator and Lycurgus, 47. and in this Polemo agrees. Sabinus makes Demosthenes his pupil, quoting, in the fourth book of his Materials for Criticism , Mnesistratus of Thasos as his authority. And it is not improbable.
Now, as you are an enthusiastic Platonist, and rightly so, and as you eagerly seek out that philosopher’s doctrines in preference to all others, I have thought it necessary to give some account of the true nature of his discourses, the arrangement of the dialogues, and the method of his inductive procedure, as far as possible in an elementary manner and in main outline, in order that the facts I have collected respecting his life may not suffer by the omission of his doctrines. For, in the words of the proverb, it would be taking owls to Athens, were I to give you of all people the full particulars.
48. They say that Zeno the Eleatic was the first to write dialogues. But, according to Favorinus in his Memorabilia , Aristotle in the first book of his dialogue On Poets asserts that it was Alexamenus of Styra or Teos. In my opinion Plato, who brought this form of writing to perfection, ought to be adjudged the prize for its invention as well as for its embellishment. A dialogue is a discourse consisting of question and answer on some philosophical or political subject, with due regard to the characters of the persons introduced and the choice of diction. Dialectic is the art of discourse by which we either refute or establish some proposition by means of question and answer on the part of the interlocutors.
49. Of the Platonic dialogues there are two most general types, the one adapted for instruction and the other for inquiry. And the former is further divided into two types, the theoretical and the practical. And of these the theoretical is divided into the physical and logical, and the practical into the ethical and political. The dialogue of inquiry also has two main divisions, the one of which aims at training the mind and the other at victory in controversy. Again, the part which aims at training the mind has two subdivisions, the one akin to the midwife’s art, the other merely tentative. And that suited to controversy is also subdivided into one part which raises critical objections, and another which is subversive of the main position.
50. I am not unaware that there are other ways in which certain writers classify the dialogues. For some dialogues they call dramatic, others narrative, and others again a mixture of the two. But the terms they employ in their classification of the dialogues are better suited to the stage than to philosophy. Physics is represented by the Timaeus , logic by the Statesman , Cratylus , Parmenides and Sophist , ethics by the Apology , Crito , Phaedo , Phaedrus and Symposium , as well as by the Menexenus , Clitophon , the Epistles , Philebus , Hipparchus and the Rivals , and lastly politics by the Republic , 51. the Laws , Minos , Epinomis , and the dialogue concerning Atlantis . To the class of mental obstetrics belong the two Alcibiades , Theages , Lysis and Laches , while the Euthyphro , Meno , Io , Charmides and Theaetetus illustrate the tentative method. In the Protagoras is seen the method of critical objections; in the Euthydemus , Gorgias , and the two dialogues entitled Hippias that of subversive argument. So much then for dialogue, its definition and varieties.
Again, as there is great division of opinion between those who affirm and those who deny that Plato was a dogmatist, let me proceed to deal with this further question. To be a dogmatist in philosophy is to lay down positive dogmas, just as to be a legislator is to lay down laws. Further, under dogma two things are included, the thing opined and the opinion itself.
52. Of these the former is a proposition, the latter a conception. Now where he has a firm grasp Plato expounds his own view and refutes the false one, but, if the subject is obscure, he suspends judgement. His own views are expounded by four persons, Socrates, Timaeus, the Athenian Stranger, the Eleatic Stranger. These strangers are not, as some hold, Plato and Parmenides, but imaginary characters without names, for, even when Socrates and Timaeus are the speakers, it is Plato’s doctrines that are laid down. To illustrate the refutation of false opinions, he introduces Thrasymachus, Callicles, Polus, Gorgias, Protagoras, or again Hippias, Euthydemus and the like.
53. In constructing his proofs he makes most use of induction, not always in the same way, but under two forms. For induction is an argument which by means of certain true premisses properly infers a truth resembling them. And there are two kinds of induction, the one proceeding by way of contradiction, the other from agreement. In the kind which proceeds by contradiction the answer given to every question will necessarily be the contrary of the respondent’s position, e.g. “My father is either other than or the same as your father. If then your father is other than my father, by being other than a father he will not be a father. But if he is the same as my father, then by being the same as my father he will be my father.” 54. And again: “If man is not an animal, he will be either a stick or a stone. But he is not a stick or a stone; for he is animate and self-moved. Therefore he is an animal. But if he is an animal, and if a dog or an ox is also an animal, then man by being an animal will be a dog and an ox as well.” This is the kind of induction which proceeds by contradiction and dispute, and Plato used it, not for laying down positive doctrines but for refutation. The other kind of induction by agreement appears in two forms, the one proving the particular conclusion under discussion from a particular, the other proceeding by way of the universal [by means of particular facts]. The former is suited to rhetoric, the latter to dialectic. For instance, under the first form the question is raised, “Did so-and-so commit a murder?” The proof is that he was found at the time with stains of blood on him. 55. This is the rhetorical form of induction, since rhetoric also is concerned with particular facts and not with universals. It does not inquire about justice in the abstract, but about particular cases of justice. The other kind, where the general proposition is first established by means of particular facts, is the induction of dialectic. For instance, the question put is whether the soul is immortal, and whether the living come back from the dead. And this is proved in the dialogue On the Soul by means of a certain general proposition, that opposites proceed from opposites. And the general proposition itself is established by means of certain propositions which are particular, as that sleep comes from waking and vice versa , the greater from the less and vice versa . This is the form which he used to establish his own views.
56. But, just as long ago in tragedy the chorus was the only actor, and afterwards, in order to give the chorus breathing space, Thespis devised a single actor, Aeschylus a second, Sophocles a third, and thus tragedy was completed, so too with philosophy: in early times it discoursed on one subject only, namely physics, then Socrates added the second subject, ethics, and Plato the third, dialectics, and so brought philosophy to perfection. Thrasylus says that he published his dialogues in tetralogies, like those of the tragic poets. Thus they contended with four plays at the Dionysia, the Lenaea, the Panathenaea and the festival of Chytri. Of the four plays the last was a satiric drama; and the four together were called a tetralogy.
57. Now, says Thrasylus, the genuine dialogues are fifty-six in all, if the Republic be divided into ten and the Laws into twelve. Favorinus, however, in the second book of his Miscellaneous History declares that nearly the whole of the Republic is to be found in a work of Protagoras entitled Controversies . This gives nine tetralogies, if the Republic takes the place of one single work and the Laws of another. His first tetralogy has a common plan underlying it, for he wishes to describe what the life of the philosopher will be. To each of the works Thrasylus affixes a double title, the one taken from the name of the interlocutor, the other from the subject. 58. This tetralogy, then, which is the first, begins with the Euthyphro or On Holiness , a tentative dialogue; the Apology of Socrates , an ethical dialogue, comes second; the third is Crito or On what is to be done , ethical; the fourth Phaedo or On the Soul , also ethical. The second tetralogy begins with Cratylus or On Correctness of Names , a logical dialogue, which is followed by Theaetetus or On Knowledge , tentative, the Sophist or On Being , a logical dialogue, the Statesman or On Monarchy , also logical. The third tetralogy includes, first, Parmenides or On Ideas , which is logical, next Philebus or On Pleasure , an ethical dialogue, the Banquet or On the Good , ethical, Phaedrus or On Love , also ethical.
59. The fourth tetralogy starts with Alcibiades or On the Nature of Man , an obstetric dialogue; this is followed by the second Alcibiades or On Prayer , also obstetric; then comes Hipparchus or The Lover of Gain , which is ethical, and The Rivals or On Philosophy , also ethical. The fifth tetralogy includes, first, Theages or On Philosophy , an obstetric dialogue, then Charmides or On Temperance , which is tentative, Laches or On Courage , obstetric, and Lysis or On Friendship , also obstetric. The sixth tetralogy starts with Euthydemus or The Eristic , a refutative dialogue, which is followed by Protagoras or Sophists , critical, Gorgias or On Rhetoric , refutative , and Meno or On Virtue , which is tentative. 60. The seventh tetralogy contains, first, two dialogues entitled Hippias , the former On Beauty , the latter On Falsehood , both refutative; next Ion or On the Iliad , which is tentative, and Menexenus or The Funeral Oration , which is ethical. The eighth tetralogy starts with Clitophon or Introduction , which is ethical, and is followed by the Republic or On Justice , political, Timaeus or On Nature , a physical treatise, and Critias or Story of Atlantis , which is ethical. The ninth tetralogy starts with Minos or On Law , a political dialogue, which is followed by the Laws or On Legislation , also political, Epinomis or Nocturnal Council , or Philosopher , political, 61. and lastly the Epistles , thirteen in number, which are ethical. In these epistles his heading was “Welfare,” as that of Epicurus was “A Good Life,” and that of Cleon “All Joy.” They comprise: one to Aristodemus, two to Archytas, four to Dionysius, one to Hermias, Erastus and Coriscus, one each to Leodamas, Dion and Perdiccas, and two to Dion’s friends. This is the division adopted by Thrasylus and some others.
Some, including Aristophanes the grammarian, arrange the dialogues arbitrarily in trilogies. 62. In the first trilogy they place the Republic , Timaeus and Critias ; in the second the Sophist , the Statesman and Cratylus ; in the third the Laws , Minos and Epinomis ; in the fourth Theaetetus , Euthyphro and the Apology ; in the fifth Crito , Phaedo and the Epistles . The rest follow as separate compositions in no regular order. Some critics, as has already been stated, put the Republic first, while others start with the greater Alcibiades , and others again with the Theages ; some begin with the Euthyphro , others with the Clitophon ; some with the Timaeus , others with the Phaedrus ; others again with the Theaetetus , while many begin with the Apology . The following dialogues are acknowledged to be spurious: the Midon or Horse-breeder , the Eryxias or Erasistratus , the Alcyon , the Acephali or Sisyphus , the Axiochus , the Phaeacians , the Demodocus , the Chelidon , the Seventh Day , the Epimenides . Of these the Alcyon is thought to be the work of a certain Leon, according to Favorinus in the fifth book of his Memorabilia .
63. Plato has employed a variety of terms in order to make his system less intelligible to the ignorant. But in a special sense he considers wisdom to be the science of those things which are objects of thought and really existent, the science which, he says, is concerned with God and the soul as separate from the body. And especially by wisdom he means philosophy, which is a yearning for divine wisdom. And in a general sense all experience is also termed by him wisdom, e.g. when he calls a craftsman wise. And he applies the same terms with very different meanings. For instance, the word φαῦλος (slight, plain) is employed by him in the sense of ἁπλοῦς (simple, honest), just as it is applied to Heracles in the Licymnius of Euripides in the following passage:
Plain (φαῦλος), unaccomplished, staunch to do great deeds, unversed in talk, with all his store of wisdom curtailed to action.
64. But sometimes Plato uses this same word (φαῦλος ） to mean what is bad, and at other times for what is small or petty. Again, he often uses different terms to express the same thing. For instance, he calls the Idea form (εἶδος), genus (γένος), archetype (παράδειγμα), principle (ἀρχή) and cause (αἴτιον). He also uses contrary expressions for the same thing. Thus he calls the sensible thing both existent and non-existent, existent inasmuch as it comes into being, non-existent because it is continually changing. And he says the Idea is neither in motion nor at rest; that it is uniformly the same and yet both one and many. And it is his habit to do this in many more instances.
65. The right interpretation of his dialogues includes three things: first, the meaning of every statement must be explained; next, its purpose, whether it is made for a primary reason or by way of illustration, and whether to establish his own doctrines or to refute his interlocutor; in the third place it remains to examine its truth.
And since certain critical marks are affixed to his works let us now say a word about these. The cross × is taken to indicate peculiar expressions and figures of speech, and generally any idiom of Platonic usage; the diple (>) calls attention to doctrines and opinions characteristic of Plato; 66. the dotted cross (⨰) denotes select passages and beauties of style; the dotted diple ( ⋗ ) editors’ corrections of the text; the dotted obelus (÷) passages suspected without reason; the dotted antisigma (Ꜿ) repetitions and proposals for transpositions; the ceraunium the philosophical school; the asterisk ( ∗ ) an agreement of doctrine; the obelus (−) a spurious passage. So much for the critical marks and his writings in general. As Antigonus of Carystus says in his Life of Zeno , when the writings were first edited with critical marks, their possessors charged a certain fee to anyone who wished to consult them.
