467 Bion was a citizen of Borysthenes* by birth; as to who his parents were and through what circumstances he came to turn to philosophy, he himself reveals clearly enough in what he said to Antigonos.* For when the king asked him,
‘Who are you, and whence do you come?
From what city and from what parentage?’,*
he replied, knowing that malicious reports had already been spread about him, ‘My father was a freedman, who wiped his nose on his sleeve’—meaning by this that he was a seller of salt-fish—‘a Borysthenite by birth, but with no face to show,* but only the branding* on his face, a token of his master’s venom. My mother was such a woman as a man of that condition might marry, she came from a brothel. And then my father, because he defrauded the customs* in some way, was sold into slavery along with his family. Being a not unattractive young man, I was bought by a rhetorician,* who left me his entire property at his death. And I burnt his books, scraped together all my resources, and came to Athens, where I turned to philosophy. This is the lineage, this the blood, of which I boast of having sprung.* That is my story, then. So Persaios and Philonides* really ought to leave off recounting it: you may judge me by who I am.’
In truth Bion was a man of versatile mind, an artful sophist, and one who provided detractors of philosophy with plenty of material;* on occasion he was sociable,* and he knew how to poke fun at vanity.
Bion initially preferred the Academic doctrines, at the time in which he was listening to the discourses of Crates.* Then he adopted the Cynic way of life,* putting on a rough cloak and knapsack; for what else could have enabled him to change over to complete insensibility? After that he went over to the Theodorean teaching and followed the lectures of Theodoros the Atheist,* who employed every kind of sophistical argument; and after that he attended the lectures of Theophrastos the Peripatetic.*
He adopted a showy style, and liked to turn everything to ridicule, making use of vulgar expressions. Because he mixed together every style of speech, Eratosthenes is said to have remarked of him that he was the first to deck out philosophy in a flowery dress.* He was clever too at parody; here is an example of that:
Oh my friend Archytas,* born to the harp, happy in his conceit,
Most skilled in rousing men to the utmost strife.
And he poked fun at music and geometry in general.
He was a man of expensive tastes, and would thus move from one city to another, sometimes contriving to put on quite a show. At Rhodes, for example, he persuaded the sailors to dress up in philosopher’s dress* and follow him around; so when he walked into the gymnasium with them in tow, he immediately became the centre of attention. He was in the habit also of adopting young men to make use of them for his pleasures, and to gain protection as a result of their affection. On the other hand, he was extremely self-centred, and placed much insistence on the maxim that ‘friends hold all things in common’.* And so he enlisted not a single disciple, even though a great many people attended his lectures. There were, however, some who allowed themselves to be led by him into shamelessness. One of his intimate friends, Betion, is thus said to have once remarked to Menedemos,* ‘Well, I for my part, Menedemos, spend the night with Bion, and don’t think that I have come to any harm by it.’
In conversation he would talk in a thoroughly impious manner, having benefited in this regard from the teachings of Theodoros. Subsequently, however, when he fell ill, so the people of Chalcis claim—for it was there that he died—he was persuaded to wear an amulet* and to repent of his insults against the gods. He was in a very bad way for lack of nurses, until Antigonos sent him a couple of his servants. And according to Favorinos in his Miscellaneous History, the king himself followed after them in a litter.