67. The doctrines he approved are these. He held that the soul is immortal, that by transmigration it puts on many bodies, and that it has a numerical first principle, whereas the first principle of the body is geometrical; and he defined soul as the idea of vital breath diffused in all directions. He held that it is self-moved and tripartite, the rational part of it having its seat in the head, the passionate part about the heart, while the appetitive is placed in the region of the navel and the liver.
68. And from the centre outwards it encloses the body on all sides in a circle, and is compounded of elements, and, being divided at harmonic intervals, it forms two circles which touch one another twice; and the interior circle, being slit six times over, makes seven circles in all. And this interior circle moves by way of the diagonal to the left, and the other by way of the side to the right. Hence also the one is supreme, being a single circle, for the other interior circle was divided; the former is the circle of the Same, the latter that of the Other, whereby he means that the motion of the soul is the motion of the universe together with the revolutions of the planets.
69. And the division from the centre to the circumference which is adjusted in harmony with the soul being thus determined, the soul knows that which is, and adjusts it proportionately because she has the elements proportionately disposed in herself. And when the circle of the Other revolves aright, the result is opinion; but from the regular motion of the circle of the Same comes knowledge. He set forth two universal principles, God and matter, and he calls God mind and cause; he held that matter is devoid of form and unlimited, and that composite things arise out of it; and that it was once in disorderly motion but, inasmuch as God preferred order to disorder, was by him brought together in one place. 70. This substance, he says, is converted into the four elements, fire, water, air, earth, of which the world itself and all that therein is are formed. Earth alone of these elements is not subject to change, the assumed cause being the peculiarity of its constituent triangles. For he thinks that in all the other elements the figures employed are homogeneous, the scalene triangle out of which they are all put together being one and the same, whereas for earth a triangle of peculiar shape is employed; the element of fire is a pyramid, of air an octahedron, of water an icosahedron, of earth a cube. Hence earth is not transmuted into the other three elements, nor these three into earth.
71. But the elements are not separated each into its own region of the universe, because the revolution unites their minute particles, compressing and forcing them together into the centre, at the same time as it separates the larger masses. Hence as they change their shapes, so also do they change the regions which they occupy.
And there is one created universe, seeing that it is perceptible to sense, which has been made by God. And it is animate because that which is animate is better than that which is inanimate. And this piece of workmanship is assumed to come from a cause supremely good. It was made one and not unlimited because the pattern from which he made it was one. And it is spherical because such is the shape of its maker. 72. For that maker contains the other living things, and this universe the shapes of them all. It is smooth and has no organ all round because it has no need of organs. Moreover, the universe remains imperishable because it is not dissolved into the Deity. And the creation as a whole is caused by God, because it is the nature of the good to be beneficent, and the creation of the universe has the highest good for its cause. For the most beautiful of created things is due to the best of intelligible causes; so that, as God is of this nature, and the universe resembles the best in its perfect beauty, it will not be in the likeness of anything created, but only of God.
73. The universe is composed of fire, water, air and earth; of fire in order to be visible; of earth in order to be solid; of water and air in order to be proportional. For the powers represented by solids are connected by two mean proportionals in a way to secure the complete unity of the whole. And the universe was made of all the elements in order to be complete and indestructible.
Time was created as an image of eternity. And while the latter remains for ever at rest, time consists in the motion of the universe. For night and day and month and the like are all parts of time; for which reason, apart from the nature of the universe, time has no existence. But so soon as the universe is fashioned time exists.
74. And the sun and moon and planets were created as means to the creation of time. And God kindled the light of the sun in order that the number of the seasons might be definite and in order that animals might possess number. The moon is in the circle immediately above the earth, and the sun in that which is next beyond that, and in the circles above come the planets. Further, the universe is an animate being, for it is bound fast in animate movement. And in order that the universe which had been created in the likeness of the intelligible living creature might be rendered complete, the nature of all other animals was created. Since then its pattern possesses them, the universe also ought to have them. And thus it contains gods for the most part of a fiery nature; of the rest there are three kinds, winged, aquatic and terrestrial. 75. And of all the gods in heaven the earth is the oldest. And it was fashioned to make night and day. And being at the centre it moves round the centre. And since there are two causes, it must be affirmed, he says, that some things are due to reason and others have a necessary cause, the latter being air, fire, earth and water, which are not exactly elements but rather recipients of form. They are composed of triangles, and are resolved into triangles. The scalene triangle and the isosceles triangle are their constituent elements.
76. The principles, then, and causes assumed are the two above mentioned, of which God and matter are the exemplar. Matter is of necessity formless like the other recipients of form. Of all these there is a necessary cause. For it somehow or other receives the ideas and so generates substances, and it moves because its power is not uniform, and, being in motion, it in turn sets in motion those things which are generated from it. And these were at first in irrational and irregular motion, but after they began to frame the universe, under the conditions possible they were made by God symmetrical and regular. 77. For the two causes existed even before the world was made, as well as becoming in the third place, but they were not distinct, merely traces of them being found, and in disorder. When the world was made, they too acquired order. And out of all the bodies there are the universe was fashioned. He holds God, like the soul, to be incorporeal. For only thus is he exempt from change and decay. As already stated, he assumes the Ideas to be causes and principles whereby the world of natural objects is what it is.
78. On good and evil he would discourse to this effect. He maintained that the end to aim at is assimilation to God, that virtue is in itself sufficient for happiness, but that it needs in addition, as instruments for use, first, bodily advantages like health and strength, sound senses and the like, and, secondly, external advantages such as wealth, good birth and reputation. But the wise man will be no less happy even if he be without these things. Again, he will take part in public affairs, will marry, and will refrain from breaking the laws which have been made. And as far as circumstances allow he will legislate for his own country, unless in the extreme corruption of the people he sees that the state of affairs completely justifies his abstention. 79. He thinks that the gods take note of human life and that there are superhuman beings. He was the first to define the notion of good as that which is bound up with whatever is praiseworthy and rational and useful and proper and becoming. And all these are bound up with that which is consistent and in accord with nature.
He also discoursed on the propriety of names, and indeed he was the first to frame a science for rightly asking and answering questions, having employed it himself to excess. And in the dialogues he conceived righteousness to be the law of God because it is stronger to incite men to do righteous acts, that malefactors may not be punished after death also. 80. Hence to some he appeared too fond of myths. These narratives he intermingles with his works in order to deter men from wickedness, by reminding them how little they know of what awaits them after death. Such, then, are the doctrines he approved.
He used also to divide things, according to Aristotle, in the following manner. Goods are in the mind or in the body, or external. For example, justice, prudence, courage, temperance and such like are in the mind; beauty, a good constitution, health and strength in the body; while friends, the welfare of one’s country and riches are amongst external things.
81. Thus there are three kinds of goods: goods of the mind, goods of the body and external goods. There are three species of friendship: one species is natural, another social, and another hospitable. By natural friendship we mean the affection which parents have for their offspring and kinsmen for each other. And other animals besides man have inherited this form.
By the social form of friendship we mean that which arises from intimacy and has nothing to do with kinship; for instance, that of Pylades for Orestes. The friendship of hospitality is that which is extended to strangers owing to an introduction or letters of recommendation. Thus friendship is either natural or social or hospitable. Some add a fourth species, that of love.
82. There are five forms of civil government: one form is democratic, another aristocratic, a third oligarchic, a fourth monarchic, a fifth that of a tyrant. The democratic form is that in which the people has control and chooses at its own pleasure both magistrates and laws. The aristocratic form is that in which the rulers are neither the rich nor the poor nor the nobles, but the state is under the guidance of the best. Oligarchy is that form in which there is a property-qualification for the holding of office; for the rich are fewer than the poor. Monarchy is either regulated by law or hereditary. At Carthage the kingship is regulated by law, the office being put up for sale. 83. But the monarchy in Lacedaemon and in Macedonia is hereditary, for they select the king from a certain family. A tyranny is that form in which the citizens are ruled either through fraud or force by an individual. Thus civil government is either democratic, aristocratic, oligarchic, or a monarchy or a tyranny.
There are three species of justice. One is concerned with gods, another with men, and the third with the departed. For those who sacrifice according to the laws and take care of the temples are obviously pious towards the gods. Those again who repay loans and restore what they have received upon trust act justly towards men. Lastly, those who take care of tombs are obviously just towards the departed. Thus one species of justice relates to the gods, another to men, while a third species is concerned with the departed.
84. There are three species of knowledge or science, one practical, another productive, and a third theoretical. For architecture and shipbuilding are productive arts, since the work produced by them can be seen. Politics and flute-playing, harp-playing and similar arts are practical. For nothing visible is produced by them; yet they do or perform something. In the one case the artist plays the flute or the harp, in the other the politician takes part in politics. Geometry and harmonics and astronomy are theoretical sciences. For they neither perform nor produce anything. But the geometer considers how lines are related to each other, the student of harmony investigates sounds, the astronomer stars and the universe. Thus some sciences are theoretical, others are practical, and others are productive.
85. There are five species of medicine : the first is pharmacy, the second is surgery, the third deals with diet and regimen, the fourth with diagnosis, the fifth with remedies. Pharmacy cures sickness by drugs, surgery heals by the use of knife and cautery, the species concerned with diet prescribes a regimen for the removal of disease, that concerned with diagnosis proceeds by determining the nature of the ailment, that concerned with remedies by prescribing for the immediate removal of the pain. The species of medicine, then, are pharmacy, surgery, diet and regimen, diagnosis, prescription of remedies.
86. There are two divisions of law, the one written and the other unwritten. Written law is that under which we live in different cities, but that which has arisen out of custom is called unwritten law; for instance, not to appear in the market-place undressed or in women’s attire. There is no statute forbidding this, but nevertheless we abstain from such conduct because it is prohibited by an unwritten law. Thus law is either written or unwritten.
There are five kinds of speech, of which one is that which politicians employ in the assemblies; this is called political speech. 87. The second division is that which the rhetors employ in written compositions, whether composed for display or praise or blame, or for accusation. Hence this division is termed rhetorical. The third division of speech is that of private persons conversing with one another; this is called the mode of speech of ordinary life. Another division of speech is the language of those who converse by means of short questions and answers; this kind is called dialectical. The fifth division is the speech of craftsmen conversing about their own subjects; this is called technical language. Thus speech is either political, or rhetorical, or that of ordinary conversation, or dialectical, or technical.
88. Music has three divisions. One employs the mouth alone, like singing. The second employs both the mouth and the hands, as is the case with the harper singing to his own accompaniment. The third division employs the hands alone; for instance, the music of the harp. Thus music employs either the mouth alone, or the mouth and the hands, or the hands alone.
Nobility has four divisions. First, when the ancestors are gentle and handsome and also just, their descendants are said to be noble. Secondly, when the ancestors have been princes or magistrates, their descendants are said to be noble. The third kind arises when the ancestors have been illustrious; for instance, through having held military command or through success in the national games. For then we call the descendants noble. 89. The last division includes the man who is himself of a generous and high-minded spirit. He too is said to be noble. And this indeed is the highest form of nobility. Thus, of nobility, one kind depends on excellent ancestors, another on princely ancestors, a third on illustrious ancestors, while the fourth is due to the individual’s own beauty and worth.
Beauty has three divisions. The first is the object of praise, as of form fair to see. Another is serviceable; thus an instrument, a house and the like are beautiful for use. Other things again which relate to customs and pursuits and the like are beautiful because beneficial. Of beauty, then, one kind is matter for praise, another is for use, and another for the benefit it procures.
90. The soul has three divisions. One part of it is rational, another appetitive, and a third irascible. Of these the rational part is the cause of purpose, reflection, understanding and the like. The appetitive part of the soul is the cause of desire of eating, sexual indulgence and the like, while the irascible part is the cause of courage, of pleasure and pain, and of anger. Thus one part of the soul is rational, another appetitive, and a third irascible.
Of perfect virtue there are four species: prudence, justice, bravery and temperance. 91. Of these prudence is the cause of right conduct, justice of just dealing in partnerships and commercial transactions. Bravery is the cause which makes a man not give way but stand his ground in alarms and perils. Temperance causes mastery over desires, so that we are never enslaved by any pleasure, but lead an orderly life. Thus virtue includes first prudence, next justice, thirdly bravery, and lastly temperance.
Rule has five divisions, one that which is according to law, another according to nature, another according to custom, a fourth by birth, a fifth by force. 92. Now the magistrates in cities when elected by their fellow-citizens rule according to law. The natural rulers are the males, not only among men, but also among the other animals; for the males everywhere exert wide-reaching rule over the females. Rule according to custom is such authority as attendants exercise over children and teachers over their pupils. Hereditary rule is exemplified by that of the Lacedaemonian kings, for the office of king is confined to a certain family. And the same system is in force for the kingdom of Macedonia; for there too the office of king goes by birth. Others have acquired power by force or fraud, and govern the citizens against their will; this kind of rule is called forcible. Thus rule is either by law, or by nature, or by custom, or by birth, or by force.
93. There are six kinds of rhetoric. For when the speakers urge war or alliance with a neighbouring state, that species of rhetoric is called persuasion. But when they speak against making war or alliance, and urge their hearers to remain at peace, this kind of rhetoric is called dissuasion. A third kind is employed when a speaker asserts that he is wronged by some one whom he makes out to have caused him much mischief; accusation is the name applied to the kind here defined. The fourth kind of rhetoric is termed defence; here the speaker shows that he has done no wrong and that his conduct is in no respect abnormal; defence is the term applied in such a case. 94. A fifth kind of rhetoric is employed when a speaker speaks well of some one and proves him to be worthy and honourable; encomium is the name given to this kind. A sixth kind is that employed when the speaker shows some one to be unworthy; the name given to this is invective. Under rhetoric, then, are included encomium, invective, persuasion, dissuasion, accusation and defence.
Successful speaking has four divisions. The first consists in speaking to the purpose, the next to the requisite length, the third before the proper audience, and the fourth at the proper moment. The things to the purpose are those which are likely to be expedient for speaker and hearer. The requisite length is that which is neither more nor less than enough. 95. To speak to the proper audience means this: in addressing persons older than yourself, the discourse must be made suitable to the audience as being elderly men; whereas in addressing juniors the discourse must be suitable to young men. The proper time of speaking is neither too soon nor too late; otherwise you will miss the mark and not speak with success.
Of conferring benefits there are four divisions. For it takes place either by pecuniary aid or by personal service, by means of knowledge or of speech. Pecuniary aid is given when one assists a man in need, so that he is relieved from all anxiety on the score of money. Personal service is given when men come up to those who are being beaten and rescue them. 96. Those who train or heal, or who teach something valuable, confer benefit by means of knowledge. But when men enter a law-court and one appears as advocate for another and delivers an effective speech on his behalf, he is benefiting him by speech. Thus benefits are conferred by means either of money or of personal service, or of knowledge, or of speech.
There are four ways in which things are completed and brought to an end. The first is by legal enactment, when a decree is passed and this decree is confirmed by law. The second is in the course of nature, as the day, the year and the seasons are completed. The third is by the rules of art, say the builder’s art, for so a house is completed; and so it is with shipbuilding, whereby vessels are completed. 97. Fourthly, matters are brought to an end by chance or accident, when they turn out otherwise than is expected. Thus the completion of things is due either to law, or to nature, or to art, or to chance.
Of power or ability there are four divisions. First, whatever we can do with the mind, namely calculate or anticipate; next, whatever we can effect with the body, for instance, marching, giving, taking and the like. Thirdly, whatever we can do by a multitude of soldiers or a plentiful supply of money; hence a king is said to have great power. The fourth division of power or influence is doing, or being done by, well or ill; thus we can become ill or be educated, be restored to health and the like. Power, then, is either in the mind, or the body, or in armies and resources, or in acting and being acted upon.
98. Philanthropy is of three kinds. One is by way of salutations, as when certain people address every one they meet and, stretching out their hand, give him a hearty greeting; another mode is seen when one is given to assisting every one in distress; another mode of philanthropy is that which makes certain people fond of giving dinners. Thus philanthropy is shown either by a courteous address, or by conferring benefits, or by hospitality and the promotion of social intercourse.
Welfare or happiness includes five parts. One part of it is good counsel, a second soundness of the senses and bodily health, a third success in one’s undertakings, a fourth a reputation with one’s fellow-men, a fifth ample means in money and in whatever else subserves the end of life. 99. Now deliberating well is a result of education and of having experience of many things. Soundness of the senses depends upon the bodily organs: I mean, if one sees with his eyes, hears with his ears, and perceives with his nostrils and his mouth the appropriate objects, then such a condition is soundness of the senses. Success is attained when a man does what he aims at in the right way, as becomes a good man.
A man has a good reputation when he is well spoken of. A man has ample means when he is so equipped for the needs of life that he can afford to benefit his friends and discharge his public services with lavish display. If a man has all these things, he is completely happy. Thus of welfare or happiness one part is good counsel, another soundness of senses and bodily health, a third success, a fourth a good reputation, a fifth ample means.
100. There are three divisions of the arts and crafts. The first division consists of mining and forestry, which are productive arts. The second includes the smith’s and carpenter’s arts which transform material; for the smith makes weapons out of iron, and the carpenter transforms timber into flutes and lyres. The third division is that which uses what is thus made, as horsemanship employs bridles, the art of war employs weapons, and music flutes and the lyre. Thus of art there are three several species, those above-mentioned in the first, second and third place.
101. Good is divided into four kinds. One is the possessor of virtue, whom we affirm to be individually good. Another is virtue itself and justice; these we affirm to be good. A third includes such things as food, suitable exercises and drugs. The fourth kind which we affirm to be good includes the arts of flute-playing, acting and the like. Thus there are four kinds of good: the possession of virtue; virtue itself; thirdly, food and beneficial exercises; lastly, flute-playing, acting, and the poetic art. 102. Whatever is is either evil or good or indifferent. We call that evil which is capable of invariably doing harm; for instance, bad judgement and folly and injustice and the like. The contraries of these things are good. But the things which can sometimes benefit and sometimes harm, such as walking and sitting and eating, or which can neither do any benefit nor harm at all, these are things indifferent, neither good nor evil. Thus all things whatever are either good, or evil, or neither good nor evil.
103. Good order in the state falls under three heads. First, if the laws are good, we say that there is good government. Secondly, if the citizens obey the established laws, we also call this good government. Thirdly, if, without the aid of laws, the people manage their affairs well under the guidance of customs and institutions, we call this again good government. Thus three forms of good government may exist, (1) when the laws are good, (2) when the existing laws are obeyed, (3) when the people live under salutary customs and institutions.
Disorder in a state has three forms. The first arises when the laws affecting citizens and strangers are alike bad, 104. the second when the existing laws are not obeyed, and the third when there is no law at all. Thus the state is badly governed when the laws are bad or not obeyed, or lastly, when there is no law.
Contraries are divided into three species. For instance, we say that goods are contrary to evils, as justice to injustice, wisdom to folly, and the like. Again, evils are contrary to evils, prodigality is contrary to niggardliness, and to be unjustly tortured is the contrary of being justly tortured, and so with similar evils. Again, heavy is the contrary of light, quick of slow, black of white, and these pairs are contraries, while they are neither good nor evil. 105. Thus, of contraries, some are opposed as goods to evils, others as evils to evils, and others, as things which are neither good nor evil, are opposed to one another.
There are three kinds of goods, those which can be exclusively possessed, those which can be shared with others, and those which simply exist. To the first division, namely, those which can be exclusively possessed, belong such things as justice and health. To the next belong all those which, though they cannot be exclusively possessed, can be shared with others. Thus we cannot possess the absolute good, but we can participate in it. The third division includes those goods the existence of which is necessary, though we can neither possess them exclusively nor participate in them. The mere existence of worth and justice is a good; and these things cannot be shared or had in exclusive possession, but must simply exist. Of goods, then, some are possessed exclusively, some shared, and others merely subsist.
106. Counsel is divided under three heads. One is taken from past time, one from the future, and the third from the present. That from past time consists of examples; for instance, what the Lacedaemonians suffered through trusting others. Counsel drawn from the present is to show, for instance, that the walls are weak, the men cowards, and the supplies running short. Counsel from the future is. for instance, to urge that we should not wrong the embassies by suspicions, lest the fair fame of Hellas be stained. Thus counsel is derived from the past, the present and the future.
107. Vocal sound falls into two divisions according as it is animate or inanimate. The voice of living things is animate sound; notes of instruments and noises are inanimate. And of the animate voice part is articulate, part inarticulate, that of men being articulate speech, that of the animals inarticulate. Thus vocal sound is either animate or inanimate.
Whatever exists is either divisible or indivisible. Of divisible things some are divisible into similar and others into dissimilar parts. Those things are indivisible which cannot be divided and are not compounded of elements, for example, the unit, the point and the musical note; whereas those which have constituent parts, for instance, syllables, concords in music, animals, water, gold, are divisible. 108. If they are composed of similar parts, so that the whole does not differ from the part except in bulk, as water, gold and all that is fusible, and the like, then they are termed homogeneous. But whatever is composed of dissimilar parts, as a house and the like, is termed heterogeneous. Thus all things whatever are either divisible or indivisible, and of those which are divisible some are homogeneous, others heterogeneous in their parts.
Of existing things some are absolute and some are called relative. Things said to exist absolutely are those which need nothing else to explain them, as man, horse, and all other animals. 109. For none of these gains by explanation. To those which are called relative belong all which stand in need of some explanation, as that which is greater than something or quicker than something, or more beautiful and the like. For the greater implies a less, and the quicker is quicker than something. Thus existing things are either absolute or relative. And in this way, according to Aristotle, Plato used to divide the primary conceptions also.
There was also another man named Plato, a philosopher of Rhodes, a pupil of Panaetius, as is stated by Seleucus the grammarian in his first book On Philosophy ; another a Peripatetic and pupil of Aristotle; and another who was a pupil of Praxiphanes; and lastly, there was Plato, the poet of the Old Comedy.
1. The foregoing is the best account of Plato that we were able to compile after a diligent examination of the authorities. He was succeeded by Speusippus, an Athenian and son of Eurymedon, who belonged to the deme of Myrrhinus, and was the son of Plato’s sister Potone. He was head of the school for eight years beginning in the 108th Olympiad. He set up statues of the Graces in the shrine of the Muses erected by Plato in the Academy. He adhered faithfully to Plato’s doctrines. In character, however, he was unlike him, being prone to anger and easily overcome by pleasures. At any rate there is a story that in a fit of passion he flung his favourite dog into the well, and that pleasure was the sole motive for his journey to Macedonia to be present at the wedding-feast of Casander.
2. It was said that among those who attended his lectures were the two women who had been pupils of Plato, Lastheneia of Mantinea and Axiothea of Phlius. And at the time Dionysius in a letter says derisively, “We may judge of your wisdom by the Arcadian girl who is your pupil. And, whereas Plato exempted from fees all who came to him, you levy tribute on them and collect it whether they will or no.” According to Diodorus in the first book of his Memorabilia , Speusippus was the first to discern the common element in all studies and to bring them into connexion with each other so far as that was possible. 3. And according to Caeneus he was the first to divulge what Isocrates called the secrets of his art, and the first to devise the means by which fagots of firewood are rendered portable.
When he was already crippled by paralysis, he sent a message to Xenocrates entreating him to come and take over the charge of the school. They say that, as he was being conveyed to the Academy in a tiny carriage, he met and saluted Diogenes, who replied, “Nay, if you can endure to live in such a plight as this, I decline to return your greeting.” At last in old age he became so despondent that he put an end to his life. Here follows my epigram upon him:
Had I not learnt that Speusippus would die thus, no one would have persuaded me to say that he was surely not of Plato’s blood; for else he would never have died in despair for a trivial cause.
4. Plutarch in the Lives of Lysander and Sulla makes his malady to have been “morbus pedicularis.” That his body wasted away is affirmed by Timotheus in his book On Lives . Speusippus, he says, meeting a rich man who was in love with one who was no beauty, said to him, “Why, pray, are you in such sore need of him? For ten talents I will find you a more handsome bride.”
He has left behind a vast store of memoirs and numerous dialogues, among them:
Aristippus the Cyrenaic.
On Wealth, one book.
On Pleasure, one book.
On Justice,
On Philosophy,
On Friendship,
On the Gods,
The Philosopher,
A Reply to Cephalus,
Cephalus,
Clinomachus or Lysias,
The Citizen,
Of the Soul,
A Reply to Gryllus,
5. Aristippus,
Criticism of the Arts, each in one book.
Memoirs, in the form of dialogues.
Treatise on System, in one book.
Dialogues on the Resemblances in Science, in ten books.
Divisions and Hypotheses relating to the Resemblances.