468 Just as a good actor must play to the best of his ability whatever role is assigned to him by the dramatist, so also must the man of worth play whatever role he is assigned by Fortune. For like a poetess, says Bion, she assigns now a leading role, now a secondary one, and sometimes the role of a king, and sometimes that of a beggar. So if you have a secondary role, do not aspire to a leading one; for otherwise you will be acting discordantly. You fulfil your role well as a ruler, and I as someone who is ruled, he says; you have many people to command, and I just one, having become a pedagogue; and you, being wealthy, can dispense liberally, while I for my part accept it from you with confidence, without grovelling, or abasing myself, or complaining of my lot. You make good use of a multitude of things, and I of just a few; for it would be wrong to suppose, he says, that what is expensive nourishes and can be used with benefit, whereas, on the other hand, one cannot make use of slight and inexpensive resources, if one is temperate and free of pretension. So if things could speak with a human voice like us, says Bion, and could plead their cause, would not Poverty, he says, be the first to say, ‘Why do you attack me, man?’, like a slave who pleads his cause with his master after having taken refuge at an altar, ‘Why are you attacking me? Have I stolen anything from you? Don’t I fulfil your every order? Don’t I regularly bring you my earnings?’ Could not Poverty say to her accuser, ‘Why are you attacking me? Have you ever been deprived of anything of value because of me? Such as moral wisdom? Justice? Courage? Surely you do not lack anything that you really need? Aren’t the roadsides full of wild vegetables, and the springs full of water? And don’t I offer you as many beds as there are places on earth? And leaves for your bedclothes? Is it impossible for you to live happily in my company? Don’t you see old women chattering merrily away as they eat a barley-cake? Don’t I provide you with hunger as a cheap and excellent seasoning for your food? Isn’t it the case that those who are hungry eat with the most pleasure and have the least need of appetizers? And those who are thirsty drink with most pleasure and yearn the least for drink that does not lie at hand? Who is it, then, who hungers for cakes or thirsts for fine Chian wine? Isn’t it true that people seek for such things through sheer self-indulgence? Don’t I provide you with housing at no expense, the baths in winter, the temples in summer? And what finer house could you have in summer, says Diogenes, than the Parthenon that I have, so well-aired and so magnificent? ‘If Poverty were to speak like this, what could you say in response? I think for my part that I would be left speechless. But we always blame anything other than our own perversity and bad nature, accusing old age, poverty, circumstances, the day, the hour, the place; and Diogenes thus claimed to have heard the voice of Vice accusing herself and saying, ‘No one other than I myself are to blame for all these ills.’* Most people, however, are lacking in sense and ascribe the blame not to themselves but to things outside. It is like the bite that one can get when one takes hold of a wild beast, says Bion; if you grasp a snake by its middle, you will get bitten, but if you seize it by the head, nothing bad will happen to you. And likewise, he says, the pain that you may suffer as a result of things outside yourself depends on how you apprehend them, and if you apprehend them in the same way as Socrates, you will feel no pain, but if you take them in any other way, you will suffer, not on account of the things themselves, but of your own character and false opinions.
(Teles fr. II 5.2–9.8 Hense; K16A, 17, 21)
469 Slaves who are of good character are free men, while free men who are of bad character are slaves to many a desire.
(Stobaeus 3.2.38; K11A)
470 And Bion of Borysthenes did well to say that one should not derive one’s pleasures from the table, but from the wisdom of one’s mind.
(Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 10, 421e–f; K14)
471 He used to say that moral wisdom* surpasses the other virtues to the same degree as sight surpasses the other senses.
(Diogenes Laertius 4.51; K12A)
472 When asked, ‘What is foolishness?’, he said, ‘An impediment to moral progress.’
(Stobaeus 3.4.87; K19)
473 False opinion, he said, is a hindrance to progress.
(Diogenes Laertius 4.50; K20)
474 He said that vain opinion is the mother of all grief.*
(Diogenes Laertius 4.48; K22)
475 And the philosopher Bion used to say that just as the suitors, when they found themselves unable to approach Penelope,* coupled with her maidservants instead, so likewise those who are unable to attain to philosophy wear themselves out with other studies which are of no worth.
(Plutarch, On the Education of Children 10, 7c–d; K3)
476 Bion used to say that the scholars, as they enquire into the wanderings of Odysseus, fail to examine where they themselves have gone astray,* and are going astray in that very activity by toiling over matters that are of no use.
(Stobaeus 3.4.52; K5A)
477 Bion used to say that the astronomers are most absurd who, when they fail to see the fish on the sea-shore, claim to know those in the heavens.*
(Stobaeus 2.1.20; K6)
478 Bion the sophist said that avarice is the mother-city of all evils.*
(Stobaeus 3.10.37; K35A)
479 If anyone wants to deliver himself or another person from want and need, he should not set out in search of riches. That would be as if, says Bion, when trying to relieve a hydroptic* of his thirst, one were to provide him with springs and rivers rather than attempting to cure him of his dropsy. By drinking in quantity he would surely burst rather than be relieved of his thirst, and likewise one can never be satisfied when one is insatiably greedy, and avid for good repute and superstitious.*
(Teles in Stobaeus 4.33.1; K34)
480 Bion said that it is absurd for people to strive for riches, which fortune bestows, avarice guards, and benevolence disperses.