On Typical Genera and Species.
A Reply to the Anonymous Work.
Eulogy of Plato.
Epistles to Dion, Dionysius and Philip.
On Legislation.
The Mathematician.
Mandrobolus.
Lysias.
Definitions.
Arrangements of Commentaries.
They comprise in all 43,475 lines. To him Timonides addresses his narrative in which he related the achievements of Dion and Bion. Favorinus also in the second book of his Memorabilia relates that Aristotle purchased the works of Speusippus for three talents.
There was another Speusippus, a physician of Alexandria, of the school of Herophilus.
6. Xenocrates, the son of Agathenor, was a native of Chalcedon. He was a pupil of Plato from his earliest youth; moreover he accompanied him on his journey to Sicily. He was naturally slow and clumsy. Hence Plato, comparing him to Aristotle, said, “The one needed a spur, the other a bridle.” And again, “See what an ass I am training and what a horse he has to run against.” However, Xenocrates was in all besides dignified and grave of demeanour, which made Plato say to him continually, “Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces.” He spent most of his time in the Academy; and whenever he was going to betake himself to the city, it is said that all the noisy rabble and hired porters made way for him as he passed. 7. And that once the notorious Phryne tried to make his acquaintance and, as if she were being chased by some people, took refuge under his roof; that he admitted her out of ordinary humanity and, there being but one small couch in the room, permitted her to share it with him, and at last, after many importunities, she retired without success, telling those who inquired that he whom she quitted was not a man but a statue. Another version of the story is that his pupils induced Laïs to invade his couch; and that so great was his endurance that he many times submitted to amputation and cautery. His words were entirely worthy of credit, so much so that, although it was illegal for witnesses to give evidence unsworn, the Athenians allowed Xenocrates alone to do so. 8. Furthermore, he was extremely independent; at all events, when Alexander sent him a large sum of money, he took three thousand Attic drachmas and sent back the rest to Alexander, whose needs, he said, were greater than his own, because he had a greater number of people to keep. Again, he would not accept the present sent him by Antipater, as Myronianus attests in his Parallels . And when he had been honoured at the court of Dionysius with a golden crown as the prize for his prowess in drinking at the Feast of Pitchers, he went out and placed it on the statue of Hermes just as he had been accustomed to place there garlands of flowers. There is a story that, when he was sent, along with others also, on an embassy to Philip, his colleagues, being bribed, accepted Philip’s invitations to feasts and talked with him. Xenocrates did neither the one nor the other. Indeed on this account Philip declined to see him. 9. Hence, when the envoys returned to Athens, they complained that Xenocrates had accompanied them without rendering any service. Thereupon the people were ready to fine him. But when he told them that now more than ever they ought to consider the interests of the state – “for,” said he, “Philip knew that the others had accepted his bribes, but that he would never win me over” – then the people paid him double honours. And afterwards Philip said that, of all who had arrived at his court, Xenocrates was the only man whom he could not bribe. Moreover, when he went as envoy to Antipater to plead for Athenians taken prisoners in the Lamian war, being invited to dine with Antipater, he quoted to him the following lines:
O Circe! what righteous man would have the heart to taste meat and drink ere he had redeemed his company and beheld them face to face?
and so pleased Antipater with his ready wit that he at once released them.
10. When a little sparrow was pursued by a hawk and rushed into his bosom, he stroked it and let it go, declaring that a suppliant must not be betrayed. When bantered by Bion, he said he would make no reply. For neither, said he, does tragedy deign to answer the banter of comedy. To some one who had never learnt either music or geometry or astronomy, but nevertheless wished to attend his lectures, Xenocrates said, “Go your ways, for you offer philosophy nothing to lay hold of.” Others report him as saying, “It is not to me that you come for the carding of a fleece.”
11. When Dionysius told Plato that he would lose his head, Xenocrates, who was present, pointed to his own and added, “No man shall touch it till he cut off mine.” They say too that, when Antipater came to Athens and greeted him, he did not address him in return until he had finished what he was saying. He was singularly free from pride; more than once a day he would retire into himself, and he assigned, it is said, a whole hour to silence.
He left a very large number of treatises, poems and addresses, of which I append a list:
On Nature, six books.
On Wisdom, six books.
On Wealth, one book.
The Arcadian, one book.
On the Indeterminate, one book.
12. On the Child, one book.
On Continence, one book.
On Utility, one book.
On Freedom, one book.
On Death, one book.
On the Voluntary, one book.
On Friendship, two books.
On Equity, one book.
On that which is Contrary, two books.
On Happiness, two books.
On Writing, one book.
On Memory, one book.
On Falsehood, one book.
Callicles, one book.
On Prudence, two books.
The Householder, one book.
On Temperance, one book.
On the Influence of Law, one book.
On the State, one book.
On Holiness, one book.
That Virtue can be taught, one book.
On Being, one book.
On Fate, one book.
On the Emotions, one book.
On Modes of Life, one book.
On Concord, one book.
On Students, two books.
On Justice, one book.
On Virtue, two books.
On Forms, one book.
On Pleasure, two books.
On Life, one book.
On Bravery, one book.
On the One, one book.
On Ideas, one book.
13. On Art, one book.
On the Gods, two books.
On the Soul, two books.
On Science, one book.
The Statesman, one book.
On Cognition, one book.
On Philosophy, one book.
On the Writings of Parmenides, one book.
Archedemus or Concerning Justice, one book.
On the Good, one book.
Things relating to the Understanding, eight books.
Solution of Logical Problems, ten books.
Physical Lectures, six books.
Summary, one book.
On Genera and Species, one book.
Things Pythagorean, one book.
Solutions, two books.
Divisions, eight books.
Theses, in twenty books, 30,000 lines.
The Study of Dialectic, in fourteen books, 12,740 lines.
After this come fifteen books, and then sixteen books of Studies relating to Style.
Nine books on Ratiocination.
Six books concerned with Mathematics.
Two other books entitled Things relating to the Intellect.
On Geometers, five books.
Commentaries, one book.
Contraries, one book.
On Numbers, one book.
Theory of Numbers, one book.
On Dimensions, one book.
On Astronomy, six books.
14. Elementary Principles of Monarchy, in four books, dedicated to Alexander.
To Arybas.
To Hephaestion.
On Geometry, two books.
These works comprise in all 224,239 lines.
Such was his character, and yet, when he was unable to pay the tax levied on resident aliens, the Athenians put him up for sale. And Demetrius of Phalerum purchased him, thereby making twofold restitution, to Xenocrates of his liberty, and to the Athenians of their tax. This we learn from Myronianus of Amastris in the first book of his Chapters on Historical Parallels . He succeeded Speusippus and was head of the school for twenty-five years from the archonship of Lysimachides, beginning in the second year of the 110th Olympiad. He died in his 82nd year from the effects of a fall over some utensil in the night.
Upon him I have expressed myself as follows:
15. Xenocrates, that type of perfect manliness, stumbled over a vessel of bronze and broke his head, and, with a loud cry, expired.
There have been six other men named Xenocrates: (1) a tactician in very ancient times; (2) the kinsman and fellow-citizen of the philosopher: a speech by him is extant entitled the Arsinoëtic, treating of a certain deceased Arsinoë; (4) a philosopher and not very successful writer of elegies; it is a remarkable fact that poets succeed when they undertake to write prose, but prose-writers who essay poetry come to grief; whereby it is clear that the one is a gift of nature and the other of art; (5) a sculptor; (6) a writer of songs mentioned by Aristoxenus.
16. Polemo, the son of Philostratus, was an Athenian who belonged to the deme of Oea. In his youth he was so profligate and dissipated that he actually carried about with him money to procure the immediate gratification of his desires, and would even keep sums concealed in lanes and alleys. Even in the Academy a piece of three obols was found close to a pillar, where he had buried it for the same purpose. And one day, by agreement with his young friends, he burst into the school of Xenocrates quite drunk, with a garland on his head. Xenocrates, however, without being at all disturbed, went on with his discourse as before, the subject being temperance. The lad, as he listened, by degrees was taken in the toils. He became so industrious as to surpass all the other scholars, and rose to be himself head of the school in the 116th Olympiad.
17. Antigonus of Carystus in his Biographies says that his father was foremost among the citizens and kept horses to compete in the chariot-race; that Polemo himself had been defendant in an action brought by his wife, who charged him with cruelty owing to the irregularities of his life; but that, from the time when he began to study philosophy, he acquired such strength of character as always to maintain the same unruffled calm of demeanour. Nay more, he never lost control of his voice. This in fact accounts for the fascination which he exercised over Crantor. Certain it is that, when a mad dog bit him in the back of his thigh, he did not even turn pale, but remained undisturbed by all the clamour which arose in the city at the news of what had happened. In the theatre too he was singularly unmoved. 18. For instance, Nicostratus, who was nicknamed Clytemnestra, was once reading to him and Crates something from Homer; and, while Crates was deeply affected, he was no more moved than if he had not heard him. Altogether he was a man such as Melanthius the painter describes in his work On Painting . There he says that a certain wilfulness and stubbornness should be stamped on works of art, and that the same holds good of character. Polemo used to say that we should exercise ourselves with facts and not with mere logical speculations, which leave us, like a man who has got by heart some paltry handbook on harmony but never practised, able, indeed, to win admiration for skill in asking questions, but utterly at variance with ourselves in the ordering of our lives.
He was, then, refined and generous, and would beg to be excused, in the words of Aristophanes about Euripides, the “acid, pungent style,” 19. which, as the same author says, is “strong seasoning for meat when it is high.” Further, he would not, they say, even sit down to deal with the themes of his pupils, but would argue walking up and down. It was, then, for his love of what is noble that he was honoured in the state. Nevertheless would he withdraw from society and confine himself to the Garden of the Academy, while close by his scholars made themselves little huts and lived not far from the shrine of the Muses and the lecture-hall. It would seem that in all respects Polemo emulated Xenocrates. And Aristippus in the fourth book of his work On the Luxury of the Ancients affirms him to have been his favourite. Certainly he always kept his predecessor before his mind and, like him, wore that simple austere dignity which is proper to the Dorian mode. 20. He loved Sophocles, particularly in those passages where it seemed as if, in the phrase of the comic poet,
A stout Molossian mastiff lent him aid,
and where the poet was, in the words of Phrynichus,
Nor must, nor blended vintage, but true Pramnian.
Thus he would call Homer the Sophocles of epic, and Sophocles the Homer of tragedy
He died at an advanced age of gradual decay, leaving behind him a considerable number of works. I have composed the following epigram upon him:
Dost thou not hear? We have buried Polemo, laid here by that fatal scourge of wasted strength. Yet not Polemo, but merely his body, which on his way to the stars he left to moulder in the ground.
21. Crates, whose father was Antigenes, was an Athenian belonging to the deme of Thria. He was a pupil and at the same time a favourite of Polemo, whom he succeeded in the headship of the school. The two were so much attached to each other that they not only shared the same pursuits in life but grew more and more alike to their latest breath, and, dying, shared the same tomb. Hence Antagoras, writing of both, employed this figure:
Passing stranger, say that in this tomb rest godlike Crates and Polemo, men magnanimous in concord, from whose inspired lips flowed sacred speech, and whose pure life of wisdom, in accordance with unswerving tenets, decked them for a bright immortality.
22. Hence Arcesilaus, who had quitted Theophrastus and gone over to their school, said of them that they were gods or a remnant of the Golden Age. They did not side with the popular party, but were such as Dionysodorus the flute-player is said to have claimed to be, when he boasted that no one ever heard his melodies, as those of Ismenias were heard, either on shipboard or at the fountain. According to Antigonus, their common table was in the house of Crantor; and these two and Arcesilaus lived in harmony together. Arcesilaus and Crantor shared the same house, while Polemo and Crates lived with Lysicles, one of the citizens. Crates, as already stated, was the favourite of Polemo and Arcesilaus of Crantor.
23. According to Apollodorus in the third book of his Chronology , Crates at his death left behind him works, some of a philosophical kind, others on comedy, others again speeches delivered in the assembly or when he was envoy. He also left distinguished pupils; among them Arcesilaus, of whom we shall speak presently – for he was also a pupil of Crates; another was Bion of Borysthenes, who was afterwards known as the Theodorean, from the school which he joined; of him too we shall have occasion to speak next after Arcesilaus.
There have been ten men who bore the name of Crates: (1) the poet of the Old Comedy; (2) a rhetorician of Tralles, a pupil of Isocrates; (3) a sapper and miner who accompanied Alexander; (4) the Cynic, of whom more hereafter; (5) a Peripatetic philosopher; (6) the Academic philosopher described above; (7) a grammarian of Malos; (8) the author of a geometrical work; (9) a composer of epigrams; (10) an Academic philosopher of Tarsus.
24. Crantor of Soli, though he was much esteemed in his native country, left it for Athens and attended the lectures of Xenocrates at the same time as Polemo. He left memoirs extending to 30,000 lines, some of which are by some critics attributed to Arcesilaus. He is said to have been asked what it was in Polemo that attracted him, and to have replied, “The fact that I never heard him raise or lower his voice in speaking.” He happened to fall ill, and retired to the temple of Asclepius, where he proceeded to walk about. At once people flocked round him in the belief that he had retired thither, not on account of illness, but in order to open a school. Among them was Arcesilaus, who wished to be introduced by his means to Polemo, notwithstanding the affection which united the two, as will be related in the Life of Arcesilaus. 25. However, when he recovered, he continued to attend Polemo’s lectures, and for this he was universally praised. He is also said to have left Arcesilaus his property, to the value of twelve talents. And when asked by him where he wished to be buried, he answered:
Sweet in some nook of native soil to rest.
It is also said that he wrote poems and deposited them under seal in the temple of Athena in his native place. And Theaetetus the poet writes thus of him:
Pleasing to men, more pleasing to the Muses, lived Crantor, and never saw old age. Receive, O earth, the hallowed dead; gently may he live and thrive even in the world below.
26. Crantor admired Homer and Euripides above all other poets; it is hard, he said, at once to write tragedy and to stir the emotions in the language of everyday life. And he would quote the line from the story of Bellerophon:
Alas! But why Alas? We have suffered the lot of mortals.
And it is said that there are extant these lines of the poet Antagoras, spoken by Crantor on Love:
My mind is in doubt, since thy birth is disputed, whether I am to call thee, Love, the first of the immortal gods, the eldest of all the children whom old Erebus and queenly Night brought to birth in the depths beneath wide Ocean; 27. or art thou the child of wise Cypris, or of Earth, or of the Winds? So many are the goods and ills thou devisest for men in thy wanderings. Therefore hast thou a body of double form.
He was also clever at inventing terms. For instance, he said of a tragic player’s voice that it was unpolished and unpeeled. And of a certain poet that his verses abounded in miserliness. And that the disquisitions of Theophrastus were written with an oyster-shell. His most highly esteemed work is the treatise On Grief . He died before Polemo and Crates, his end being hastened by dropsy. I have composed upon him the following epigram:
The worst of maladies overwhelmed you, Crantor, and thus did you descend the black abyss of Pluto. While you fare well even in the world below, the Academy and your country of Soli are bereft of your discourses.
28. Arcesilaus, the son of Seuthes, according to Apollodorus in the third book of his Chronology , came from Pitane in Aeolis. With him begins the Middle Academy; he was the first to suspend his judgement owing to the contradictions of opposing arguments. He was also the first to argue on both sides of a question, and the first to meddle with the system handed down by Plato and, by means of question and answer, to make it more closely resemble eristic.
He came across Crantor in this way. He was the youngest of four brothers, two of them being his brothers by the same father, and two by the same mother. Of the last two Pylades was the elder, and of the former two Moereas, and Moereas was his guardian. 29. At first, before he left Pitane for Athens, he was a pupil of the mathematician Autolycus, his fellow-countryman, and with him he also travelled to Sardis. Next he studied under Xanthus, the musician, of Athens; then he was a pupil of Theophrastus. Lastly, he crossed over to the Academy and joined Crantor. For while his brother Moereas, who has already been mentioned, wanted to make him a rhetorician, he was himself devoted to philosophy, and Crantor, being enamoured of him, cited the line from the Andromeda of Euripides:
O maiden, if I save thee, wilt thou be grateful to me?
and was answered with the next line:
Take me, stranger, whether for maidservant or for wife.
30. After that they lived together. Whereupon Theophrastus, nettled at his loss, is said to have remarked, “What a quick-witted and ready pupil has left my school!” For, besides being most effective in argument and decidedly fond of writing books, he also took up poetry. And there is extant an epigram of his upon Attalus which runs thus:
Pergamos, not famous in arms alone, is often celebrated for its steeds in divine Pisa. And if a mortal may make bold to utter the will of heaven, it will be much more sung by bards in days to come.
And again upon Menodorus, the favourite of Eugamus, one of his fellow-students:
31. Far, far away are Phrygia and sacred Thyatira, thy native land, Menodorus, son of Cadanus. But to unspeakable Acheron the ways are equal, from whatever place they be measured, as the proverb saith. To thee Eugamus raised this far-seen monument, for thou wert dearest to him of all who for him toiled.
He esteemed Homer above all the poets and would always read a passage from him before going to sleep. And in the morning he would say, whenever he wanted to read Homer, that he would pay a visit to his dear love. Pindar too he declared matchless for imparting fullness of diction and for affording a copious store of words and phrases. And in his youth he made a special study of Ion.
32. He also attended the lectures of the geometer Hipponicus, at whom he pointed a jest as one who was in all besides a listless, yawning sluggard but yet proficient in his subject. “Geometry,” he said, “must have flown into his mouth while it was agape.” When this man’s mind gave way, Arcesilaus took him to his house and nursed him until he was completely restored. He took over the school on the death of Crates, a certain Socratides having retired in his favour. According to some, one result of his suspending judgement on all matters was that he never so much as wrote a book. Others relate that he was caught revising some works of Crantor, which according to some he published, according to others he burnt. He would seem to have held Plato in admiration, and he possessed a copy of his works. 33. Some represent him as emulous of Pyrrho as well. He was devoted to dialectic and adopted the methods of argument introduced by the Eretrian school. On account of this Ariston said of him:
Plato the head of him, Pyrrho the tail, midway Diodorus.
And Timon speaks of him thus:
Having the lead of Menedemus at his heart, he will run either to that mass of flesh, Pyrrho, or to Diodorus.
And a little farther on he introduces him as saying:
I shall swim to Pyrrho and to crooked Diodorus.
He was highly axiomatic and concise, and in his discourse fond of distinguishing the meaning of terms. He was satirical enough, and outspoken. 34. This is why Timon speaks of him again as follows:
And mixing sound sense with wily cavils.
Hence, when a young man talked more boldly than was becoming, Arcesilaus exclaimed, “Will no one beat him at a game of knuckle-bone?” Again, when some one of immodest life denied that one thing seemed to him greater than another, he rejoined, “Then six inches and ten inches are all the same to you?” There was a certain Hemon, a Chian, who, though ugly, fancied himself to be handsome, and always went about in fine clothes. He having propounded as his opinion that the wise man will never fall in love, Arcesilaus replied, “What, not with one so handsome as you and so handsomely dressed?” And when one of loose life, to imply that Arcesilaus was arrogant, addressed him thus:
35. Queen, may I speak, or must I silence keep?
his reply was:
Woman, why talk so harshly, not as thou art wont?
When some talkative person of no family caused him considerable trouble, he cited the line:
Right ill to live with are the sons of slaves.
Of another who talked much nonsense he said that he could not have had even a nurse to scold him. And some persons he would not so much as answer. To a money-lending student, upon his confessing ignorance of something or other, Arcesilaus replied with two lines from the Oenomaus of Sophocles:
Be sure the hen-bird knows not from what quarter the wind blows until she looks for a new brood in the nest.
36. A certain dialectic, a follower of Alexinus, was unable to repeat properly some argument of his teacher, whereupon Arcesilaus reminded him of the story of Philoxenus and the brickmakers. He found them singing some of his melodies out of tune; so he retaliated by trampling on the bricks they were making, saying, “If you spoil my work, I’ll spoil yours.” He was, moreover, genuinely annoyed with any who took up their studies too late. By some natural impulse he was betrayed into using such phrases as “I assert,” and “So-and-so” (mentioning the name) “will not assent to this.” And this trait many of his pupils imitated, as they did also his style of speaking and his whole address.
37. Very fertile in invention, he could meet objection acutely or bring the course of discussion back to the point at issue, and fit it to every occasion. In persuasiveness he had no equal, and this all the more drew pupils to the school, although they were in terror of his pungent wit. But they willingly put up with that; for his goodness was extraordinary, and he inspired his pupils with hopes. He showed the greatest generosity in private life, being ever ready to confer benefits, yet most modestly anxious to conceal the favour. For instance, he once called upon Ctesibius when he was ill and, seeing in what straits he was, quietly put a purse under his pillow. He, when he found it, said, “This is the joke of Arcesilaus.” Moreover, on another occasion, he sent him 1000 drachmas.
38. Again, by introducing Archias the Arcadian to Eumenes, he caused him to be advanced to great dignity. And, as he was very liberal, caring very little for money, so he was the first to attend performances where seats were paid for, and he was above all eager to go to those of Archecrates and Callicrates, for which the fee was a gold piece. And he helped many people and collected subscriptions for them. Some one once borrowed his silver plate in order to entertain friends and never brought it back, but Arcesilaus did not ask him for it and pretended it had not been borrowed. Another version of the story is that he lent it on purpose, and, when it was returned, made the borrower a present of it because he was poor. He had property in Pitane from which his brother Pylades sent him supplies. Furthermore, Eumenes, the son of Philetaerus, furnished him with large sums, and for this reason Eumenes was the only one of the contemporary kings to whom he dedicated any of his works.
39. And whereas many persons courted Antigonus and went to meet him whenever he came to Athens, Arcesilaus remained at home, not wishing to thrust himself upon his acquaintance. He was on the best of terms with Hierocles, the commandant in Munichia and Piraeus, and at every festival would go down to see him. And though Hierocles joined in urging him to pay his respects to Antigonus, he was not prevailed upon, but, after going as far as the gates, turned back. And after the battle at sea, when many went to Antigonus or wrote him flattering letters, he held his peace. However, on behalf of his native city, he did go to Demetrias as envoy to Antigonus, but failed in his mission. He spent his time wholly in the Academy, shunning politics.
40. Once indeed, when at Athens, he stopped too long in the Piraeus, discussing themes, out of friendship for Hierocles, and for this he was censured by certain persons. He was very lavish, in short another Aristippus, and he was fond of dining well, but only with those who shared his tastes. He lived openly with Theodete and Phila, the Elean courtesans, and to those who censured him he quoted the maxims of Aristippus. He was also fond of boys and very susceptible. Hence he was accused by Ariston of Chios, the Stoic, and his followers, who called him a corrupter of youth and a shameless teacher of immorality. 41. He is said to have been particularly enamoured of Demetrius who sailed to Cyrene, and of Cleochares of Myrlea; of him the story is told that, when a band of revellers came to the door, he told them that for his part he was willing to admit them but that Cleochares would not let him. This same youth had amongst his admirers Demochares the son of Laches, and Pythocles the son of Bugelus, and once when Arcesilaus had caught them, with great forbearance he ordered them off. For all this he was assailed and ridiculed by the critics abovementioned, as a friend of the mob who courted popularity. The most virulent attacks were made upon him in the circle of Hieronymus the Peripatetic, whenever he collected his friends to keep the birthday of Halcyoneus, son of Antigonus, an occasion for which Antigonus used to send large sums of money to be spent in merrymaking. 42. There he had always shunned discussion over the wine; and when Aridices, proposing a certain question, requested him to speak upon it, he replied, “The peculiar province of philosophy is just this, to know that there is a time for all things.” As to the charge brought against him that he was the friend of the mob, Timon, among many other things, has the following:
So saying, he plunged into the surrounding crowd. And they were amazed at him, like chaffinches about an owl, pointing him out as vain, because he was a flatterer of the mob. And why, insignificant thing that you are, do you puff yourself out like a simpleton?
And yet for all that he was modest enough to recommend his pupils to hear other philosophers. And when a certain youth from Chios was not well pleased with his lectures and preferred those of the above-mentioned Hieronymus, Arcesilaus himself took him and introduced him to that philosopher, with an injunction to behave well.
43. Another pleasant story told of him is this. Some one had inquired why it was that pupils from all the other schools went over to Epicurus, but converts were never made from the Epicureans: “Because men may become eunuchs, but a eunuch never becomes a man,” was his answer.