(Stobaeus 4.31c.87; K38A)
481 Bion said, ‘Riches are not given to the wealthy by fortune, but loaned to them.’
(Stobaeus 4.41.56; K39B)
482 As long as a person is insatiable, niggardly, slavish, and full of false pretences, he is bound to remain in want and need.—But how can people be in want of what they already have?—And how, says Bion, can money-changers be in want of riches which they already have beneath their hands? Plainly because what they have does not really belong to them; and likewise with those other people [the insatiable and miserly].
(Teles fr. IVA, p. 36.6–9 Hense; K41)
483 Bion used to say that just as shabby purses, even if they are of no value in themselves, are held to be of value in so far as they have money in them, so likewise, wealthy men who are of no worth are held to be of worth for what they possess.
(Stobaeus 4.31a.33; K42a)
484 He said of a miserly rich man, ‘That man doesn’t own his wealth, his wealth owns him.’
(Diogenes Laertius 4.50; K36)
485 He said that misers look after their property as if it belongs to them, but gain no more benefit from it than if it belonged to somebody else.
(Diogenes Laertius 4.50; K37)
486 Bion neatly remarks that it hurts the bald no less to have their hair pulled out than it hurts those who have a full head of hair. You may be sure that the same applies to the poor and the rich, that they suffer the same distress: for in both cases their money clings to them, and cannot be torn away without them feeling it.
(Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind 8.3; K44)
487 To someone who had devoured his entire inheritance, he said, ‘The land swallowed up Amphiaraos,* but you have swallowed up your land.’
(Diogenes Laertius 4.48; K45)
488 Bion said that a good magistrate will lay down his office having increased, not his wealth, but his reputation.
(Stobaeus 4.5.23; K43A)
489 Wealth is the sinews of business.*
(Diogenes Laertius 4.48; K46)
490 When Crates asked him [Stilpo]* whether the gods take pleasure in adoration and prayers, he is said to have replied, ‘Don’t ask me about such matters in the street, you fool, but when we are alone’; and it is said similarly that when Bion was asked whether the gods exist, he replied:
‘Will you not scatter the crowd from me, wretched old man?’*
(Diogenes Laertius 2.117; K25)
491 So it was a neat remark that Bion made, I think, when he asked how people could reasonably pray to Zeus for good children when Zeus could not even procure that for himself.*
(Clement of Alexandria, Protreptic 4.56.1; K29)
492 ‘And is it such a marvel’, says Bion, ‘if a mouse has gnawed through a sack,* not having anything to eat? The real marvel would be, as Arcesilaos* jokingly remarked, if the sack had devoured the mouse.’
(Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.4.24.5; K31A)
493 When Bion persistently ran down the diviners, he [Menedemos] said that he was simply slaying the dead.*
(Diogenes Laertius 2.135; K32)
494 He [the superstitious man] sits outside his house in sackcloth or wrapped up in filthy rags, and often rolls naked in the mud* as he confesses his sins or errors, such as having eaten or drunk the wrong thing, or having walked along a path contrary to some divine indication.* But if he is very fortunate and only moderately in thrall to superstition, he sits at home and has himself purified by fumigations and magical procedures, as old women, so Bion says, bring along whatever they please* and attach and fasten it to him as though to a peg.
(Plutarch, On Superstition 7, 168d; K30)
495 He said that people in Hades would suffer a much worse punishment if they were made to fetch water in vessels that were intact, rather than in ones that have holes bored through them.*
(Diogenes Laertius 4.50; K28)
496 Bion says that if God punishes the children of the wicked,* that is even more ridiculous than a doctor administering medicines to a son or grandson to cure the illness of his father or grandfather.