At last, being near his end, he left all his property to his brother Pylades, because, unknown to Moereas, he had taken him to Chios and thence brought him to Athens. In all his life he never married nor had any children. He made three wills: the first he left at Eretria in the charge of Amphicritus, the second at Athens in the charge of certain friends, while the third he dispatched to his home to Thaumasias, one of his relatives, with the request that he would keep it safe. To this man he also wrote as follows:
“Arcesilaus to Thaumasias greeting.
44. “I have given Diogenes my will to be conveyed to you. For, owing to my frequent illnesses and the weak state of my body, I decided to make a will, in order that, if anything untoward should happen, you, who have been so devotedly attached to me, should not suffer by my decease. You are the most deserving of all those in this place to be entrusted with the will, on the score both of age and of relationship to me. Remember then that I have reposed the most absolute confidence in you, and strive to deal justly by me, in order that, so far as you are concerned, the provisions I have made may be carried out with fitting dignity. A copy is deposited at Athens with some of my acquaintance, and another in Eretria with Amphicritus.”
He died, according to Hermippus, through drinking too freely of unmixed wine which affected his reason; he was already seventy-five and regarded by the Athenians with unparalleled good-will.
45. I have written upon him as follows:
Why, pray, Arcesilaus, didst thou quaff so unsparingly unmixed wine as to go out of thy mind? I pity thee not so much for thy death as because thou didst insult the Muses by immoderate potations.
Three other men have borne the name of Arcesilaus: a poet of the Old Comedy, another poet who wrote elegies, and a sculptor besides, on whom Simonides composed this epigram:
This is a statue of Artemis and its cost two hundred Parian drachmas, which bear a goat for their device. It was made by Arcesilaus, the worthy son of Aristodicus, well practised in the arts of Athena.
According to Apollodorus in his Chronology , the philosopher described in the foregoing flourished about the 120th Olympiad.
46. Bion was by birth a citizen of Borysthenes [Olbia]; who his parents were, and what his circumstances before he took to philosophy, he himself told Antigonus in plain terms. For, when Antigonus inquired:
Who among men, and whence, are you? What is your city and your parents?
he, knowing that he had already been maligned to the king, replied, “My father was a freedman, who wiped his nose on his sleeve” – meaning that he was a dealer in salt fish – “a native of Borysthenes, with no face to show, but only the writing on his face, a token of his master’s severity. My mother was such as a man like my father would marry, from a brothel. Afterwards my father, who had cheated the revenue in some way, was sold with all his family. And I, then a not ungraceful youngster, was bought by a certain rhetorician, who on his death left me all he had. 47. And I burnt his books, scraped everything together, came to Athens and turned philosopher.
This is the stock and this the blood from which I boast to have sprung.
Such is my story. It is high time, then, that Persaeus and Philonides left off recounting it. Judge me by myself.”
In truth Bion was in other respects a shifty character, a subtle sophist, and one who had given the enemies of philosophy many an occasion to blaspheme, while in certain respects he was even pompous and able to indulge in arrogance. He left very many memoirs, and also sayings of useful application. For example, when he was reproached for not paying court to a youth, his excuse was, “You can’t get hold of a soft cheese with a hook.” 48. Being once asked who suffers most from anxiety, he replied, “He who is ambitious of the greatest prosperity.” Being consulted by some one as to whether he should marry – for this story is also told of Bion – he made answer, “If the wife you marry be ugly, she will be your bane; if beautiful, you will not keep her to yourself.” He called old age the harbour of all ills; at least they all take refuge there. Renown he called the mother of virtues; beauty another’s good; wealth the sinews of success. To some one who had devoured his patrimony he said, “The earth swallowed Amphiaraus, but you have swallowed your land.” To be unable to bear an ill is itself a great ill. He used to condemn those who burnt men alive as if they could not feel, and yet cauterized them as if they could. 49. He used repeatedly to say that to grant favours to another was preferable to enjoying the favours of others. For the latter means ruin to both body and soul. He even abused Socrates, declaring that, if he felt desire for Alcibiades and abstained, he was a fool; if he did not, his conduct was in no way remarkable. The road to Hades, he used to say, was easy to travel; at any rate men passed away with their eyes shut. He said in censure of Alcibiades that in his boyhood he drew away the husbands from their wives, and as a young man the wives from their husbands. When the Athenians were absorbed in the practice of rhetoric, he taught philosophy at Rhodes. To some one who found fault with him for this he replied, “How can I sell barley when what I brought to market is wheat?”
50. He used to say that those in Hades would be more severely punished if the vessels in which they drew water were whole instead of being pierced with holes. To an importunate talker who wanted his help he said, “I will satisfy your demand, if you will only get others to plead your cause and stay away yourself.” On a voyage in bad company he fell in with pirates. When his companions said, “We are lost if we are discovered,” “And I too,” he replied, “unless I am discovered.” Conceit he styled a hindrance to progress. Referring to a wealthy miser he said, “He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him.” Misers, he said, took care of property as if it belonged to them, but derived no more benefit from it than if it belonged to others. “When we are young,” said he, “we are courageous, but it is only in old age that prudence is at its height.” 51. Prudence, he said, excels the other virtues as much as sight excels the other senses. He used to say that we ought not to heap reproaches on old age, seeing that, as he said, we all hope to reach it. To a slanderer who showed a grave face his words were, “I don’t know whether you have met with ill luck, or your neighbour with good.” He used to say that low birth made a bad partner for free speech, for –
It cows a man, however bold his heart.
We ought, he remarked, to watch our friends and see what manner of men they are, in order that we may not be thought to associate with the bad or to decline the friendship of the good.
Bion at the outset used to deprecate the Academic doctrines, even at the time when he was a pupil of Crates. Then he adopted the Cynic discipline, donning cloak and wallet. 52. For little else was needed to convert him to the doctrine of entire insensibility.
Next he went over to Theodorean views, after he had heard the lectures of Theodorus the Atheist, who used every kind of sophistical argument. And after Theodorus he attended the lectures of Theophrastus the Peripatetic. He was fond of display and great at cutting up anything with a jest, using vulgar names for things. Because he employed every style of speech in combination, Eratosthenes, we hear, said of him that he was the first to deck philosophy with bright-flowered robes. He was clever also at parody. Here is a specimen of his style:
O gentle Archytas, musician-born, blessed in thine own conceit, most skilled of men to stir the bass of strife.
53. And in general he made sport of music and geometry. He lived extravagantly, and for this reason he would move from one city to another, sometimes contriving to make a great show. Thus at Rhodes he persuaded the sailors to put on students’ garb and follow in his train. And when, attended by them, he made his way into the gymnasium, all eyes were fixed on him. It was his custom also to adopt certain young men for the gratification of his appetite and in order that he might be protected by their goodwill. He was extremely selfish and insisted strongly on the maxim that “friends share in common.” And hence it came about that he is not credited with a single disciple, out of all the crowds who attended his lectures. And yet there were some who followed his lead in shamelessness. 54. For instance, Betion, one of his intimates, is said once to have addressed Menedemus in these words: “For my part, Menedemus, I pass the night with Bion, and I don’t think I am any the worse for it.” In his familiar talk he would often vehemently assail belief in the gods, a taste which he had derived from Theodorus. Afterwards, when he fell ill (so it was said by the people of Chalcis where he died), he was persuaded to wear an amulet and to repent of his offences against religion. And even for want of nurses he was in a sad plight, until Antigonus sent him two servants. And it is stated by Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History that the king himself followed in a litter.
Even so he died, and in these lines I have taken him to task:
55. We hear that Bion, to whom the Scythian land of Borysthenes gave birth, denied that the gods really exist. Had he persisted in holding this opinion, it would have been right to say, “He thinks as he pleases: wrongly, to be sure, but still he does think so.” But in fact, when he fell ill of a lingering disease and feared death, he who denied the existence of the gods, and would not even look at a temple, 56. who often mocked at mortals for sacrificing to deities, not only over hearth and high altars and table, with sweet savour and fat and incense did he gladden the nostrils of the gods; nor was he content to say “I have sinned, forgive the past,” 57. but he cheerfully allowed an old woman to put a charm round his neck, and in full faith bound his arms with leather and placed the rhamnus and the laurel-branch over the door, being ready to submit to anything sooner than die. Fool for wishing that the divine favour might be purchased at a certain price, as if the gods existed just when Bion chose to recognize them! It was then with vain wisdom that, when the driveller was all ashes, he stretched out his hand and said “Hail, Pluto, hail!”
58. Ten men have borne the name of Bion: (1) the contemporary of Pherecydes of Syria, to whom are assigned two books in the Ionic dialect; he was of Proconnesus; (2) a Syracusan, who wrote rhetorical handbooks; (3) our philosopher; (4) a follower of Democritus and mathematician of Abdera, who wrote both in Attic and in Ionic: he was the first to affirm that there are places where the night lasts for six months and the day for six months; (5) a native of Soli, who wrote a work on Aethiopia; (6) a rhetorician, the author of nine books called after the Muses; (7) a lyric poet; (8) a Milesian sculptor, mentioned by Polemo; (9) a tragic poet, one of the poets of Tarsus, as they are called; (10) a sculptor of Clazomenae or Chios, mentioned by Hipponax.
59. Lacydes, son of Alexander, was a native of Cyrene He was the founder of the New Academy and the successor of Arcesilaus: a man of very serious character who found numerous admirers; industrious from his youth up and, though poor, of pleasant manners and pleasant conversation. A most amusing story is told of his housekeeping. Whenever he brought anything out of the store-room, he would seal the door up again and throw his signet-ring inside through the opening, to ensure that nothing laid up there should be stolen or carried off. So soon, then, as his rogues of servants got to know this, they broke the seal and carried off what they pleased, afterwards throwing the ring in the same way through the opening into the store-room. Nor were they ever detected in this.
60. Lacydes used to lecture in the Academy, in the garden which had been laid out by King Attalus, and from him it derived its name of Lacydeum. He did what none of his predecessors had ever done; in his lifetime he handed over the school to Telecles and Evander, both of Phocaea. Evander was succeeded by Hegesinus of Pergamum, and he again by Carneades. A good saying is attributed to Lacydes. When Attalus sent for him, he is said to have remarked that statues are best seen from a distance. He stadied geometry late, and some one said to him, “Is this a proper time?” To which he replied, “Nay, is it not even yet the proper time?”
61. He assumed the headship of the school in the fourth year of the 134th Olympiad, and at his death he had been head for twenty-six years. His end was a palsy brought on by drinking too freely. And here is a quip of my own upon the fact:
Of thee too, O Lacydes, I have heard a tale, that Bacchus seized thee and dragged thee on tip-toe to the underworld. Nay, was it not clear that when the wine-god comes in force into the frame, he loosens our limbs? Perhaps this is why he gets his name of the Loosener.
62. Carneades, the son of Epicomus or (according to Alexander in his Successions of Philosophers ) of Philocomus, was a native of Cyrene. He studied carefully the writings of the Stoics and particularly those of Chrysippus, and by combating these successfully he became so famous that he would often say:
Without Chrysippus where should I have been?
The man’s industry was unparalleled, although in physics he was not so strong as in ethics. Hence he would let his hair and nails grow long from intense devotion to study. Such was his predominance in philosophy that even the rhetoricians would dismiss their classes and repair to him to hear him lecture.
63. His voice was extremely powerful, so that the keeper of the gymnasium sent to him and requested him not to shout so loud. To which he replied, “Then give me something by which to regulate my voice.” Thereupon by a happy hit the man replied in the words, “You have a regulator in your audience.” His talent for criticizing opponents was remarkable, and he was a formidable controversialist. And for the reasons already given he further declined invitations to dine out. One of his pupils was Mentor the Bithynian, who tried to ingratiate himself with a concubine of Carneades; so on one occasion (according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History ), when Mentor came to lecture, Carneades in the course of his remarks let fall these lines by way of parody at his expense:
64. Hither comes an old man of the sea, infallible, like to Mentor in person and in voice. Him I proclaim to have been banished from this school.
Thereupon the other got up and replied:
Those on their part made proclamation, and these speedily assembled.
He seems to have shown some want of courage in the face of death, repeating often the words, “Nature which framed this whole will also destroy it.” When he learnt that Antipater committed suicide by drinking a potion, he was greatly moved by the constancy with which he met his end, and exclaimed, “Give it then to me also.” And when those about him asked “What?” “A honeyed draught,” said he. At the time he died the moon is said to have been eclipsed, and one might well say that the brightest luminary in heaven next to the sun thereby gave token of her sympathy.
65. According to Apollodorus in his Chronology , he departed this life in the fourth year of the 162nd Olympiad at the age of eighty-five years. Letters of his to Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, are extant. Everything else was compiled by his pupils; he himself left nothing in writing. I have written upon him in logaoedic metre as follows:
Why, Muse, oh why wouldst thou have me censure Carneades? For he is ignorant who knoweth not how he feared death. When wasting away with the worst of diseases, he would not find release. But when he heard that Antipater’s life was quenched by drinking a potion, 66. “Give me too,” he cried, “a draught to drink.” “What? pray what?” “Give me a draught of honeyed wine.” He had often on his lips the words, “Nature which holds this frame together will surely dissolve it.” None the less he too went down to the grave, and he might have got there sooner by cutting short his tale of woes.
It is said that his eyes went blind at night without his knowing it, and he ordered the slave to light the lamp. The latter brought it and said, “Here it is.” “Then,” said Carneades, “read.”
He had many other disciples, but the most illustrious of them all was Clitomachus, of whom we have next to speak.
There was another Carneades, a frigid elegiac poet.
67. Clitomachus was a Carthaginian, his real name being Hasdrubal, and he taught philosophy at Carthage in his native tongue. He had reached his fortieth year when he went to Athens and became a pupil of Carneades. And Carneades, recognizing his industry, caused him to be educated and took part in training him. And to such lengths did his diligence go that he composed more than four hundred treatises. He succeeded Carneades in the headship of the school, and by his writings did much to elucidate his opinions. He was eminently well acquainted with the three sects – the Academy, the Peripatetics, and the Stoics.
The Academics in general are assailed by Timon in the line:
The prolixity of the Academics unseasoned by salt.
Having thus reviewed the Academics who derived from Plato, we will now pass on to the Peripatetics, who also derived from Plato. They begin with Aristotle.
1. Aristotle, son of Nicomachus and Phaestis, was a native of Stagira. His father, Nicomachus, as Hermippus relates in his book On Aristotle , traced his descent from Nicomachus who was the son of Machaon and grandson of Asclepius; and he resided with Amyntas, the king of Macedon, in the capacity of physician and friend. Aristotle was Plato’s most genuine disciple; he spoke with a lisp, as we learn from Timotheus the Athenian in his book On Lives ; further, his calves were slender (so they say), his eyes small, and he was conspicuous by his attire, his rings, and the cut of his hair. According to Timaeus, he had a son by Herpyllis, his concubine, who was also called Nicomachus.
2. He seceded from the Academy while Plato was still alive. Hence the remark attributed to the latter: “Aristotle spurns me, as colts kick out at the mother who bore them.” Hermippus in his Lives mentions that he was absent as Athenian envoy at the court of Philip when Xenocrates became head of the Academy, and that on his return, when he saw the school under a new head, he made choice of a public walk in the Lyceum where he would walk up and down discussing philosophy with his pupils until it was time to rub themselves with oil. Hence the name “Peripatetic.” But others say that it was given to him because, when Alexander was recovering from an illness and taking daily walks, Aristotle joined him and talked with him on certain matters.
3. In time the circle about him grew larger; he then sat down to lecture, remarking:
It were base to keep silence and let Xenocrates speak.
He also taught his pupils to discourse upon a set theme, besides practising them in oratory. Afterwards, however, he departed to Hermias the eunuch, who was tyrant of Atarneus, and there is one story that he was on very affectionate terms with Hermias; according to another, Hermias bound him by ties of kinship, giving him his daughter or his niece in marriage, and so Demetrius of Magnesia narrates in his work on Poets and Writers of the Same Name . The same author tells us that Hermias had been the slave of Eubulus, and that he was of Bithynian origin and had murdered his master. Aristippus in his first book On the Luxury of the Ancients says that Aristotle fell in love with a concubine of Hermias, 4. and married her with his consent, and in an excess of delight sacrificed to a weak woman as the Athenians did to Demeter of Eleusis; and that he composed a paean in honour of Hermias, which is given below; next that he stayed in Macedonia at Philip’s court and received from him his son Alexander as his pupil; that he petitioned Alexander to restore his native city which had been destroyed by Philip and obtained his request; and that he also drew up a code of laws for the inhabitants. We learn further that, following the example of Xenocrates, he made it a rule in his school that every ten days a new president should be appointed. When he thought that he had stayed long enough with Alexander, he departed to Athens, having first presented to Alexander his kinsman Callisthenes of Olynthus. 5. But when Callisthenes talked with too much freedom to the king and disregarded his own advice, Aristotle is said to have rebuked him by citing the line:
Short-lived, I ween, wilt thou be, my child, by what thou sayest.
And so indeed it fell out. For he, being suspected of complicity in the plot of Hermolaus against the life of Alexander, was confined in an iron cage and carried about until he became infested with vermin through lack of proper attention; and finally he was thrown to a lion and so met his end.
To return to Aristotle: he came to Athens, was head of his school for thirteen years, and then withdrew to Chalcis because he was indicted for impiety by Eurymedon the hierophant, or, according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History , by Demophilus, the ground of the charge being the hymn he composed to the aforesaid Hermias, 6. as well as the following inscription for his statue at Delphi:
This man in violation of the hallowed law of the immortals was unrighteously slain by the king of the bow-bearing Persians, who overcame him, not openly with a spear in murderous combat, but by treachery with the aid of one in whom he trusted.
At Chalcis he died, according to Eumelus in the fifth book of his Histories , by drinking aconite, at the age of seventy. The same authority makes him thirty years old when he came to Plato; but here he is mistaken. For Aristotle lived to be sixty-three, and he was seventeen when he became Plato’s pupil.
The hymn in question runs as follows:
7. O virtue, toilsome for the generation of mortals to achieve, the fairest prize that life can win, for thy beauty, O virgin, it were a doom glorious in Hellas even to die and to endure fierce, untiring labours. Such courage dost thou implant in the mind, imperishable, better than gold, dearer than parents or soft-eyed sleep. For thy sake Heracles, son of Zeus, and the sons of Leda endured much in the tasks whereby they pursued thy might. 8. And yearning after thee came Achilles and Ajax to the house of Hades, and for the sake of thy dear form the nursling of Atarneus too was bereft of the light of the sun. Therefore shall his deeds be sung, and the Muses, the daughters of Memory, shall make him immortal, exalting the majesty of Zeus, guardian of strangers, and the grace of lasting friendship.
There is, too, something of my own upon the philosopher which I will quote:
Eurymedon, the priest of Deo’s mysteries, was once about to indict Aristotle for impiety, but he, by a draught of poison, escaped prosecution. This then was an easy way of vanquishing unjust calumnies.
9. Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History affirms that Aristotle was the first to compose a forensic speech in his own defence written for this very suit; and he cites him as saying that at Athens
Pear upon pear grows old and fig upon fig.
According to Apollodorus in his Chronology he was born in the first year of the 99th Olympiad. He attached himself to Plato and resided with him twenty years, having become his pupil at the age of seventeen. He went to Mitylene in the archonship of Eubulus in the fourth year of the 108th Olympiad. When Plato died in the first year of that Olympiad, during the archonship of Theophilus, he went to Hermias and stayed with him three years. 10. In the archonship of Pythodotus, in the second year of the 109th Olympiad, he went to the court of Philip, Alexander being then in his fifteenth year. His arrival at Athens was in the second year of the 111th Olympiad, and he lectured in the Lyceum for thirteen years; then he retired to Chalcis in the third year of the 114th Olympiad and died a natural death, at the age of about sixty-three, in the archonship of Philocles, in the same year in which Demosthenes died at Calauria. It is said that he incurred the king’s displeasure because he had introduced Callisthenes to him, and that Alexander, in order to cause him annoyance, honoured Anaximenes and sent presents to Xenocrates.
11. Theocritus of Chios, according to Ambryon in his book On Theocritus , ridiculed him in an epigram which runs as follows:
To Hermias the eunuch, the slave withal of Eubulus, an empty monument was raised by empty-witted Aristotle, who by constraint of a lawless appetite chose to dwell at the mouth of the Borborus [muddy stream] rather than in the Academy.
Timon again attacked him in the line:
No, nor yet Aristotle’s painful futility.
Such then was the life of the philosopher. I have also come across his will, which is worded thus:
“All will be well; but, in case anything should happen, Aristotle has made these dispositions. Antipater is to be executor in all matters and in general; 12. but, until Nicanor shall arrive, Aristomenes, Timarchus, Hipparchus, Dioteles and (if he consent and if circumstances permit him) Theophrastus shall take charge as well of Herpyllis and the children as of the property. And when the girl shall be grown up she shall be given in marriage to Nicanor; but if anything happen to the girl (which heaven forbid and no such thing will happen) before her marriage, or when she is married but before there are children, Nicanor shall have full powers, both with regard to the child and with regard to everything else, to administer in a manner worthy both of himself and of us. Nicanor shall take charge of the girl and of the boy Nicomachus as he shall think fit in all that concerns them as if he were father and brother. And if anything should happen to Nicanor (which heaven forbid!) either before he marries the girl, or when he has married her but before there are children, any arrangements that he may make shall be valid. 13. And if Theophrastus is willing to live with her, he shall have the same rights as Nicanor. Otherwise the executors in consultation with Antipater shall administer as regards the daughter and the boy as seems to them to be best. The executors and Nicanor, in memory of me and of the steady affection which Herpyllis has borne towards me, shall take care of her in every other respect and, if she desires to be married, shall see that she be given to one not unworthy; and besides what she has already received they shall give her a talent of silver out of the estate and three handmaids whomsoever she shall choose besides the maid she has at present and the man-servant Pyrrhaeus; 14. and if she chooses to remain at Chalcis, the lodge by the garden, if in Stagira, my father’s house. Whichever of these two houses she chooses, the executors shall furnish with such furniture as they think proper and as Herpyllis herself may approve. Nicanor shall take charge of the boy Myrmex, that he be taken to his own friends in a manner worthy of me with the property of his which we received. Ambracis shall be given her freedom, and on my daughter’s marriage shall receive 500 drachmas and the maid whom she now has. And to Thale shall be given, in addition to the maid whom she has and who was bought, a thousand drachmas and a maid. 15. And Simon, in addition to the money before paid to him towards another servant, shall either have a servant purchased for him or receive a further sum of money. And Tycho, Philo, Olympius and his child shall have their freedom when my daughter is married. None of the servants who waited upon me shall be sold but they shall continue to be employed; and when they arrive at the proper age they shall have their freedom if they deserve it. My executors shall see to it, when the images which Gryllion has been commissioned to execute are finished, that they be set up, namely that of Nicanor, that of Proxenus, which it was my intention to have executed, and that of Nicanor’s mother; also they shall set up the bust which has been executed of Arimnestus, to be a memorial of him seeing that he died childless, 16. and shall dedicate my mother’s statue to Demeter at Nemea or wherever they think best. And wherever they bury me, there the bones of Pythias shall be laid, in accordance with her own instructions. And to commemorate Nicanor’s safe return, as I vowed on his behalf, they shall set up in Stagira stone statues of life size to Zeus and Athena the Saviours.”
Such is the tenor of Aristotle’s will. It is said that a very large number of dishes belonging to him were found, and that Lyco mentioned his bathing in a bath of warm oil and then selling the oil. Some relate that he placed a skin of warm oil on his stomach, and that, when he went to sleep, a bronze ball was placed in his hand with a vessel under it, in order that, when the ball dropped from his hand into the vessel, he might be waked up by the sound.
17. Some exceedingly happy sayings are attributed to him, which I proceed to quote. To the question, “What do people gain by telling lies?” his answer was, “Just this, that when they speak the truth they are not believed.” Being once reproached for giving alms to a bad man, he rejoined, “It was the man and not his character that I pitied.” He used constantly to say to his friends and pupils, whenever or wherever he happened to be lecturing, “As sight takes in light from the surrounding air, so does the soul from mathematics.” Frequently and at some length he would say that the Athenians were the discoverers of wheat and of laws; but, though they used wheat, they had no use for laws.