(Plutarch, On the Delays of Divine Justice 19, 561c; K27)
497 Bion put forward arguments to prove at one time that everyone is sacrilegious, and at another time that no one is. When he feels inclined to throw everyone down from the Tarpeian Rock,* he says, ‘Whoever takes anything and consumes or puts to his own use what belongs to the gods, commits sacrilege; but everything belongs to the gods, so whatever anyone takes, he takes from the gods, to whom all things belong; so anyone who takes away anything whatever commits sacrilege.’ And then, by contrast, when he bids people to break into the temples and pillage the Capitol without fear of divine punishment, he says that no one can commit sacrilege, because whatever anyone takes away, he removes from one place that belongs to the gods to another place that belongs to the gods.
(Seneca, On Benefits 7.7.1; K33)
498 Beauty is another’s good.*
(Diogenes Laertius 4.48; K54)
499 To those who say that beauty exercises a tyrannical power, he would say, ‘Oh yes, a tyranny that can be brought down by a hair.’*
(Stobaeus 4.21b.23; K55)
500 In an even more vulgar vein, the sophist Bion used to refer to the hairs of beautiful youths as Harmodioi and Aristogeitones,* because when they make their appearance, lovers are liberated by them from a beautiful tyranny.
(Plutarch, Amatorius 24, 770b; K56)
501 He even abused Socrates, saying that if he felt desire for Alcibiades and held back, he was a fool, or if he did not, there was nothing remarkable in his behaviour.*
(Diogenes Laertius 4.49; K59)
502 He cast reproach on Alcibiades, saying that, as a boy, he led husbands away from their wives, and when he grew up to become a young man, drew wives away from their husbands.
(Diogenes Laertius 4.49; K60)
503 When asked if one should marry, he said, ‘If she’s ugly, you’ll find her hard to bear, if she’s beautiful, you’ll find you have to share.’*
(Diogenes Laertius 4.48; K61A)
504 When reproached for not trying to win over a youth,* he said, ‘One can’t catch a soft cheese on a hook.’
(Diogenes Laertius 4.47; K58)
505 It is impossible to please the mass of people, so Bion thought, unless one becomes a honey-cake or good Thasian wine.
(Dio Chrysostom 66.26; K18)
506 To be unable to endure ills is itself a great ill.
(Diogenes Laertius 4.48; K23)
507 When asked who is subject to the greatest anxiety, he said, ‘He who aspires after the greatest prosperity and happiness.’
(Diogenes Laertius 4.48; K24)
508 On seeing an envious man with a very glum expression on his face, Bion the sophist said, ‘Either something very bad has happened to him, or something very good to somebody else.’*
(Stobaeus 3.38.50; K47A)
509 To an envious man who was looking very glum, he said, ‘I don’t know whether something bad has happened to you, or something good to somebody else.’
(Gnomologium Vaticanum 158; K47B)
510 Bion compared people like this [i.e. those who readily offer their ear to flatterers] as jugs who can easily be carried away by their ears.*
(Plutarch, On Not Letting Ourselves Be Bullied 18, 536a; K51)
511 It was thus foolish and simple-minded of Bion to say, ‘If a field could be made more fertile and fruitful by being praised, it would not seem amiss to do that rather than to dig and work away at it; so there would be nothing improper in praising a man also, if it is beneficial and productive to those who are praised’; for a field cannot be made worse by being praised, but a man can become puffed up and corrupted if he is falsely and undeservedly praised.
(Plutarch, How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend 16, 59a; K50)
512 We should keep a close eye on our friends to see what kind of people they are, so that one should not be thought to associate with rogues, or to turn away people of worth.
(Diogenes Laertius 4.51; K49)
513 Bion used to say that, as with Hesiod, pupils come in three races,* the gold, the silver, and the bronze; the gold are those who pay and learn, the silver those who pay and do not learn, and the bronze those who learn but do not pay.
(Stobaeus 2.31.97; K78A)
514 When the Athenians concentrated their attention on rhetoric, he taught philosophy at Rhodes;* and to those who criticized him for that, he said, ‘When I have brought wheat to market, how can I sell barley?’