18. “The roots of education,” he said, “are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” Being asked, “What is it that soon grows old?” he answered, “Gratitude.” He was asked to define hope, and he replied, “It is a waking dream.” When Diogenes offered him dried figs, he saw that he had prepared something caustic to say if he did not take them; so he took them and said Diogenes had lost his figs and his jest into the bargain. And on another occasion he took them when they were offered, lifted them up aloft, as you do babies, and returned them with the exclamation, “Great is Diogenes.” Three things he declared to be indispensable for education: natural endowment, study, and constant practice. On hearing that some one abused him, he rejoined, “He may even scourge me so it be in my absence.” Beauty he declared to be a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction. 19. Others attribute this definition to Diogenes; Aristotle, they say, defined good looks as the gift of god, Socrates as a short-lived reign, Plato as natural superiority, Theophrastus as a mute deception, Theocritus as an evil in an ivory setting, Carneades as a monarchy that needs no bodyguard. Being asked how the educated differ from the uneducated, “As much,” he said, “as the living from the dead.” He used to declare education to be an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity. Teachers who educated children deserved, he said, more honour than parents who merely gave them birth; for bare life is furnished by the one, the other ensures a good life. To one who boasted that he belonged to a great city his reply was, “That is not the point to consider, but who it is that is worthy of a great country.” 20. To the query, “What is a friend?” his reply was, “A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” Mankind, he used to say, were divided into those who were as thrifty as if they would live for ever, and those who were as extravagant as if they were going to die the next day. When some one inquired why we spend much time with the beautiful, “That,” he said, “is a blind man’s question.” When asked what advantage he had ever gained from philosophy, he replied, “This, that I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.” The question being put, how can students make progress, he replied, “By pressing hard on those in front and not waiting for those behind.” To the chatterbox who poured out a flood of talk upon him and then inquired, “Have I bored you to death with my chatter?” he replied, “No, indeed; for I was not attending to you.” 21. When some one accused him of having given a subscription to a dishonest man – for the story is also told in this form – “It was not the man,” said he, “that I assisted, but humanity.” To the question how we should behave to friends, he answered, “As we should wish them to behave to us.” Justice he defined as a virtue of soul which distributes according to merit. Education he declared to be the best provision for old age. Favorinus in the second book of his Memorabilia mentions as one of his habitual sayings that “He who has friends can have no true friend.” Further, this is found in the seventh book of the Ethics . These then are the sayings attributed to him.
His writings are very numerous and, considering the man’s all-round excellence, I deemed it incumbent on me to catalogue them:
22. Of Justice, four books.
On Poets, three books.
On Philosophy, three books.
Of the Statesman, two books.
On Rhetoric, or Grylus, one book.
Nerinthus, one book.
The Sophist, one book.
Menexenus, one book.
Concerning Love, one book.
Symposium, one book.
Of Wealth, one book.
Exhortation to Philosophy, one book.
Of the Soul, one book.
Of Prayer, one book.
On Noble Birth, one book.
On Pleasure, one book.
Alexander, or a Plea for Colonies, one book.
On Kingship, one book.
On Education, one book.
Of the Good, three books.
Extracts from Plato’s Laws, three books.
Extracts from the Republic, two books.
Of Household Management, one book.
Of Friendship, one book.
On being or having been affected, one book.
Of Sciences, one book.
On Controversial Questions, two books.
Solutions of Controversial Questions, four books.
Sophistical Divisions, four books.
On Contraries, one book.
On Genera and Species, one book.
On Essential Attributes, one book.
23. Three note-books on Arguments for Purposes of Refutation.
Propositions concerning Virtue, two books.
Objections, one book.
On the Various Meanings of Terms or Expressions where a Determinant is added, one book.
Of Passions or of Anger, one book.
Five books of Ethics.
On Elements, three books.
Of Science, one book.
Of Logical Principle, one book.
Logical Divisions, seventeen books.
Concerning Division, one book.
On Dialectical Questioning and Answering, two books.
Of Motion, one book.
Propositions, one book.
Controversial Propositions, one book.
Syllogisms, one book.
Eight books of Prior Analytics.
Two books of Greater Posterior Analytics.
Of Problems, one book.
Eight books of Methodics.
Of the Greater Good, one book.
On the Idea, one book.
Definitions prefixed to the Topics, seven books.
Two books of Syllogisms.
24. Concerning Syllogism with Definitions, one book.
Of the Desirable and the Contingent, one book.
Preface to Commonplaces, one book.
Two books of Topics criticizing the Definitions.
Affections or Qualities, one book.
Concerning Logical Division, one book.
Concerning Mathematics, one book.
Definitions, thirteen books.
Two books of Refutations.
Of Pleasure, one book.
Propositions, one book.
On the Voluntary, one book.
On the Beautiful, one book.
Theses for Refutation, twenty-five books.
Theses concerning Love, four books.
Theses concerning Friendship, two books.
Theses concerning the Soul, one book.
Politics, two books.
Eight books of a course of lectures on Politics like that of Theophrastus.
Of Just Actions, two books.
A Collection of Arts [that is, Handbooks], two books.
Two books of the Art of Rhetoric.
Art, a Handbook, one book.
Another Collection of Handbooks, two books.
Concerning Method, one book.
Compendium of the “Art” of Theodectes, one book.
A Treatise on the Art of Poetry, two books.
Rhetorical Enthymemes, one book.
Of Degree, one book.
Divisions of Enthymemes, one book.
On Diction, two books.
Of Taking Counsel, one book.
25. A Collection or Compendium, two books.
On Nature, three books.
Concerning Nature, one book.
On the Philosophy of Archytas, three books.
On the Philosophy of Speusippus and Xenocrates, one book.
Extracts from the Timaeus and from the Works of Archytas, one book.
A Reply to the Writings of Melissus, one book.
A Reply to the Writings of Alcmaeon, one book.
A Reply to the Pythagoreans, one book.
A Reply to the Writings of Gorgias, one book.
A Reply to the Writings of Xenophanes, one book.
A Reply to the Writings of Zeno, one book.
On the Pythagoreans, one book.
On Animals, nine books.
Eight books of Dissections.
A selection of Dissections, one book.
On Composite Animals, one book.
On the Animals of Fable, one book.
On Sterility, one book.
On Plants, two books.
Concerning Physiognomy, one book.
Two books concerning Medicine.
On the Unit, one book.
26. Prognostics of Storms, one book.
Concerning Astronomy, one book.
Concerning Optics, one book.
On Motion, one book.
On Music, one book.
Concerning Memory, one book.
Six books of Homeric Problems.
Poetics, one book.
Thirty-eight books of Physics according to the lettering.
Two books of Problems which have been examined.
Two books of Routine Instruction.
Mechanics, one book.
Problems taken from the works of Democritus, two books.
On the Magnet, one book.
Analogies, one book.
Miscellaneous Notes, twelve books.
Descriptions of Genera, fourteen books.
Claims advanced, one book.
Victors at Olympia, one book.
Victors at the Pythian Games, one book.
On Music, one book.
Concerning Delphi, one book.
Criticism of the List of Pythian Victors, one book.
Dramatic Victories at the Dionysia, one book.
Of Tragedies, one book.
Dramatic Records, one book.
Proverbs, one book.
Laws of the Mess-table, one book.
Four books of Laws.
Categories, one book.
De Interpretatione, one book.
27. Constitutions of 158 Cities, in general and in particular, democratic, oligarchic, aristocratic, tyrannical.
Letters to Philip.
Letters of Selymbrians.
Letters to Alexander, four books.
Letters to Antipater, nine books.
To Mentor, one book.
To Ariston, one book.
To Olympias, one book.
To Hephaestion, one book.
To Themistagoras, one book.
To Philoxenus, one book.
In reply to Democritus, one book.
Verses beginning Ἁγνὲ θεῶν πρέσβισθ᾽ ἑκατηβόλε (“Holy One and Chiefest of Gods, far-darting”).
Elegiac verses beginning Καλλιτέκνου μητρὸς θύγατερ (“Daughter of a Mother blessed with fair offspring”).
In all 445,270 lines.
28. Such is the number of the works written by him. And in them he puts forward the following views. There are two divisions of philosophy, the practical and the theoretical. The practical part includes ethics and politics, and in the latter not only the doctrine of the state but also that of the household is sketched. The theoretical part includes physics and logic, although logic is not an independent science, but is elaborated as an instrument to the rest of science. And he clearly laid down that it has a twofold aim, probability and truth. For each of these he employed two faculties, dialectic and rhetoric where probability is aimed at, analytic and philosophy where the end is truth; he neglects nothing which makes either for discovery or for judgement or for utility. 29. As making for discovery he left in the Topics and Methodics a number of propositions, whereby the student can be well supplied with probable arguments for the solution of problems. As an aid to judgement he left the Prior and Posterior Analytics . By the Prior Analytics the premisses are judged, by the Posterior the process of inference is tested. For practical use there are the precepts on controversy and the works dealing with question and answer, with sophistical fallacies, syllogisms and the like. The test of truth which he put forward was sensation in the sphere of objects actually presented, but in the sphere of morals dealing with the state, the household and the laws, it was reason.
30. The one ethical end he held to be the exercise of virtue in a completed life. And happiness he maintained to be made up of goods of three sorts: goods of the soul, which indeed he designates as of the highest value; in the second place bodily goods, health and strength, beauty and the like; and thirdly external goods, such as wealth, good birth, reputation and the like. And he regarded virtue as not of itself sufficient to ensure happiness; bodily goods and external goods were also necessary, for the wise man would be miserable if he lived in the midst of pains, poverty, and similar circumstances. Vice, however, is sufficient in itself to secure misery, even if it be ever so abundantly furnished with corporeal and external goods. 31. He held that the virtues are not mutually interdependent. For a man might be prudent, or again just, and at the same time profligate and unable to control his passions. He said too that the wise man was not exempt from all passions, but indulged them in moderation.
He defined friendship as an equality of reciprocal good-will, including under the term as one species the friendship of kinsmen, as another that of lovers, and as a third that of host and guest. The end of love was not merely intercourse but also philosophy. According to him the wise man would fall in love and take part in politics; furthermore he would marry and reside at a king’s court. Of three kinds of life, the contemplative, the practical, and the pleasure-loving life, he gave the preference to the contemplative. He held that the studies which make up the ordinary education are of service for the attainment of virtue.
32. In the sphere of natural science he surpassed all other philosophers in the investigation of causes, so that even the most insignificant phenomena were explained by him. Hence the unusual number of scientific notebooks which he compiled. Like Plato he held that God was incorporeal; that his providence extended to the heavenly bodies, that he is unmoved, and that earthly events are regulated by their affinity with them (the heavenly bodies). Besides the four elements he held that there is a fifth, of which the celestial bodies are composed. Its motion is of a different kind from that of the other elements, being circular. Further, he maintained the soul to be incorporeal, defining it as the first entelechy [i.e. realization] of a natural organic body potentially possessed of life. 33. By the term realization he means that which has an incorporeal form. This realization, according to him, is twofold.
Either it is potential, as that of Hermes in the wax, provided the wax be adapted to receive the proper mouldings, or as that of the statue implicit in the bronze; or again it is determinate, which is the case with the completed figure of Hermes or the finished statue. The soul is the realization “of a natural body,” since bodies may be divided into (a) artificial bodies made by the hands of craftsmen, as a tower or a ship, and (b) natural bodies which are the work of nature, such as plants and the bodies of animals. And when he said “organic” he meant constructed as means to an end, as sight is adapted for seeing and the ear for hearing. Of a body “potentially possessed of life,” that is, in itself.
34. There are two senses of “potential,” one answering to a formed state and the other to its exercise in act. In the latter sense of the term he who is awake is said to have soul, in the former he who is asleep. It was then in order to include the sleeper that Aristotle added the word “potential.”
He held many other opinions on a variety of subjects which it would be tedious to enumerate. For altogether his industry and invention were remarkable, as is shown by the catalogue of his writings given above, which come to nearly 400 in number, i.e. counting those only the genuineness of which is not disputed. For many other written works and pointed oral sayings are attributed to him.
35. There were in all eight Aristotles: (1) our philosopher himself; (2) an Athenian statesman, the author of graceful forensic speeches; (3) a scholar who commented on the Iliad ; (4) a Sicilian rhetorician, who wrote a reply to the Panegyric of Isocrates; (5) a disciple of Aeschines the Socratic philosopher, surnamed Myth; (6) a native of Cyrene, who wrote upon the art of poetry; (7) a trainer of boys, mentioned by Aristoxenus in his Life of Plato; (8) an obscure grammarian, whose handbook On Redundancy is still extant.
Aristotle of Stagira had many disciples; the most distinguished was Theophrastus, of whom we have next to speak.