(Diogenes Laertius 4.49; K4)
515 And it was a witty response too that Bion made to the lines of Theognis,
Any man bowed down by poverty can neither do
Nor say anything, since his tongue is tied.*
—‘How can it be, then, that being poor as you are, you talk all this nonsense and tire us with your empty chatter?’
(Plutarch, On How a Young Man should Listen to Poets 4, 22a; K53)
516 When, during a discussion over the wine, he noticed that a young man was keeping silent, he said, ‘If you’re well educated and keeping silent, you’re badly educated,* but if you’re ill-educated, you’ve plainly had a good education.’
(Gnomologium Vaticanum 159; K77)
517 To a relentless chatterer who sought his help, he said, ‘I’ll do what I can, provided only that you don’t come along yourself, but send others to plead on your behalf.’*
(Diogenes Laertius 4.50; K74)
518 When someone asked him why he failed to benefit from his own advice, he replied, ‘Neither do medicine-boxes which contain excellent medicine draw any benefit from it themselves.’
(Gnomologium Vaticanum 157; K75)
519 When someone snatched away the upper part of the fish, Bion turned to seize it back, and he then gobbled it down and recited the verse, ‘But Ino finished the work on the other side.’*
(Athenaeus 8, 344a; K81)
520 While making a sea-voyage in very bad company, he ran across some pirates; when his companions said, ‘We’re done for if we’re discovered’, he replied, ‘And I’m done for if we’re not.’
(Diogenes Laertius 4.50; K79)
521 Bion said that boys throw stones at frogs in fun, but the frogs do not die in fun but in real earnest.
(Plutarch, On the Cleverness of Animals 7, 965ab; K76)
522 Old age, he said, is the harbour of all ills; for at any rate, all of them take refuge there.
(Diogenes Laertius 4.48; K62A)
523 He said it is not right to heap reproaches on old age, to which, he said, all of us aspire to attain.
(Diogenes Laertius 4.51; K63)
524 He said that old age is the dregs of life.
(Gnomologium Vaticanum 163; K64)
525 When people are young, he said, they have courage, but they only reach the height of their wisdom in old age.
(Diogenes Laertius 4.50; K65)
526 He used to say that the path to Hades is an easy one; people set off along it at any rate with their eyes shut.
(Diogenes Laertius 4.49; K66)
527 Bion said that there are two things that foretell the nature of death, the time preceding our birth and sleep.
(Gnomologium Vaticanum 160; K67)
528 Just as we leave a house, says Bion, when the landlord, having failed to receive the rent, takes out the door, removes the tiles from the roof, and shuts up the well, so likewise, he says, I leave my poor body when nature, which has lent it to me, deprives me of the use of my eyes and ears, and of my hands and feet; I do not resist, but as when leaving a banquet, I depart without any ill-feeling, so also do I depart from life itself: when the hour comes, ‘Climb into the shelter of the boat.’*
(Teles 15.11–16.4; K68)
529 It is this opinion [i.e. that death is a great evil] that gives rise to all those horrible forms of mourning, such as begriming one’s body, tearing at one’s cheeks like a woman, and striking oneself on the chest, thighs, and head; it is this that makes Agamemnon, in Homer and Accius* alike, ‘oft tear in grief his unshorn locks’. Hence that witty remark by Bion, that it was exceedingly silly of the king to tear out his hair in his grief, as though his sorrow would be alleviated by baldness.
(Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.26.62; K69)
530 Disputes over burial, says Bion, have provided the basis for many a tragedy.*
(Teles in Stobaeus 3.40.8; K70)
531 He would condemn those who burn the dead* as if they are devoid of sense, and yet invoke them* as though they were still in possession of their senses.
(Diogenes Laertius 4.48; K71)
532 Let anyone run over in his mind the various things that cause us to be happy or sad, and he will recognize the truth of what Bion said: ‘All the affairs of human beings resemble their beginnings, and their life is no more sacred and serious than their conception, they return to nothing after having been born out of nothing.’
(Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind 15.4; K72)